Just think about that next time you you call it it's it's going to zero or that it's going to die like
We're all just sitting back here laughing at you sir. We are we're laughing at you
We think you're an idiot because we don't think that you understand like how this actually works and like that this this is a
this is a takeover and
We're sucking all the monetary energy out of the global economy and we're stuffing it into Bitcoin and we're gonna recap all the equity
So congratulations. You played yourself. We're here. We're taking over
Greetings and salutations my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast
The Bitcoin block height is 807 210 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin
Today's episode is Bitcoin talk where I talk with my guest about Bitcoin and many other things as well
Today that guest is Preston Pish a man whom I admire a great deal
Preston graduated from West Point is a captain in the US Army
It was a combat helicopter pilot flying Apache attack helicopters on multiple tours of duty
Preston is also one of the founders of the investors podcast network
He hosts the show Bitcoin fundamentals a collection of podcast episodes on the we study billionaires flagship
podcast of the investors podcast network with more than 150 million downloads
You can find Preston on no store by going to primal net slash Preston
I really enjoyed this conversation and I think you will too if you want to watch the video version of the show
Head to YouTube comm slash at Walker America
If you're a Bitcoin only company looking to sponsor another fucking Bitcoin podcast hit me up on no store at primal net slash Walker on
Twitter at Walker America or by going to Bitcoin podcast net
Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Preston Pish
Greetings and salutations my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast
today's episode is Bitcoin talk and I am joined by an all-around
Incredible and impressive human being today Preston Pish
Preston's resume is quite long and extensive. So just a couple of highlights. He graduated from West Point
He's a captain of the US Army was a combat helicopter pilot flying Apache attack helicopters on multiple tours of duty
He's also one of the founders of the investors podcast network. He hosts the show Bitcoin fundamentals
It's a collection of podcast episodes on the we study billionaires flagship podcast on that network
They have more than 100 million or 150 million downloads at this point
So that is quite impressive Preston. Thank you so much for taking your scarce time to talk with me today
It's great to have you wonderful to be here a big fan of you and your wife
Yeah, great to be here. I'm a bigger fan of my wife than I am of me, but I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless
Well, well, thanks so much. I'd love to start out by just again
I highlighted a couple of things that you have done in your life, but I'd love to hear from you
Who is Preston Pish and how the heck did he get here today?
What does that journey look like
You know, I just to kind of tell a little bit of my story of like why I went into the military
because that heavily influenced who I who I am and kind of
My morals and things like that
When I was a kid I was
10th grade I went up and I had a cousin who was a oral surgeon at West Point
He was the head dental oral surgeon at West Point Fullberg Colonel, which is for people that don't know the ranks
that's one rank below general and
He lived at West Point and was just, you know
the head dentist there and
My family was like, hey, we're gonna go up and visit Jack
And so, you know, I'm a young kid just
highly in you know influenced by whatever you see
Have no idea what it is. I want to do I was good at that point in my life
I was I was good at math really couldn't stand writing and language and all that kind of stuff
And so I went up there we visited him and his family and
You know, I got taken around to see the academy and just really liked the discipline
and I really liked that it was an engineering and math school and
It was up for a challenge, you know, like that was really kind of
Where I was at at that point in my life was just like, hey, this looks like a real challenge
It looks really difficult
It was really difficult to get into so I wasn't so sure whether, you know, it was even a possibility of whether I could do it
But long story short, uh, it it had a huge impact on me at this point in my life where I was just starting my 10th grade year
And uh, really motivated me to to want to go do that
And if I didn't get in the west point, I was looking at some of the other service academies like the Air Force Academy and just
Really kind of liked that, uh
The rigor I liked the uh
The morals and like everybody's room is unlocked and you can trust all the other people
There was like an honor code associated with it and it was just it really kind of uh
Harmonized with with who I was as a perp or like least what I thought I was as a person at that point in my life
and um
Yeah, so like that's a little bit more on on
What I was attracted to at that age and I knew I wanted to do engineering and this was like one of the top five
engineering schools in the country
And so it was just kind of it was a kind of a fit for me and um, I knew it was going to be hard
But I was a little bit attracted to that. I wanted something that was really challenging at that point
And I really wanted to fly
um, I
Uh, I think when we were up there, they had like a helicopter display. We were up there for a football game
Uh the weekend of a football game and they had like all these different displays
And I was just looking at like oh my god. This would be amazing
I could go here and then I could be a pilot afterwards and like that would just be awesome
and that's what I did and um
So that that had a big influence on who I who I became and kind of like my moral construct
um
Because you you learn like when you go through the surface academy that
um
Your ability to tell the truth
Your ability to work together as a team and with other people is really kind of the essence of like
Being successful in the military. It's it's really kind of comes down to uh, you got to trust your buddy to your left and your right
and if you can't act morally responsibly and
always with truth at the forefront of of your actions
Then that you can't work together in harmony as a team if those aren't at the at the root
And so uh, that's really bred into the culture at service academies is you
You if you lie me it's so serious that if you would lie is with something I'll give you an example
if uh
if you had a a coke in your
Pepsi or a coke on your on your dresser and it somebody came in and drank it
And like you could prove somehow that that person drank the coke and you asked the person afterwards like did you drink that
Coke or Pepsi and they said no like and they just blatantly lied about it
You could literally be thrown out of the school for that
That's how that's how serious it is zero tolerance
Like literally zero tolerance and it doesn't even matter how small
The act is there's just no tolerance for it whatsoever let alone like cheating on a test or anything like that
But then I I saw I saw many of people that were thrown out of the school for for honor
And uh, so it's it's very serious. It's something that uh, you know this
I can't even tell you how many classes, you know how this is like drilled into your head
Um throughout your four years is that you just there's no tolerance for liars cheaters and people that take advantage of others
and so like that is
um
I didn't have an appreciation for how important and how powerful this was when I was going through the school
It was more like like you're you were fearful of it
Like the consequences were so like huge of like oh my god. I went through three years of this and I got thrown up for
Honestly
When when I was going through it. I was more fearful of it than understanding why it was so important
But you know two decades later
uh
It's
It's very obvious to me why this is so vital to
uh
The school and like what it represents and why it's important to people to to live a successful life afterwards
and if I was going to try to explain it in a way that is uh
Either it just maybe a different way to to describe it
When you lie or when you do things that are unethical and I would describe unethical is when you're stealing somebody else's energy
And you're not you're you're doing it in a way that's manipulative that the other person doesn't know you're stealing their energy
When you do that what you're doing is you're actually introducing volatility into not only their life, but also your life
Because I think what you do is you're setting you're setting this
Uh reciprocal laws of motion into the the universe's ether
And it's going to find a way to come back and manifest itself into your life
And the thing that makes it really hard for people to wrap their head around why a lot of people don't believe that
Is because I think it manifests itself back into your life at the point that's most optimal for the universe
Which means it could be five years later. It could be 10 seconds later or it could be 30 years later
And I think the longer the lag is that that it does come back to you. I think there's some sort of like interest on it
Meaning if it comes back to you 30 years later, it's coming back with a whole lot more magnitude than what you
Inserted into it 30 years previously
And so people would hear this and be like, oh, that's a lot like karma and it is yeah, and um
You know, this isn't something that like I learned at the school. This is something that I've kind of uh, I guess it's my framework for how I view the world
and um
I just think that
When like if I went to you and I I told you I was going to help you out with something but my intention and this is what
What is taught when you're talking about?
Uh, honor violations at these schools as they say what was the intention of the person?
Was the intention of the person to go in there and drink the coke?
Because they didn't want to pay for one
Okay, because that's just a pure
uh parasitic activity
Very small in value, but that's stealing somebody else's energy that's in the form of this coke that they're that they're drinking and by the way
I don't think I I don't drink coke or Pepsi. I drink water
Oh, I'm glad that you clarified that
For the help for the health people out there
But let's say my intention was I was trying to have fun
with you by
By screwing with your head by drinking a little bit of the coke because you were trying to figure out who it was right?
And my intention was actually to have fun because we're friends
Okay
There are two acts
Okay
That one might try to argue or the same thing
But I would argue they're very very different
And they're very different because of the intention of the person of like why were they doing it?
Were they actually trying to claw energy away or were they actually trying to have fun and uh
Uh and later on they're gonna say oh, yeah, that was me. I was screwing with you. I was just trying to have fun and and by the way
And here and here's a coke by the way. Yeah, and here's here's your coke back, right?
Like if that was truly the intention there's the it's it's interesting because I think
when we when we pull on this thread of morals and we pull on the thread of reciprocity and uh
Karma
I think that
Inside of all of that is this idea of intentions that are wrapped inside of it
So if your intention is to actually steal like look at all these look at all these shitcoins, okay?
Look at the people that are that are behind these shitcoins
Look at the intentions of the people behind these shitcoins
And their intentions they really think they're clever and they really think that
That they can smooth millions of dollars of buying power and that the universe isn't going to find a way
To totally destroy them in their future
Right and and sometimes it plays out fast and sometimes it's gonna play out much longer. And so I look at guys like, uh
Ben, what's the uh, bit boy bit boy?
Yeah
Like when I see a guy like this and I can see he's just straight parasitic
My actions on twitter is I want to I want to block this guy
so insanely
Facts so that there's no way that I can that I can pull him into my gravitational pull of
Of my circle or my inner circle because he is the definition of of parasitic activity, right?
Now what I find interesting is other parasites
People that harmonize with those types of activities are attracted to him
They get they get pulled in almost like it's a gravitational energy force
That's that's sucking them to a guy like that so that they can enjoy this
Uh, this energy sucked together
And and what it is is it's a life of pain
Right this this introduction of volatility and and parasites that get attracted to each other
It's a life of pain. It's a life of a person choosing
Choosing to experience the pain instead of experience
Growth through other people's hardships or or uh
um
Great performance like you can learn through others or you can learn through pain and it's like well
This is the the way you want to you want to go so
Some of those things are what shaped me very early on. I know that was a really long response, but I liked it
But these are the these are really core ideas to who I am and what I believe in
And why I make the decisions in the manner that I make them
It really I would tell you this is at my core of like who I am and how I think about people and how I think about
Their decision-making and whether I decide to associate with them or not
I can be very picky with people that I associate with
I consider myself even luckier after hearing that to have the pleasure of associating with you
I want to I want to stick on that that topic for a second because
Something that I always ask myself is for these people that are these parasitic scammers that we from the outside can very
Obviously see what they're doing. We can see their intent
Do you think some of these guys and I say guys because well
They're they are mostly guys
If we're in the in the shitcoin space, do you think that they tend or start to believe their own bullshit at a certain point?
Do you think they start to think you know what I really am helping people?
Uh, like that they start out knowing that what they're doing is an obvious grift and then at some point
They get so wrapped up in the story that they've told themselves that they may actually start to delusionally believe like no no
Bencoin is going to change the world and it's going to be the future of finance and it's helping people
What's your take on that?
So for this type of person
The way that their brain functions is it's all about them first
And then they reverse engineer the logic
Okay, so they would look at bencoin and they'd be like this dude is going to rug pull so many people
And he's going to make so much money
Right and therefore if I can participate in this alongside of him
I'm going to make so much money
And and then it's like okay. So like how can I do do some type of logic that make and you see the excitement that I'm showing you
Yep, this excites them
This excites them because you got to remember at their core
It's all about them and it's all about how creative they can be
In order to suck energy away without somebody else knowing that they're sucking the energy away
That's for them a productive action
Because of what they believe at their core, which is it's all about me first and this is going to feed me like it's never fed me before
Right and that's that's what they're really thinking and if they can tell a cute or creative story around that
And and dup other people in the process
they're walking away from that experience of duping somebody with an enormous amount of of
self
Like it really makes them feel good
Because they were able to suck that energy away without the other
counterparty
Knowing that they were that they like they're like I fooled the living hell out of these idiots
And like they feel really good about it
And that's scary, but that's but that's who they are at their core
And that's why they're attracted to a guy like that is because they he completely
Resonates with the way they think about themselves and about the world
Which is the whole world is my oyster to suck energy from and not to to give anything in return
It's such a
I think that it's so you explained it very well
And it's so difficult for people who are not parasitic in that way
People who are genuinely trying to build something to create value to give value to others
Because they know that value comes back when you when you create it and put it out in the world
It's so difficult to wrap your mind around that that narcissistic
Egotistical parasitic mindset where you just say like how can you like how can you live with yourself?
How can you sleep at night?
But then we also must remember that like literally 1 of the general population are clinical psychopaths and you know a few percent are sociopaths
So it's like maybe
Three to five out of every 100 people is either a psychopath or a sociopath
So I think that's often giving some of these scammers too much credit like some of them are there are just also
You know people who are very shitty. They may not be psychopaths. They're just
Egotistical narcissists and you know they were wired up that way
So like when we look at how people get wired up so much of it's just influenced by the first 15 years 20 years of their life
From your parents
And you know if you have if you have parasitic parents
It's going to dry. It's going to polarize you one way or the other
It's going to polarize you to be exactly like them
Or the pain is so painful that it actually drives the person in the exact opposite direction
So when you look at a person who's not parasitic either their parents were were
Great parents and really taught the person how to how to
How you need to be in harmony with everybody
And it needs to be a win-win and it needs to be a value creation to the other person
Or they were so dang parasitic that they they they wired you up to be the polar opposite of who they are
And uh, and I think this is why human nature when we talk about human nature it it
Perpetuates this cycle
over and over and over again
Uh, and and you could argue that a parent who is too giving that doesn't let their child discover anything
It can actually perpetuate a parasitic child sometimes because they're their total pushovers and they've just
received energy their whole lives
Without ever learning like what's behind the why of like why the parent is so giving
And it can perpetuate the opposite right and it's this it's this uh, it's this harmony of
uh
Like a yin-yang right like you look at at that like when it becomes too overpowering one direction
You actually create the opposite of what what maybe you're intending to create
Yeah, it's I definitely knew of some people like that in college that uh did not quite understand how they had it so good
But just assume that it must always be like that. Uh, they did not do so well in college. Um with that mentality though, unfortunately
And so after
After they leave their parents who were just giving abundance of energy to them at no cost whatsoever
What they're really searching for after they leave the parents and they'll continue to suck off the parents
But like they're looking for a partner. They're looking for other people in their lives
That can provide this free source of energy. I mean, this is the definition of a parasite
Right, they're looking for something that can supply this free source of energy
And yeah, it's wild. So the lesson for for people that are getting ready to be parents like yourself
Is is there's a balance and most importantly there's an education process that has to take place with the child at the root
Of like the why am I giving this to you?
And why I'm going to stop giving it to and why you need to to create value for others
um
Yeah, it's it's it's difficult for people to wrap their head around like this this recurring loop of
Of how things can play out in a person's life
It's interesting. I've talked to a few bitcoiners about a similar
In a similar vein where the idea of okay if we let's imagine a hyper bitcoinist future
Where uh, those of us who have been working hard to accumulate bitcoin over, you know, the past, you know, a few years and also maybe the next 20 30 years
When we go to give something to our children
Uh, how do you make sure that you still instill in those kids if if we are truly in this hypothetical situation?
Which is not so hypothetical. Hopefully uh living in this post-hyper bitcoinized world
uh
bitcoiners are going to have a massive amount of material wealth, uh, and
How do you make sure that if you are raising kids
You raise them to still have the tenacity and the grit and the drive to push forward and to realize listen
Yeah, you have it you have it good, but life cannot be handed to you and you still need to work at this
And I think I had the chance to meet uh meet your kids briefly and they seem like wonderful human beings
So if you have any thoughts on that in the in the post-hyper bitcoinized world, how do bitcoiners who are stacking now ensure that their kids
Uh
Have the same drive and tenacity that they did
So this is one of my favorite talks
Uh, because I think so many people get this really wrong like really
So going back to the example we were talking about where a parent is just showering their child with energy
Right and how it can actually perpetuate and create this monster
That expects energy to just continue to shine down on them
um
Take that
multiply it by a hundred thousand
And that's what you get when you hand wealth to children
without any type of
Thought as to whether they can actually handle
such an energy uh
Exposure
Right, this would be like taking a plant like some outdoor plant
and like hooking up like
like this
massive
Energy like light system to like this tiny little plant and then just showering it with energy for like 48 hours straight
Like you're gonna wither it
to an ash
And like that's what people are doing when they have an abundance of money
And they jam it down the throat of the child who has no clue like how it was ever achieved
how how it was ever created and um
They're they're they're destroying their family line is what they're doing through something like like it
It has the potential to be the most toxic pill you could jam down the throat of your child
and um
Now there are there are children that let's say they're 30 years old and they have
enormous drive and understanding of like how to
How to control the flow of all that energy because I just see it as like pent up energy
It's almost like a marvel movie, right?
Like where they can like control like these these timelines or these energy exchange and like
uh, the what's the one with the guardians of the galaxy where like
Very few people can like actually hold one of these stones
They just explode if they grab one of these stones. It is exactly like that
When you talk about handing wealth over to children like you're handing this thing that's going to make them explode
So, uh, I if you would all in that light and I think it's a case by case basis
I think age is super important when you look at like
Whether that so like if a person's setting up a will I think that will should definitely have
Clauses in there that extend out the age before they would get this drip of money
uh
If not just giving it all away
I think that that's a that may be one of the most viable and your kids might hate you
But you know what at least you're like
Somewhat protecting them from being showered with like ultraviolet gamma radiation or whatever
That's like, you know, did literally destroy them
Right and well and hopefully if you're giving it away not being forcefully giving it away via some 50 percent inheritance tax to the government
But a voluntary
Giveaway in a product that actually goes to a productive use not just funding a bloated state
Uh, no, I think that that's that's great advice and you know, I think that's something that actually uh from my own experience
That I've seen immigrant parents do extremely well
Is and sometimes, you know, they come off as very harsh
Uh, uh when compared to a let's say quote typical american parent who maybe
Is more of the participation
Uh award type of parent versus
At least, you know, carlos parents for example, uh, her dad escaped communism. He was a defector
He did not have it easy
Uh and worked his ass off for that and never let
His you know daughters forget that and they both turned into very incredible women
I've seen that in a lot of cases. Of course that that can also be taken too far in certain cases, you know, too much
Guilty of you know, well, you didn't walk 20 miles uphill both ways to school with you know
The you know, but but there's you know everything in balance, right as you said yin and yang
Uh, and and I think that's key. So
Speaking of balance, uh, how I just I would love to know a little bit more, uh, about how you managed to balance
Uh, you came out of the military and uh, and you went and you got your masters right in uh, uh in finance
and
What did that journey look like for you of balancing coming out of the military?
and after having really and truly served
and then
Deciding okay, I'm gonna go back to school. I'm going to then start what is
Like one of the I think what the most probably successful investor
Uh investing podcast, uh, that's out there. I mean you guys have built something really incredible
How did that journey start out for you? When did you kind of decide? Okay? I want to I want to do this
I want to I want to go in this direction
And and how did you manage to balance all of that with also?
Uh, you know having a wonderful wife
raising some amazing kids because
It's something that I think is uh balance is difficult
But balance is one of the if you can find that balance. It's one of the things that gives your life so much fulfillment
So where I think a lot of people go wrong is once they decide. Oh, I'm gonna do a podcast or I'm gonna do
Whatever you name it business idea
They
They don't harness time
appropriately
They want it now
They want to see results in two years
they uh
Or in the little jump ship like oh, I'm not doing that anymore. I'm going all in right here
I got to go all in like just like that phrase right? Yep
Uh, that's what leads to a really
In balance in a person's life
Like for me like I started doing the podcast. I actually started it off as a forum
Uh, like an online forum and education site and the business actually started off in books like publishing books
and um
and it was just this slow little grind that I was doing on the side that uh
You know, I dedicated an hour to two hours
At night like late at night usually like after 9 p.m
I would work an hour to two hours and I just was like slowly like just chipping away
like ever so slightly and it was um
It was my lack of desire to see results immediately
that I would say allowed me to balance it all and allowed me to stay sane and to enjoy my family and like
It was it was always this thing like well if if if it grows up into this thing
That would be amazing. But if it doesn't that's okay, too
And I was just very realistic about it all and there was really no grand strategy and no like grand plan
and I think that's why it was able to
um
You know some people they they tell themselves stories
so often
That they convinced themselves of these
uh
Like oh this is going to we're going to be at a million dollars in two years
We're going to be at five million dollars in revenue a year after that and they tell themselves a story over and over and over again
And then especially when it's not met
Like it's a meltdown and it's it's this disaster and then it's like well
We still have to figure out a way to do it and then they start getting uh
Like overly creative in a very bad way
And like we just never had any of that like it was always just like to be honest with you the first
three to
Five years was just like we weren't making any money. We were just doing it because we were having fun
We were doing it for the love of the topic
Right, we were doing it for like oh, well, this is pretty neat. We get to talk to some really neat people
we're not getting paid anything but like
Like and we were so early in the podcasting like there wasn't even advertising like back there like if I would
That's when advertising like hey, you want to add do ads on our show like what what's a podcast like you talk about
um
So like we were doing it because we loved it and um
And I think that that was really important if you're doing something because you just want to make a bunch of money
Like good luck to you like I don't know what to tell you like it's probably not going to work out so well for you because
when people are
Actually creating value for others
They're doing it because they're solving a problem that they just cannot deal with anymore like personally
They're just maybe they work at some widget factory and like they're like god
I could make this so much easier if I could just invent this tool that does this step like five times faster
And so then they invent the tool and then the tool does great and they like there
They're intimately familiar with a problem that needs to be solved
And then they're very passionate about solving that problem and it like if that's not you and you're just like oh
I I got this idea to make five million dollars and like that's the reason you're gonna
Nine times out of ten maybe 99 times out of 100 like you are gonna fail so flat on your face. It's not even funny
It's it's like the the kind of the the chat gpt business model of okay
Chat gpt give give me a real good idea that's gonna make me five million dollars in revenues
Like it's it's it's wanting the result without
Putting in the work. It's the expectation of having it handed to you
Because you're somehow worthy of it even though you have done nothing to prove that worth
And again, it's really just like that chat gpt mentality of like okay
I don't want to figure out the the process just give me what the solution is and then I'll just do that and it'll just work
Well, I think a lot of people are motivated by just going big like that's the that's a catch then 10 exit or
Let's go big like it's it's like this cliche thing that people are so and it gets back to the whole fiat cleanly
People are so frustrated because when they look around they literally know nothing
They don't think that they're renting like the most obscure things these days like things that like
Cost a couple hundred bucks and they're renting it like it's wild to me like how like
How
Truly everybody's a rent seeker everybody's a debt slave like through and through
and um
So I think it's it's that combined with well
I just got to go big and like just reverse the tide here
Like I can't deal with this reality that I own nothing and I'm a slave
to society
And all these people that control the the fractional reserve banking system
um
That they that they then want to go big and then it's like let me type in the chat gpt. It's going to give me an idea
I'm going to execute i'm going to crush it right and it's just this is not how the world works
It's it's almost this gambler's mentality of you're down so bad
Uh, not always necessarily through fault of your own but through fault of the system
Uh, perhaps it's also fault of your own, but in general that gambler's mentality of I just need that one that one win
I'll make it all back and then some and then and then i'm out
You know then I'll then I'll quit but but you're never out um this in in in the house of or in the casino of fiat
The house always wins and the deck is very much stacked against you
But that's frustrating to people and so I think that that's where you have that, you know, they're searching for something
Uh, that they can just grab on to that they can make theirs that they don't have to do the work for
because also the I think
Perhaps the the way that our culture has started shifting a little bit and maybe it's partially social media
Maybe it's just natural, but there's the glorification of uh, I don't I think that glorifying success
Is a good thing if you're telling the story of how that's of the hard work that went into it
I think glorifying just a lifestyle that is supposed to be associated with success
Leads people to doing absurdly stupid things like renting a Ferrari
For an hour to take a photo with it with your rented Rolex that you know, you also have for the next hour
Just to be able to post on social media to show that you have somehow attained this level of success
And you're going to teach somebody else how to do it too, buddy. Don't worry and it's
We need to get back. I think to
glorifying hard work and
glorifying the idea that sacrifice
Is okay and a good thing
That success shouldn't just be easy that it should be hard one
And I think will be a lot better off and and if people, you know, there's nothing so satisfying as a hard day's work
Um when you can be done with the day and say wow, I'm really proud of what I accomplished today
Otherwise, it's just hollow
Yep, I so I interviewed this billionaire, uh, Jesse Itzler. This guy's hilarious. He uh, wrote this book
Living with a seal he hired this navy seal to live with him just to like kick his butt and like
Uh, like just give make him hard like he's all about like doing hard things. So, um,
I was I was talking to Jesse and I said well people just really need to be passionate about what they're
You know doing to be successful if they're trying to create a visit because what I'm not sure what I don't want to
Send across here is like it's too hard. Don't even try. I'm not saying that
but what I'm saying is
If if it's something that you are are passionate about and I'm going to tell you the Jesse story
and
You you're passionate about the journey
Then that's something that you should you should really go after so so the story with Jesse
So I said to Jesse I said well, you got to be really passionate about the thing that you're that you're building
Jesse goes f that
He says you need to be passionate about the journey
And I I took a step back and I thought like oh that's interesting. He's like he's like because
A person who's building something from nothing. So like his story. So he built marquee jet
Which was like one of these jet-share
businesses that he's sold for hundreds of millions of dollars and
And then his wife is Sarah Blakely who created Spanx and uh sold that oh wow, okay?
Yeah, so the two of them are just total powerhouses and
Um, but he said because if you're not passionate about the journey
What's going to happen is you're going to you're going to be working at 4 a.m
You're going to be like plowing through stuff that you never thought was possible
Like you could never work this hard about on something
And if you're not passionate about that journey and building this thing
Like you're never going to make it because they're like to really truly build something huge
Like it is a tow grind
It's a lot of long hours
And it's working on something that if you're if you're not passionate about that experience in like growing that
Like you're never going to make it
And and there's people out there that are maybe building the same exact thing that are
passionate about that journey and they're just going to they're going to destroy you
Yeah
So like I for me it was it was a real uh
It was a it was an eye-opening experience and then when I looked at like my like my little podcast business, right?
Relative to the suckle that little uh, yeah, it's all relative, right?
Like i'm looking at it with jesse with jesse bill and i'm looking at like my business
I'm saying i'm saying you know what preston i you are very passionate about this
And like it was this moment for me like you know what like I love doing
I love this topic. I love you know if I have to wake up real early for an interview
Which sometimes happens if it's uh, you know if it's a big main person and they're in europe or wherever
Like there's many times I did interviews at 4am. I literally wake up at 4am to do an interview
and um
And I never once was like oh god
I got to get up and do this like I was always excited about and it was something that I was very passionate about and so
If if you're somebody who's trying to build something and you don't think that's you for this particular thing
Well, then I would tell you to find something else
That's that that's great advice. Uh, just so you know, I was very excited to get up this morning and talk to you
Uh, so
For what it's worth. Well, uh, let's let's switch gears a little bit just so you know
It's a little bit just speak about something. Uh, we're both. I think pretty passionate about
Which is noster
It's something that's very easy to get passionate about because like bitcoin. It's something that is open to absolutely anyone
There are no restrictions on your ability to use it and to participate
in this network
And you I I remember uh, you were very early on noster
Uh, you and I both were relative again relatively speaking not relative to the devs that were building it
not relative to fiat javu created this thing but relative to the
mass influx of people and that mass is also still relative
but
What drew you to
Noster in the first place. I think you were on in december. Uh, like we got on around the same time
it was a few people messing around and
It was this thing that was really exciting and cool. It was also around the time where there was some turbulence in uh
In the platform formerly known as twitter or x now
and I'd love to know a little bit more because
this is something that uh
It's a network that has the potential to
really
Pull in so many aspects of our social media lives
But also to go so far beyond that we're using it right now in the context of social media
That has its own huge number of benefits, but there are
potentially infinite possibilities for what can be built on top of this open source communication protocol
So I'd love to know a little bit and we we took some questions off noster as well, which we can get to a bit later
But what drew you to noster? What are you excited about there now?
And where do you see that fitting into just both your personal future?
But perhaps your your business's future as well as you you know see how this network grows and develops
So decentralized social media has been something that's been on my radar for quite a few years
I would say back to 2017 is whenever people first started talking about it
And they were talking about it more from the lens of like
if one of these social media companies created their own crypto token that's uh, you know
We we could get into the the conversation of like how decentralized that would be
um, but the idea was if they created a crypto token that they could force advertisers to use that token
Like if i'm an advertiser and I want to advertise on facebook or I want to advertise on twitter
I would have to convert my fiat into their token in order to
Have these units that then I could buy ads with and what that would do is it would generate a
A a real market cap for the utility of such a thing because they have billions of people on my platforms
And so this was this was on my radar because of that
back six years ago
I I was very concerned
At that time like if I was doing a risk assessment on bitcoin
I was very concerned that a facebook or a twitter or like one of these one of these platforms with billions of users
could could
uh
Create a token like this and scale it so that the market cap would be potentially competitive with bitcoin
And it would it would be a risk to bitcoin's adoption was my concern back then. I don't have this concern at all these days
But like back in 2017. I had that concern
Then you saw when was it uh
Was it 2020 that facebook announced that they were going to do liberal?
Well, maybe maybe even earlier than that actually. Yeah, maybe 2019. Maybe 2019 or something like that. Yeah, I think it was
2019 they announced this
And David Marcus was the guy like doing this. Yeah, and so uh, this was very concerning
Like that they were going to do this and I remember
Jack was talking about decentralized social media where there's no company needed and that could run off of
tokens and things like that uh without a company basically
uh
managing all the back end of this stuff since
probably maybe even before 2017
and so like all of this has always been on my radar of of uh, what's happening and
Jack has been on record for many years saying that to do it is very difficult technically
I didn't understand the nuances of like why that was really difficult technically to do
But I knew that that was Jack's opinion and I I've
Followed Jack very closely as to like what he's saying about various things
so
When I saw Jack start talking about this, I think at the end of uh, 2022
Nostra
um, and that he had made a donation to the out jack and uh
Uh, these others and saying hey, this actually has a real potential to actually be decentralized social media
I immediately dug in and was like all right. So like how does it work?
Uh, how is it actually decentralized? How is it not mastered on like that that you have these skatekeepers controlling content moderation and things like that?
and once I and I
Immediately tried to start running my own relay so that I could technically sort of understand
Yeah, I know I didn't I didn't have the best success, but I had it up and running there for a little bit with lots of help
um, and I'm running my own turnkey a relay now with uncle and uh, but anyway, so
When I saw that jack was behind this and I saw that it actually looks like this is going to work
I mean, I just went all in I was like, okay, this is huge. This is going to change the way all social media works
It's just a matter of timeline of like when the adoption curve really starts. They hit. We're nowhere near that by the way
um
but um
I think that uh, this is really important and it's very exciting very exciting for me to know that
bitcoin
Is at the root of the currency system inside of this
this network this communication protocol and
Uh, you know if if I could go back and tell the 2017 2018 press thing that this is how this has shaken out
God, I would be
enamored right I'd be so excited that this is the way things have progressed because
I if you would have asked me back then I don't think that that's what I would have thought would have happened
I I actually thought that uh
A lot of these large social media
Yeah, I would have guessed that like the facebook's of the world would have gone in there spent a lot of money on lobbying
Convinced, you know that that they would be allowed to do this with huge cup or huge donations to political candidates because I mean
Naturally wash and cash. Yeah, and yeah
And so the way that it played out
It's really exciting
And one one other thing about jag when when I would watch him be called to converse along with all the other social media
uh empire controllers
and
Basically called to the carpet to answer I could just see the look on his face
was
Dear god like decentralized social media can't come fast enough
And it's going to it's going to remove all of this insanity that these idiots think that they can control speech
And it's going to it's going to slap them so hard across the face that they're not going to know what's happened
And that's exactly what nostre is like it is it's brewing. It's free speech. You can't turn it off
And it is beyond exciting
I think I'm just as excited about nostres. I am about bitcoin because it ensures free speech
which is
At par with free and open money
Absolutely, and I think that what you touched on there is so important which is having bitcoin as it doesn't have to be bitcoin
It could be something else that is used as you know for zaps
But it is bitcoin because a lot of the people that are building on nostre are
Bitcoin bitcoiners and maybe bitcoin devs
And so they started that from from the very beginning and I think that
Because of that you have this what could have gone a very different direction had other people
uh, let's say had the had the uh, had the crypto world
seen
Nostre earlier and thought oh, I can I can make some make a quick buck off of that
Maybe things would have gone differently, but thankfully it seems that uh, most of them have ignored
Nostre for now. By the way, I do still say uh, Nostre
Uh, not Nostre and I'm just I'll die on that hill. That's just a quick aside
but
It goes back to what you were saying earlier, which is about uh, kind of having integrity at the core of something
Having truth at the core of something because the fact that bitcoin is the
I mean bitcoin is the the native currency of the internet, right? And it's right now. It is the the uh,
The money that is used on Nostre that enables you to not only have that completely free and open expression
But to assign value to the manifestation of that expression
through a free and open monetary protocol, which again has truth at its core
So you have these these two things working in parallel that are so powerful
separately
But then together I don't think we can even entirely conceive of where this is
potentially going next because again right now it's it's just
Social media, right? We've got a lot of twitter clones and uh, you know,
You know, sub stack type clones and things like that
Which is great because you've got to start somewhere and you start with what you know
And what's familiar and what people are looking for an alternative to in the current system
But where does it go next and what kind of potential does that have? I know uh, Pablo Pablo F7z is
Building all sorts of just wild things at all times
um, you know from just different writing tools and bookmarking tools and then you start to
Uh, gg wrote a great piece of purple text orange highlights. I don't know if you've had a chance to read it. It's I hadn't seen that yet
It's it's fantastic. Uh
But going over like what does that value enabled?
uh
web really look like and
No, sir because of its simplicity and beauty and bitcoin because of its openness and simplicity
It's taking us in a direction that makes me really hopeful about the world at a time where it's very easy to get sucked into the
the twitter slash x
paradigm of just being
Rage baited by the algorithm at all times it gives you a feeling of having more actual control
You know bitcoin is giving you control of your money
No, sir is giving you control over your experience with the social internet
And I think that that's a really beautiful thing and you see the positivity
That is just exploding out of no, sir. Although it may still be small, you know, maybe what a little over 500 000
Active users at any given time. That's that's tiny
that is tiny
but
It has I think and will have an outsized impact as it continues to just grow upward
We're we're it's still early as we'd say
two two points that I that I want to say because
The I said that I think it's just as important as bitcoin
I think bitcoiners might kind of roll their eyes like come on man
Like it can't be as important as money itself. But but here's why
If I was going to send you an energy packet like let's just say I had a ball of energy and I'm going to send it
okay
How can I send that to you if there's not a way for us to communicate the address?
Right like I have to have
a a line of communication to you to coordinate
the address of where it needs to be received
You don't necessarily have to know where it's coming from
but you do have to know the address where the energy packets going to be delivered and
if you have
If you can't control
If somebody can control those lines
Right then it can always be corrupted the the address can be corrupted
So you can have the most pure money on the planet
Okay, the the best form of money that's ever been invented, which is bitcoin
But how can I ensure that it actually arrives at the address that that needs to be delivered without
Unsensible speech a communication a coordination layer
Nostra is that
Nostra is this this coordination layer so that you can always ensure that the address is is properly received
And I can't say that about any other
You know everyone's like oh well you got signal you got off now like those there are
Companies yep that manage these applications sure. It's an encrypted line
Is as far as you know, can you audit their code? I sure as heck can't
But I think Nostra is providing something here that
like
Like the how profound this is is being lost on a lot of people and
And like bitcoin
It's only a matter of time until the network effect takes over and this is going to be
massive huge the other thing that I that I wanted to just clarify
When I was talking about my concern back in like the 2017 time frame of a facebook or
Or a twitter or whoever standing out. I wasn't concerned about twitter because of jacobit
Any of these large social media platforms creating their own coin
Even back then
I was of the opinion that there's no way it's going to win in the long run
Because they will always be corruptible
When when those units are being controlled by any entity
It can always be corruptible by politicians or whoever
But what I was concerned with was the timeline being extended out to the right
Because of how many people would be duped into using such a thing
You know, it could extend the timeline to to bitcoin adoption by an extra decade because of some, you know, large behemoth
Inserting a coin that you know, it's a profitable company. So they don't need to debase the coins
But they're still corruptible by politicians. So just to want to like
Say that so people understand that that's not a risk even moving forward or any other altcoin to ever be concerned with because they can always be corrupted
And I think that that is a really important point is that anytime you have a
A point of centralization anytime there is a throat to choke, you know a a head to chop off
That will always inherently be vulnerable
It may exist and do well for a while
But it is always going to trend towards more centralization
And it is always as you said corruptible and there's just there's just no way around that
Except for you know, taking that centralization and breaking it all out and decentralizing it and and otherwise it just
The end result is always the same and and and we see this and just speaking of corruptibility
We know that in our in our current system
Uh, things are in our current monetary system. Things are just they are incredibly corrupt our political
Structure is corrupt. Our our money is broken and that has broken so many other things in our system. We see
geriatric
politicians, uh, I mean, I'm sure you I think you shared it actually the recent mcconnell
video where you see somebody who is one of our elected representatives
Who has a tremendous amount of power who?
I mean who should probably
He should probably be hospitalized and and under I mean, I'm sure he's under 24 hour watch because he's a very powerful guy
You know he's being watched by his handlers
by vinnie or whoever it was in that video who had to come and kind of jog him awake a little bit
but
I think that it's it's frustrated people are there's a frustration building
In people and and you and you sense this and a lot of people while they may have complied during
Even those people were very
Complying during the covet lock-duns and things like that
That built up frustration and resentment and now you see as we come out the other side of this
And they start talking about going back to these sorts of things and you see these geriatric politicians who are
Very obviously
Should not be in that position anymore and and it's it's it's clear to everybody and there's frustration building
but so much of that frustration
is directed at
Whichever, you know if you're a red person on the red team you directed at the blue team because they're in charge
And if you're in the blue team you directed at the red team
So many people still and it will probably take a long time
Miss the fact that it's so much deeper than that and it's the fact that
Because our money is broken. It has broken the incentive structures within the systems that govern us
Yeah, and so
I'm curious to get your take on where you see for instance in this next election cycle
We have
Three now because I believe Francisco Suarez did not make the cut. So he's he's out. Uh, but we have three pro bitcoin
politicians that are
Vocally talking about bitcoin wanting to protect it some with greater degrees of knowledge than others. That's very evident
but this is a
Big shift in the overton window
About what is the acceptable public discourse during an election year and do you I'm curious if you see
Over this next, uh, you know year and a half
Do you see the conversation starting the the mainstream conversation starting to get at more of the root causes
of issues because
Bitcoin which is a a truth machine has been brought into the equation
And now when you start talking about bitcoin, you have to necessarily talk about what's broken in the current system
Does that the conversation that we bit coiners have all the time?
Uh, does that conversation about broken money
Start to feed into the mainstream more and do we start to see that that people really start to realize?
You know what? It's not just coca-cola or Pepsi-cola. This is a false dichotomy
Created to distract me from the fact that the people pulling the strings are the ones that have the control over the money
yeah
I think that what's driving that more that bitcoin is just the inflation rate and the difficulty for most households to uh pay for what they
they felt like was
Not that it was easy, but it was much easier for them to just live their day today life and sustain their their level of
Uh, what's the word i'm looking for a standard of living they're saying yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's exactly
Um, they're they're they're not able to sustain that anymore, especially if they move like if their house wasn't paid for
And they got to move like sure they got the bump but like they can't afford the the same type of house now
Right, so they're seeing their their standard of living step down
And I think that that's driving more like what's causing this like do they actually have things under control?
Maybe they're just handing out money to like all these college students
They don't have to pay their their bills anymore and like like I think that's where the general population is at with all of this
And I think bitcoin for that for that day-to-day person they're they hear bitcoin and they're like
Honestly, this is how I think most people see this like
Oh, isn't that that thing where like all those crypto bros where people are wearing like the goofy glasses and the weirdly shaved
Beards like that's that's all those people right?
I think that's where the general population is right now actually now
agree
That doesn't matter
Yeah, because the the true the true
um bitcoin moment is going to be all of the bond tranches converting
Uh that buying power into bitcoin
And it doesn't even have to be a large amount like even 1 percent of like all that buying power
Pen up and and fixed income coming into bitcoin is going to actually cause the price to to take off and then people are going to be like
Okay, so you're telling me people are paying a couple hundred thousand dollars for an imaginary coin like what am I missing?
Like how is that possible and then that's going to drive the general population to like
Uh really start to dig in and maybe understand why they're not there right now. They are not there
And uh, and you know what they don't have any buying power anyway, like if you want to have a hundred people
They don't have money anyway like they're dead up to their eyeballs. So it's not like they're going to draw a bitcoin
It's not that they're just not
um
The thing that's going to drive bitcoin is is the movement of all this pent up stored energy which is in fixed income
Moving into bitcoin. That's what's going to cause it
and and do you I
I I am hesitant to ask about uh
potential timelines for something like this because obviously it's it's you know extremely difficult to
Uh to estimate but based on what you are seeing
Uh in in marcus now you obviously have exposure to through you know your podcast, but also, uh, you know, you have your own fund as well
Uh
You have exposure to the the broad macro landscape
What do you kind of uh
Let's say what should the
The average person uh
The average bitcoin or let's say or bitcoin curious person
What should they be looking for what should they be thinking about what what are some things to pay attention to for them for somebody?
Who's perhaps not
Doesn't necessarily have the time to go really deep into things
Uh, but wants to be a little bit more aware of what's going on in that broader macro world
What should they be looking for what are what are kind of what are the writings on the wall that they should be uh scouting for?
So, um
How do I explain this for?
Uh, yeah, and you and you don't have to simplify too much, but just maybe it's a better question to ask. What are you looking for?
Uh, okay, so for me, I'm just looking at cycles. So you go through, you know, there's these big long-term cycles
Then you have the shorter term cycles
Um, we are we are currently going through a short term cycle and where I think we're at in that short term cycle is
I think you're starting to see
Um, the the credit market is screaming that a recession is coming
Uh, you can see this in the credit market because the the interest rate that you get on short money short duration money like three month
note
Is giving you a higher return than a 30 year bond
which
For a person who they might think I miss said but I didn't miss a like three month money will give you a higher yield
Then then somebody who's locking up money for 30 years
And that's that inversion that you're looking for that's basically saying, okay
Something something funky's going on. So here I just pulled
Ships, uh
Screwed okay
All right, so, uh, wait till this loads
So when we're when we're talking about that inversion where like this really short duration money has given you a higher yield than really long duration money
This this historically is a moment when that peaks out when that becomes that inversion is deeply negative
When it starts to reverse itself
Is is when you can you're basically saying that's the top inequities and when it starts peeking out again in the future
Which we're not there
Uh, that's when you're going to see the bottom in stocks
Okay, so, uh, look at this chart. Uh, can you see my mouse? Oh, yeah, I think you guys can see it
So going back here. This is 2006. Okay. And so for people that are familiar with like the s and p 500
The s and p 500 is here on this bottom chart. Okay, and then this is your yield curve inversion. So here's zero
Okay, zero percent and this is this is a bunch of different
Uh comparisons. So like it's the 10 year minus the two year. It's the 30 year minus the three month
It's the 10 year minus the five year and I put these on here because what they're doing is they're showing
If we would go back in time to 2006 the beginning of 2007 you were at the deepest part of this inversion
Okay, and when you look at where the stock market was at during this deep inversion on this bottom chart
You can see it was peeking out the stock market was hitting its high
Then what you have is is once you you start getting impairment in this fractional reserve system. And so what that means is
The units in the global economy like people are accustomed to seeing a dollar in their pocket
And that being money, right? But most of that money is actually ios and debt
Okay, and people were trading around that debt like let's say I had a thousand dollars worth of debt
And I give it to you that somebody owes me right like somebody owes me a thousand bucks
I can give you that certificate or that piece of paper
Walker and now somebody owes you a thousand dollars
Okay, and so those those ios trade like money or they they they spend like money
Like let's say I wanted to buy something from you. That's
That was a thousand dollars like some laptop or something and I give you this this note that says that
Billy Bob owes you a thousand dollars now and you gladly accept it because you know Billy Bob is good for it
He's also going to pay you some coupons between now and the maturity of that note and then you give me the laptop
But the problem is
Now you're dependent on Billy Bob actually having that money and this is probably one of the best names
I've ever come up with for uh, you know an example. I love it
So all of a sudden Billy Bob don't have the money
Right and and and all of a sudden you actually were using that thousand dollar
coupon that Billy Bob owed you to go out and say I'm good for this other thing
I'm going to create another iou with Carla for five hundred dollars
Right because I have this thousand dollars that I'm going to that I'm going to collect from Billy Bob
So Carla I'm good for it
Right, this would be your pitch to her to give you something for five hundred bucks
Right and so what you can see is there's this
There's this system of iou's
That naturally stand up through a fractional reserve system
Now when Billy Bob doesn't have the thousand bucks, he comes to you and he says hey, we need to renegotiate these terms
He doesn't typically default on the full thousand. He'll come to you and say
Hey, brother, I don't have it. I just don't have it. Uh, uh, let's do five hundred bucks, right? And you're like
Okay, I can deal with five hundred because I owe Carla five
So so what you're doing is you're going to Carla's like I don't have this guy owed me some money
Uh, I can give you two fifty and you're trying to get her to sell
Right, even though you're getting the five hundred you're trying to get her to sell for the smaller
And so this is called impairment
Okay, and when when the uh
When you have these made up iou's and they start to contract
What happens is is this proliferates itself throughout the entire global economy
Of the units being destroyed and disappearing. So what happens when that when that's taking place
There's less units. So the prices of everything else that you're measuring
Them in which are these units has to go down
Okay, if you read books or you go to like business school or whatever they'll be like, oh, yeah
So every so you know every eight years you get this contagion situation where everybody just becomes greedy like out of nowhere
Everybody becomes who knows where it comes from. It's fear. Yeah, it's fear
Like fear will drive people to sell things for lower prices
And everybody just becomes fearful when the prices go down like this is truly what they teach. It's it's calm
Right. It's not fear
It is inherent in a fractional reserve system
That as the iou's blow up they spill over into the next person and then everybody renegotiates and everything gets priced lower
So I would tell you
Right now and this chart that i'm showing you right now is a chart. I look at a lot
Um, when I look at how deeply negative this yield curve is going right now
I would tell you that it looks like it's finding a bottom
Um, you can see it in the 10 year minus the five year where it kind of made a new high and it's starting to try to like
Want to reverse itself? It doesn't mean it can't go lower
And I'm definitely not saying this is a bottom
But I'm saying it's looking like we're hitting a bottom like it's it's looking like it's starting to form right
And once it starts to unravel itself it actually picks up pace
It gets harder to control this without there being an enormous amount of debasement
Of the of the baseline money that the iou's are constructed on top of
Okay
They have to step in so um
Now what's what's really fascinating about this is if we take this little measuring tool
We kind of line it up right here and we look at how long did it take for this to bottom itself out?
Okay, you can see that from from where we were kind of hitting a bottom here in the credit inversion
This was like 652 days on a real quick drawing here. Let's just call two years, right?
Where you hit a bottom in equities two years from this point of being in the bottom of this
So let's just say we are hitting the bottom right now on this yield curve inversion. I don't know but it's looking like we kind of
We're in 25
2025 before you'd be in the depths of a equity
Uh, Bob
And this is very important
That's dependent that the central planners take a similar
Speed at which they handle this situation as they did in the 2007 to 2009 timeframe
Which may or may not be the case
Right, so they they may be looking at it right now
And they may be trying to do all sorts of you know backstop facilities and this and that that weren't done in the 2008 2009 crisis
That could extend things out longer than what we've seen historically
That's what makes all this really hard when you're saying from like a forecasting standpoint
Meanwhile, you have bitcoin. Okay, so like all of that's the macro
Jeff's what the people love to talk about but then like what's the so what for me who's just holding big one?
right the so what is
If they continue to allow the the uh, the impairment of credit units
You're gonna see bitcoin continue to kind of struggle and and uh,
You know because without an influx of buyers
Without an influx of people converting fixed income into bitcoin
It's going to continue to just kind of like shrug it along right? I think it's going to be fine
I think it's going to continue to go up in the coming year and the halving will definitely have an impact too because now
Your inflation rate is half
So like all of these things have an impact and I think that as long as you have
Hodlers of last resort
The trace may or term which I think is very underestimated
um
Psychopaths like you and me that will hold if the price goes to 10,000 where it's like well, that's what it does
Yeah, I'm just going to keep buying more like not too many assets on the planet that that
That's your user base or those are your owners think and act like that
Okay, but in bitcoin that's truly that the people who hold the lion's share of coins
That's how they think because for a lot of them their basis is five dollars
Right, so if your basis and this is something that if somebody from wall streets listen to this
This is what I want you to take home
If your basis is five bucks or your basis is 30 cents
Do you think that person cares whether it goes from 26,000 to 10,000?
Nope
Guess what those are the people that hold a lion's share of the bitcoin in the world
Okay, just think about that next time you you you call it
It's it's going to zero or that it's going to die like we're all just sitting back here laughing at you sir
We are we're laughing at you. We think you're an idiot because we we don't think that you understand like how this actually works and like
that this this is a this is a takeover and
We're sucking all the monetary energy out of the global economy and we're stuffing it into bitcoin and we're going to recap all the equity
So congratulations. You played yourself. We're here. We're taking over and we're doing it with a smile
And we're trying to be kind we're trying to educate people
uh
A little bit of my southern accent was coming out there. Oh, okay. I loved it. I love this
I wish I wish I had a five dollar cost basis. Um, I that that would be lovely, but I will also psychopathically hold
Uh, well no matter what because it's it's my savings technology. That's that's how I look at it
I also enjoy spending it. Um, no stores a great way for me to spend it
But it is how I save and honestly before
Bitcoin I was not always the most uh, uh, disciplined saver
But through bitcoin I have found this way where it's like nope
That's that is where I just put my money and I know that it's not money that I need tomorrow
It's money that I am saving for um myself for carla for our future children
One of them is on the way and and it's it's so uh, it became so much easier to save
When I changed that perspective to I I'm not looking at this for oh, yeah
Do I follow the price of bitcoin? Of course I do because I'm curious how many uh sats
I'm gonna get for my us dollar for my lovely, you know fiat how much how many sats am I gonna get for that?
But I'm not looking at it to say I'm not I'm not a trader
You know, I'm just somebody who is trying to work hard to save my money
In the hardest form of money that exists and to look at it with a long-term horizon
And when you approach it from that perspective, I think it gives you a great deal of peace honestly because
It really is
You you don't sweat the small stuff and for anybody listening. I am not a bitcoin og
I think I bought my uh first few sats at december 2019
uh, and then but didn't really uh
Think that much of it and then went down the rabbit hole deeply in 2020 when I started seeing the government just handing out
Stimulus checks at the same time as they were locking people, you know locking people down
And I said, okay something is really messed up
And that I think for a lot of people that was when uh, no this uh, this class of bitcoiners of which I am one
Kind of came in and said oh wow, okay. This is this is something I really need to pay attention to
I need to learn what is actually going on with our money
and I think a lot of people uh to uh
To switch gears slightly but stay in a bit of the the fiat lens here
A lot of people and I saw this on noster and some of the questions
A lot of people have trouble understanding the lag that happens with fiat monetary policy
Because it's not like they make a change and the effects are immediately felt their response to uh the uh,
COVID uh
emergency
Was to create ungodly amounts of money
Extremely quickly to rapidly expand the base money
Those effects weren't necessarily felt right away people didn't you know prices uh didn't start reflecting that massive debasement
For some time after that
And now you know, we've actually had a a contraction in that m2 money. The Fed has been tightening
They've been raising interest rates at a historically fast pace which a lot of people
Thought that maybe that wasn't ever going to be possible for the Fed again
Maybe they were going to be stuck at QE infinity rates are near zero forever
So do you have any perspective on a kind of
Again, there's always going to be a lag with monetary policy. We're going to feel the real effects of the Fed's decisions in the future
Uh, what do you think is
Is really what do you think is the Fed's uh
Next move not in terms of do they raise rates or keep them steady at the next meeting?
But more so at a larger scale
Do you think they end up in just adjusting the inflation target?
To so it's no longer a target of 2 but as we recently saw Paul Krugman, you know promoting
Maybe three another arbitrary number 3 is a good idea. Maybe maybe that's a fax machine. I didn't have my fax machine
Set up. I didn't see that. You missed it. You missed it. Yeah
So let me let me pause on answering the Fed question and just say one other thing that I think complements this
so, um
When people when we start talking about macro we talk about all these things that are influencing bitcoin
There's also bitcoin itself, which is is in its own kind of cycle and like I would argue right now
There's so much seller suffocation that's taken place that you're just compressing bitcoin
Like a spring and like maybe there's this thing with finance and maybe wall street's gonna pop
Binance like a zit and it's gonna compress it even more for a very short period of time and then like I think the spring is gonna release itself
There's this idea in physics where you talk about constructive interference and destructive interference
And what this is is when you have two waves, right? Let's say they're of equal amplitude
And you put them uh, well, I mean your bows headsets do this noise canceling technology is a destructive interference wave
Yeah, that's that's canceling out a consistent sound
You could take that same thing and you could you could shift it 180 degrees
And all of a sudden like you're getting these blowouts and magnitude
And so when I think of bitcoin and I think of macro and I think of them side by side
I think of these waves where some of these waves are actually
You know, when you think of them side by side, I think of these waves where sometimes
You have destructive interference and sometimes you have constructive interference
And what that's doing is is you're sometimes seeing these really outsized performance
Sometimes it feels like it's going nowhere
And what it is is it's it's two waves different frequencies
Different magnitudes that are causing people to to want to assign
Well, this is what happened and this is why it happened
Right when in fact you you're not having an appreciation for how complex and how
Difficult it is to forecast something like that when you're dealing with and I'm just talking about two waves
There's other factors beyond that
That that kind of really weigh into all so I would I would preface all of this conversation with that simple understanding and then
To answer your question about the fed
I think that um
The real challenge that they have if like if I'm sitting in the fed chair, I'm just kind of assessing like how I would do this job
Um
A it all comes down to just trying to keep as much
Social unrest and bay is possible. Like that's where my head's at
Uh, I'm looking at it from a coordination standpoint big time like way more than I think
Uh, any type of elected official would realize is that these central banks over in Europe here in the u.s.
Japan like
They are they are totally coordinating with each other
deeply coordinating with each other you can't go to any type of real meeting without them all being together
And the challenge that they have is Europe is a train wreck
In Europe as a train wreck because they're dependent on outsourced energy
Right, and that's what this is a whole of the whole ukraine rusher thing. It's all about that
It's all about Europe having no control over their energy input
Which means they have no control over the price of anything
And if they can't control the price of anything they can't control this iou network that is priced off of the the inflation rate
so like
Like a bond right like if you tell me the inflation rate it's 2 percent
I'm going to tell you well the bond should probably be like yielding like 4 percent depending on the duration
like there needs to be some type of
Advantage for somebody to own that that thing if inflation is 2 percent well over in the uk the inflation rate is like 12 percent
Or like 11 and a half percent
So that tells me that that their fixed income market should be at least like 13 percent or 14 percent. It's nowhere near that
Right, so going back to the question if i'm j pow and i'm trying to like make decisions and I have
this friend that I have to that that I have to harmonize with
Because it all falls apart. They like if they're not in harmony with each other in their decision making
and it's like this dude
Is getting murdered over there right now with respect to their the runaway inflation
Which is completely outside of their control because it's the energy input
Right and like they're having to make decisions around that so like
Although we're supposedly at two and a half percent depending depending on how they like
Define the magnitude of this bucket that they're managing for cpi
If it was truly 2 percent, I think that they would be uh, you know
You know letting up and not continuing to to press the the the break on
Uh by raising rates higher
I think the issue for them is actually europe and that they have to try to get inflation global
Or let me let me rephrase that g7
Uh inflation under control collectively as a group. That's what they have to do
And so I think a lot of their decision making is based around that and I think that they're going to continue to raise rates until they actually
start to see like
uh
Demand just leave the market completely like you still have a ton of people
A ton of demand is starting to roll over
But they're gonna keep the they're gonna keep pressing harder on the break until it truly truly rolls over to include europe
I think it's it's such an interesting thing to me that when I think the more you study bitcoin and you realize it's
Simplicity and the fact that about every four years, uh, which is it's actually measured in the blocks, you know 210 000 blocks
The new issuance of bitcoin per block is cut in half. It's an exponentially decreasing new supply
And you think about that and you're like, wow, that's that's really simple and easy to understand
And I know exactly what's going to happen at this date and this date and this date in the future
Wow, I can plan for my life. That's wonderful. That's right
And then and then you take a look back at the system that we're in
And you realize that you know these these cycles that as you were you know joking earlier
People just get fearful and something happens in the you know, the animal spirits of the market take over and something happens
It's just so absurd because you have when if you listen to the the fed folks or any central bankers talk
They actively talk about wanting to okay, you know, we want to suppress demand or we want to stimulate demand
Or you know, like we need to inject liquidity in the market. We need to remove liquidity from the market
It's this incredible hubris
That that they somehow think that they can play god
In a world of eight plus billion people
That they can play god and be able to somehow perfectly engineer
This this system to work just fine and we just have to push here and pull here and it'll all work great
And sure it creates an endless cycle of booms and busts and throughout those booms and busts us and all of our friends
We're fine
But yeah, sure
Maybe the average person is getting hurt and losing their job and it's really rough for them and you know
You risk social unrest across the world
But hey for the most part it's you know, it's mostly peaceful and people are mostly okay
But thank goodness they don't realize that we're just jerking them along by a chain
You know giving them a treat occasionally and then you know, it's a it's a little carrot and then a stick just forever and ever
Like some sort of monetary purgatory
And then you contrast that with bitcoin you say god
I'm so grateful that I have this thing that is so simple
Yeah, that I don't have to worry about what a bunch of
Old people in a closed-door session are going to decide this month about the entire world's money
Like I can just I can just go on my note and I yep still
Still producing blocks
About every 10 minutes
in their mind, I think a lot of them look back at
Uh, you had this inflation episode in the in the 70s, right?
interest rates in 81 blue the 10 year treasury I think was around 16 percent
And so they look at that
And you look at their age and you look at for up until the 2008 crisis
I would argue in g7 countries and that's very important to emphasize
the
uh social unrest was way down you saw prosperous you saw
harmony amongst uh social and and economic
Classes for the most part up until 2008 and so from their from their mindset
We did an expert job pool on these strengths, you know, the world was just humming along and and you know what if you're not in the g7
And you're one of these other countries walls who cares about them anyway
It's kind of their mindset
And and that's how they that's the lens of like we're pretty phenomenal people here, right?
What why couldn't we fix this?
right kind of their mindset
and uh
and I think uh
Since 2008 it's just been pure hubris driving
Them thinking they can actually solve this and it's and it's a little bit of uh
You know, I didn't even feel like I had found a solution until 2015 with bitcoin
So I think for them they're looking at and say well like how the world could we ever even even solve this thing?
Without us continuing to pull these levers and and and save continue to save the world. I mean literally the ben Bernanke
Uh cover was the guy who basically saved the world uh cover
So like these people believe this they believe that they are the only hope to keep social order
at bay in the world and they definitely don't think that some
you know, uh
Guy who created this protocol and then left after a couple years of creating it is is the thing that's the salvation here
it's like
What do you mean? You're gonna take your hands completely off the machine
I have to touch the machine a hundred times a day just to keep everything sane, right?
Yeah, it's such a great point and uh, that it actually brings me to another question that was asked on noster
Which is generally do you think that?
As we move forward into the next uh, not just few years, but let's say a few decades. Let's you know zoom it out a little bit
Do you think that bitcoin becomes a compliment?
To the u.s. Dollar. I'm also curious at a in a more uh today's uh today's standpoint
What do you think about rfk jr's proposal to quote?
back the u.s. Dollar with gold silver platinum and bitcoin to quote him
Do you see it bitcoin as a compliment to the
To the status of the dollar and the value of the dollar. Do you think it is possible to back it to again?
I use back in quotes the dollar with bitcoin and precious metals again or is
Is the fiat dollar too far gone?
and
Where do you think that's going?
It's a big question. Yeah three points to this. Okay
a
Very impressed that rfk is is saying this
Because what it what it's actually demonstrating is that he has a profound understanding of the problem
And a potential way to solve the problem
Okay
um
Like very deep understanding now whether it's him or somebody else that's like, you know message this then I have no idea
But I can tell you on the face of it to me it demonstrates profound understanding of the issues that are happening and a and a path for
The second point that I have is
This is for me a very academic solution
And I say that because a lot of the times academic solutions like you can you can write it all out
You can put it on a piece of paper and it's the right solution
You're going to get the hundred percent on your test
But in real life
Billy Bob's going to throttle you and like you're just not going to win because
Billy Bob is using the sound logic of like street smarts
And he knows he can look at it like they ain't no work
So
I love that Billy Bob is now that he's like a recurring character for us. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yes Ricky Bob
uh even better
He races on the weekends, um, but anyway, so uh
I I think it's an academic solution now why I say that
Is I think in practicality
As soon as let's say let's say he becomes president
Let's say he really goes after this policy
Let's say he can convince congress to go along with this policy because just because he can appoint the the person who leads the treasury
Doesn't mean that he actually has total control to run this
But so let's say he gets congress to implement something like this
Uh, because there's a whole lot of you know loose ends there that have to be tied up for this to even happen
Let's just say all that does happen
And they roll out the first ball on tronch which has this backing this 1% backing
I think it sends such a profound message to the world that the dollars effed
that uh, it it causes this blow out and I think it it uh
It becomes unattainable
because of the fact that you're doing it
interesting
and um, so
So yeah, those are my thoughts around it, but I would I would say this bravo
Like I'm very impressed. You have you have demonstrated a deep intellectual knowledge and understanding of like what the problem is
how to potentially solve it and uh, you know, hopefully they fill their bags with bitcoin before they actually do this bond thing
right like if I was advising him I'd be like, yes, I love this
I love this. Uh, keep telling everybody that this is what we're gonna do and we are gonna do this
Right, but we're gonna do this after we print like ungodly amounts of dollars and exchange and go direct to miners
Right, like you're not stepping on the exchanges. No, you're going direct to every miner on the planet
You're soaking up as much bitcoin that you can stack onto the treasury as possible
Right and then like when the price is is when there's no bitcoin left and the price is blowing out
I'm like whatever then you then you go and do that and you and then uh,
Then it really comes down to how do you change all of the inherent spending?
Uh of the country which I think is going to be an enormous
Like maybe not even possible challenge to orchestrate without there being intense pain for the general population
Well, I mean that's the thing is that when it comes down to it
We are we are deeply indebted as as a country in terms of the debt that our government has accrued on on our behalf
Lucky us, but also from a person. I know credit card debts over a over a trillion dollars at just a personal level
So you've got all these layers of debt, right? And you've got interest on the debt payments, which are just I mean
Going up up in a way
um
We also see on the other side of the world
the bricks basket of countries who are
Now moving towards, uh, you know, we're in a we're in a multipolar world now and there are
The bricks which represents billions of people
Yes, I'm curious of your thoughts on I've seen a lot of
We don't have to go too deep in this but I've seen a lot of
Conflict the opinion some people saying this is the you know, they're so sure this is the debt of the the death of the dollar
Excuse me not the debt of the dollar the death of the dollar other people who are so sure that this is a nothing burger
Some that are claiming well
It's actually going to skyrocket the price of gold because these these the bricks currency is going to be backed by a
basket of all their currencies and then also by gold which assumes that they'll open up their
Uh, you know, let let each other audited each other's gold reserves, which I find highly unlikely
Uh, you know, but that's a different story. But I'd love your take on
where you see bricks fitting into the
uh
The the future of world reserve currency status. Do you think this is a legitimate threat to the dollar?
Do you think this is something that is going to end up being hyped up a lot as a threat to the dollar?
But ultimately not change the paradigm too much or is it somewhere in between?
So I would refer to bricks as all those countries that are net producers
Okay, and I would refer to g7 as all those countries that are net consumers
Okay, so let's start there because if you're a company and you're a net producer
Apple
Google
Companies that retain profits
Okay, if you're an individual and you have more debt next year than you had this year, you're a net consumer
If you're a person who has more savings next year than you have this year, you're a net producer
Same thing goes for companies. There's a ton of companies out there that don't make money
They just go to another VC round or they debase their shares by issuing more shares and that's how they offset their net consumption or their parasitic
activities
Because if a company isn't making money year over year that company's a parasite and it needs to die
It needs to be replaced by a company that actually is profitable
Because that's how that's how society can progress and move forward. So why am I saying all this?
When we're talking about bricks because what I'm trying to do is is create a first principles idea
around what bricks is versus what the g7 is which is the two
parties that are at conflict here
When you're the net producer
You can start calling the shop. It's a whole lot more than the net consumer
The net consumer has a duration or a lifespan at which they may be able to continue to
Try to get themselves out of it mess if you're a company you'll you'll sell a bunch of stock
You'll debase all the existing shareholders. You'll raise a hundred million dollars
And then hopefully you can go invest that in some type of revenue stream that gets you into profitability
When you're a country and you're a net producer
Right, it's kind of the same principles as if you're at a company level or an individual level
Okay, so these bricks nations are saying
we're tired
of receiving
made-up monopoly money from all these g7 countries
for real work
In real molecules that we are sending to their domains
Right, we're done. We're gonna shut off the pipeline
We're going to you know, not allow you to to to come over here and claw away another
bread basket country
That's where they're at. Okay, and so and I'm not trying to say one's good or bad
What I'm trying to define for people is the incentives that are at bay on a very large macro setup, right?
So what if you're a bricks nation?
What do you want to receive for payment?
For these goods that you're producing in excess of what your population is consuming
Well, I know what I want to receive
And it's just a matter of time until they kind of figure that unit out in the meantime
A lot of them a lot of these leaders inside of bricks
They're very scared of that of bitcoin. They're they're very scared of that system because it holds them to absolute
Accountability
Is the word? Okay, so if if if one of them says oh, we're only
We're accepting bitcoin and bitcoin only like I'm sorry that that country is what they're really saying
This is a south of right what that country is really saying
Is we are not going to rug pool our population?
And we're not going to rug pool our counter parties of other countries that we exchange with
By controlling this made up paper unit, even though we're net producers
Basically, we're not going to do a stock issuance
Even though it'd be like apple going out and saying and you know
And it'd be like apple net producer don't need the cash
Just we don't have any like revenue streams that we need the cash for that that we're going after that
That would be a reason for a company to do that is like they see a huge opportunity in the market that they want to capture
And they don't have the cash on hand so they debase the shares to try to capture that and they think that they can make it up
That would be that would be a pure intention for going back to intentions
for a company to debase their shares
To create more value
But an impure intention is let's rug pool all the existing shareholders. Let's take that and like let's do it for whatever, you know
So when when we look at a country like bricks like just take russia or brazil or any of them, right?
The reason they they love rug pool technology so much by debasing currency
Is because they can tax citizens without impacting their ability to be reelected or
The way that they're viewed optically from their citizens. And so they love that they love using the the rug pool technology as much as possible
So getting them to sign up to bitcoin this early on right is in the moment where they're starting to get the upper hand to really start taking
And I think it is a major threat to the dollar
Like the timelines the part that everybody will argue over like people that say that like well, that's all happened in the next three years
You're an idiot like correct. It is not happening in the next three years, but maybe over the next 10 or 20
watch out
And so I think we're at this pivotal moment where that's shifting that's changing and a lot of them are going to be hesitant to sign up to
Technology that prevents them from rug pulling their their constituents
And so that brings us to the point where like
Okay, so they they don't trust each other or else they would just sign you use bitcoin
They they want to have this they want to have this luxury to still
Control things and that's where it's going to take them a little bit of time to come around the bitcoin
But they're gonna be it's gonna be forced upon
Within the time
It's really an interesting to think about a thing to think about the el salvador model of a country that's actually
And I think we see this and from the times that I've been there actually talking to people
People are genuinely really happy with the changes, you know, nothing is perfect
But you see in my mind in el salvador a country that is actively trying to do right
By its populace that is trying to correct some of the wrongs that have been done
That is trying to clean house to a certain extent and that may ruffle a lot of feathers
But you know what it's easy to have the luxury of judgment sitting here in the in the you know, so-called developed world
Uh judging a country that's trying to pick itself back up by its bootstraps after a lot of the so-called developed world
Was kicking it down for many many years. So this is the challenge for el salvador. Okay
Implementing a bitcoin strategy for a country is way easier if you're a net producer
Way easier. It's possible
When you're a net consumer, it's way more difficult
Because you're constantly trying to offset that net consumption through the basement
And um, and it's very tricky. So in el salvador for at least my understanding
I did a very cursory research on it. My understanding is that it's a net consuming country in at net across like all their goods and services
but by uh becoming a bitcoin country
What they've done is they've attracted
uh
Business around this particular sector into their country which may turn them into a net producer
Which then will get this flywheel going for them that they can continue to uh to grow and expand and and potentially be a powerhouse
Uh, you know 20 30 years from now because of such a decision
But I will say this if a country is a net producer, it's a whole lot
Easier for them to to turn to bitcoin and start incorporating it
That's I think that's very well said and I do want to be conscious of your time here
Preston do you have a couple more minutes still? Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Okay. I uh fantastic. Uh, so just uh
I wanted to switch gears a little bit and and just talk about
Shockingly bitcoin specifically and I'd love uh to talk a little bit about your thoughts on drive chains the kind of the the big
Uh big hot top. I know I know and I know you and I know you just did uh an extensive interview
Uh with adam back on this very topic. I know that you've uh
You are a uh, I think if I'm correct in in this characterization
You are in the camp of let's not do something that's going to potentially quote break bitcoin
uh, let's let's focus on
Having sound money remain sound money
Because if we can do that then bitcoin is inevitable. Uh, if we start messing with this thing
That inevitability may have a slightly lower success chance
So I'd love your thoughts on the current debate. I think a lot of nuance is
Lost in this debate when it's just people, uh, you know in a few characters going back and forth with each other on twitter
Within you know bitcoin is its own tribe and within that tribe there are many factions and people
People like to debate about stuff and it's good that we do that and it's good that we do that out in the open as well
That's a strength not a weakness
But where if you're if you can say where where do you stand on this and how
How do you approach this question because I think
You know, it comes back to uh a first principles understanding of something of how are you going to break this down?
It's not just a knee-jerk reaction to quote drive chains
It's how do you think about changes to bitcoin in a broader sense?
And how do you make the decision as to whether or not something is going to be?
You know, is it going to be approved by your node?
I've made a lot of decisions in my day
A lot of decisions as a leader, um as a military leader in in, uh
Situations where they were literally life and death decisions
um
And I can tell you when a person is forcing me to make a decision or cramming a decision down my throat
And it's not something that is time imminent
That is a person I immediately don't trust
Okay, because you have to ask yourself why
Why is this person forcing me to make a a decision that's not time sensitive?
right now
And when I when I look at drive chains and I look at paul's actions, and I'll call him out right here, right paul
um
All I see is a person who's jamming a decision down everybody's throat and saying like we're doing this now with or without you
We're going to
Do it in a in a sneaky way
Where only minors are going to run the code and everybody else is going to be forced to do like everything about that guy
To me based on my past experience of making a lot of decisions is
I can't trust this guy
Okay
now
I want to preface this
I don't have the technical chops to go through the proposal to understand whether it's
introducing vulnerabilities
To to bitcoin through just the code alone
I have concerns about it warping incentives
And with respect to the minors
Um, are they deep concerns? Not really
But they warned me to say why now why does the decision have to be made right now?
Why can't we sit down and like literally hash this out for
Literally it has to set up. That's good for another, uh, you know 300 blocks or whatever
um
300 30000 blocks. Um, there we go. Yeah, so, uh
You know like those are some of like the really like broad like a meat like off the top of my head things that I think about
and that um very reserved
The other really big frustration I personally have with bitcoin
Is I think a lot of participants
That are in bitcoin today think like a
consumer that makes a hundred thousand dollars a year
And uh, like they're they're coming with a roger veer lens
Because that's how I view roger is this guy who who does not understand like really like
The people pulling the strings in the global economy
Uh, they're moving billions upon billions of buying power at the snap of a finger
And these are the people that are like that are the puppeteers of of the world
Okay, and when I think about
How clown world has manifested itself?
Okay, the reason it has manifested itself is because these puppeteers
That are controlling these enormous flows of energy
Um are incentivized to to double down on clown world because there's no backing
It goes back to our discussion around the bricks where you know, you have these these really large stream pullers
That are saying oh, well, let's just crap on these keys and let's add another five trillion units into this system
And then like let's squirt those suckers over to russia and like and then let's literally pull them all back
So they have zero what idiots right?
These are the stream pullers of society whether you like that or not
You can't take away from the fact that they are the ones pulling the strings and they are the ones controlling the flow of these
these energy units or
You know, whatever you want to call the existing fiat
Okay, so when I think about what solves that
what actually solves that is
Bitcoin store value first and foremost and if you fail at that like the whole the whole experiment is toast
Like you have to peg these people to the wall that are key stroking in a trillion units
In the only way I think you can do that is is with bitcoin making sure that layer one is absolutely immutable
The incentives are totally aligned between miners and users and and all the all the parties that make up that
That deeply connected incentive structure that that is perfectly balanced
and any threat to that
I'm going to I'm not only going to like aggressively
Antagonize the person who's trying to change that
But I'm going to force people to take a step back and say no no no no the decision does not need to be made today
Stop the madness. Let's sit down. Let's talk about if ever this needs to be done
because I look at so
I use bitcoin as a savings technology. I am a net producer
I can save the the excess of what I what I receive on a month-to-month basis and I choose to store that in bitcoin
Okay, like every other net producer on the planet
If you're not a net producer the bitcoin is going to flow out of your hands. This is going to go somewhere
It's the it's the nature of bitcoin to find a net producer
um, so so when I look at drive chains and
I see the rush
and I see the the use case
for me, you know how many times I've had to swap into a minaret or
Go to lbtc, which is which is a solution that already exists that gives you an amenity on bitcoin
Which Adam back literally built it already exists. You're using a federation. It's just not a minor. It's exchanges. So like what's the difference?
You know how many times I've needed to use that?
zero
because I actually follow the law and I and I do things the way that
You know the I don't want to go to jail
and um, so like you know many times I had to swap into eith zero
You know how many times I had to go do any of this other stuff that these other shitcoins offer?
zero
So when these people are saying that this is the only way it'll scale
It's the only way it'll scale for uh, crypto ben. What's the guy's name again?
Bit boy. It's the only way it'll scale for bit cool bit boys
Which are parasites
Which are people that are rug pooling others
I don't need it and neither does anybody else who's who's managing a five billion dollar bond tranche and the energy that's soaked into that thing
They don't need drug chains. Let me tell you for a second. They don't need it
Okay
so, uh, you know, I would I would encourage people to take off
Take off their uh, their 12 year old like kitty hat and put on the the the big boy hat
And look at how the flow of energy actually happens around the world and design a system that accommodates that so that we can
peg the living hell out of
Uh clown world and hold these people accountable so they can't keystroke two trillion units into the system
I think that's extremely well said and the
Again, this is this is something I talked with jeff about a little bit was the idea that
Just because you can build something just because something is a cool idea
That you have the ability to develop that will allow you to leave your mark on something
Just because you can do that does not mean you should
and and it's great that you can do that but
That doesn't mean it's a good idea and forest urgency is always a red flag for me
Oh, I mean, that's that's how you do that's the easiest way to tell if an email is trying to fish you
Do they tell you you need to do something right now or you're gonna lose access to your account?
Well, then they're trying to scam you that's right. I to illustrate this point
So, uh, I was interviewing this guy, uh, tren griffin. I think is the guy's name. This was years ago
Uh, he's an executive at microsoft and big time value investor guy
Has a pretty neat blog. I think it's called 25 IQ all about this. So, um
I was talking to him and I said so so trend like my biggest gripe with microsoft
Well, not my biggest gripe today, but back then this was
I said
Why the hell do you guys keep changing the layout of like word or powerpoint and they've gotten way better with this in the last
five to seven years
but up like if you go back like seven years ago
And you were using these the suite of microsoft tools
They were constantly changing this ribbon at the top and like reorganizing everything
And I said to him I said
The only thing you guys have to do
is stop changing it
Like because when you change where the things are in the layout digitally on the screen
It makes me say why am I paying for this?
Let me go find something cheaper and something that's not changing the layout where I have to go look for the edit button
Or the crop button or whatever
Right. I said, why the hell do you guys do that? You're competitive mode is everybody knows how to do it
They're already educating. They're just gonna keep paying the subscription fee
And and he goes, you know Preston
Like that's a really good point
But he goes
But designers are designers and they're just gonna design things and like
It's a little bit out of our control because they just designed new layouts
And I was like that is the dumbest answer that I've ever heard and it wasn't transdisc
his decision, but it's like
That is idiotic
Because people aren't actually thinking about the competitive mode of once you've got them trained and once they know where to go
Like just stop tinkering with it and then you join the proceeds because everybody's happy
Right and when I think about bitcoin engineer
And I think about all these people doing g-wiz things
Um, I think about kind of like that parallel of like just stop tinkering with it
like identify the problem
And identify whether you're solving that problem in the most efficient and value-accurative way possible
And if if the answer is I've done that then take your dang hands off the the machine and let it perform the solution
Right and and that's where I'm at with a lot of engineers on bitcoin
No, and I think in to to play devil's advocate it
There is of course going to be there's incredible work that bitcoin core devs do to maintain
To maintain bitcoin to actually make sure that you know that there are
Not going to be any critical bugs that are going to manifest themselves. There is a complete
I think separation between that and just to clarify for anyone listening. That's not what we're talking about here
What we're talking about here is we need to take and build things on top of the
Bitcoin and to enhance bitcoin and to to redesign
It's not about the core maintainers who are doing incredible work
To maintain bitcoin as it is today. It's about the people who are looking to leave there
You know to the designers who wanted to design to the developers who want to develop
It's
Amen
You know
I'm glad you clarified that exactly how exactly how I feel like the amount of of
appreciation and
just
Humility that I have for all these developers that have built bitcoin to where it's at like I can't even express it
and I am I'm
deeply indebted to them
And what they've done to for humanity here
Um, and I think that sometimes uh, you know, I'm working around the house and putting in shrubbery and like you get to a point
Where sometimes you put too much
Shit into something
And it makes it look so much worse because you're overdoing it
And I guess what what I'm saying is I want to guard against that
I want I want to just because you can do this new cool swoopy thing doesn't mean you should and and and if you're really held
That on well then just go out in the layer too and work on it and do it right or go build it on litecoin, you know
Yeah, go. Yeah have fun over there, but I
I understand the tendency of people who are incredible developers to want to develop things and leave their mark on it
I think that it's it's also, uh often characterized that uh, somebody like you or myself who are saying look
Uh, let's let's remember what the the core value proposition of bitcoin is as the most uh, the most truthful and strongest
sound money network
In that has ever been created. Let's remember what that is. Perhaps that's often characterized by the people who are hardcore developers as
Uh, well, you just think you should you know, you should completely osfi bitcoin and never touch it again
And that you think that nothing needs to be done because you don't understand development
And it's like no
Not saying that um
These people of course have a much deeper understanding of how to write codes that then you and I do
I I run a software company my developers
Know much more about how to write code than I do because that's not why I'm here
Uh, I you know, we each have different roles we perform and we need to be able to
Have these conversations where we can be honest and say look
You're approaching it from this perspective
I'm thinking something needs to be built. I'm approaching it from a different one and saying that
I believe that the simplest solution is going to be the strongest and most elegant
And we are have we somehow have the good fortune
To exist in this moment in space and time where we are around for the advent of this new monetary technology
Which is revolution it is it is and it is an uh, it is a technological upgrade for money
And it is an ethical upgrade for the world and it's incredible that we're here to experience it
And what a shame what a shame it would be if we screwed that up because we over engineered
and tried to solve a problem that didn't exist
and
We already, you know, we have something very very good. Let's be very very cautious about how we try and change it
Because if there's a chance that we might screw it up
I don't know if the if the risks outweigh the benefits
I I know where I stand on that but yeah, that's
I appreciate your your perspective on that because I think
The forced urgency is a really important thing for people to realize
If somebody tells you you need to make a decision right now
But there's not actually a time-based imperative for you to make that decision
You should be extremely
Extremely skeptical of that because then that means there's another motive at play and you don't know what that motive is
For instance, maybe he only has so far of a runway from his VC fund. That's that's paying for all this
Yeah
Right like let's
Let's pull the thread on why it's so pertinent that it happens right now
Maybe he needs to show something to his investors that something was that happened that gave him all the money to be doing this
And paying for his marketing campaign, which has clearly happened
Yeah, like
The whole thing stinks like rotten fish
Ah, but ah anyway, yeah, yeah, well, I think those are my thoughts on drive chains. I
I
Appreciate that because it's it's something that people are very curious about and a lot of people don't necessarily
Want to dive into the twitter debate, but they're curious about
What not what to think about or what they should think but how they should approach the question for themselves
And I think you laid that out very well
Uh
Another thing I because I again being conscious of your scarce time on this wonderful earth that we inhabit
Uh, I I want to kind of move towards wrapping things up a little bit and but before we do that
Uh, I'd just like to know uh at a to get out of the bitcoin and macro topic a little bit
You have done a lot in your life
Uh, and you have a lot of life left to live
What is something that you have not done yet that you want to do that you plan to do that you're excited to do?
Uh, what what what is what is what is Preston looking forward toward?
That that's not in his life right now
Um
I I guess I would say just kind of seeing like where my kids go
So next in their life as they you know become adults and just uh their contributions to society and like all of that like
Uh, I think that's very exciting and very important and I want to be playing an active role in that and being there for them and
Yeah, I mean
Going back to the comment that I said earlier with uh, Jesse Itzler about being passionate about the journey
When I look at bitcoin and I look at like all these incredible people that I've met through through the years and just this grind of like battling
the consensus
And battling this just really corrupted system
Like let's just say we could snap our fingers and we would be at full bitcoin adoption and like everybody's doing
Bitcoin and like settling all transactions and like it's just all over and it's like well
Why would anybody even talk about the water that we're swimming in?
Right, we're just we're just in water
If we're going to the fish analogy, right? Um
So I I think there's a little bit of uh
Like as we look at the coming five to 15 20 years ahead
Like I'm very passionate about this journey. I'm very passionate about
Uh, it taking place in a way that is most beneficial to the largest amount of people possible
Which means like hey if it happens a little slower
Because it's more beneficial for people to ease into that transition. Well, then that's what I want if it's
If it's happens faster because that's more beneficial, well, then that's what I want
But I want to I want to enjoy the journey
And I want to enjoy the journey of all the relationships that I'm able to have with real people
that are value creators
That are here to help others and not just themselves
And a mutually beneficial harmonious kind of way
And I'm very excited for what that looks like
Moving forward. I think that I think it's very exciting and it and it's going to be very fulfilling like one of the things
I've I've met tons of people that have become very rich through the years
And um, you know the the thing that they almost always say is you've got to have something
Because a lot of them they make $500 million and they're they're very rich. They can do anything
That they want they can go anywhere they want whenever they want they can do it, right?
But what they find out really fast
Is that if you if you don't have like this bigger purpose?
That's driving you to do something
You become very dissatisfied with your life
Like very like it it gets very stale very gray
Right and
I guess for me, I'm just we have so much to look forward to on this journey and it's and if you didn't like if you're watching a movie
Give you another example if you're watching a movie and like there's not this
Stare step progression to the end where the where the person wins big
Right?
And in the middle of the movie it looks like there's no way they're gonna win. They're gonna lose
Like I kind of think we're maybe in the middle of that story and that journey that he was journey
Of like if we didn't have
these Sam Bank and free to the world
And the Gary Ginsler's and I'm taking the meetings and all the politics like
this journey would not be nearly as
Rewarding and beneficial and so I'm just I'm thankful for all of these people
Beneficial and so I'm just I'm thankful for all of it
I'm thankful. I'm very thankful for the journey that that lies ahead
And it's something that is going to be so rewarding for all of us
Uh to participate and have even the smallest impact
On a net basis of all the other contributors to educate the world on what I think is going to
You change the landscape for humanity. It's just so exciting. It's awesome. So I'm looking forward to all of that
It's I think that's beautiful. You know, honestly, I I'm
uh
I'm not in a rush for hyperbit quantization. I think similar to you because
The journey is what's
important, right? Like I I'm I'm glad to have been born in a pre hyperbit quantized time
uh, where although uh, this uh
Uh
This battle that we see bitcoin against pitted against fiat may be frustrating at times and as you said, there's a lot of uh, a lot of
nair duel characters
but
It you know, the yield is the friends we made along the way, right and it's beautiful to see never before
have I
seen such a high concentration of
highly ethical
highly intelligent and highly hopeful people. Yeah, like
It's not that I haven't met people that are all of those things throughout my life
I've been privileged to have a lot of great people in my life
But never before have I seen those characteristics in such high concentration
Yes, and and and expanding
It's not like it's this small group that stays small
It's constantly bringing in new people and bringing new hope and bringing new ideas
And I think that that's just this beautiful thing and I'm right with you. I feel so
fortunate just to exist at this moment in space and time and
It's a what a time to be alive, you know, yeah true
Well on that really happy note, I'd like to uh, I this has been fantastic by the way
I've really enjoyed this conversation before we close out. I'd love to know, uh, just are you reading anything right now that you'd really
recommend uh to
So I just finished I just
Yeah, this is Lin's book. I finished that one. We we interviewed her so we finished that one nice
Uh, the pdf form obviously, but uh, I just finished this book
and uh chip wars and this was really good and the reason why I would uh,
There's people if they pick it up and they are reading it
The reason I like this book is what it's what it's really describing in an indirect way is how, uh
How complex our supply chains are becoming for
fundamental building blocks that the world
Can't do without anymore, which is microprocessors and it's just one example. I would tell somebody this is just one example of many
Uh pieces and parts and components that that we treat as if they are fundamental building blocks, but they're actually
The most intellectually dense
uh
Organization of material
That uh
The like you can't even wrap your header how complex these parts and pieces are so like etching these these chips
I mean these are hundred million dollar machines
and only one person making these machines and then you think about all the parts and pieces that go into the machines that etch the chips
like
It is it is becoming so and and to go back again until it may be a macro kind of theme
Um, when you look at what's brought us to this point
It's the years upon years of creating these, uh digital units that have incentivized
technology explosion
and not allowing, uh
There to be a more like more players in the market. It's forced
It's forced the consolidation into the hands of one producer of the lithography machine that etches these these chips
And so I would I would highly encourage people to read this to just gain insight into how
Insanely complex our society has has become through the the tail end of this fiat system
And how dependent it is on supply chains to never break down
We need sheer perfection for prices to never go higher
And I think we've I think we've reached ludicrous speed
And I think that we're starting to like come back from ludicrous speed
And it's it just kind of furthers this larger thesis of like they're not going to be able to control the price inputs
And if they can't control the price inputs, that means they can't control the treasury market
Which means they have to find another place to store their value
Uh, so yeah, that would be the book I recommend right now for people
Fantastic and uh, where should people find you? Um, uh,
I'll link I'll link I'll link your noster first in the in the show notes
Uh, but you're at Preston Pish on Twitter. Uh, I'll put a direct link to your noster as well as your n pub
Uh, anywhere else you you'd like people to go. Uh, that's perfect. Yeah, this is the two spots that you can interact with
I'm trying not to respond on twitter anymore and only respond on noster
I obviously am on twitter and kind of reading the feed with with what not to just kind of keep myself informed with what's happening in the world
but um, if people want to interact with me ask me questions on on noster because that's where I'm going to uh
I'm trying to force my responses only on there and kind of ignoring any kind kind of questions. I get on twitter
Um, but yeah, and then we have the podcast we study billionaires as the feed
It's pretty much on whatever and then my bitcoin ship comes out on wednesdays
Yeah, well, uh, thank you so much. And I think that that's a great, uh, it's the mentality I'm trying to have as well with with nosters
That's where I'm interacting. Um, I guess I'm I'm consuming more on twitter. I'm producing more on noster
Yes, I think is the way I'm kind of looking at it. Um, I think that's a good way to do it
Yeah, I'm not going to respond to you if you ask me a question on twitter
I'm I will respond to you if you ask me a question on monsters. Yeah, what I'm trying to do. Yeah
Yeah, I
Gradually then suddenly right now, but surely well, well, press and thank you so much, uh for sharing your scarce time with me
And thank you to anybody who is watching this
Bitcoin is scarce, but bitcoin podcasts are abundant
So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking bitcoin podcast
Preston, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thanks walker. I loved it
And that's a wrap on this bitcoin talk episode of the bitcoin podcast
A big thank you to Preston for sharing his scarce time with me for this episode
You can find him on noster at primal.net slash Preston
You can find me on noster by going to primal.net slash walker
If you're interested in sponsoring the bitcoin podcast head to bitcoin podcast net
If you want to follow the bitcoin podcast on twitter go to at titcoin podcast and at walker america
You can also find the video version of this podcast and all the others at youtube.com slash at walker america
And at walker america on rumble
Bitcoin is scarce there will only ever be 21 million
But bitcoin podcasts are abundant
So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking bitcoin podcast
Until next time stay free
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