We're on the train of money printing,
talking about money printing and fiscal responsibility.
Like if you're a politician talking about
fiscal responsibility of nations useful
for people who believe in fiscal conservatism,
but realistically, that's never going to happen.
We all know that money printing is like a drug
and no one's gonna commit political suicide
by actually cutting government spending
and then ruining the economy for a two year period,
just to have the next three, four years
and then once you're unelected,
the next president benefit from the measures that you took.
I don't care for Trump to talk about sound money.
I know he's gonna print,
I'm expecting him to print a bunch.
We all seem to think we understand fiat,
but then we say things like,
well, we need to go back to sound money.
Yeah, we do, but as long as fiat's here,
you have to play the fiat game
and we're super fortunate that we can also play
the sound money game.
I have my escape, right?
So I think our goal or the goal of the government
should be to leverage the fiat system as it is
to protect American lives and American prosperity
as much as it can, while hedging bets on
what I think the future will be, which will be Bitcoin,
because we all know that the fiat dollar
won't be around forever.
["The Fiat Dollar"]
Greetings and salutations, my fellow clubs.
My name is Walker and this is The Bitcoin Podcast.
The Bitcoin time chain is 858-823
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 whatever else comes up.
Today, that guest is Samuel Arms.
This conversation is really a sneak peek
behind the curtain of the lobbying process in America
and how things actually work
and get done in the political world.
We get into the intersection of politics and Bitcoin.
Samuel shares experience in lobbying
for Bitcoin legislation in Florida
and crafting the anti-CBDC bill there,
the impact of Donald Trump's speech at Bitcoin 2024
and how it shifted the national conversation around Bitcoin,
influence of Bitcoin in political campaigns
moving forward and a whole lot more.
Before we dive in, do me a favor and subscribe
to the Bitcoin Podcast, wherever you're listening
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Without further ado,
let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Samuel Arms.
Sam, man, good to see you again.
It's been, let's see, since Nashville now,
bumped into each other backstage
and the rest as they say is history.
How you doing, man?
Everything's going good.
It's just same busy, election is less than 90 days out.
We were just on a great podcast today with Gary,
who I work with, Gary Cardone.
So just staying very busy up until November
and then just lots to figure out.
But I thought Bitcoin Nashville was very good.
Seeing Trump there was awesome.
Seeing RFK Jr., who's now endorsed Trump there was awesome.
I thought that conference was very well done
and then I just got back from the Salt Conference
in Wyoming, which is hosted by Scare Mucci,
who's obviously on the opposite side of the Trump fence,
but still a very, I think, kind of cool, neat, interesting dude
to pay attention to.
So yeah, just living the life.
Yeah, I actually tuned in for part of the live stream
you guys had earlier today.
Grant was pretty hilarious.
He was getting fired up there.
It was great to see.
Scare Mucci's an interesting one.
I wouldn't have pegged him to be such a Gunghok Kamala supporter,
but I guess he has some interesting history
with Trump as well.
So maybe that has tainted the waters a little bit.
I don't know, it's interesting to me.
Politics is really simple.
A lot of it's more about personal relationships
than it is actual policy.
And so yeah, Scare Mucci got bounced out of the White House
and I think has had it been dead ever since.
And so does it make sense?
It makes sense if your whole life
has run off of relationships as alignment,
but that's just how it is sometimes.
Yeah, no, it's interesting.
And I mean, yeah, I want to get into kind of like
the political landscape with you leading up to the election
and everything, but I want to kind of start with actually
what got you and I chatting.
We were sitting backstage when Gary was on stage
and Carl and I, my lovely wife were emcees,
and you and I got chatting and I was just asking
what you did and you're like, oh, you heard of the CBDC
legislation in Florida and you talked about how you helped
push that through.
And I was just like, oh, well, that's fascinating.
And so we exchanged info and I wanted to talk with you
about that a little bit because I think it's a really cool thing
to see kind of behind the curtain a little bit
of how this shit actually gets done.
A lot of times, you know, you see these bills come out
and you see the headlines one way or another,
you see a little bit of chatter about it,
but then you don't actually know like what, okay,
what moved the needle, what got things done
behind the scenes.
So can you talk about that a little bit
or maybe it's better if we start out just who are you,
how did you get here today to have your hands
in a few different buckets that you do right now
doing quite a lot of different things?
Yeah, I kind of forced my way into the political realm.
You know, so my background, really my first professional
foray into Bitcoin was I did some research for USS Socom
out of McDeal Air Force based at United States
Special Operations Command on the counter threat finance
and you know, whether Bitcoin was gonna be used by ISIS
or drug cartels and how they might actually take it down,
which was very fascinating.
And then I was at the State Department for a little bit,
maybe about six months and there I was actually working
on like Bitcoin policy at the State Department
and then came out of there, decided I didn't wanna go
into government work, you know, just not a good
cultural fit for me.
So I came back, I love Florida,
that's where I'm born and raised, that's where I'm a native
and I didn't wanna live in DC, but loved politics,
the political process.
I come from a very politically minded family
where politics was always discussed at the dinner table
and around other people.
So just kind of like sitting in on that, you know,
very easily easy to catch the political bug.
And come 2017, I worked or 2018 somewhere in there,
I worked in the Florida legislature,
came out, worked for a lobbying firm and pitched
a lobbying firm on lobbying for Bitcoin,
kind of broader web three blockchain,
whatever the term was then, policy, right,
to try to sell them on it.
And they weren't interested, so I left
and started my own lobbying firm and then my own
Chamber of Commerce, which was the first state focused
Chamber of Commerce for the industry,
which was the Florida Blockchain Business Association,
which is still running today and since I started it,
we've passed five, maybe six now bills in the legislature,
we have another upcoming legislative session here
where we're also gonna be hopefully pushing more
legislation and I also sit on the board of a giant chamber
that kind of runs all the other state associations
and we've worked with all the other partners in DC,
like the Blockchain Association, for example,
and coordinating policy with them.
So like to pass legislation, I just made a video
on my YouTube about how to lobby actually
and lobbying is actually very simple.
It's about money and it's about relationships, right?
And so what I did when I first started was I just
was very good at building relationships.
It doesn't take much, you just have to be a friendly person,
I think, and so I built those relationships,
I kept those relationships, I nurtured them over time
so that when it was time for me to really strategically
think, okay, how do I get started on passing legislation?
I knew all the key people in Florida to do so.
So I partnered with the right people from the outset,
figured out what I had to do to get a bill sponsored,
what the rules of lawmaking are,
which are different every year in the state of Florida
as they are in other states, you know,
the House and the Senate might rewrite the rules slightly
on how things are passed and of course,
every state's very different and then you have rules
in DC as well, which of course are gonna be
their own animal.
So you figure out the rules,
which I don't have a law degree by the way,
you don't need a law degree,
a lot of people want you to have a law degree,
but you certainly do not need a law degree in any way,
shape or form to understand, shape or change legislation.
So I actually, you know, and I had lawyers
who worked for me, quote unquote, right,
who helped me craft all the policy that I wanted crafted.
And so I just started passing legislation from there.
And then I guess the hallmark of my career
was that anti-Central Bank Digital Currency Bill.
That was definitely the most famous bill, you know,
at the time DeSantis was running for president.
It was a perfect political opportunity,
wait for him to stand out in the primary,
hopefully get more votes.
And then it ended up shaping the national conversation,
right, because, you know, Vivek,
Vivek was already anti-CBDC,
but once DeSantis became anti-CBDC,
that's when Trump's tone really started to change.
He was kind of like, ah, shoot, right?
Because at the time DeSantis was kind of believed
to be his biggest competitor.
So at turn Trump, I think it started Trump's
initial journey into being the pro-Bitcoin president
that he is today.
And so it just goes to show you how much influence
you can wield, you know, at a state level
to affect the national conversation,
which is something I think that a lot of people
underestimate very highly.
I think that's, it's a really good point,
because I mean, at the end of the day,
like the states do have power.
Like that is kind of the point of America,
is that the states are powerful,
that they do operate, you know, independently,
yes, they are, you know, underneath the federal government,
but legislation at the state level
makes a huge difference.
And like a lot of Bitcoiners out there
may be of the opinion that like, you know,
we just got to completely ignore the state,
you know, ignore politics, whatever,
but there's that old quote,
it's like, you may not care about politics,
but politics cares about you.
And we can certainly see how, you know,
look at a state like Texas,
where you have the Bitcoin mining industry,
which is just booming.
And that's because they've got a lot of folks
at that state level, a lot of, you know,
private business working very hard,
but then a lot of lobbying,
a lot of folks at that state level
who are seeing the benefits of this,
but they don't necessarily,
they don't go out of their way to look for this stuff.
It's like somebody has to shove it in front of them
and kind of, I don't want to say beat them over the head
with it, but that kind of feels like how it is sometimes.
Like is that kind of your experience with it?
Like they're not going to go out of their way
to look for this stuff.
Somebody has to actually bring it to them,
wrapped up neat in a bow and say,
look, here's what this is,
here's why you should actually care about it.
And here's why this is going to matter
for kind of your political career.
Yeah, you know, when I first started the association,
even to this day, you know, I get Bitcoiners
who give me tons of hate for even talking to government.
You know, I still have people who are like,
yeah, why would you do that?
We don't need to do that.
But it's a different philosophy.
You know, a lot of times, you know,
and those are only conversations
that you have with individuals.
Anytime you're talking to a business owner,
that's never the case.
As long as you're a business owner,
business owners who are normally like producing something,
right, get, okay, well, if I'm going to be in America,
I kind of have to be involved.
And that's why a lot of what I've done
is really focused around businesses.
Originally, we were trying to take the model
of moving a lot of individuals,
but because of that kind of philosophy in the community,
we changed our course.
But, you know, the best example was
in last legislative session,
there was a bill that was going to be pretty bad for Florida.
You know, I kind of termed it our mini-bit license,
creating a regime that I just thought was terrible.
Not a long bill by any means, but certainly a bad bill.
Certainly a bad bill.
And I walked into this legislator's office
with, you know, five or six people, businesses,
that I had brought up that this bill
was going to affect their industry,
their companies directly.
I sat down, I said,
hey, so we just wanted to talk to you about this bill.
You know, it's our belief that it's,
in no way, shape or form a good bill,
and we actually think it's going to kill jobs.
And, you know, I didn't even get through my whole pitch,
and he cut me right off, and he said,
hey, you know, we don't really need to talk about this
because I haven't even read the bill.
A buddy just told me it was a good bill.
That's why I, you know, sponsored it, you know,
so you have no worries,
like I'm not going to pass it this session.
You can go talk to my friend who said it was a good idea.
And his friend was, of course, a lobbying firm
trying to push the bill on behalf of,
funny enough, another crypto company.
So, which is also very funny
how a lot of people don't understand that
part of the adoption cycle means that crypto companies
and Bitcoin companies might actually,
themselves trying to pass legislation
that creates a moat for themselves,
you know, at the cost of your average Bitcoin,
or so to speak.
So, that's also a fun little tidbit for you
if you want to go into the political realm,
is just seeing, you know, who's playing for what team really.
But yeah, it's about just being there.
Had we not even had that conversation,
everyone in that room and the legislators
would have probably assumed,
okay, this bill is fine, we haven't heard anything, right?
And, you know, tweeting about it doesn't really help.
For a lot of these people,
it's best to be there in person,
not saying Twitter is not an effective political tool.
But a lot of these conversations will not happen
in the public sphere, right?
A lot of them are behind closed doors.
A politician's never gonna say out in public,
I never read the pill that I was pushing.
You know, they'll never tell you that.
And I'll never name the politician, right?
Cause I just think that would be a stupid idea.
But that's really what lobbying comes down to.
Is lobbying comes down to, you know, lobbying?
I mean, the term was created
because people would wait outside the chamber lobbies
to talk to the politicians
about what decisions were being made.
So it's about being there in person,
being, having intimate conversations,
and then building relationships close to power
so that you can have influence.
And just, a lot of people don't want to do that.
A lot of people don't have time to do that.
That's why a lot of times I'll also argue
that as long as you're in a democracy,
you know, lobbying is actually very free market
because it's just marketing to government, right?
You have B2C, B2B, I call it B2G, right?
And there's very practical use cases for it.
Obviously I'm biased, right?
Because I'm the one doing it all.
So whether that's me justifying my own position and role.
But I do truly believe that.
So, you know, it's a world in and of itself, you know,
and not a lot of people,
especially my industry in the political world,
and a lot of people really, you know,
don't talk about it too much.
You know, a lot of them are behind the scenes.
But I made the decision I think two years ago
that I was gonna push more in media.
And that's actually, you know,
when I teamed up with Gary, Gary Cardone now,
and both of us are pushing more into media
because we both kind of saw that same vision
where everything we've done in Bitcoin and crypto
and our previous careers and now in politics
aligns with what we wanna do publicly around media.
So I'll stop my rant.
Hopefully that's given you enough alpha to chew on.
No, absolutely.
And you know, this is always a safe space for rants.
Not like a bullshit safe space
where everyone's feelings are respected,
but like a safe space where you can rant freely.
No, I mean, I think it's fascinating.
Because again, I'm somebody who like, I very much
like don't have an interest in, let's say,
getting involved in the political process.
At the same time, I'm very interested in what's happening
because these decisions that happen all the time
genuinely affect me.
And so it's like, and I think a lot of people
are in that boat where it's like,
maybe you don't wanna get your hands dirty,
but some people do wanna get their hands dirty
and are gonna get their hands dirty.
And it is helpful to have people
that are at least getting their hands dirty
for things you care about, right?
Like, and ultimately it's like,
what, you're not gonna stop lobbying.
And I would agree with you that lobbying is essentially like,
I mean, that's the market, right?
Like if that's, it favors incumbents,
as you correctly pointed out,
like crypto type companies lobbying
to basically create a larger moat.
We saw that exact same thing
and still see that happening
with big tech companies more generally.
You look at any of the, you know, Facebook,
and Google, these companies that will advocate
and go in front of Congress and say that,
well, you know, maybe we need more, you know,
more censorship, we need more control of this.
You look at the big AI companies, you know,
open AI, which is certainly not open,
but going out and saying, we need more AI regulation.
And it's like, well, why did they do that?
Is it because they themselves wanna be regulated?
No, it's because they wanna help draft regulation
that can then be used to stifle out
small up and coming, you know, competitors
who may be able to creep into their market.
Like that's the reality of the situation.
And so it's like, whether or not you like it,
it is the reality.
And it's one that like,
you have to be able to navigate and deal with.
And I'm kind of curious, you know, obviously,
okay, so Donald Trump spoke at Bitcoin 2024,
whatever somebody thinks of Trump,
you cannot deny that that was a fucking historic moment.
That's a former president,
potentially the next president of the United States,
who came to a conference for magic internet money.
Like that's pretty wild.
That's pretty big deal.
RFK Jr. as well, who's now endorsed Trump was there.
He was there the year before as well with Vivek,
both announced at Bitcoin 2023,
they'd be accepting political donations in Bitcoin.
That's pretty cool.
But just like this shifting of the overton window
that we see, where now you've got a national spotlight
on a Bitcoin conference,
the Bitcoin conference, the biggest one in the world,
because the former president is there.
And speaking about this as, you know,
I noticed the tone of his speech,
and let me know what you think about this,
but it was very much focused on Bitcoin as the industry.
It was like he compared it to the steel industry, right?
He's talking about this as like a fundamental building block
of American industry,
because obviously the steel industry
is not what it used to be in America.
No hard industries are.
Bitcoin has a chance to be,
and right now there is a lot of hashing power there.
What was your take on just the overall tone of his speech?
I mean, I think he still has probably a lot
to learn about Bitcoin.
You know, that's okay as well.
Like he's only gonna learn so much so fast
with quite a lot of other things on his plate.
But I mean, do you think that that conversation
moved the needle for a lot of both individuals,
but also, you know, for a lot of folks
in Washington potentially,
like made them kind of realize,
oh, we need to pay attention to this.
We can't just ignore it.
We need, this is something that is
in the national conversation now,
and now it won't go away.
Yeah, I mean, you very obviously got Kamala Harris worried,
you know, trying to attempt a crypto reset.
You saw Russia and China both responding,
I think a week later,
with different crypto Bitcoin policies
around what they're going to do around transactions, right?
I think I saw China might be reopening
up Bitcoin mining again, right?
What Trump says matters, and he's not even president,
but he's taken very seriously.
And other countries and other individuals
kind of recognize that.
And now, you know, even if you're someone
who thinks Kamala's going to win,
well, you know, just came through with politics,
you know, Kamala's now going to have to at least
keep her eye out for the industry.
You know, now she may not like the industry very much
because they're more so supporting her competitor,
but it's definitely on their radar now,
and it's forcing their hand in certain ways.
So, I think it definitely, you know, it was a game changer.
You know, it's crazy to think, you know,
Bitcoin being a presidential talking point,
at least for one party, right?
It's only on the Republican Party platform.
It is not on the Democratic Party's platform.
But, you know, a lot of this,
I think you could have seen in the tea leaves.
Traditionally, Republicans have always been
kind of the Bitcoin party.
A lot of people would argue against that,
and that's fine, they can be wrong.
But the red states have always led in Bitcoin policy.
It's always been Texas and Florida,
as opposed to the heavily blue states
like California and New York and Illinois,
which have outright tried terrible Bitcoin policy,
like the BitLicense, Illinois was trying to pass something
that would have effectively banned Bitcoin mining
in the states, which I think Warren,
Elizabeth Warren later put in a bill, actually.
And then, you know, California,
with their many form of the BitLicense
and going after ATMs.
So, you know, the Republican Party,
traditionally, I think, has been the Bitcoin party.
And a lot of people just, you know,
because Bitcoin's quote unquote independent
or libertarian minded,
a lot of people just haven't been comfortable
mentioning that.
I think a lot of people are still uncomfortable
with Donald Trump, right?
And secretly don't want him to be pro-Bitcoin
because they don't want a reason to vote for him, right?
And I still hear comments like that,
but, you know, if you're a single issue voter,
which, you know, single issue voters are powerful,
but still a very small percentage.
And I think of single issue voters,
probably Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole
are probably a minority.
And the single voting issue, like abortion,
is probably a larger demographic
for single issue voters than Bitcoin is.
But, you know, it's a competitive election,
only about five states matter.
And so, you know, and either Wisconsin or Michigan,
I think 20,000 votes is all you need
because I think that's what Trump won by originally in 2016.
I think Biden then beat him in,
I think it was Michigan, it might have been Wisconsin,
but I think about 70,000 votes.
You know, those are very small numbers actually,
like we're talking, you know, points of a percent,
you know, so getting as many single issue voters
behind you as possible, it adds up
and it becomes very important.
So, yeah, I think it shifted the national conversation.
It certainly has helped the Republican Party with donations,
especially Trump specifically.
You know, a lot of that money has gone to Senate races
in Montana and Ohio, and actually funny enough,
in California, where they packed Adam Schiff
over another Democratic colleague,
I forget her name, Porter.
I think her last name was Porter, Congresswoman Porter.
It was anti-crypto, she's very in sync with Warren,
which is why, by the way, at the Crypto Town Hall,
Harris did, you know, Adam Schiff was there.
So that was no surprise to see,
because crypto, I think, helped him win his election,
his primary.
So I think, yeah, crypto now has money,
Bitcoin now has money,
it has the right people willing to put that money to use,
and I think now it has votes.
I don't know how impactful those single issue voters will be,
like if they're in Texas and Florida,
maybe that affects congressional districts,
but I'm not sure that's gonna affect, you know,
the presidential election,
but there's a lot of Bitcoin people in Arizona,
Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan,
then they'll really become powerful.
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or not voting for this November,
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Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny
because Elizabeth Warren very much like took it upon herself
to essentially be the voice of this anti-crypto army
that she is building there.
And I think it's just, she basically filled a vacuum
and nobody was there to call her on it.
And you've now seen the results of that
is that the Democrats are seen as the anti-crypto,
anti-Bitcoin party,
because that's literally what Elizabeth Warren said.
And the Republicans not so.
Like it was just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It seems like Elizabeth Warren miscalculated
and thought that somehow she was going to win
a lot of people over to her agenda
with this whole, her anti-Bitcoin, anti-crypto crusade.
That very obviously has not worked.
Like it didn't make,
it's not made bringing anyone new into her coalition.
It is just alienating a huge portion of potential voters
who also have their purchasing power.
If they're saving in Bitcoin,
their purchasing power is growing every single year.
They're becoming an economically significant coalition.
And I think that it's like the Democrats had a lot of chances
to kind of disavow Warren over these years
and just really didn't.
And I think it's gonna come back to bite him
and maybe not in this election.
Like, I mean, being honest,
if I was like, when RFK was still in the race,
probably was gonna vote for RFK
just because I find the duopoly of American politics
not productive for the people.
Now that RFK has jumped behind Trump,
it doesn't really, the endorsement isn't what does it.
It's just like, if I'm actually trying to weigh the benefits,
it's like, well, I know I'm not gonna vote for Kamala Harris.
Like I just know that.
Like it wouldn't matter who she was running against.
I just, dear Lord,
I just don't think I could bring myself to it.
And maybe I'll vote for Donald Trump.
Maybe I won't vote.
Maybe my vote doesn't actually matter that much.
But regardless, I'm happy to see the political conversation
shifting away from just endless congressional hearings
run by Elizabeth Warren,
where all she does is just spread lies
and anti-Bitcoin propaganda
without really having anyone call her on it
and having the big bankers in there
who just basically pair it everything she says
and say, yep, that's exactly right.
We should have more regulation.
It's like when the bankers are calling for more oversight,
when in fact they're responsible
for the majority of the money laundering
that happens in this world,
it's just kind of painfully ironic.
I don't know.
Yeah, I think politics is very easy.
I think people overcomplicate it.
I was never an RFK supporter.
You know, I think he's a cool guy.
I'm glad he was so pro-Bitcoin.
But I don't need my president to understand
what multi-sig is.
Like for me, that's pretty useless.
It's cool.
And when politicians kind of cater to those certain crowds,
to me it's a sign of desperation more than anything.
RFK was forced out of the Democratic Party.
They moved the primary from New Hampshire to South Carolina
because they knew he could win New Hampshire.
So I really enjoyed kind of what his campaign strategy was.
I'm excited to see him backing Trump.
I saw Tulsi's now backing Trump.
I think that tells you a lot.
You know, and people,
I saw this on a Twitter thread,
I thought was a really good statement.
People are policies.
So the people who endorse you,
the people who you bring on your team
are representation of the policies that you will pass,
regardless of what you say.
And so as long as Vivek's close to Trump,
like I'm fine, like I don't care if Trump knows anything
about Bitcoin, he just needs to say the right things.
He needs to keep the right advisors.
Awesome.
It really is that simple.
RFK, I mean, the biggest bragging point was,
man, RFK meets so many check marks on the Bitcoin sphere.
Well, congrats, he's now an advisor to Trump, right?
So that makes it even easier if you're a single issue voter.
You know, Elizabeth Warren, people are so funny.
And I've said that, I mean, this is pretty well known now,
but she became so powerful because in the 2020
Democratic primary, it was her, Bernie, and Biden.
And if Elizabeth Warren had dropped out,
Bernie would have won the primary.
So she stayed in to take votes away from Bernie.
She took about three states away from him,
which allowed Joe Biden to clinch the nomination,
so which is really what the primary process is about.
Primary, political primaries are about negotiating power, right?
It's not just about, oh, who comes in second and third?
It's like, okay, how can I use my second and third place
as leverage?
That's what affected, affected it very, very well.
Used the Republican primary to get closer to Donald Trump,
which was just fantastic strategically.
But when Elizabeth Warren made that decision
and stayed in to him, Bernie Sanders' chances, you know,
so Biden now owes her favors.
I heard about a third of the White House staff
came from Warren's office or from Picks by Elizabeth Warren.
So that told me right there, okay,
when Biden was still the nominee,
if Biden won again, the crypto positions
were gonna be the same.
A lot of the advisors of Biden on crypto
and Bitcoin policy are anti the industry.
It's looking like Kamala might be picking
some of those same people, regardless of what she says.
And you know, Kamala herself has still
yet to really say anything.
You know, so the crypto town hall
where you have a lot of different Democratic people,
they were actually, I listened to the whole thing,
they were actually trashing Biden,
which I found very interesting.
Trying to separate the two,
even though I don't believe you can,
but the media has done a very good job
of separating Kamala and Biden
and some crypto people have fallen in line with that.
But I view them as the same
and a lot of those staffers will be the same.
A lot of the internal people will be the same.
And until Kamala comes out and says exactly
what Trump has said, which is very easy,
for her it would probably be a five to 10 minute video.
I don't really believe any claims that,
you know, there's a Democratic reset
or that there's going to be any pro-crypto policy
out of her tenure.
You know, now, Chuck Schumer is apparently pro-crypto,
but the Senate might be flipping Republican, right?
And so you might have the most powerful
Democratic position who's pro-crypto
not even be in power anymore, you know,
and who knows what will happen in the House.
So, you know, to me, it's all just, it's very simple.
And then if you believe in voting in your interests,
just like you believe in the market, which is all about,
you know, pursuing your interests,
you know, you can complain about the duopoly,
but I think it's very simple.
You know, it's kind of, I always laugh,
it's kind of like the gun debate.
Okay, well, do you want a pro-gun or anti-gun party?
All right, you can hate everything else,
but if guns is a big thing for you, you know,
not voting is not going to help you
if the anti-gun people win in your pro-gun or vice versa.
All right, you can apply that to being pro-life
or pro-abortion.
So, like, I think it's very simple.
So I think, you know, if you're a Bitcoiner,
Trump's a very obvious, obvious pick at this point.
I thought he was the obvious pick
before he even went on stage in Nashville,
but I think now, like, if you're debating,
it's very obvious a lot of these people
aren't really single issue voters,
which is fine, by the way, it's perfectly okay.
But a lot of them, you know, obviously,
Bitcoin isn't their number one factor,
it's a lot of other things as well.
But, you know, that's people, right?
And part of the political process
is just learning and understanding
what your average person's voter psychology is,
and then just maneuvering around that or with it,
and using that to kind of feed some of your decisions.
Yeah, I mean, the reality of the situation is that, like,
I truly believe like everything is good for Bitcoin.
I truly don't understand why Kamala would not just come out,
and as you said, it would be very easy
for her to just come out and say,
just take what Trump said, verbatim, you know,
switch it up a little, add some laughs in the middle,
you know she will anyway.
Yeah.
But why not?
Why would she hold back from that?
I mean, presumably she's not making the decisions
about what her own policy is.
That's the only reason I could think,
because it seems like a no-brainer
if you, A, want to bring more potential voters
over to your side that are single-issue voters,
even if it's a small coalition of voters,
it can still be meaningful.
But B, if you wanna be able to increase your fundraising,
like that is what this machine runs off of, right?
Why would you not just say, look, I mean,
like that's the beauty of Bitcoin.
Whether you're looking at it from a conservative
or a progressive lens, it falls within that lens.
Like it is both conservative and progressive.
It is progressive in the sense that it completely
annihilates existing power structures
and builds a new system.
It is conservative in the sense that it is sound money,
that it is a return to actual sound money
and potentially a sounder basis
of what we can build everything else on top of,
which is a better monetary system.
And so it's like, regardless of which side
you're coming from, you should be able to find
great reasons to be pro-Bitcoin.
The reasons for being anti-Bitcoin
are usually a little bit more nefarious.
And so it's like, if you're not being vocally pro-Bitcoin,
it's like, well, then you're not pro-your citizens.
You're not aiming to advance the best interests
of your citizens.
You're not pro-freedom.
And that just seems like a really,
I have to imagine she's just either has no idea
what's going on and hasn't even been made aware of this,
which could very much be the case.
Or she has people who are just very actively telling her,
I don't know what kind of justifications they're giving,
but that, no, no, no, you should just,
we'll just give them a little bit of lip service.
We'll do a little town hall and that'll be enough.
That'll be enough to convince the people we need to convince
and we won't convince anyone else anyway.
So let's just maintain course.
Let's not piss off the bankers.
Let's just keep doing what we're doing.
I don't know, it just, it seems insane to me not,
she has such a huge opportunity to come out
and be pro-Bitcoin.
Why not take it?
The tough part for Kabala is she's late.
So Bitcoiners have already given a lot of their money
to, for example, the Republican Senator running in Montana
against Hester, or Tester, John Tester, against John Tester,
and then against Sherrod Brown in Ohio.
So a lot of money has already been poured
into Republican campaigns.
Probably a majority amount has gone
into Republican campaigns.
And then because Trump has come out first,
it makes Kamala look politically weak
if she capitulates on any of her stances.
That's one of the reasons why Biden,
before he stepped down, was trying to inch around,
like, what does he do?
Does he veto this bill?
That's good for crypto or not?
If he vetoes it, he's viewed as an enemy,
but if he doesn't veto it, it shows that we have power
over him, and that's not something
that they want to admit.
So it becomes a lot of political power posturing.
So if I was in Kamala's camp, it's definitely a tight spot,
but what's easy for Kamala is there's so many Democrats
in crypto, a lot of people in Bitcoin who own Bitcoin
businesses, and of course, a lot of Bitcoin media,
like any media, is very democratic.
And so a lot of them have been itching for her
to say anything pro-Bitcoin just so that they could push
the narrative that she is.
So it really wouldn't be hard.
She doesn't have to give much.
I think her strategy is really just stay out of the limelight.
She's trying to stay off camera.
She hasn't really announced too many policy positions
besides the price controls, which once again,
if you're a Bitcoin, it's just funny to me
like how you justify voting for someone who's for price controls
and then thinks they're pro-Bitcoin is the cognitive dissonance
there, I think is a little funny.
But even still.
Straight up socialism.
I mean, it is literally socialism.
But it doesn't matter because Bitcoiners, if they're
Democrats, will vote for anyway, right?
Because it's about fitting, which everyone does this, right?
I'm not just roasting Democrats, but more often than not,
we fit something into our own narrative, right?
And so it's more about, come on, just give me something
to fit into my democratic narrative
so I can brag about how you are actually pro-Bitcoin,
as opposed to is she actually pro-Bitcoin or not?
The answer is she's not.
The answer is she probably won't be.
But if you're a Democrat and you hate Donald Trump,
but you love Bitcoin and you're in the Bitcoin space,
you're like, man, this kind of sucks.
I hate Trump, but I like Bitcoin.
What do I do?
More often than not, I think a lot of them
will still vote for Kamala.
I don't think they're actual single issue voters.
I think they'll fall in line with the rest of their party,
majority of them.
And for the people who are going to vote for RFK,
those are more independent minded, kind of late.
To your point, those types of people
most likely just wouldn't vote anyway.
So the big question is how many of them
are going to actually fall on the bandwagon and vote for Trump?
And if a lot of them do, if probably 80% of RFK supporters
were to vote for Trump, I think he very easily
wins the election.
But if it's 50-50 split, I don't know.
Yeah, I would be very surprised to see folks who
are big fans of RFK go and vote for a Democratic ticket,
given how much RFK just roasted the entire Democratic
apparatus.
Like, he basically just obliterated them, essentially,
in his last few addresses.
I would be very like, if someone is a real die-hard Bobby fan,
I find it difficult to believe that they
would go and vote for Kamala.
But you never know.
People are funny.
And maybe they, I think a lot of people
hold out hope for what their preferred political team can
be versus the reality of what it is.
And the other reality is the one thing
that we know whether Trump or Kamala is elected
is that there's going to be massive, massive money
printing either way.
Like, I don't see either one of them.
That's something I have not, I certainly
haven't heard Kamala talk about.
I mean, she's talking about fucking socialist price
controls, which literally have never worked throughout all
of history.
And find me an example of price controls not leading
to shortages and not leading to complete breakdown.
And I will, I don't know, I'll give you 15 sats.
But on Trump's side, I have not heard anything from him
about, you know what, I'm actually going to,
I'm going to work on having a sounder money.
Like, yeah, he briefly talked about,
we're going to hold on to the Bitcoin that we have,
that half of it is actually Bitfinex's Bitcoin.
So that's like a whole legal battle.
But who knows.
But it would be nice to hear something from Trump
about, hey, we actually need to get back to sounder money.
We need to stop inflating our currency so much.
We need to maybe put some better checks in place
to rein in our runaway banking sector
and not give them the backstop that we always give them,
which is the Fed bailout.
Like, because that just does not,
that prevents anything from ever meaningfully changing.
When the banks know that even if they fuck up,
they're always going to get bailed out at the taxpayers'
expense.
Or if the, you know, it's not technically
at the taxpayers' expense,
it's ultimately still at their expense
because the taxpayer suffers because the value of their dollar
is worth less and less and less.
So I would be interested to see if his messaging,
if some of the Bitcoiners around him,
because I think Vivek has talked about this a little bit more.
Certainly a lot of the Bitcoiners who are in his ear
or seem to be in his ear, in his campaign's ear,
talk about this a lot.
So I'd be interested to see if he actually says anything
about that.
Because under his last administration,
it was like, yes, it was COVID, but we had historic money
printing.
And that seems to be whether it's red or it's blue,
the Fed ends up printing money.
And more than they did the previous administration.
That's the one thing that has bipartisan support, it seems.
So that and war.
But that's a different story.
Yeah, I mean, I kind of fall off the Bitcoin train
about caring about money printing.
It's my belief that we're on the train of money printing,
talking about money printing and fiscal responsibility.
If you're a politician, talking about fiscal responsibility
of a nation is useful for people who
believe in fiscal conservatism.
But realistically, that's never going to happen.
We all know that money printing is like a drug.
And no one's going to commit political suicide
by actually cutting government spending
and then ruining the economy for a two-year period, just
have the next three, four years.
And then once you're unelected, the next president
benefit from the measures that you took.
And that's what happens a lot.
If you look at some states, there's
a lot of examples of states that had hugely fiscally
irresponsible governors.
A new governor comes in, does what needs to be done,
gets unelected in his second term.
And then the new guy comes in, then
all the benefits of the previous guy
come into fruition from that austerity, so to speak.
But the guy who did it, did all the hard decisions,
gets none of the credit.
So it's not politically astute to do.
I don't think it makes even, it doesn't make a lot of sense
to me in a lot of ways.
One of the places the Bitcoin community definitely failed
was a lot of Bitcoiners think Donald Trump was anti-Bitcoin
in his first term, which I actually disagree with.
I put that on us for being bad at marketing.
The US dollar, whether you like it or not,
is the most important geopolitical tool known to man.
And it's part of the reason why we keep our livelihood here
in America, our high standard of living,
even though that is declining.
And so to go to a president and say, well,
I want to take out your number one tool, geopolitically,
no president's going to be for that.
And I would actually agree with that president.
The US dollar, unfortunately, which
is in the hands of a lot of bad people,
still gives us a lot of security and leverage,
even though it's still being improperly managed.
So it's an interesting political question.
I don't care for Trump to talk about sound money.
I know he's going to print.
I'm expecting him to print a bunch.
To me, that's not antithetical to Bitcoin actually.
I think fiat's going to do what fiat's going to do.
I think your fiat strategy should be different than your Bitcoin
strategy.
I mean, that's the fun part.
We all seem to think we understand fiat,
but then we say things like, well,
we need to go back to sound money.
Yeah, we do.
But as long as fiat's here, you have to play the fiat game.
And we're super fortunate that we can also
play the sound money game.
I have my escape.
So I think our goal, or the goal of the government,
should be to leverage the fiat system as it is
to protect American lives and American prosperity as much
as it can, while hedging bets on what I think the future will
be, which will be Bitcoin, because we all know that the fiat
dollar won't be around forever.
I don't think it's going to end anytime soon.
I've made that realization about maybe five years ago
around really doing research on the euro dollar
and what the euro dollar is, which still baffles my mind.
And that'll also change your perspective on inflation
as well.
What really causes inflation, it can be money printing,
but money printing, in my opinion,
is not always linked to inflation.
Like I think a lot of our COVID inflation
had nothing to do with the money printing
and everything to do with energy prices and supply
change stock, which is even more interesting when you look
at the Biden administration, inflation really getting bad,
and tying that to some of their proposals around energy,
by the way, which is something not a lot of people talk about.
So Trump, for me, it's already said and done.
He said everything I need him to say.
I'll leave the sound money conversations
for people like us to have, because I
think he's going to do whatever he needs to get elected.
That's what I care about.
I care about him winning.
And if talking about sound money starts
to lose some votes, I'm more than happy for him
to just stay quiet on it.
I appreciate the honesty and the realism.
And again, I'm in agreement with you
that I do not think the fiat dollar is going away anytime soon.
I also think that if and when the fiat dollar does go away,
fully collapse, well, that's going
to be the last fiat currency to collapse.
If the dollar is collapsing, that
means that every other fiat currency has likely
collapsed as well, maybe with a couple of exceptions.
But the reality is that the dollar is still
the king of the castle.
And yeah, there's a lot of people
at the top who use that dollar as a weapon, much
to the detriment of folks all over the world.
But the reality is that those other currencies
are going to die off long before the dollar does.
And ultimately, it's like, yeah, you're
right that there is going to be a massive print,
whether Trump or Kamala is elected.
The printer will go on.
Like we will inflate.
Because we're $35.2 trillion in debt.
There's literally the interest expense in that debt
is bigger than our military budget.
There is literally no way for them to remain solvent
unless they massively debase the currency.
It's literally the only way that or a complete reset
by having a massive scale hot war.
Like those are basically the two ways
that you end up resetting the system.
There's no other ways.
They have those are the two doors.
And maybe it's a porcano los dos, just a little bit of both.
Who knows?
But ultimately, and this sounds callous to say,
but as a Bitcoin holder, all of that is good for Bitcoin.
Like that is very good for Bitcoin.
If we're measuring Bitcoin in terms of the fiat price, which
most people still are.
At the same time, it's the reality.
Like it's going to pump a lot of bags.
And you can feel dirty for saying it, but it is the truth.
And again, I think that for Bitcoiners, it's like,
there is the reality of the world that we live in.
And there's very much inspiring and hopeful future
that I think people are building to in parallel
and that I very much try to support and want to see.
At the same time, we become able to better influence
the existing system from the outside,
influence from our parallel system
when our purchasing power in the existing system
increases massively.
When that happens, you can affect more change
from the outside.
Because the system is not going to change itself
from the inside out.
The fiat system is what it is.
It's not going to fix itself from the inside.
It needs to be forced to change from the outside.
And when you talk about long-term prosperity,
that is the only thing that is going to do that,
is energy security, which Bitcoin helps to drive.
Like we see this.
We see Texas is an amazingly proving ground for this.
Stability and security.
And then also just general freedom
to transact outside this existing system
is something that Bitcoiners should not take for granted.
That is really amazing that we have that.
And you see with all the Pavel Durov, with the Telegram CEO,
it's just been tossed in jail by the French
and slapped with a bunch of charges.
Like the censorship industrial complex is going to get worse.
And if they can censor your money, like with a CBDC,
for example, they will.
And I'm curious how you see a slight gear shift here.
But just going into this next election,
do you think we start to see the censorship train just
heat up even more?
Like I saw the Rumble founder is now,
they're shut off in France right now.
Rumble is.
Oh, are they really?
I just saw this, like a couple of tweets about it
right before we got on.
Didn't get a chance to independently verify,
but it appears that they're shut down in France.
I know that the Rumble CEO was leaving Europe
because he's not feeling too comfortable there.
Can't blame him.
But I don't know.
I feel like the whole censorship is going to get a lot worse
before it gets better.
We just saw Zuckerberg admitting that the Biden-Harris
administration was asking them to censor COVID stuff.
Like we all knew this was happening,
but now it's just like it's fully admitted.
Like it's in the congressional record now.
How do you see this shaking out around election time?
Like are things going to get very, very strange?
Are we going to start seeing major platform censorship?
What's your take?
I mean, if it's any worse than in the last election, right?
I mean, last election, you have to remember,
Dorsey's Twitter, you know, censored tons of people,
including at the time a sitting president.
Facebook did the same.
Google did the same.
And all those players are still doing the same thing.
We had a worldwide pandemic, which can still get you banned
on certain platforms for talking about.
So censorship, like we're lucky in America
that we have the First Amendment, although that
is like a tertiary shield.
But other countries don't have that.
We do.
And so that gives us a standing basis
to fight some of these fights.
And we're very fortunate that someone like Elon Musk
bought Twitter.
We're even in an odd irony fortunate that TikTok
is a foreign company, which censors us
on a foreign censorship scale instead of the American
censorship scale.
So it's like different things are censored.
So you can kind of play cat and mouse
and talk about different things on different platforms, which
is a ridiculous spot to be in as an American.
But that is the spot that we're in.
So I think if Kamala wins, things will definitely
get worse on the censorship side,
whether that's from the government or from the quote,
unquote, free market of Google and Facebook,
just coordinating and deciding what
speech is allowed and what's not.
I think Elon's going to be in a lot of trouble.
If Kamala wins as well, I think he's
after Trump public enemy number two.
And if I were him, I would definitely
be scared of going out of the country.
If I were him, I'd be scared of going out of Texas.
So I do think it's going to get ramped up.
I don't know how that plays out.
I think you're also still going to see the typical canceling
of people and debanking and all that fun, exciting stuff
that we see here and there.
It's probably a little calm right now
because of the administration and power
and it being an election year.
But depending on who wins, I think it could really ramp up.
And hopefully, lawyers that are pro First Amendment
are ready for that here in the US.
But those are long battles.
Zuckerberg just admitted that he was the bad guy.
He probably still is the bad guy who knows what else he's
censoring and working on.
I have no doubt in my mind that everyone knew
he was going to make this announcement six months ago
to a year ago.
And they've been planning for this
and how they're going to shape it.
So what Zuckerberg does from here, I'm not sure.
But I guarantee you it's not him saying,
you know, I'm tired of this government.
I'm going to speak out.
That's not it.
Anyone who thinks it is, I think is a little ridiculous.
So I do.
I think it's going to ramp.
I think censorship is going to ramp up and become,
if it's not already, the next big political fight.
How that plays out policy-wise is
going to be very interesting.
It's going to really rack a lot of braids,
because I hear arguments about government
shouldn't be involved in what private citizens do.
But then your biggest private citizens and platforms
are Google, Facebook, who are doing
a majority of the censorship.
So I don't think being censored by a giant corporation
is any better than being censored by the government,
for example, especially when those giant corporations control
levers of power to then get you debanked.
So I think it's going to ramp up.
I think what's happening with the owner of Telegram,
or the founder of Telegram, is a canary in the coal mine.
And we'll just have to see who they go after next.
But it's not looking good in the sense
that I think they're going to double down and start
going after some other people as well.
But we'll wait to see.
A lot of the times, it's like reading tea leaves.
The French government doing this, I
don't believe it's on their own.
This was probably coordinated by the EU,
and then they kind of pick, OK, who wants to handle this?
Right, and I know the US is probably involved as well.
So what the next European country is going to do,
like England's already persecuting you for retweeting,
I don't see how it gets much worse than that at all.
It's a very interested for anyone who
supports those types of policies.
But yeah, I think we are very lucky as Americans
to have the First Amendment.
And we often forget that that is a uniquely American thing,
along with the Second Amendment, that other countries don't
have the luxury of getting.
And we're seeing that play out in real time.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And to give Jack Dorsey a little credit,
and I think this is not to excuse
the actions of any owners or CEOs,
controllers of companies.
But they're put in an impossible position,
which is a function of their position itself, which
is they are the throat to choke.
They are the head to cut off.
So when the government comes to you and says,
you need to censor this, and when you're
a publicly traded company, well, it's a threat.
Not even an implicit threat.
It's a very explicit threat that's censor this or else.
We're going to make your life hell.
We're going to ruin your company.
Like maybe that part's a little bit more implicit.
But what I do appreciate about Dorsey
is that he has now taken a lot of his money
and invested it in open source protocols,
in things like Noster, building a parallel system
for free and open communication.
Because even Twitter has undoubtedly in or ex now.
I think a lot of the change that Elon has made has been good.
I think it's also good that he's, for instance,
paying content creators with advertising dollars.
I think that's a really cool thing to do.
It incentivizes some different sorts of behavior.
But I think it's a net benefit that people can now
earn some money from the impressions that they get
versus just fully being the product.
But at the same time, Elon is still the head to cut off.
He's still the throat to choke.
Even if we assume he has all the best intentions, not
to censor, not to deplatform, not to ban people,
he's still that figurehead.
He's still the one that they can come after.
And that's why the beauty of Satoshi Nakamoto
is that he disappeared.
Because if he hadn't disappeared,
we wouldn't be having the same conversation about Bitcoin
here today.
This is the beauty of something like Noster,
where once the open source code is out there,
anyone can use this.
Anyone can run this.
And I don't think it's going to play a huge role
in this current election cycle.
But I just know, I'm not sure if you're on Noster yet.
If not, I'll send you some stuff.
I'd be happy to help you get set up,
because I think you'd dig it.
But we've seen a pretty large influx in users,
relatively speaking, over just the last couple days
since this Pavel Durov arrest.
Because each one of these little things, when it comes
to censorship, it makes a few more people wake up a little bit.
And they may not actually give a shit about censorship
resistance, because they think, well, I'm never
going to be censored.
But enough of these things happen,
and people start to realize, huh, maybe I
should try out this other thing just in case.
Just in case, because I don't know where things are going to go.
And I think a lot of people feel a lot of uncertainty right now
in general about what is the world or my nation going
to look like in the next five to 10 years?
Is it going to be better?
Is it going to be worse?
I don't think anybody is really of the opinion,
like, well, it's all going to stay exactly the same.
You can feel there's this energy right now where everybody
thinks something's coming.
Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad.
I don't know.
Maybe that's just me projecting, which is also certainly
possible.
But it seems like these next few years,
like a lot of people have made the argument
we're in that fourth turning, right?
We're in the midst of it.
This is the time where big things change,
and they change really, really fast.
And if you're not paying attention,
you're going to be in rough shape.
So it's good to wake up if you're not already.
Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely more of an Elon fan
than I am a Dorsey fan.
Still not too big of a Dorsey fan.
But I do have an appreciation for anyone
who will put money to a good cause for sure.
I do think we are at one of those pivotal moments.
Certainly if the energy seems that way.
I hear a lot of people talk about the fourth turning,
and I've read the book, very, very good book, fun book.
All those books where it's like every page,
you're kind of like I have to, when I read, like, OK,
let me Google this event.
Let me Wikipedia that event, because I have no idea what
he's referring to.
And then it takes me forever to get through a chapter,
because then I get lost on another research tangent.
But yeah, I think reality in life always seeks equilibrium.
And I think Bitcoin tipped that equilibrium
to the side of freedom.
And so the only response to that is more authoritarianism,
which will then tip it into more freedom.
I think that's always a cat and mouse game.
Who said it?
Maybe it was Dostoevsky, maybe it was somebody else.
And I'm totally going to miss a quote.
But the thing to saying was the freest man is one step away
from tyranny.
And I do think that's true.
And I think we realize what freedom truly
is when you can see what tyranny is.
And sometimes it's an unfortunate and not so fun,
but needed lesson that's just called the circle of life
and human nature, much like books like The Fourth Turning,
I think, Hintats or even Preach.
So I think we're definitely in one of those moments where
we've had the World Wide Web, which
has given us more freedom of expression than we've ever had.
It's also allowed us to be tracked
like we've never been tracked before.
A lot of people think that kings in ancient England
were terrible dictators, but a king in ancient England
couldn't figure out what you were saying in your house 24-7.
You didn't get Amazon ads because of what you googled.
So I think the tyranny that we have now is potentially far worse,
but we have even more channels and avenues
to escape that kind of tyranny and promote freedom.
So technology just kind of ups the stakes
of that freedom and tyranny game.
And I think that's what we're going to see.
We'll see what happens to the owner and founder of Telegram.
He's not a French citizen, to my knowledge,
but he's going to be prosecuted like he's some Russian criminal
committing terrorist activity.
Are we as a country going to stand up for him?
Is anyone going to call them out?
Does it matter?
Is Putin going to call them out?
Because the irony is, is Putin asked for the owner
to give them all access to Telegram
and supposedly he said no and then fled Russia.
It's too bad he fled Russia to the West and then found out,
hey, this is actually the worst option as we're seeing.
So at least for him specifically.
Yeah, so the only thing to do is live through it and be prepared.
Big fan of parallel economies, parallel media, parallel societies.
I think that's what happens in a time of somewhat decay.
You just build for the next step in the future.
That's what Isaac Asimov was all about.
And I think that's true.
And I think the best golden ages come from those types of cycles.
So I'm very optimistic actually, regardless of all this,
even if Kamala wins, for example.
Still very optimistic about the future and the trends
that I'm seeing.
And it's not just because I'm young,
although that's certainly my job.
But I do think the trend airs in the favor of freedom.
And so I'm still very bullish and excited about the future,
regardless of what role Bitcoin even has in it.
No, I mean, amen to that.
And I think I want to be conscious of your time here too.
But one thing I did want to touch on with you was,
just because you mentioned at the end,
this changing media landscape.
Because I know this is something that you are very much tuned
into both from the political process and then
through the other work that you're doing.
But we're at the point right now where podcasts, not this podcast,
but say something like Joe Rogan, absolutely
dwarfs the amount of viewership, listenership, that all the,
whatever, I don't even know if people still call them cable
news, but legacy news channels do, combined.
All of them combined don't even touch his viewership.
And he's one guy.
And he's the biggest.
But there's many others who get similar numbers
on long form conversations.
Like in a time where basically everybody is a little bit ADD,
it has a super short attention span.
Somehow people still tune in for an hour and a half,
two and a half hours to listen to a couple of people talk.
And they tune in in the millions.
Meanwhile, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, they're
lucky if they get half a million during prime time, which
is insane.
How do you see this evolving?
I mean, I think probably during Obama's election
was probably the first.
That was the first real maybe social media election
through his use of Facebook and pulled that off very well,
right?
Credit where credit is due.
Obviously Twitter has now X, but Twitter before had played
a huge role in other elections.
How do you see this shaking out during this election cycle?
Because you start to get the feeling
that it's like everybody still gets,
the algorithm still silos people into their echo chambers.
So it's like, yeah, in your left, in your blue echo chamber,
everybody is saying how amazing Kamala is
and how there's all this fake news from the Republicans
and da, da, da.
And in your red echo chamber, it's the exact opposite.
Everybody's spreading lies about Trump.
But it's all just people agreeing with each other.
And the algorithm sometimes throws people together
confrontationally, and you see some sparks fly.
But does that ever really move the needle in terms
of the average person?
Maybe it's the average person isn't the one commenting.
They're just the one watching all this unfold.
And there is some needle moving.
But how do you see the media landscape really?
Do you think it's, is it different during this election
cycle, or is it more of the same?
We're not quite at a phase shift yet.
It's a good question.
They say Obama was the first social media president.
Trump was the first meme of president.
And I think that's true.
I think Netflix is a very good example.
Like Netflix was the cable killer.
And then you had Hulu, and you have Amazon Prime,
and you have HBO.
But now there's so many media services
that now they're starting to offer live 24 hour TV
on some of these media streaming services.
Some of them are bundling.
Hey, you can bundle Netflix and HBO going back
to the cable model.
So I think it's the natural process of consolidation
and then decentralization to then consolidation again.
With decentralized media, one thing
Gary always say is how amazing it is.
Anyone can pick up a $500 camera, or really now your iPhone,
if you have an iPhone, and even some of these Android cameras.
Get one of those and just start talking.
It's very easy, and it's very powerful.
And so if you look at the recent assassination attempts
on Trump, how much of what we've seen was recorded via phone.
And we're able to independently piece together
a story based on footage that people are analyzing from phones.
And that comes with the flip side is that, OK, well,
we don't need a surveillance state
because we're all surveilling each other all the time.
And that goes back to the consolidation and decentralization,
but it's the same as freedom and tyranny,
as it's always progressing in both directions
simultaneously.
Technology can be used for good as much
as it can be used for evil.
So I think this election cycle, the most important media avenues
are TikTok and Twitter.
Those are certainly the most diverse and knowledge-rich forms
of media.
And people laugh when I say that about TikTok.
But TikTok's algorithm focuses on promoting content,
not the creator.
And so you will see very small accounts
have videos go viral because of a video that just popped off.
It's a very good news source if you're looking at it for news.
But on the flip side of that, as easy as it
is to have a TikTok account or even a Twitter account,
well, what's happening?
We're becoming slaves to an algorithm.
And so now are we reconciliating our independent media?
Like, what is the point of having a camera if the algorithm says,
hey, sorry, you're not a good fit?
So you can post into the ether, which
is what I love about Twitter, is finding those random accounts
that have been posting for three years
and still have 10 followers, but still
have the dedication to post.
So shout out to those guys.
They're often some of the funniest Twitter accounts.
But our algorithms are going to start ruling everything.
I talk about, I made a video about Spotify algorithms.
And it's very subtle and nuanced.
But when I shuffle my Spotify playlist or my Apple Music
playlist, it'll sometimes randomly select songs
to put in my playlist to see if I like them.
And music's a very powerful psychological tool.
How do I know someone's not paying for that shuffle song bump?
Like, is an artist or a media company
paying Spotify behind closed doors saying,
hey, I want this song shuffled into this type of playlist.
Will you promote it?
It's just kind of like books.
Every time you see a New York Times bestseller,
well, it's a New York Times bestseller
because the publisher bought the first 500,000 books, which
are then given out for signing out at conferences
and stuff like that, or giving out books for free.
And then it's a New York Times bestseller,
which is what makes people then buy the book.
Also a great campaign finance technique.
That's why every politician writes a book
because you can skirt campaign finance laws.
So media, we're seeing the power structures change
a little bit.
CNN's dying.
Fox News is dying.
Tucker now has one of the best media channels out there.
Joe Rogan, Patrick Bet David, some of these independent creators.
And then quote unquote, micro influencers
have incredible political sway, which is awesome.
But if they get banned or the algorithm doesn't like them,
that becomes a problem.
And we have yet to see a good example is, again, TikTok.
The owners of TikTok are not necessarily the greatest people.
But we saw when TikTok was potentially going to be banned
and forced and sold, who was going to buy it?
It was going to be people who are very closely associated
with the establishment media as it is today.
So who's to say that independent media companies don't start
getting bought up?
As much as you like Joe Rogan, he too has limits.
He still has a contract deal with Spotify.
He says he'll never have Trump on.
I think that is not necessarily his choice completely.
Just look at it.
If you look at some, it's very, very subtle.
But if you look at some of the people he's had on,
it's very easy to notice who he's had back on and who he has not.
And so even Joe Rogan, as much as I really like Joe Rogan,
I think is still bound by a contract.
If Spotify decides one day, hey, you're gone,
it'll hurt Spotify, but they'll survive.
What does Joe Rogan do?
I don't know what Joe Rogan does.
CNN's not going to pick him up.
He's not going to go to Fox.
I guess he has to restart on Twitter or something.
But media is still complex and complicated.
But I do think the current power structure has no idea
what to do with everyone posting on everything all the time.
And I think algorithms can kind of help them handle that.
But you're average American.
You're average consumer is very funny and very clever.
I've never heard the term unalive so much.
Because if I say the other word that unaliving means,
you get banned or you get shadow banned
or the algorithm doesn't like you.
But unalive is still acceptable.
Not walking anymore.
There's so many fun ways to get around some of these algo codes.
And yes, sometimes you get caught and other times you don't.
But I think the key in media is really
to stay innovative.
You have to be having fun.
And that's what I think makes people
able to survive the media landscape is they're having fun.
And you see that in some of the biggest YouTube channels,
like MrBeast, who has yet to go political.
But I think one day will, even subtly.
So yeah, I think this election, I think TikTok and Twitter
are going to be the biggest factors.
TikTok, scroll through your TikTok if you have one.
I see debates, live debates going on constantly.
I host some of them myself.
You'll have in the background, I'm voting for Trump.
Tell me why you hate him.
And you'll have 300, 400 people watching.
So I think TikTok's the main spot for political news.
And I think Twitter is the main spot for political news.
Everything else is kind of out in the dustbin
unless you're into memes on Instagram, which are very funny.
And also very political.
But Instagram reels is more of an echo chamber
than TikTok and Twitter are.
Yeah, I think that's a fair analysis.
And I'm going to get you on Noster as well,
because I think you would appreciate it.
And it's one of those things where it's a very young ecosystem,
a young protocol.
And so there's a lot of opportunity, I think,
for folks that are using it early and using it well
and being authentic on there to grow really powerful
followings.
Because ultimately, I think in the years to come,
we're going to start to see other
social media platforms just start to integrate with the Noster
protocol as just a feature within their own platform,
because there's going to be enough signal over there
that they want to pull in.
And it's just a feed that they can surface.
I'm also interested in the marketplace of algorithms
that some folks are talking about on Noster.
Because to your point about being ruled by the algorithms,
the problem, because you're exactly right,
but the problem isn't the algorithm itself.
It's the opaqueness of the algorithm.
It's the arbitrariness of the algorithm.
It's the fact that somebody with the control of that algorithm
can very much sway opinion.
And that's the problem.
But if you have an open marketplace of open source
algorithms that anyone can contribute to, just free market,
choose what algorithm you want.
How do you want to be served this content?
What kind of content?
That gets a lot more powerful, because it
puts the hands back in the, or puts the power back
in the user's hands.
And I think that's something I don't know if we'll
see that from centralized platforms.
But it would be nice.
But until then, at least there are some parallel systems
that I think are very useful.
But Sam, I want to be conscious of your time here.
Enjoy the heck out of this conversation.
Appreciate the honesty and the peak behind the curtain.
It's quite fascinating.
Anywhere you want to send folks, I'll link your Twitter.
And in the show notes.
But anywhere else you want to send people.
Yeah, I mean, it's same across the board.
My TikTok, my Instagram, my Twitter,
Substack, YouTube, we're all just Samuel Arms.
Some of them might have an underscore in there,
because it wasn't available on all of them.
But you'll find me if you look them up.
We'd love for you guys to give a follow.
Then obviously follow this podcast if you aren't already.
I've really enjoyed this conversation.
You've been the man.
I'm glad we can meet and connect at Bitcoin Nashville.
One of the many benefits of still gathering in person.
I think it's still, that's something that it's usefulness
I don't think will ever go away.
So really appreciate you having me on.
Amen to that.
As much as I like the technology to be able to do this
from across the country, there is nothing better
than being in the meat space with people.
So yeah, go to Bitcoin conferences
or any conferences you want, or just go to the bar
or wherever people gather around you.
But go meet people in person.
It makes a difference.
But Sam, thanks so much for your time.
Appreciate it very much.
And yeah, looking forward to seeing how things shake out
this year should be an interesting one.
Good deal.
Thanks again.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode
of the Bitcoin Podcast.
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