1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,400
the only way that I think you can effectively police that and reach a kind of almost equilibrium of

2
00:00:06,400 --> 00:00:13,280
who's happy with what credible threats of violence that incentivize, you know, what you're, what

3
00:00:13,280 --> 00:00:20,640
accords with your ethical theory is not resorting to ever more escalating violence, you know, in

4
00:00:20,640 --> 00:00:29,600
pursuit of ultimate victory and the monopoly, but rather shame, basically, or other more socially

5
00:00:29,600 --> 00:00:35,440
enforced means of punishment and reward. So that's where I kind of land on this, that that's

6
00:00:35,440 --> 00:00:40,560
actually more important. It's basically, it's a very, very pretentious way of describing politics

7
00:00:40,560 --> 00:00:45,440
as downstream of culture, but not just describing it, but encouraging you to take it very, very

8
00:00:45,440 --> 00:00:51,840
seriously because, you know, if you put the requisite time and energy into creating a culture that

9
00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:57,840
self enforces ethics, you don't need violence in the first place and you can escape that loop,

10
00:00:57,840 --> 00:01:01,200
in theory, at least. That's my, that's my hot take.

11
00:01:07,760 --> 00:01:13,360
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast.

12
00:01:13,360 --> 00:01:20,800
The Bitcoin time chain is 843281 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin. Today's episode

13
00:01:20,800 --> 00:01:27,040
is Bitcoin talk where I talk with my guest about Bitcoin and whatever else comes up. Today,

14
00:01:27,040 --> 00:01:34,400
that guest is Alan Farrington. Alan is a general partner at Axiom Venture Partners and the co-author

15
00:01:34,400 --> 00:01:41,600
of the quite famous book, Bitcoin is Venice. He also identifies as a layer two and that's all

16
00:01:41,600 --> 00:01:46,400
I'm going to say about that. Alan and I had a great conversation that meanders all over the

17
00:01:46,400 --> 00:01:52,240
place from Apple to light beer to MMT to capitalism to the proper role of the state

18
00:01:52,240 --> 00:01:58,480
and a whole lot more. Alan is a hilarious and incredibly knowledgeable dude, so I know you're

19
00:01:58,480 --> 00:02:03,360
going to enjoy the heck out of this one. Before we dive in, do me a favor and subscribe to the

20
00:02:03,360 --> 00:02:09,040
Bitcoin podcast wherever you are listening and give this show a five star rating. Or don't,

21
00:02:09,040 --> 00:02:14,160
Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure would appreciate it. Also just a heads up that you can find links

22
00:02:14,160 --> 00:02:20,240
in the show notes to get discounts on the Bitcoin only Bitbox 02 hardware wallet from Bitbox Swiss

23
00:02:20,240 --> 00:02:26,800
and on 5G SIM card service from Cloaked Wireless. They protect you from SIM swap attacks and the

24
00:02:26,800 --> 00:02:32,480
promo code for both is Walker. If you'd rather watch this show than listen, head to the show notes

25
00:02:32,480 --> 00:02:37,280
for links to watch on YouTube, Rumble and now on Noster via highlighter. But if you're like me and

26
00:02:37,280 --> 00:02:42,480
you prefer to just listen to your podcasts, I highly recommend you check out fountain.fm. Not

27
00:02:42,480 --> 00:02:48,400
only can you send Bitcoin your favorite podcasters to give value for value, but you can earn Bitcoin

28
00:02:48,400 --> 00:02:53,760
just for listening to this fucking podcast. And if you are already listening to the Bitcoin podcast

29
00:02:53,760 --> 00:02:58,720
on fountain, consider giving the show a boost or creating a clip of something you found interesting.

30
00:02:58,720 --> 00:03:03,120
Finally, if you are a Bitcoin only company interested in sponsoring another fucking

31
00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:09,040
Bitcoin podcast, hit me up on social media or through the website, Bitcoin podcast.net.

32
00:03:09,040 --> 00:03:20,800
Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Alan Farrington.

33
00:03:20,800 --> 00:03:25,360
You're good intro. This is exactly where you should start.

34
00:03:25,360 --> 00:03:31,200
Well, it does. You know, I mean, so I interviewed Jeff Booth is one of the first people I had on

35
00:03:31,200 --> 00:03:36,400
here. And at one point, you know, Jeff, he's so even keeled. He's he's and he's so just like,

36
00:03:36,400 --> 00:03:41,600
I love the way he speaks. He's this beautiful calming presence that brings brings him down.

37
00:03:41,600 --> 00:03:46,480
So he is he is. And it's hard to argue with that where as the rest of us get a bit firebrandish

38
00:03:46,480 --> 00:03:52,960
at times. But at one point, he's telling the story of how he kind of like, got around to writing

39
00:03:52,960 --> 00:03:57,680
the book, the price tomorrow. And he's like, Walker, the people in charge of the rules have no

40
00:03:57,680 --> 00:04:02,400
fucking clue. And then and I was like, I don't think I've ever heard Jeff say fuck before.

41
00:04:02,400 --> 00:04:09,280
And then later he texts me is like, Hey, I really like the interview. But is it possible to just

42
00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:14,240
to cut out my curse word? Because I usually don't swear. I don't want to, you know, give that.

43
00:04:14,240 --> 00:04:18,080
And I was like, you know, Jeff, for you, for you anything. So, you know, just cut it out.

44
00:04:18,080 --> 00:04:22,480
So it just sounds like the people in charge of the rules have no pause clue. But

45
00:04:22,480 --> 00:04:27,440
I have no ad break. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, have you heard of the

46
00:04:27,440 --> 00:04:34,320
Bitbox O2 Bitcoin only hardware wallet? But yeah, so that sweet, sweet, sweet Jeff Booth.

47
00:04:35,520 --> 00:04:38,320
If only there were more of him, like I wish we, you know, but

48
00:04:38,320 --> 00:04:42,400
Have you kept the recording though? Because you can now you can blackmail him potentially.

49
00:04:42,400 --> 00:04:46,400
You've got his reputation hostage. Yeah, I've got the recording. You know,

50
00:04:46,400 --> 00:04:51,040
honestly, I was of the opinion. I was like, you know, thinking like, Jeff, you're just

51
00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:55,680
you're just showing some great emotion here. Like Pete, if you swear, like I say fuck all the time,

52
00:04:55,680 --> 00:04:59,120
it starts to lose a little bit of its meaning, you know, like, fuck, fuck, fuck, could he fuck.

53
00:04:59,120 --> 00:05:04,240
Sorry if there's any kids listening to this later. But, you know, you say it enough times,

54
00:05:04,240 --> 00:05:07,280
and it's just kind of part of the general vernacular. But Jeff, it's like,

55
00:05:07,920 --> 00:05:11,360
that's not a word that he uses often. So if he busts it out, you know that it was for

56
00:05:11,920 --> 00:05:18,400
a serious reason, you know, it's, it was a very meaningful, meaningful fuck. So yeah.

57
00:05:18,400 --> 00:05:25,520
Yeah. But man, how's it how's it going? How's life? I loved I was listening to the cheat code,

58
00:05:26,160 --> 00:05:32,320
the cheat code sessions, those were awesome. I wish that was that just a great time. Had you

59
00:05:32,320 --> 00:05:38,080
been to bed for before? No, no, I never had. I yeah, I loved that. That was that was first

60
00:05:38,080 --> 00:05:43,120
conference I've been doing quite a while as well. And so it was super nice. It's in the UK. I think

61
00:05:43,120 --> 00:05:47,840
that's that that was the main thing, which is a bit of a shame because that isn't really giving

62
00:05:47,840 --> 00:05:52,880
Peter any credit. Like he obviously can't really control that. So I have other nice things to

63
00:05:52,880 --> 00:05:56,720
say about it, obviously. But from my point of view, oh, my God, such a relief. Because it's just

64
00:05:56,720 --> 00:06:02,080
not that I'm mind obviously, because it is, you know, just conferences in general are fun.

65
00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:07,200
They're useful for work now for me as well. But you know, if I if I had the choice between,

66
00:06:07,200 --> 00:06:12,400
do I want to fly to Miami? Or do I want to fly to Dubai? That was what I went to before Bedford.

67
00:06:12,400 --> 00:06:18,480
Or do I just want to sit on a train going through the British countryside for a couple of hours and

68
00:06:18,480 --> 00:06:24,960
read a book? And you know, I know more importantly, actually, get the train like walk 10 minutes to

69
00:06:24,960 --> 00:06:33,200
the train. No security. No. So that was that was lovely from my point of view. But very good

70
00:06:33,200 --> 00:06:37,680
conference. So yeah, it's I'm sure they're going to do it again, given how successful that one was.

71
00:06:37,680 --> 00:06:43,040
Yeah. And I'd never been to Bedford. No. So that was also a very good excuse to go lovely place.

72
00:06:43,040 --> 00:06:49,840
Oh, yeah, I was we were planning on trying to go to it. And then the whole had a had a baby thing.

73
00:06:49,840 --> 00:06:54,720
And so he's a little too young to travel right now. But but yeah, I'm definitely going to try to go

74
00:06:54,720 --> 00:06:59,920
next year. It just looked like all the programming that Danny and Peter were posting on the What

75
00:06:59,920 --> 00:07:04,000
Bitcoin did channel afterwards was just great. Like I went through all that felt like I was there.

76
00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:09,360
And just awesome conversations. And I I'd like the fact that it seemed there were a ton of people

77
00:07:09,360 --> 00:07:14,560
for whom it was their first Bitcoin conference, which is cool. Yeah. Like that. I think that's

78
00:07:14,560 --> 00:07:21,120
a neat that's a neat thing. Like it's not always the case at depending on the the type or the scale

79
00:07:21,120 --> 00:07:24,800
of a conference. It's like cost as well. I would have thought that's actually it's really interesting.

80
00:07:24,800 --> 00:07:30,880
You mentioned that I probably want to thought of this myself that that tends to be quite well

81
00:07:30,880 --> 00:07:37,760
correlated with how much I enjoy it on the basis that, you know, obviously, you can always just

82
00:07:37,760 --> 00:07:41,600
watch the talks afterwards, right? It's never this is kind of cliche, right? For anyone who's

83
00:07:41,600 --> 00:07:45,600
been to probably more than two or three that you don't go to see the talks. Maybe to some extent,

84
00:07:45,600 --> 00:07:50,640
you go to see your Twitter friends who otherwise, you know, you don't really have an excuse to see

85
00:07:50,640 --> 00:07:55,760
in real life. But I think the the main thing, at least for me, what I always find by far the most

86
00:07:55,760 --> 00:08:01,440
enjoyable is just meeting new people who aren't my Twitter friends. And, you know, this is their

87
00:08:01,440 --> 00:08:06,480
only real excuse to get involved in this kind of thing. And I do tend to find that now that I've

88
00:08:06,480 --> 00:08:12,000
been involved for long enough and, you know, beaten to enough of them that the bigger the

89
00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:17,040
conferences tends to be very closely connected with how commercial it is, which tends to be connected

90
00:08:17,040 --> 00:08:22,160
with how expensive it is. And it just ends up drawing a different kind of a crowd, whereas this

91
00:08:22,160 --> 00:08:29,200
one was very purposefully, you know, very accessible, basically. And so, yeah, by far, my

92
00:08:29,200 --> 00:08:32,640
favorite part was just hanging out with plebs. That was that was great. It was the first time I

93
00:08:32,640 --> 00:08:40,000
done that in a while, too. Yeah, that's nice. Also, quick pause. I think your mic is picking up some

94
00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:44,400
tapping on your desk. It's just a hoax up. I think that's me. I'm just doing that instinctal.

95
00:08:44,400 --> 00:08:49,600
No, no, no, no, it's okay. And I like the instinct. Don't don't throttle your instincts. Let them

96
00:08:49,600 --> 00:08:53,680
let them run wild. I was on my standing desk. So I'm kind of like, I did it a bit.

97
00:08:53,680 --> 00:08:59,360
No, no, no, no, you're good. You're good to go. I honestly, the most that I sit down during the

98
00:08:59,360 --> 00:09:05,520
day is usually for if I'm interviewing somebody, I've got my very nice fiat chair, you know, that

99
00:09:05,520 --> 00:09:11,360
was like built in China, ordered on Amazon. But I fucking love my standing desk. I started, I put

100
00:09:11,360 --> 00:09:15,760
a little, a little walking pad, like one of those like treadmills that only goes like a few miles

101
00:09:15,760 --> 00:09:21,280
an hour. And they're like, again, made in China and on Amazon. That's cool. But I put it, it's

102
00:09:21,280 --> 00:09:26,560
honestly nice because it's like, I've got a lot of fiat work meetings during the day where I need

103
00:09:26,560 --> 00:09:33,440
to, I need to still be at my computer. But I don't want to just be static standing the whole time.

104
00:09:33,440 --> 00:09:37,040
And I definitely don't want to be sitting the whole time. So I'm like, Oh, well, you know, I'll

105
00:09:37,040 --> 00:09:41,200
just start walking. And I find myself it's like a couple hours of meetings and you've walked miles,

106
00:09:41,200 --> 00:09:46,320
miles, which is kind of like, it's kind of cool. It's not quite as based as the Steven Lubca,

107
00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:51,600
walking outside for every meeting. But also I don't live in Florida. So I don't have that,

108
00:09:51,600 --> 00:09:57,440
you know, beautiful weather 365 by the window, surely, or even just in the garden, just set up

109
00:09:57,440 --> 00:10:02,320
the desk in the garden. Honestly, I hadn't thought about bringing the, bringing the pad outside.

110
00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:06,320
There's, there's something like a little bit sad though, about like being like walking outside

111
00:10:06,320 --> 00:10:10,160
on a treadmill. It's somehow, I don't know, I don't know why it just feels like it'd be a little bit

112
00:10:10,160 --> 00:10:14,560
wrong. I can't quite, I can't put my finger on why it's wrong, but it just feels wrong.

113
00:10:14,560 --> 00:10:17,760
I'm sure there's, we'll ask Steven about this because he'll definitely have looked into it.

114
00:10:17,760 --> 00:10:23,840
There must be a kind of an equivalent to a standing desk, but where it attaches to you.

115
00:10:24,480 --> 00:10:29,600
So it's like, it like latches onto your hips or something. And then you can actually just walk

116
00:10:29,600 --> 00:10:33,920
around. I think it was Steven, who was actually telling me about some guy who did this and he

117
00:10:33,920 --> 00:10:42,000
like did it as part of like a fairly, you know, scientific study about productivity and had,

118
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:47,440
had basically made like a harness that he could put his laptop on, but that he could walk outside

119
00:10:47,440 --> 00:10:52,400
with that harness, you know, tapping away. But that also, that just seems like, that seems so

120
00:10:52,400 --> 00:10:56,960
cumbersome. Like if you just got the phone, great. If you just need to have some air pods in and

121
00:10:56,960 --> 00:11:02,000
you're walking around talking, fantastic. But having like the, you look like this kind of like

122
00:11:02,000 --> 00:11:06,400
a guy who's like trying to live in the future. If you've got your laptop like strapped to you,

123
00:11:06,400 --> 00:11:10,400
it's like, Oh no, this is the future baby. You know, but you're, but you're not like quite there.

124
00:11:10,400 --> 00:11:14,000
You're not fully, you're only like partially on the way to being a biotic man. It's like,

125
00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:20,320
I think you need, you need like AR goggles to complete that look. Yeah. Yeah. As ridiculous as

126
00:11:20,320 --> 00:11:23,440
possible to anyone who happens to see you, assuming you're not just in your own garden.

127
00:11:24,160 --> 00:11:27,200
Yeah. And you know, speaking of AR goggles, there's been so much

128
00:11:27,200 --> 00:11:32,880
flak against Apple lately that I've seen. Like I saw, you know, they launched their new commercial

129
00:11:32,880 --> 00:11:38,240
or just, yeah, I think just in general, because the, the vision pro, I think, I mean, the fact that

130
00:11:38,240 --> 00:11:42,880
it's so expensive and I'm, you know, I don't know what their sales numbers are on it. I hadn't looked

131
00:11:42,880 --> 00:11:48,480
into it that deeply, but I'm sure they probably still sold out of it like everywhere because

132
00:11:48,480 --> 00:11:53,120
it's still Apple and people will buy their products no matter what, because the legacy of Steve Jobs

133
00:11:53,120 --> 00:11:58,800
still lives on. Like I feel like there's still like coasting on, on the coattails of, of Steve Jobs

134
00:11:58,800 --> 00:12:05,120
to a certain extent, but, but it's funny, like how long you can do that. And like the difference in,

135
00:12:05,120 --> 00:12:11,760
in sort of management styles from like a Steve Jobs to a Tim Cook, who Tim Cook is very much,

136
00:12:11,760 --> 00:12:18,800
I think maybe more like your typical kind of MBA CEO, like coming in and I'm just not going to rock

137
00:12:18,800 --> 00:12:23,520
the boat too much. If, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, which is, you know, still,

138
00:12:23,520 --> 00:12:29,680
obviously they're an incredibly valuable company still. They're not going anywhere for some time.

139
00:12:29,680 --> 00:12:35,440
Probably won't be around forever, but none of us will. But I don't know, it's, it's interesting to

140
00:12:35,440 --> 00:12:42,480
think about like, once you become, once you're no longer the upstart and you become the, the

141
00:12:42,480 --> 00:12:49,360
institutional option, how that kind of changes you as an organization. And if you can ever really,

142
00:12:49,360 --> 00:12:56,480
if it's even possible to retain that kind of upstart outsider mentality that they got you to

143
00:12:56,480 --> 00:12:59,760
where you are in the first place, because, you know, like think different, that was their whole

144
00:12:59,760 --> 00:13:04,880
thing. And now it's kind of like, doesn't seem to have been a ton of different thinking recently

145
00:13:04,880 --> 00:13:09,680
there. I don't know if you've tried the Vision, Vision Pro. I mean, they, it's weird to me,

146
00:13:09,680 --> 00:13:14,800
they need to be like plugged in most of the time. Like the, we got an Oculus Quest, like a couple

147
00:13:14,800 --> 00:13:20,240
years ago, like beginning of the pandemic fairly soon after they came out and pretty much like

148
00:13:20,240 --> 00:13:25,040
used it for like, like Carla did a lot of beat saber on it as like an exercise, which is just

149
00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:30,240
like hilarious to watch, you know, you walk into a room and somebody's swinging around. But it didn't

150
00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:37,120
seem like what they did was a huge like 10X on top of that. You know, I don't know, maybe again,

151
00:13:37,120 --> 00:13:41,920
maybe again, just biased and I'm like, I don't want to spend four or five grand or whatever it

152
00:13:41,920 --> 00:13:46,640
was on this thing to have me strapped into VR world. But maybe I'm just a boomer.

153
00:13:46,640 --> 00:13:53,680
I'm actually kind of, I'm relatively militant in my, that's the best way of putting this,

154
00:13:55,280 --> 00:14:06,000
being opposed to certainly not all, but a lot, maybe most of the, the norm, certainly the,

155
00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:11,200
whatever the trend is and let's say consumer tech, that's probably the best way of putting it,

156
00:14:11,760 --> 00:14:19,760
that I'm kind of, to be honest, a lot of it is, is sort of ironic hipstery approach of like,

157
00:14:19,760 --> 00:14:24,960
well, which is very Bitcoinery thing to, you know, attitude to adult. I think, well, this is very,

158
00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:31,200
this is norm-ish. This is, therefore it's fiat. Therefore I have to, I have to ignore it at least

159
00:14:31,200 --> 00:14:37,120
for now, but no, I mean, I'd like to think there is a semi-serious undertone to it that I don't

160
00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:43,840
like getting so, especially with, with like VR and AR, I just, I find it honestly kind of creepy.

161
00:14:43,840 --> 00:14:49,040
I don't want to be that disconnected from reality. I want actual reality, right? I don't want

162
00:14:49,040 --> 00:14:54,640
virtual reality, which is in, that's a very hipster thing to say, obviously. There's nothing

163
00:14:54,640 --> 00:14:57,920
insightful here. There's nothing, there's nothing novel. I didn't come up with any of these thoughts

164
00:14:57,920 --> 00:15:03,680
of my own, but I do, I do get kind of creeped out by, by a lot of it. And it's interesting too,

165
00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:09,120
because that's back to your, your original question about Apple, that as far as I'm aware, that is

166
00:15:09,120 --> 00:15:14,960
pretty much the only new, you know, or like, meaningfully new, as opposed to just an iteration,

167
00:15:14,960 --> 00:15:17,600
you know, product that they've had in a long time. And then, well, what I alluded to though,

168
00:15:17,600 --> 00:15:21,680
because I don't know if your audience will know this yet, that, do you want to describe the commercial

169
00:15:21,680 --> 00:15:25,280
that just came out, which I only saw like a few hours ago. I think it was yesterday. I don't know

170
00:15:25,280 --> 00:15:30,800
when you were going to release this, but yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe I should, okay. So, you know,

171
00:15:30,800 --> 00:15:34,880
I could probably just play the video, but again, you know, better, it's like always better to

172
00:15:34,880 --> 00:15:40,320
describe why a joke is funny to tell it. So I'll just describe it. Basically, they've got all of

173
00:15:40,320 --> 00:15:46,400
these different, they've got a piano and video cameras and all paint buckets and, and easels

174
00:15:46,400 --> 00:15:53,280
with art on them and all sorts of little odds and ends inside this giant hydraulic hydraulic press,

175
00:15:53,280 --> 00:15:58,800
like really large hydraulic press room sized, and it just starts slowly going down and crushing

176
00:15:59,680 --> 00:16:04,320
absolutely everything. And lo and behold, at the end, you know, paint squirts out,

177
00:16:04,320 --> 00:16:08,960
oh, very beautiful, a little bit of paint spatter on the camera. Wow. And then, and then what's

178
00:16:08,960 --> 00:16:14,880
underneath, but it's, it's the new iPad pro and it's the thinnest iPad they've ever made,

179
00:16:14,880 --> 00:16:19,920
but also the most powerful because it has the new M2 chip in it. And imagine what people are

180
00:16:19,920 --> 00:16:26,160
going to create with this new iPad. And it's like, okay, like it's not a, not a horrible ad.

181
00:16:26,160 --> 00:16:30,320
I mean, I don't know, I think it's horrible ad. Like, I thought it was, well, no, but I thought it

182
00:16:30,320 --> 00:16:35,760
was visually, I thought it was visually at least kind of interesting. I don't think that the ad

183
00:16:35,760 --> 00:16:43,840
itself was like, like it wasn't incredibly creative. It's like, okay, we get it, you're pressing it all

184
00:16:43,840 --> 00:16:49,360
down into one thing and it's a, it's hydraulic press and they can compact anything down and,

185
00:16:49,360 --> 00:16:54,640
you know, like, yes, I, like, I get it. I get, I get what you're going for. I, I, I don't,

186
00:16:54,640 --> 00:16:59,200
I didn't hate it simply because I thought, again, like visually, like it's cool to watch stuff get

187
00:16:59,200 --> 00:17:03,840
crushed. Like there's something that was, it's like, that's neat. Like I like watching, you know,

188
00:17:03,840 --> 00:17:07,920
hydraulic presses, try to like crush different things and seeing how they react. Like, that's

189
00:17:07,920 --> 00:17:10,960
cool, except they probably didn't actually have a hydraulic press.

190
00:17:10,960 --> 00:17:14,800
What do you do on a M2 when you're in a fiat work meeting, you're not really paying attention to it?

191
00:17:14,800 --> 00:17:19,280
Yeah, it's, it's like, what's going to happen in that coke can? Like, well, how flat is it going to get?

192
00:17:19,920 --> 00:17:24,640
Or like you see with, depending on the, the density of the metal that the press is using and

193
00:17:24,640 --> 00:17:29,440
the density of the object, like you can use certain, like, tungsten and titanium balls or

194
00:17:29,440 --> 00:17:35,760
whatever that will like break the press itself, which is even more satisfying. But I mean, it

195
00:17:35,760 --> 00:17:41,920
wasn't, it wasn't great. It was a pretty predictable, like predictable ad, but why did you hate it?

196
00:17:41,920 --> 00:17:47,600
I'm curious. Okay, so I think, keep in mind, this is only like a few hours old for me.

197
00:17:48,160 --> 00:17:53,200
Yeah. So, and again, I think there's only a day or two old, as of when we're recording this.

198
00:17:55,360 --> 00:18:00,960
Even more layers may dawn on me at some point or I may read even more criticism of it. Because

199
00:18:00,960 --> 00:18:06,960
that's another interesting thing that I, I saw it in, or I kind of consumed it in an odd way,

200
00:18:06,960 --> 00:18:13,440
because I had seen so many tweets dunking on it before I actually watched it. And

201
00:18:15,040 --> 00:18:20,880
I guess I just thought like there's no way, they all just seemed so extreme in their disparagement,

202
00:18:20,880 --> 00:18:28,000
all these tweets that I thought, they must be exaggerations, right? It can't possibly be that

203
00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:32,080
bad. And then I eventually did watch it. It's like, oh no, it is actually that bad. It's so,

204
00:18:32,080 --> 00:18:41,120
so, okay, but why is it bad? So I think it, I definitely, there's more than one reason why

205
00:18:41,120 --> 00:18:46,320
it's bad. This, I'm not even sure where to start. So on the surface, they, it seems like they clearly

206
00:18:46,320 --> 00:18:52,080
didn't recognize what the alternative interpretations of this were going to be. So I agree with your

207
00:18:52,800 --> 00:18:57,360
description as to like, that's what they were probably going for. And, and crushing stuff is

208
00:18:57,360 --> 00:19:04,480
kind of cool, you know? Yeah, it's kind of cool. But they didn't, there's so many things that they

209
00:19:04,480 --> 00:19:13,600
seemingly nobody picked up on. Like everything they're destroying is not only a creative tool,

210
00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:22,720
but a physical creative tool. It's, it's something that you manipulate in the real world and you

211
00:19:22,720 --> 00:19:31,440
have real control over as an artist, say. Whereas what they're, so they're destroying that in order

212
00:19:31,440 --> 00:19:43,200
to create this basically read only like slab of metal that this trillion dollar corporation

213
00:19:43,200 --> 00:19:49,440
can cut off your access to at any moment. They, they, they, they seemingly didn't pick up that

214
00:19:49,440 --> 00:19:54,080
that would be, I would actually argue a more obvious interpretation than the literal one that

215
00:19:54,080 --> 00:19:58,240
you gave. But then that lends itself to, so this is what I mean when there's like layers to how

216
00:19:58,240 --> 00:20:04,240
bad it is that Apple is a huge or it's like one of the biggest companies in the world. I don't

217
00:20:04,240 --> 00:20:07,680
know who, I don't really know anything about how these ads get made, but I'm sure that it was an

218
00:20:07,680 --> 00:20:14,880
ad agency that did it and, but basically how many people didn't sign, like sign or sorry,

219
00:20:14,880 --> 00:20:20,320
did sign off, didn't object. How many people had the opportunity to say what I just said?

220
00:20:20,880 --> 00:20:24,640
And I don't know, we're just like scare chitless of their boss or, you know, didn't want to go,

221
00:20:24,640 --> 00:20:29,680
I, we're aware of how much money had been spent on this already. I don't, like, again, I don't

222
00:20:29,680 --> 00:20:36,720
know what the process is of making these things, but I think that reflects even more poorly on

223
00:20:36,720 --> 00:20:43,600
Apple than how bad the commercial is. Like how it's made is worse than how bad it is. And there's

224
00:20:43,600 --> 00:20:47,840
again, there's probably more layers that I haven't had time to think of yet, but it's so bad. It's

225
00:20:47,840 --> 00:20:54,240
so, so bad. You know, that is a really interesting point just about like kind of the, like, viewed

226
00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:58,320
through another lens, like, wow, it's kind of like dark and tragic. It's like we are literally,

227
00:20:58,320 --> 00:21:05,040
we are literally crushing all of these physical, creative tools. Like we are, we are destroying

228
00:21:05,040 --> 00:21:09,360
them. One of the tweets I wanted to just like recite all of them, but there's one of them that

229
00:21:09,360 --> 00:21:16,880
I think in hindsight, I agreed with the most, even though I read it first, that it's a good bookend to,

230
00:21:16,880 --> 00:21:21,760
they use that exact expression. It's a good bookend to the 1984 one, which I'm sure, you know, I'm sure

231
00:21:21,760 --> 00:21:27,920
most of the audience knows. Yeah. Just in terms of the, how would you put it, I forget how the tweet

232
00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:34,240
put it, the themes, I guess, or like the imagery that in the 1984 one, and I think it goes back to

233
00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:40,000
your point about, you know, they used to be the upstart and now they're the monolith and there's

234
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:47,120
no, there's no kind of, I don't know, upstarting left to do. Oh, do you want to play it?

235
00:21:47,120 --> 00:21:54,000
Yeah, yeah. We can offer live commentary now. It's like, oh, it's, you know, it starts out kind of

236
00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:59,360
nice. And then here's the fucking hydraulic press. Trumpets first to go. Actually, yeah,

237
00:21:59,360 --> 00:22:05,520
if I, if I comment over this, this will probably make the point. In the 1984 one, the

238
00:22:07,440 --> 00:22:14,400
everything that is being destroyed is kind of the, the tone of the hero, I guess, you know,

239
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:20,880
what Apple is supposed to represent, right? They embody that kind of color and vibrancy and

240
00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:29,840
creativity and blah, blah, blah. And what they're opposing is, I think, well, it's not exact, it

241
00:22:29,840 --> 00:22:36,720
does map perfectly, but it's the eyeballs. The eyeballs. Yeah. What they're opposing is very

242
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:45,840
nicely characterized by this hydraulic press. And it's just gray, dull, but also ominous and

243
00:22:45,840 --> 00:22:54,400
powerful. And they've just completely reversed what Apple is representing in all of this. It

244
00:22:54,400 --> 00:23:00,320
would seem and it's almost like, okay, well, that, you know, that chapter is over. And in a sense,

245
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:05,760
we're over. It's like, Apple's done now. Apple's something else. It's not, it's not Steve Jobs'

246
00:23:05,760 --> 00:23:11,120
anymore. Yeah. And just in case like you wanted to know, like literally the eyeballs popping out

247
00:23:11,120 --> 00:23:15,520
at the end, it's like, you're dead. Like that, that, that, that's kind of, that's, it's just like,

248
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:23,280
that's death. It's a surprised face and then dead. Like, you know, I'm glad we were able to offer some,

249
00:23:23,280 --> 00:23:28,560
some color commentary over this, this colorful video. And you know, I, you know what, I, I, I

250
00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:35,760
miss the old, I miss the Apple dunking days, just like dunking on Microsoft. Oh, the one with the

251
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:44,560
two guys with the name of Justin Mac. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant concept. Worked well. Stuck with people,

252
00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:49,760
stuck with me to today. It's like, I'm not, I'm not that fucking nerd. Like no way. Yeah. Yeah.

253
00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:55,760
Exactly. I mean, not just in long either. Remember, remember that one. Exactly. But yeah. Well,

254
00:23:55,760 --> 00:24:02,160
I mean, maybe this is just, maybe this is a, a symptom of, of just the,

255
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:07,440
the, some of you talk about, about a lot of just like misallocation of capital. Like, I wonder how

256
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:12,720
much, I wonder how much that costs them to make presumably a shitload of money. Cause everything

257
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:15,040
I didn't set this up.

258
00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:26,320
Really, it's, it is. Well, I think, I think that's kind of, I think this is torturing that point

259
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:31,280
a little bit. This is just wasting money. It's not exactly the same thing. I don't think.

260
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:37,120
Yeah. You know, but you, you could have, you could have made that same, you could have probably

261
00:24:37,120 --> 00:24:42,080
made a stronger impression that wasn't vilified as much by those watching it and didn't potentially

262
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:49,520
make such like a weirdly negative implied cultural statement by going back to something

263
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:55,680
really simple. Like, I think, I think a lot of, a lot of brands that have done that, like,

264
00:24:55,680 --> 00:25:01,680
I'll take for example, my good old fashioned Miller light, my, my favorite perfectly balanced

265
00:25:01,680 --> 00:25:07,040
light beer. I'm from Wisconsin and the United States. So I, it's, you know, grew up with this

266
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:12,400
stuff, but they went back to their like original design can a number of years ago and, and just

267
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:15,760
kept that they'd gone to some, you know, new, like fancy silvery kind of.

268
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:18,880
Oh yeah. And they just say, well, the logo as well.

269
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:20,960
Yeah. That's something that's going around.

270
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:25,920
But then they were like, the number of years ago, they're like, what if we just went back and did

271
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:29,680
the really cool old original design? We don't have, we don't have to hire a team for this.

272
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:30,320
Holy shit.

273
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:36,000
Yeah. Like we don't have to do anything new for this. We just go back to what it was. And people

274
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:40,640
are like, Oh yeah, cool. Like this is the Miller, my dad would drink. This is, I like this. This

275
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:45,920
resonates with me. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting to see like,

276
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:58,800
like, there seems to be this urge for companies to try and like reinvent or to, to change themselves

277
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:03,280
without actually doing any meaningful change. Like this is Apple trying to show that like,

278
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:09,440
Oh, look, look at, look at how new this is. But like, there's no reinvention here. There's no,

279
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:14,720
there's nothing entirely creative here. Like it's cool that you were able to compress all this

280
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:21,840
stuff down into a super thin tablet. Awesome. But like, this isn't like earth shattering. This

281
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:27,200
isn't a 10 X from any of their previous tablets. Like they're all pretty darn good. I've got an

282
00:26:27,760 --> 00:26:32,400
older Apple tablet here. And it isn't definitely not as powerful as the new one, but like it

283
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:37,840
fucking works. I don't know. Like, like, where do you think this like is again, this just like a

284
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:42,800
symptom of late stage fiat, where it's like, we're, we're out of all the, the, these companies are

285
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:47,360
out of all the good innovative ideas. And it's just like, well, let's just kind of cosmetically

286
00:26:47,360 --> 00:26:52,320
change things and pretend like we're super innovative, but without actually doing anything

287
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:58,480
innovative at all. Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know. To be honest, it doesn't strike me

288
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:03,600
as that much of a fiat thing. It might be. Maybe if I thought about it for longer, I could come up

289
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:10,320
with a good article on it. I think it might be actually, I think it might be more linked to

290
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:18,560
social media and would you call it like a news cycle, something like that? And just in terms of

291
00:27:19,120 --> 00:27:24,960
how companies feel they need to advertise, there might be something there. I'm just, this is just

292
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:28,640
coming to me right now. I don't have a, like a grand theory around this or anything, but

293
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:32,880
not yet. The way you described the thing with Miller Lite, that got me thinking that,

294
00:27:32,880 --> 00:27:40,720
you know, a lot of the same principles you would think ought to apply to Apple, probably ought to

295
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:47,600
apply to any large, like very large company with a distinctive brand that at the end of the day,

296
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:50,640
well, maybe this doesn't quite work for Apple because they are a bit more kind of tech oriented,

297
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:57,360
but certainly for some of like Miller Lite, where the product is basically commoditized,

298
00:27:57,360 --> 00:28:02,000
right? There's, there's not like a secret sauce or anything in it. Their, their value at as a

299
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:10,640
company really just is in the brand itself. You would think that protecting the brand ought to be

300
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:15,520
a focus and almost like there should be a bit of a Lindy effect. I would imagine, you know,

301
00:28:15,520 --> 00:28:22,080
the longer that it's been around, the more powerful the brand becomes. Whereas it seemed, and I

302
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,680
think correct me if I'm wrong, because I, you know, I only just learned this example from you now that

303
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:32,640
maybe Miller went through, or whoever owns Miller, I don't know, I'm sure there's like a multinational

304
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:38,800
conglomerate parent company or something. But they maybe went through this before and then realized

305
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:47,040
how bad an idea it was that they feel pressured to constantly remake the brand just to keep up with,

306
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:53,440
I don't even know, just because I kind of think it's fake in the first place. So I'm not really

307
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:59,680
sure what to link it to, but shorter and shorter attention spans, let's say, you know, the, the

308
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:05,840
their, their presumption, because I don't even know if it's true. I hope it's not true, but

309
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:14,160
their presumption that their audience, that they're advertising to is itself constantly

310
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:19,120
changing and constantly looking for a new thing, because there's finally coming full circle to

311
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:24,960
where this, where this idea came from, because the way it's presented on social media, you know,

312
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:32,560
like the doom scrolling and the, the algorithm and all that makes it seem that way, when in fact,

313
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:37,120
it's just beer, it is the beer your dad drank, right? Like, why do you need anything more than

314
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:41,920
that? Why do you need to, why do you need to change everything and confuse everybody? No, I think

315
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:46,880
I'll tell my head that's my best idea. No, no, I would agree with that. And I think that there's

316
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:54,240
generally like this appetite to like that companies assume that people always want the new, like

317
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:58,560
that something has to be new and be fresh. And, and, and it always has, you know, to make a big

318
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:04,320
splash in, you know, and like, you know, you, you go to the other extreme of that, which is like

319
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:10,560
the, you know, Bud Light just self-immolating. Like, like, like they really, really were trying

320
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:14,800
to push that like really trying to lean into, you know, like I support the current thing versus

321
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:22,400
like, you know what, maybe people just said that logo. That would have been a great, like,

322
00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:28,480
honestly, really great campaign. Like, like Bud Light, I support the current thing,

323
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:32,240
especially if it was a little tongue in cheek. It would have been amazing. Actually,

324
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:35,840
I'm surprised nobody thought of this if whoever, but I mean, maybe Miller Light, I don't know,

325
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:41,120
but whoever Bud Light's most obvious competitor is had immediately come out with an I support the

326
00:30:41,120 --> 00:30:46,240
current thing campaign. That would have been hilarious. I'm disappointed that whoever didn't,

327
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:49,840
that nobody did that as far as I'm aware. Well, right. And I think it's because most

328
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:55,040
marketing agencies, whether they be in-house or external are not very based. I think that would

329
00:30:55,040 --> 00:31:00,560
be, I think that'd be a fair generalization. That suggests that it's just even more of an

330
00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:07,200
opportunity though. Right. I don't know. And I said a couple of answers ago. I don't know how that

331
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:14,320
industry works. Yeah. Well, you know, I could pontificate about Miller Light's branding and

332
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:20,320
Bud Light's self-immolation all day, but I also, I want to dig into a little more.

333
00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:22,640
It's the Miller Light episode. Yeah, this is a...

334
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:27,040
It's deemed highly knowledgeable guest. Maybe they will...

335
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:30,400
...has come on to ignorantly opine.

336
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:35,360
I love it. And you know, maybe Miller Light will sponsor another fucking Bitcoin podcast

337
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:39,280
after this. That'll be when I know I've made it, when I'm just getting pallets of Miller Light

338
00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:42,800
to learn as part of a sponsorship gig. That'd be just sweet.

339
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:48,480
I'd like to take a quick break from Miller Light to remind you to get your Bitcoin off exchanges.

340
00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:56,320
Head to bitbox.swiss.com, slash Walker, and use promo code Walker for 5% off the fully open source

341
00:31:56,320 --> 00:32:02,640
Bitcoin only, Bitbox O2 hardware wallet. Then again, get your Bitcoin off the exchanges and

342
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:08,800
into your own self-custody. The Bitbox O2 is truly easy as hell to use, whether you are brand new

343
00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:13,280
to Bitcoin just starting out or you are a well-seasoned psychopath, and this is like your

344
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:18,720
12th hardware wallet. Again, it is Bitcoin only. And again, it is fully open source. You can head

345
00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:23,360
to their GitHub and you can verify that for yourself. There is no need to trust me. Plus,

346
00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:30,000
when you go to bitbox.swiss.com, slash Walker, and use promo code Walker, not only do you get 5%

347
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:36,080
off the Bitbox O2, but you also help support this fucking podcast. So thank you. I'll take it back a

348
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:40,640
step because I like to ask this question in a very general open-ended way and you can take it

349
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:47,760
any way you want because that is the nature of this question, which is just who are you and how

350
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:53,200
did you get here today? And again, any way you want to take that, any link that you want to, I

351
00:32:53,200 --> 00:33:00,960
know. Yeah, you can get as literal or figurative as you want with that. I could give as stupid and

352
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:07,280
annoying an answer to this as I want. Absolutely. Okay, I'll give a more straightforward answer.

353
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:12,160
And if it's not entertaining enough, you can chastise me and we can come back and I can

354
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:18,320
get something more out there. Who am I? So I...

355
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:28,080
Okay, here's a fun way of putting it. It is literally true, but it gives you avenues to poke.

356
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:39,280
I'm a mole or maybe even a plant from TradFi and I've kind of fallen into Bitcoin and they just

357
00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:46,320
stayed. So yeah, so I worked in TradFi. I worked for a big asset management firm for a very long

358
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:53,440
time. It's the only adult job I've ever had in the sense of like I got it straight after I graduated

359
00:33:53,440 --> 00:34:00,640
from college from undergrad. And while I was in college, I had like minimum wage gigs, flipping

360
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:10,400
burgers and parking cars and that kind of thing. But this is like real job. And yeah, over the course

361
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:15,600
of me being there, got more and more... I knew about Bitcoin when I joined actually, just wasn't at all

362
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:23,200
relevant to my job and got more and more into it while it got closer and closer to becoming

363
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:30,000
relevant to my job. And when it finally did, everything basically happened very quickly

364
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:34,560
in the sense that as soon as I had exposure to it professionally, which was many, many years

365
00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:38,800
after I'd had pretty significant exposure, well I say exposure. I don't mean financial exposure,

366
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:44,800
I mean more like time dedicated to thinking about it seriously. And yeah, as soon as I had that on

367
00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:50,080
the job, I basically realized like this is way more fun than my real job. I want to do this all

368
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:53,760
the time. And so I don't know if your audience may or may not actually know this because most of what

369
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:59,680
I do on Twitter is just kind of generic shitposting rather than any meaningful promotion. But about

370
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:07,040
two, almost exactly two years ago actually, I left to set up a company that is basically just a VC

371
00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:13,760
firm. I mean, we have ambitions to do other more exciting finance stuff with Bitcoin. But

372
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:16,800
the VC component is sort of how we pay the bills for now.

373
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:25,280
Now, I love it. I like the idea of you as a plant. You know, you're like a recovering,

374
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:32,640
recovering, trad-fi holic. You go to a trad-fi anonymous. Yeah, exactly. I am Alan. I was a

375
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:43,520
trad-fi for seven years, been clean for two. I love it. And I think that that's, you see a good amount

376
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:51,440
of that in Bitcoin. And I think that the number of recovering trad-fi addicts will only increase.

377
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:57,840
Like that is NGU technology as well. But I think perhaps like there's a, I'm curious,

378
00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:04,800
did you see a, when you were still at your old firm, did you have other colleagues who were

379
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:11,280
as open to Bitcoin as you were? Definitely. Yeah. There's quite a few things I could say there. So

380
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:17,840
one is that the co-author of Bitcoin is Venice when we turned into a book, Sasha. He's, I mean,

381
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:27,040
he's just one of my best friends anyway. He was a groomsman at my wedding. We met because we joined

382
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:34,160
that job at the same time. We were part of the same intake in 2015. So it was quite a while ago.

383
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:39,200
He's obviously always been very open to it. He's just, he's nowhere near, I guess it's just

384
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:45,920
a bit more kind of private and shy than me. So he's never really found it appealing to,

385
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:52,800
you know, shitpost as much as I do. I mean, he has Twitter and he's, he sends some bangers

386
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:56,240
every now and then. I do my best to reach with him, but he just doesn't really care. Like he

387
00:36:56,240 --> 00:37:02,080
doesn't have any interest in trying to self promote, I guess. But yeah, I mean, he was interested in it

388
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:07,360
clearly, you know, enough to want to co-write a book. So, so that was good. I mean, the other

389
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:11,680
point worth making, I've said this before, I'm not trying to be, you know, secretive about it in

390
00:37:11,680 --> 00:37:17,680
any way either. It's just that I really like my former employer. I didn't, I didn't rage quite.

391
00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:22,160
It wasn't like, ah, finally I can, well, it was a little bit of finally I can now do Bitcoin stuff.

392
00:37:22,160 --> 00:37:28,160
But everybody understood that they're far too big for it to make sense to do it there. So that was

393
00:37:28,160 --> 00:37:32,720
kind of the, the rationale for leaving. And I don't think anyone was really that surprised.

394
00:37:32,720 --> 00:37:39,600
They were just happy for me, very, very supportive. But what, so this is a super interesting thing.

395
00:37:39,600 --> 00:37:45,040
I get, I've mentioned this a little bit in, in kind of in public before. But I think you'll

396
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:52,560
enjoy diving into this that they, they just, they as a company, not so much any individuals,

397
00:37:53,680 --> 00:38:03,200
but their investment philosophy is very, I wouldn't say it's pro Bitcoin. It's not that

398
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:09,440
strong, but it's, it aligns very nicely with Bitcoin, which helped in a bunch of ways. I mean,

399
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:15,600
I actually think it helped me appreciate Bitcoin more, to be honest. It wasn't the biggest influence

400
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:22,160
on me, but it was more, it was a bit more circuitous than that maybe in that their investment philosophy,

401
00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:28,080
which I, I don't want to say I just swallowed it without, you know, without any critical analysis

402
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:35,040
of my part, but I believed in it for the most part, like I appreciated it. And that was the lens

403
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:41,120
through which I learned finance at large, both in theory and, you know, the kind of more practically,

404
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:47,840
like how the industry works. And then that lent itself to Bitcoin very nicely. So that's, that's

405
00:38:47,840 --> 00:38:54,400
one component. I think just an obvious manifestation of that though, is that at the level of individuals

406
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:58,560
rather than the company as a whole, yeah, there's, there's plenty of people who are, who are totally

407
00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:03,040
open to it, which was really nice. I mean, they, there was no one who's anywhere near as involved

408
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:10,480
as me, probably unsurprisingly. So typically they would kind of defer to me on anything more

409
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:15,840
in depth, but yeah, there's a good, there's a good cohort of people. And yeah, I'm still,

410
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:20,320
I'm still in touch with most of them actually. And it's quite funny because it's, you know, the whole,

411
00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:26,240
the whole premise in some sense, like definitely part of our thesis, let's say at Axiom is just

412
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:32,080
that it's going to become more and more normalized, right? It's obviously very niche now, but if we're

413
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:36,400
even vaguely right, it's going to get, but not just in price, but in terms of, I'd say more

414
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:40,640
interesting angles of like how it gets embedded in other technology, how it becomes socially

415
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:47,360
normalized and so on and so forth. But that, to the extent that's true, it has an obvious consequence

416
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:53,440
in terms of what they see as investable opportunities. So every now and then, they, you know, someone

417
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:58,400
there will reach out just to see what I think about something because it's, it's come across their desk

418
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:05,760
for the first time. So yeah, there's a short answer. Yes, many people were interested and it was very,

419
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:10,480
it's very, very healthy environment to discuss these things and helpful for me as well.

420
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:18,640
That's, I mean, it's good to hear. I'm sure that's probably the case at a lot of these types of firms,

421
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:25,840
certainly maybe not a majority of them, but I don't disagree, but I think it's probably

422
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:31,200
rarer than you would think. And this all, this ties together a few things. I said just a moment

423
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:38,800
ago actually in kind of an amusing way that one of the parts of their, I wouldn't even say their

424
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:45,520
investment philosophy, it's not so much to do with, you know, rationale for choosing investments. If

425
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:53,440
anything, it's a bit more kind of marketing oriented than that. It's like their propaganda in a way

426
00:40:53,440 --> 00:41:00,880
that, you know, how they, how they conceive of themselves, which I think is for the most part

427
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:04,960
true. And it's also something, you know, as I mentioned before, it resonated with me and influenced

428
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:13,920
how I came to think about the financial industry or the traditional financial industry. Without,

429
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:18,480
I'll keep it kind of high level for now. We can go into more detail if you want, but without those

430
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:28,480
details, one way you can think about that propaganda is that they set themselves up as very opposed to

431
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:34,800
like almost the entire rest of the industry in a way that just be clear has nothing whatsoever

432
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:40,320
to do with Bitcoin. It's just, well, okay, no, sorry, that's not quite right. It's nothing explicit

433
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:46,960
to do with Bitcoin, but the, the tenets on which it is based are shockingly aligned with Bitcoin. So

434
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:52,080
it's that, I mean, this isn't official just to be clear. This is just like kind of marketing.

435
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:59,920
They don't write this down anywhere, but the, the rest of the industry is alarmingly short termist,

436
00:42:00,720 --> 00:42:04,480
right? And as their contrast is that, you know, they're very long term, they think over very long.

437
00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:08,400
They don't use the word or the expression time preference, but frankly, they may as well.

438
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:21,360
They're focused on metrics that don't really matter because they're too reflexive. And hence

439
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:27,920
they're, they're ultimately, when you unwind them, they're really just pointing at speculation

440
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:35,760
rather than actual investment. So in the sense of gauging the viability of the investments in ways

441
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:42,000
that if you kind of push to an extreme, almost have nothing to do with the actual company that

442
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:46,720
you're talking about, it's like just the price. And, and actually now I'm thinking, I've never,

443
00:42:46,720 --> 00:42:50,240
I've never made exactly this point before, but now I'm thinking about a lot of these criticisms

444
00:42:50,240 --> 00:42:55,200
or a lot of the, what is being criticized kind of in, you'd have to caricature it a little bit,

445
00:42:55,200 --> 00:43:01,920
but it would certainly apply to shitcoins as well. Like the entire, the entire attitude and kind of

446
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:09,600
almost disgust and resentment is, it was very similar to, you know, I think also rubbed off

447
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:14,800
on me and probably made it easier for me to cut through the noise there and, and, and, and, you

448
00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:21,440
know, expect going crypto to be clear and realize that, yeah, the people who are talking about this

449
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:25,600
stuff don't actually care. Like you can tease out from the way they're talking about it. They don't

450
00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:34,000
care about the, the underlying alleged cause of this value, right? It's just, it's like a common

451
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:40,960
dump or whatever changes from one circumstance to the next. But anyway, sorry, yeah, where, what made

452
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:46,960
me think of all of this is that the fact that they set themselves up that way, and you know,

453
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:52,080
I jokingly refer to it as propaganda, I guess culture would be maybe like a nicer way of putting

454
00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:58,960
it. That's probably what they call it. First of all, I know for sure is quite unusual, but also

455
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:03,680
I think I completely coincidentally, because obviously none of this is about Bitcoin,

456
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:10,400
rubbed off on me in a very helpful way given the path I've now gone down. But I, I really can't

457
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:16,480
imagine being the case or, or anything like it being the case at that many other institutions,

458
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:22,640
at least of comparable size, because it's quite a big company. It's not huge, but it's, it's up there

459
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:28,320
in terms of the, the amount of assets that they, they manage, you know, like in dollar terms. So

460
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:33,920
I don't think that many people will have had a similar experience. I would imagine, and actually

461
00:44:33,920 --> 00:44:38,160
I have heard this from, from quite a few people. I wouldn't like dox anybody on the show, but

462
00:44:38,160 --> 00:44:42,560
quite a few people have reached out to me over the years basically saying, you know, who also work

463
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:46,720
in TradFi. And I was just like, I just, I just hate it. Like everyone's, well, but they probably

464
00:44:46,720 --> 00:44:52,960
wouldn't say everyone's an idiot, but more along the lines of the culture is so

465
00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:59,680
contrary to what they have now come to value because of Bitcoin.

466
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:05,680
Is that a, I mean, really it seems that what you're, what you're kind of picking at there is a,

467
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:11,840
is a question of ultimately morality in many ways. Is that fair to say? Because I mean,

468
00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:17,760
when you talk about things like short-term, like really short-term, true speculation,

469
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:21,680
now we can, we can debate whether, you know, everything is speculation in some way, right?

470
00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:25,520
If you're trying to pursue a, a profit in an uncertain environment, like, yeah,

471
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:28,960
there's a certain amount of speculation involved in everything. But when we're talking about just

472
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:37,120
like people who are knowingly promoting, propagating, creating various vehicles, whether

473
00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:42,000
this is in the TradFi world or the shit coin world, that, yeah, as you said, you can tell,

474
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:46,000
by the way that they talk about them, that they don't actually believe their own bullshit.

475
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:52,320
They're saying what, they're saying what they think you need to hear. And, and, but you also,

476
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:56,160
if you are mildly intelligent, know that they're kind of full of shit, but you're like, well,

477
00:45:56,160 --> 00:45:59,280
I'm going to kind of go along with this because I know that I'm going to at least

478
00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:04,080
make some money off of this because the next round of people that comes along, they're,

479
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:08,480
they're going to have no idea. Like, I'm, you know, there's still dumb money that I can dump this on.

480
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:12,640
Like, versus this kind of longer term thinking, I'm not just trying to,

481
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:17,040
not just trying to flip things. I'm not just trying to figure out what's the next,

482
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:23,840
the next scheme or the next idea that I can use to make a quick buck and then turn that into

483
00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:28,160
something else. I'm trying to think about the long haul and what are actually productive,

484
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:33,920
valuable, valuable, meaningful investments. Like to me, a lot of that comes back to, and maybe

485
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:38,800
morality is too general of a term to use, but that kind of seems to be what it, what it hints at.

486
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:42,240
And maybe that seems too like, oh, you know, we're more moral in our investing.

487
00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:46,080
But, but I think that there's, I think there's something there. I mean, is that,

488
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:50,720
is that kind of the sense that you have or, or is it just purely from a pragmatism standpoint?

489
00:46:50,720 --> 00:46:56,240
Not exactly, but I think there's a lot of really good material here to draw. So one thing that

490
00:46:56,240 --> 00:47:01,520
is quite funny. I'll just mention this in passing is that again, back to the, the propaganda around

491
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:07,920
the, around the firm, they did enjoy somewhat tongue-in-cheek playing this up in the sense that,

492
00:47:07,920 --> 00:47:11,120
you know, oh, well, we're doing is actually good. I don't think they'd ever go as far as say, oh,

493
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:16,080
everyone else is bad, but it's, it's implied, right? Right. That is, that is kind of funny.

494
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:24,880
I think it's actually, it's, it's a little bit more complicated than just whether or not it's

495
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:30,240
good or, you know, contrasting good and bad, ethically good and bad approaches.

496
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:36,880
For one reason that's, that's actually quite important even before getting into

497
00:47:38,000 --> 00:47:45,520
my explanation of like my fuller explanation of it. So if you were to think that, I know you're

498
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:48,240
not putting this forward, but just, you know, hypothetically, probably some people do think

499
00:47:48,240 --> 00:47:55,840
that's actually that. We can pretend that I put it forward. Yeah. If you were to think that you, you

500
00:47:55,840 --> 00:48:02,320
know, your, your choices, your choices to how you're going to invest is, you know, there's a

501
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:10,640
single dimension of is this good or is this bad? I don't think, I'm struggling to think how exactly

502
00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:18,160
to articulate this. You, it's very, it's very risky lens to take right from the start because

503
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:23,440
even if you don't mean it, I think it quite strongly suggests and certainly will be interpreted by

504
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:35,040
others as suggesting that the good or bad dimension, you're, you're choosing to value that more than

505
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:40,960
the, you know, good or bad as an investment, like financially rewarding or not. So you're deliberately

506
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:47,680
making not bad investments, but relatively worse investments because you're opting for, you know,

507
00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:54,480
you have like a, an ethical filter, say something like that. So, which I don't think is relevant

508
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:59,920
at all to this. I think it's, you desperately want to avoid that trap and I won't go too far down this,

509
00:48:59,920 --> 00:49:04,720
this particular rabbit hole, but you, you could also imagine how that very easily leads to ESG

510
00:49:04,720 --> 00:49:09,040
as well because that's right. A bit more blatantly, you know, that is what they're putting forward,

511
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:14,640
except they're, they're then going the other way where they are in fact making that distinction,

512
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:21,280
but then they claim they're not. And it, in my opinion, just becomes fraud quite quickly. But

513
00:49:21,280 --> 00:49:27,840
I'll leave that for now. We can go back to whining about ESG if you like. What I think is more important

514
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:37,760
than just on the face of it is this good or bad is incentives. I think that's the cleanest way of

515
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:44,560
capturing it. So I do agree that the approach that I described and that is very obviously very

516
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:53,440
nicely aligned with Bitcoin is more ethically good. I don't think the reason the majority doesn't do

517
00:49:53,440 --> 00:50:01,520
it is that they are ethically bad. It's that the incentives in the industry are such that even if

518
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:06,240
they are ethically good, you know, whether it's people or they're trying to be ethically good in

519
00:50:06,240 --> 00:50:15,040
their process, whatever that even really means, the incentives they face are such that it's not

520
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:21,440
impossible to, you know, take this approach, but it's very, very difficult. And hence it doesn't

521
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:30,080
happen very often at all. And so I think that's a far more interesting place to kind of chip away

522
00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:37,040
at intellectually in terms of wondering, you know, why do we get the outcomes that we do? And

523
00:50:38,720 --> 00:50:43,360
I'll stop here because I'm sure you'll find this funny anyway, but it'll potentially open up many,

524
00:50:43,360 --> 00:50:48,080
many more rabbit holes so you can choose which one you want to go down. But that is very fiat,

525
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:54,320
right? I have no qualms. You know, before, I was like Apple and Miller and stuff, I was a bit like,

526
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:58,240
I don't know, that's exactly what he felt like. This is fiat. This is the most fiat thing that

527
00:50:58,240 --> 00:51:04,160
we have talked about so far. And probably that I've ever, you know, ranted about, because I ran

528
00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:11,360
about this particular topic quite a bit. A lot of Treadfy is very, very fiat, but in particular,

529
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:15,760
this point about what are the incentives as to how you ought to deploy capital.

530
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:23,520
And maybe, you know, it's a, again, this is a safe space for rants. So never,

531
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:29,840
never feel that you cannot continue or explore a certain ranting tangent. But maybe this is a good

532
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:38,080
place to just like as a primer for folks who are either not, perhaps are fairly new to Bitcoin and

533
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:43,840
maybe kind of new to the rabbit hole of tangential rabbit hole of Austrian economics and, you know,

534
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:50,000
what many would call like real economics versus this kind of Keynesian fiat economics. Maybe it's

535
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:56,400
a good idea to just, I would love in your own words, explain it to me like I'm Elizabeth Warren,

536
00:51:56,400 --> 00:52:02,080
for example. This is also my new ELI five. It's just like, explain it like I'm Elizabeth Warren,

537
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:10,240
because I think it teases out some nice responses. But like, what is capital and what is capitalism?

538
00:52:10,240 --> 00:52:18,960
That's a heavy one. I know. Can I take a break to go and think about it? So, okay, I,

539
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:25,440
um, I have a, I have a sneaky answer, which is to tell people to go read something.

540
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:30,720
So I do, first of all, it's a totally unfair question. Like this is really mean. I know,

541
00:52:30,720 --> 00:52:35,520
I know, this way. One of the more recent things that I have written,

542
00:52:35,520 --> 00:52:40,560
um, uh, actually it might be the most recent thing I've written now that I think about it,

543
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:45,200
because everything else I've just helped edit. But for, for axiom, since axiom has started

544
00:52:45,200 --> 00:52:51,760
putting out material, uh, is an essay called, uh, capital in the 21st century. So we won't go find

545
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:56,240
that if they're interested. You don't have to go read it, but it, it is probably the best answer to

546
00:52:56,240 --> 00:53:00,720
this. And it's not too long. I think it's maybe like five, six pages, something like that. Um,

547
00:53:00,720 --> 00:53:09,120
it's like short, short for you. Now that I've committed to it. Um, but it starts off with

548
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:16,000
exploring exactly this question and then linking it to, you know, having established what I think

549
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:22,000
is a reasonable answer, like a good working answer, linking it to money and then linking it to Bitcoin.

550
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:27,840
And so I'll try to give a, a summary of that argument in answer to, to your question. So

551
00:53:27,840 --> 00:53:36,640
I think then the nicest way that I have come across to describe capital, uh, was provided by an

552
00:53:36,640 --> 00:53:42,240
economist called Hernando de Soto, who interestingly is not an Austrian. I think he'd probably call

553
00:53:42,240 --> 00:53:49,680
himself like a neoclassical economist. Um, but he wrote a book which I highly, highly recommend.

554
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:55,040
It's probably one of the, one of the economics books I recommend the most. And it's probably one of the

555
00:53:55,040 --> 00:54:00,560
only like explicitly non Austrian ones. Uh, the book's called the mystery of capital, uh, which is

556
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:08,320
where I got this, um, definition, I guess it's kind of more of a, it's not really very rigorous.

557
00:54:08,320 --> 00:54:14,880
It's more almost romantic in a way. It's kind of an image. Like this is exactly what I say at the

558
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:23,040
start of the, the start of the essay, but he, uh, he, he refers to capital as economic potential

559
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:27,920
energy, which I really, really like as an, as an image. I think it, it obviously it's not, you

560
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:32,080
know, I'm interested in it. It's not rigorous at all. It doesn't really, you, I think you do have

561
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:39,840
to have a little bit of understanding already to, to apply this. Um, but it lends itself very nicely

562
00:54:39,840 --> 00:54:46,000
to more involved thoughts about, you know, things like capital misallocation. And again, exactly as

563
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:51,360
I do in the essay, how it then links to, to money and so on, but to just, to tease it out a little

564
00:54:51,360 --> 00:55:01,920
bit further, it's time that you have decided to put into producing rather than consuming,

565
00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:11,440
but which you have, you know, the product of which has not itself been fully consumed yet. So

566
00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:19,520
it's like you're storing up the time, uh, in, in potential to then be really, there's a couple

567
00:55:19,520 --> 00:55:23,360
of things I like about it is it partly the, you know, how it forces you to think about time.

568
00:55:23,360 --> 00:55:30,400
It's very Austrian thing, right? Um, also, I think if you push it a bit further, how it forces you

569
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:38,560
to think about human action and, and, you know, the role of, of acting minds, because it's not just

570
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:42,960
that, oh, it gets stored up and then it starts like decaying or something. I know this is all a

571
00:55:42,960 --> 00:55:48,000
metaphor anyway, but you know, that's not part of how you're supposed to understand the metaphor.

572
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:55,040
Yeah. You store it up such that you can then purposefully release it when you choose in the

573
00:55:55,040 --> 00:56:00,480
future. Um, and so yeah, I really like how I don't know that really answers the question at all.

574
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:05,440
No, no, no, it doesn't. I think that's actually, I think that that's a useful lens and I know that

575
00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:11,040
people get really hung up sometimes on like even described like when, when, uh, somebody, you know,

576
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:14,960
like Sailor system, like Bitcoin is digital energy and people are like, well, no, it's not.

577
00:56:14,960 --> 00:56:21,440
Um, and it's like, yes, correct. It's, it's, it's not, this is, this is a way of, this is a lens

578
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:27,520
through which to think it because none of us really fucking understands every single aspect of Bitcoin

579
00:56:27,520 --> 00:56:34,400
and what it is and what it can be. Uh, and at the same time we need, we are, you know, mildly

580
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:39,760
intelligent apes and we need a way to figure out how to a lens through which to look at the world,

581
00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:44,880
which is useful for us to kind of paint a picture and people, you know, learn to understand things

582
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:49,440
in different ways. And so I think these metaphors like, like is capital just potential energy,

583
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:54,080
literally like Alan, you know, and it's like, well, no, but this is a way to think about it.

584
00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:59,680
Right. So I think that that is useful and to speak to the time, the time component, which I

585
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:04,880
is a really necessary piece here. I think that that's also that obviously perfectly

586
00:57:04,880 --> 00:57:12,080
bleeds into okay, well, if you are saving this potential energy, this, uh, time that can be

587
00:57:12,080 --> 00:57:18,800
basically deployed at a later, at a later stage, well, you want the, uh, the time decay to be as

588
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:23,440
minimal as possible. Or is your ideally, you'd want that, you'd want it to be negative, right?

589
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:30,080
You'd want, you'd want it to grow, uh, to, uh, to have the ability to purchase more time in this

590
00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:34,880
way with that potential energy in the future. And that's why fiat is such a destructive tool,

591
00:57:34,880 --> 00:57:39,200
because it's actively, it has this massive time decay function, which is saying that the longer

592
00:57:39,200 --> 00:57:44,160
you are holding on to that potential energy, the more it decays, the less power it has when you

593
00:57:44,160 --> 00:57:50,320
go to deploy it in the future. And actually, no, I tweaked that slightly just to, to emphasize

594
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:57,040
the human component, the less ability you have to wield it the way you want to.

595
00:57:59,840 --> 00:58:03,680
Okay. Cause that actually, that's interesting. Cause that, that can potentially bleed into a

596
00:58:03,680 --> 00:58:08,880
couple other effects of just like one can even think of the, the custody aspect of fiat and

597
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:12,480
fact that, you know, you can't self custody fiat unless it's literally under your mattress.

598
00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:16,400
Like you can't digitally self custody fiat. It's not possible. It's always,

599
00:58:16,400 --> 00:58:19,120
it's always controlled by someone else. I don't mean to move too far away from the,

600
00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:26,400
the capital point, but this seems like a natural enough segue that one of my favorite tricks for,

601
00:58:26,400 --> 00:58:30,880
I would say orange pilling people. Like no one's convinced just by having this pointed out, but

602
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:34,960
confusing normies, let's say it like, you hope that you say this and then five years later,

603
00:58:34,960 --> 00:58:39,920
they do actually get orange pill. But this was the start of it, but really drilling down on

604
00:58:40,640 --> 00:58:47,360
what fiat money even is, because most people have no idea. And I think part of the problem is that

605
00:58:48,080 --> 00:58:51,600
I'm not part of the problem. Part of the issue that you then untangle when you do this. And

606
00:58:51,600 --> 00:58:57,040
like if you, if you have this conversation with people is that what I mean in answer to that,

607
00:58:57,040 --> 00:59:01,760
I think is that kind of a more philosophical level than they've probably ever thought about it. So,

608
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:08,800
so my answer is it's a commercial bank liability. That's what fiat money is. And it's, it's purely

609
00:59:08,800 --> 00:59:13,600
conceptual. It has no physical existence. To some extent, it's like an entry in a ledger,

610
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:18,160
but even that is like the actual ledger's digital. So it doesn't, it's not super helpful, but

611
00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:23,360
so that's, it's, it's a bit, yeah, it's a bit kind of conceptual. It's a bit, it's a bit abstract.

612
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:28,480
In part, the problem I think is that, you know, people don't tend to think about

613
00:59:28,480 --> 00:59:33,280
really anything that way. Nevermind, nevermind money. So that's a bit of a leap to like nudge them

614
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:40,320
in this like, oh, but what is it really kind of thing. But once they get over that, once they sort

615
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:49,440
of accept the framing I'm going for, it's really interesting just just sort of seeing them realize

616
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:53,520
that they've never thought about this, that they, they didn't actually have any idea. And obviously

617
00:59:53,520 --> 00:59:58,240
there's loads of great like directions you can go in. There's loads of cool ways you can tease that

618
00:59:58,240 --> 01:00:02,400
out. Like, you know, oh, you have, this was the point that you made that made me think of it,

619
01:00:02,400 --> 01:00:07,520
you know, you don't actually have any control, right? You think you do, but there's, it's kind

620
01:00:07,520 --> 01:00:13,280
of even weirder than that. It's not even really equivalent, I don't think to, I don't know,

621
01:00:13,280 --> 01:00:16,800
like a custodial lightning wallet or something, or just like, you know, Bitcoin and Coinbase.

622
01:00:16,800 --> 01:00:24,080
It's not like they have control, not you. You actually, when you insist on being as philosophical

623
01:00:24,080 --> 01:00:28,640
as possible, you're like, there isn't even a thing to control. It's not that they don't have

624
01:00:28,640 --> 01:00:34,480
control is that like barely exists. Like it's just a promise from them, you know.

625
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:40,960
Yeah, it's, it's so interesting. And you know, maybe this is a, we're just, we're just going to

626
01:00:40,960 --> 01:00:46,000
top a cop here today because I, you know, you say things and they make me think of other things.

627
01:00:46,000 --> 01:00:52,880
And again, this is an open space for Rantz. This, this makes me think of all the, I notice MMT has

628
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:59,520
come up very much in the, in the public discourse of late because Stephanie Kelton is releasing,

629
01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:07,280
released her new movie and you can buy it for $12.99 on various platforms. And, and so, you know,

630
01:01:08,640 --> 01:01:12,240
that video that was circulating that went super viral. There's a clip from the movie.

631
01:01:12,240 --> 01:01:16,720
You have to pull that up and show it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. If I'm going to

632
01:01:16,720 --> 01:01:22,000
show one, but, but I think in, and while I'm, while I'm pulling this up, maybe what I would ask you is

633
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:29,760
like, MMT and Bitcoiners in a way kind of have like, like we agree up to a point.

634
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:36,000
Except, except, except it is, except Bitcoiners look at it as like this absurd thing. Like,

635
01:01:36,720 --> 01:01:43,520
well, why do we pay taxes? We just print, we can just print money and MMT are like, exactly.

636
01:01:43,520 --> 01:01:47,920
Just print the money, you know, like really earnest and then Bitcoiners, it's like, oh Jesus,

637
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:54,160
you guys are being serious here. Can you talk about how you like, because MMT seems like,

638
01:01:54,160 --> 01:02:00,480
like the pinnacle of fiat, like it's just finally saying out loud, all of the things that have been

639
01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:05,280
true. But instead of saying like, look at how terrible this is, they're like, look at how

640
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:10,320
wonderful this is for issuers of the currency. I mean, I don't think I can put it much better than

641
01:02:10,320 --> 01:02:16,640
that. That's more or less exactly what I, what I would have said that the reason we agree is because

642
01:02:16,640 --> 01:02:23,520
they give a more or less accurate description of how fiat actually works, which no other

643
01:02:23,520 --> 01:02:28,800
mainstream school of economics dares to do. I guess, and again, you know, I was saying before,

644
01:02:28,800 --> 01:02:33,440
I don't really know anything about advertising. I don't really know anything about academic

645
01:02:33,440 --> 01:02:38,000
economics in terms of the politics of it. I mean, I know the, the, how stupid the material is,

646
01:02:38,000 --> 01:02:45,760
but I don't know how it works on a more of a social level. But I would assume that the reason

647
01:02:45,760 --> 01:02:53,440
it ends up having to be M.M. Tears who do this is probably a combination of most, most people just

648
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:58,160
don't know, like they've just generally never thought about it. They probably just assume some

649
01:02:58,160 --> 01:03:03,520
kind of vague things about money that they, they think are well defined, but they've never been

650
01:03:03,520 --> 01:03:06,720
pressed on them and realized that they don't actually make any sense. And then maybe there are

651
01:03:06,720 --> 01:03:13,840
a few who do know, but don't dare talk about it because you kind of realized how bad it is. Whereas

652
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:20,160
M.M. Tears give an accurate description. So Bitcoin are celebrate that they're like, oh my

653
01:03:20,160 --> 01:03:24,720
God, finally someone's actually saying it the way it is. And you know, without all these

654
01:03:25,280 --> 01:03:30,400
nonsensical contortions, but then yeah, you're right at the end of that description, once it

655
01:03:30,400 --> 01:03:37,760
becomes normative, they're like, and this is great. No, did you hear your own description?

656
01:03:37,760 --> 01:03:41,920
What are you talking about? Oh, wait, okay. So I've got this, I've got this pulled up now.

657
01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:47,680
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Because this is, I mean, it's really amazing. Like I do want to see this

658
01:03:47,680 --> 01:03:52,640
doc. Maybe I'll even give Stephanie Kelton $12.99 for it. Okay, okay, here we go.

659
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:57,040
The US government can't go bankrupt because we can print our own money.

660
01:03:58,160 --> 01:04:02,320
It obviously begs the question, why exactly are we borrowing in a currency that we print

661
01:04:02,320 --> 01:04:08,880
ourselves? I'm waiting for someone to stand up and say, why do we borrow our own currency in the

662
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:15,200
first place? Like you said, they print the dollar. So why, why does the government even borrow?

663
01:04:15,760 --> 01:04:27,520
Well, the, so the, I mean, again, some of this stuff gets, some of the language that the MN,

664
01:04:27,520 --> 01:04:32,160
some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money,

665
01:04:32,160 --> 01:04:36,880
and it definitely lends that money, which is why the government definitely prints money,

666
01:04:36,880 --> 01:04:43,760
and then it lends that money by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They, they,

667
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:52,000
yeah, they, they, they sell bonds. Yeah, they sell bonds, right? Since they sell bonds and people

668
01:04:52,000 --> 01:04:58,000
buy the bonds and lend them the money. Yeah, so a lot of times, a lot of times, at least to my

669
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:03,600
year with MMT, the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, but there is no

670
01:05:03,600 --> 01:05:15,680
question that the government prints money, and then it uses that money to, so, yeah, I guess I'm

671
01:05:15,680 --> 01:05:19,280
just, I don't, I can't really talk, I don't, I don't get it. I don't know what they're talking

672
01:05:19,280 --> 01:05:25,760
about, like, because it's like, the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time,

673
01:05:25,760 --> 01:05:30,320
and it clearly borrows, otherwise we wouldn't be having this debt and deficit conversation, so

674
01:05:30,320 --> 01:05:36,000
I don't think there's anything confusing there. Nothing confusing there, except this guy is clearly

675
01:05:36,000 --> 01:05:43,120
so confused. Like, that's the wild thing about this is it's like, this is, this guy is literally

676
01:05:43,120 --> 01:05:49,120
like Biden's, you know, like one of his, what is, is chief economic advisor? Yeah, something like that.

677
01:05:49,120 --> 01:05:52,480
Like, this is just insane. I think it's the end of the caption. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

678
01:05:52,480 --> 01:05:57,840
Just go back 10 seconds. Yeah, and so, I mean, this is, this is the, this is the wild thing here,

679
01:05:57,840 --> 01:06:02,320
it's like, I saw some people being like, like some Bitcoiners being like, just so you know,

680
01:06:02,320 --> 01:06:07,840
this is an MMT person sharing this video, like we shouldn't be, if you're a great, it's like, no,

681
01:06:07,840 --> 01:06:13,440
no, no, no, it is good that this, like, this is a good thing, this documentary is coming out,

682
01:06:13,440 --> 01:06:17,600
because it sheds light on the absurdity of all this and how even the people in charge of it,

683
01:06:17,600 --> 01:06:23,040
clearly don't, I mean, like, I don't, I don't know, he has no business being,

684
01:06:23,040 --> 01:06:29,360
having economic or advisor anywhere in his title for one thing. And for another, it's just like,

685
01:06:29,360 --> 01:06:34,480
the absurdity of it. Like, if you, I don't know, have you read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton?

686
01:06:34,480 --> 01:06:40,240
No. I have only, I honestly, I feel like I've been bribed enough of this from Twitter. I don't

687
01:06:40,240 --> 01:06:47,680
need to waste any, you know, tie, we know time is scarce. Yeah. I, you know, I have not, I have not

688
01:06:47,680 --> 01:06:55,280
read her book, but I have read many quotes from it. I have also, I have also asked ChatGPT to

689
01:06:55,280 --> 01:07:01,680
summarize it in various ways and to write arguments from an MMT perspectives that I can better understand

690
01:07:01,680 --> 01:07:08,640
that thought process. But like, one of their big things is, is a public sector deficit equals

691
01:07:08,640 --> 01:07:15,120
private sector surplus. So, and their whole thing is, it's this, I mean, it all comes down to hubris

692
01:07:15,120 --> 01:07:19,840
really, because they're like, well, okay, yes, deficits can be good or bad. And she has this one

693
01:07:19,840 --> 01:07:24,000
quote in this TED talk she gave, she's like, a six can become a nine when viewed from a different

694
01:07:24,000 --> 01:07:29,120
angle. And I'm like, are you making a 69 joke? But, but like, it's like, okay, sure, but a six is

695
01:07:29,120 --> 01:07:33,040
still a six and a nine is still not, but anyway, okay, fine, you can have your little, your little,

696
01:07:33,040 --> 01:07:38,720
you know, metaphor. But it's, it's this insane hubris in my opinion, that basically says, well,

697
01:07:39,360 --> 01:07:44,080
yes, you know, the government prints money and it for issue, issuers of the currency, again,

698
01:07:44,080 --> 01:07:49,280
very clear there, you need to be, you know, the United States or the United Kingdom or another

699
01:07:49,280 --> 01:07:55,600
currency issuer for this to work. You just, you don't need to tax more, you just print money to

700
01:07:55,600 --> 01:08:00,480
fund whatever you want. And as long as we put it into the right stuff, then it won't be inflationary,

701
01:08:00,480 --> 01:08:05,280
we just have to pick the right things to invest the money in. And this comes down to the hubris

702
01:08:05,280 --> 01:08:11,600
of central planners. And at a deeper level, I think just like central planning and its failure

703
01:08:11,600 --> 01:08:18,000
and a misunderstanding of subjective value and the fact that all value is subjective.

704
01:08:18,000 --> 01:08:24,240
And this idea that, well, yeah, this group of a few economists and politicians in a back room

705
01:08:24,240 --> 01:08:30,320
can certainly figure out how to, how to perfectly allocate the resources to make the economy just

706
01:08:30,320 --> 01:08:38,560
run, you know, perfect. And like, this is, it's just on its head absurd and, and dripping in hubris.

707
01:08:38,560 --> 01:08:46,240
But I mean, I don't know, do you think this comes down to just like, at this point, they're just

708
01:08:46,240 --> 01:08:52,000
looking for reasons to justify behavior that already exists in the system? Or do these people

709
01:08:52,000 --> 01:08:57,520
genuinely think like, no, this is the answer, we're smart enough, we can figure it out. Like,

710
01:08:57,520 --> 01:09:01,440
we'll just allocate the capital correctly, we just print it out of thin air and that'll create

711
01:09:01,440 --> 01:09:10,720
more value. I don't know. I mean, I think I, I think this ties with the way you introduced the whole

712
01:09:10,720 --> 01:09:19,680
topic in kind of an amusing way that it is interesting that their description is purely the

713
01:09:19,680 --> 01:09:25,440
description is more or less right without whether it's a good idea or not. Right. But well, the

714
01:09:25,440 --> 01:09:30,800
description of how the purely how the process of money creation works, let's say, certainly not

715
01:09:30,800 --> 01:09:36,080
what the consequences are for capital misal... capital misallocation, right? And inflation and,

716
01:09:36,080 --> 01:09:42,400
you know, you said capital misallocation. Yeah, I have to. I can't go on a podcast and not say that.

717
01:09:44,720 --> 01:09:46,640
What I think is really funny though, is that

718
01:09:49,040 --> 01:09:53,600
how can I even put this? Because again, there is a bit of a, like, I'm just guessing at what the,

719
01:09:53,600 --> 01:09:57,920
you know, the politics of the song in terms of the like the social component of these people

720
01:09:57,920 --> 01:10:03,920
as academics. But it does strike me as quite amusing that the fact their description is correct

721
01:10:03,920 --> 01:10:07,280
and that nobody, I mean, other than Bitcoin or two may as well not exist as far as their

722
01:10:07,280 --> 01:10:11,680
concern, that certainly isn't any presence within academic economics for them to compete with.

723
01:10:13,040 --> 01:10:18,640
The fact their description is the only correct one. But that basically what it is correctly

724
01:10:18,640 --> 01:10:25,280
describing is that the monetary system has been more or less communist since at least 1971.

725
01:10:25,280 --> 01:10:29,440
You know, obviously we don't really go through the whole history here, but you could pick other

726
01:10:29,440 --> 01:10:34,400
dates at which it was kind of nudging in that direction, right? It's almost like their argument

727
01:10:34,400 --> 01:10:40,560
is, okay, you know, we have now finally correctly identified how this communist monetary system works.

728
01:10:40,560 --> 01:10:45,840
So can we please just be communist? Like, why are we still arguing about this? I think there's a,

729
01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:50,000
they obviously can't, they can't phrase it that way. Like, they never get away with that. But I

730
01:10:50,000 --> 01:10:55,360
think that is the gist of their argument, which is pretty funny. That's what I appreciate. Like,

731
01:10:55,360 --> 01:10:58,800
you said before, right? Like, people should watch this. It's, you shouldn't try to,

732
01:10:58,800 --> 01:11:02,960
not that any, you know, Bitcoin, Twitter can get it censored or anything, but you shouldn't discourage

733
01:11:02,960 --> 01:11:10,240
people from just letting them talk, right? Just listen to how insane they sound when they talk.

734
01:11:10,240 --> 01:11:20,560
No, I, you know, I have a, I have another question for you. Has real capitalism ever been tried?

735
01:11:20,560 --> 01:11:24,160
We always, you know, all the communes always say, well, real communism's never been tried. Has real

736
01:11:24,160 --> 01:11:32,320
capitalism ever been tried? Yeah, I think so. But my, well, I kind of want to just say that I want

737
01:11:32,320 --> 01:11:38,240
to reject the question more than fair. I go back to like, attempting to answer it honestly.

738
01:11:38,240 --> 01:11:43,280
And the reason I kind of don't want to at all though is that this is probably one of my biggest

739
01:11:43,920 --> 01:11:49,280
bugbears with, certainly not within Bitcoin to be clear, but just like wider public discourse,

740
01:11:49,280 --> 01:11:55,200
if you want to call it that, that almost everybody seems to mean something different by capitalism.

741
01:11:55,200 --> 01:12:00,320
Like they, even a lot of people who allegedly support it, they're, when they say, when they use

742
01:12:00,320 --> 01:12:06,160
the word, they're describing something that I wouldn't call it that. And, but every, but then

743
01:12:06,160 --> 01:12:10,720
everyone has their own thing. I think more so on the side of people who are really just status and

744
01:12:10,720 --> 01:12:17,040
they're, they kind of, it's, it's been like, you know, like how, if you, if you don't like something

745
01:12:17,040 --> 01:12:20,720
more politically, you just call it fascist, especially if you're more kind of lefty, you

746
01:12:20,720 --> 01:12:25,040
just call everything fascist. It doesn't matter whether it is or not, or what it is in particular,

747
01:12:25,040 --> 01:12:29,840
it's really more of a slur. It's like repainting it as untouchable. And therefore people don't

748
01:12:29,840 --> 01:12:35,840
even need to think about it at all. I think a lot of status, again, I don't really feel they

749
01:12:35,840 --> 01:12:40,320
need to be much more precise than that. Do something or, or, or, you know, Keynesians, let's say,

750
01:12:42,080 --> 01:12:48,400
do that with capitalism. And it's, it's almost like it stays in their own mind what they even

751
01:12:48,400 --> 01:12:56,400
mean by it. So that's my non-answer. I just, I just reject the question because it's too confusing.

752
01:12:56,400 --> 01:13:02,480
It'll lead people down completely unhelpful paths. So we, well, we, you defined earlier for us

753
01:13:02,480 --> 01:13:10,400
capital, but what is your like ignoring everyone else's misconceptions about what capitalism is?

754
01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:14,160
How, how do you define it? When you use the word, what do you mean by it?

755
01:13:15,520 --> 01:13:18,880
Well, so I actually don't think I use the word capitalism very often.

756
01:13:18,880 --> 01:13:19,520
Okay.

757
01:13:19,520 --> 01:13:21,760
Ever. So I'm going to keep giving you annoying evasive.

758
01:13:21,760 --> 01:13:22,240
No, no.

759
01:13:22,240 --> 01:13:26,560
I use the word capital all the time. But so I have a problem with it, right? That

760
01:13:27,920 --> 01:13:31,680
tie a few of these things together. The reason I don't use it, the reason other people use it

761
01:13:31,680 --> 01:13:38,000
confusingly, I think, or part of the reason that that seems to be the case is that to my mind,

762
01:13:38,000 --> 01:13:43,040
capital is just a pretty straight for, well, no, sorry, it's not straight forward at all. It's a,

763
01:13:45,120 --> 01:13:53,600
it's a complicated concept, but it's a, it's an economic concept. It, when you tease it out and

764
01:13:53,600 --> 01:13:59,440
when you apply it in the context of some other problem, maybe it takes on political components

765
01:13:59,440 --> 01:14:07,920
or legal component or whatever, like it obviously bleeds into other fields. But the way the word

766
01:14:07,920 --> 01:14:16,080
capitalism tends to be used is almost never with reference to economics as far as I can tell,

767
01:14:16,080 --> 01:14:19,360
right? People will, I mean, we've already done it on the show, right? You'll talk about like

768
01:14:19,360 --> 01:14:25,040
neoclassical economics or Keynesian or Austrian or modern monetary theory or whatever, right? No,

769
01:14:25,040 --> 01:14:28,320
no one says capitalism as if it's a school of economics, even though

770
01:14:28,320 --> 01:14:33,920
capital is an economic concept. And so I think that confusion, they use it predominantly politically

771
01:14:33,920 --> 01:14:38,160
as far as I can tell, but then, you know, even that, I'm not sure if that's entirely true because

772
01:14:38,720 --> 01:14:45,200
the more confusing usages of it that then rile me up are maybe in part political, but they

773
01:14:45,200 --> 01:14:51,520
kind of mean something cultural or they kind of mean something legal. And the fact that this is,

774
01:14:51,520 --> 01:14:59,040
this is why I object to it and kind of somewhat jokingly just gave you a complete non-answer that

775
01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:03,680
you're very evasive. I don't want to give you a definition because I'm not sure what anyone

776
01:15:03,680 --> 01:15:08,800
else means by it either. Like I don't, I'm not sure why I would even want to define it. So there

777
01:15:08,800 --> 01:15:15,520
you go. That's as unhelpful as I can possibly be. I appreciate it. Or even our words, man.

778
01:15:15,520 --> 01:15:22,800
Do words even exist, man? Well, okay, perhaps a different way of framing this.

779
01:15:23,920 --> 01:15:30,560
Just because you touched on stateism in general, do you have an opinion of what the proper role

780
01:15:30,560 --> 01:15:40,400
of the state is in the modern era? Yeah, kind of. This is interesting. I started talking about this

781
01:15:40,400 --> 01:15:45,920
with a couple of people just in a, I think it was a Twitter group actually, just the other day. So

782
01:15:45,920 --> 01:15:49,840
this is kind of fresh, but in this somewhat jokey context of like, I'm going to write a book on this

783
01:15:49,840 --> 01:15:54,880
in 30 years or something. So give me your ideas now and then I'll steal them and not credit you.

784
01:15:57,360 --> 01:16:03,040
I think, this is very loose, but this is like an answer really again. It's more helpful.

785
01:16:03,040 --> 01:16:09,120
Another non-answer. Or just like a train of thought. Yeah. And I think when most people

786
01:16:09,120 --> 01:16:14,800
approach this, and in particular, people who I would be inclined to agree with certainly,

787
01:16:14,800 --> 01:16:19,360
no, no, no, no, that they're Bitcoiners necessarily, but maybe more like they might be coincidentally

788
01:16:19,360 --> 01:16:24,960
Bitcoiners, but in terms of the way they're framing their answer, they're, you know, anarcho-capitalists,

789
01:16:24,960 --> 01:16:28,960
say, or libertarians, or there's a bunch of ways you could describe yourself if you're vaguely,

790
01:16:29,760 --> 01:16:33,200
vaguely in that camp, which I probably would as well. And I probably agree with most of what they

791
01:16:33,200 --> 01:16:41,840
say. But I think a lot of arguments from that point of view suffer from a pretty serious

792
01:16:42,720 --> 01:16:55,040
is-ought problem in that I agree with them ethically, but that doesn't necessarily translate

793
01:16:55,040 --> 01:17:05,760
to reality in any helpful way. So you can say state, you know, the role of the state is either

794
01:17:05,760 --> 01:17:09,840
ought to be, you know, very, you'd be like, I think it's called minarchism, right? You could be a

795
01:17:09,840 --> 01:17:15,280
minarchist where it's basically just to, it's police and courts, essentially. It's enforcing

796
01:17:15,280 --> 01:17:22,640
contracts. That's the role. Or just that there's no role, right? Even that can be done privately.

797
01:17:22,640 --> 01:17:26,720
And then obviously there's a spectrum of like what you're tacking onto it after that. And then

798
01:17:26,720 --> 01:17:32,880
communism, I suppose, is completely the other, completely the other end. But when you're,

799
01:17:34,400 --> 01:17:38,560
all of those answers, at least in terms of the way I phrase the original question,

800
01:17:39,360 --> 01:17:46,000
I think are really about ethics in that you're framing the state as an actor. But ultimately,

801
01:17:46,000 --> 01:17:50,240
there is no state. There's just other people, right? So what you're really saying, you're

802
01:17:50,240 --> 01:17:55,200
communicating it in a more helpful way to aid the obviously political discussion. But what you're

803
01:17:55,200 --> 01:18:01,040
really saying is like how ought individuals behave. It's a question about ethics and journey and come

804
01:18:01,040 --> 01:18:06,400
up with your own ethical theory. That doesn't mean anyone will behave that way. So this is,

805
01:18:06,400 --> 01:18:11,440
this is kind of, this is like the wedge into what I want my book to be about when I write it in 30

806
01:18:11,440 --> 01:18:20,800
years that you should, there's like a weird reflexivity here obviously, because that's,

807
01:18:20,800 --> 01:18:27,760
that's a normative claim, but you should have a, have an ethical theory and try to,

808
01:18:29,040 --> 01:18:34,080
you know, live according to it. And I mean, again, I would probably argue for something,

809
01:18:34,640 --> 01:18:38,480
at least Minarchist, if not just, you know, you should never be violent, right? You should adopt

810
01:18:38,480 --> 01:18:45,440
the non-aggression principle. That's, that's fine. But your expectations of others' behavior

811
01:18:47,200 --> 01:18:54,400
should be realistic. So you're, so to qualify that in like a really clean way, your own behavior

812
01:18:54,400 --> 01:18:59,840
should adhere to this ethical standard, but you should not necessarily assume other people's

813
01:18:59,840 --> 01:19:07,200
will. You should assume that they will behave according to whatever their incentives are.

814
01:19:07,200 --> 01:19:11,760
And so that's, that's kind of what I think is super interesting to drive at that.

815
01:19:12,400 --> 01:19:21,200
I also think a lot of people who, you know, maybe sentimentally, I guess, are very much in my camp,

816
01:19:21,200 --> 01:19:25,360
but I, I do honestly think they shy away from this and a lot of their argumentation just

817
01:19:25,360 --> 01:19:30,160
collapses into like, well, that's wrong, right? Like these people are bad, whatever,

818
01:19:31,120 --> 01:19:35,600
which is just like, okay, cool, like, like they're still going to do it, whatever the thing is that

819
01:19:35,600 --> 01:19:42,000
you disapprove of all, like you're not actually solving, stopping them doing that. And then also

820
01:19:43,680 --> 01:19:48,640
if you really push people in this, you can also get into this weird, like they feel like they're in a

821
01:19:48,640 --> 01:19:53,680
sort of a, I don't know if a contradiction or paradox is exactly the way of putting it, where

822
01:19:53,680 --> 01:19:58,880
you're kind of backed into saying that, well, you know, some, because it's whatever the behavior is,

823
01:19:58,880 --> 01:20:04,000
somebody is so bad, somebody needs to stop it. But then you're basically just describing the state

824
01:20:04,000 --> 01:20:08,080
and you're like, okay, no, but it's not the state. It's somebody else going around in circles like

825
01:20:08,080 --> 01:20:13,760
that. So again, this is like a complete non-answer. Sorry, I'm just like thinking out loud. But I

826
01:20:13,760 --> 01:20:17,200
love thinking out loud. I think the way that you resolve this though, or the way that you should

827
01:20:17,200 --> 01:20:24,080
at least attempt to resolve it is to focus on culture. This, I think this is, this is interesting,

828
01:20:24,080 --> 01:20:30,160
right? This is like an actual, at least attempt to an answer that's vaguely original. I think the

829
01:20:30,160 --> 01:20:40,720
only way you can police every component of this effectively is not by one upping the violence

830
01:20:40,720 --> 01:20:45,200
with, you know, even more scary violence. And then eventually you end up in a place where it's like,

831
01:20:45,200 --> 01:20:49,760
well, okay, you've just recreated the state, you didn't want to call it the state, but you are

832
01:20:49,760 --> 01:20:57,360
functionally the state. The only way that I think you can effectively police that and reach a kind

833
01:20:57,360 --> 01:21:04,960
of almost equilibrium of who's happy with what credible threats of violence that incentivize,

834
01:21:04,960 --> 01:21:12,240
you know, what you're, what accords with your ethical theory is not resorting to ever more

835
01:21:12,240 --> 01:21:18,720
escalating violence, you know, in pursuit of ultimate victory and the monopoly, but rather

836
01:21:18,720 --> 01:21:29,520
shame, basically, or other more socially enforced means of punishment and reward. So that's,

837
01:21:29,520 --> 01:21:33,600
that's where I kind of land on this, that that's actually more important. It's basically, it's a

838
01:21:33,600 --> 01:21:40,560
very, very pretentious way of describing politics as downstream of culture, but, but not just

839
01:21:40,560 --> 01:21:46,320
describing it, but encouraging you to take it very, very seriously, because if you have, you know,

840
01:21:46,320 --> 01:21:55,440
if you put the requisite time and energy into creating a culture that self enforces ethics,

841
01:21:56,000 --> 01:22:00,880
you don't need violence in the first place and you can escape that loop in theory, at least.

842
01:22:00,880 --> 01:22:06,880
That's my, that's my hot take. And now I think that that's an important point for people to grasp

843
01:22:06,880 --> 01:22:13,440
that, that politics is downstream of culture. And maybe I can ask to bring this back to Bitcoin,

844
01:22:13,440 --> 01:22:20,240
do you think that the incentives around Bitcoin are such that it has the ability to

845
01:22:20,240 --> 01:22:25,040
actually influence like technology influencing culture, influencing politics because it's able

846
01:22:25,040 --> 01:22:33,040
to change that incentive structure and, and then, and takes away the, the ability for the monopoly

847
01:22:33,040 --> 01:22:38,720
on violence to be effective, basically, is that, is that a fair statement? I think so. Yeah, I'm

848
01:22:38,720 --> 01:22:43,040
not sure I'd even add anything to that, at least nothing, nothing original that, you know,

849
01:22:43,040 --> 01:22:47,040
your audience wouldn't have heard a thousand times. I mean, it's a sovereign individual thesis,

850
01:22:47,040 --> 01:22:55,040
basically. It's not my thesis. It's that not just Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is probably the best example,

851
01:22:55,040 --> 01:23:04,160
maybe ever of something that fits this, but a technology that shifts the balance of returns

852
01:23:04,160 --> 01:23:08,400
to violence, anything that, that fits that. I mean, I think you can maybe even, you could talk

853
01:23:08,400 --> 01:23:14,560
about things like various other applications of cryptography, maybe do the same thing, not to

854
01:23:14,560 --> 01:23:19,040
say that Bitcoin is like a subset of that strictly or anything, but the point I make is more, it's

855
01:23:19,040 --> 01:23:22,640
not just Bitcoin that fulfills this, but I think Bitcoin is, that's, that's a good way of putting

856
01:23:22,640 --> 01:23:29,360
why a lot of people are as excited about it as they are, that they, you know, they recognize that

857
01:23:29,360 --> 01:23:33,920
it's, I saw, I saw somebody say more or less, I won't get the quote exactly right, but more or

858
01:23:33,920 --> 01:23:40,880
less this on Twitter, addressing a lot of these same points that Bitcoin is basically what allows

859
01:23:40,880 --> 01:23:48,480
libertarians to stop larking, right? Like this might, this might actually work, rather than just,

860
01:23:48,480 --> 01:23:54,400
it was back to my, you know, somewhat facetious previous answer of like, oh no, but that's wrong,

861
01:23:54,400 --> 01:23:58,240
like, okay, great. So what, are you going to do anything about it? No.

862
01:23:58,240 --> 01:24:04,560
Yeah, I honestly, it's a, it's a hilarious and a great point. And this,

863
01:24:07,840 --> 01:24:14,800
it's interesting to just think about like, in general, the, you see so much nihilism and pessimism

864
01:24:15,520 --> 01:24:20,480
throughout so much of the world. And then you see folks, like, you know, you were talking

865
01:24:20,480 --> 01:24:25,600
earlier about being at cheat code and just hanging out with, with plebs and, and you see so much hope

866
01:24:25,600 --> 01:24:32,960
and optimism amongst people from a truly diverse set of backgrounds and like actually diverse,

867
01:24:32,960 --> 01:24:40,240
not contrived, you know, diversity. And you see all of this just kind of unbridled optimism. And

868
01:24:40,240 --> 01:24:45,120
yeah, realism too, and acknowledgement of the fact that, yeah, like things are, things are

869
01:24:45,120 --> 01:24:49,920
pretty fucked up in a lot of ways. But finally, there's a glimmer of hope. There's a glimmer of

870
01:24:49,920 --> 01:24:54,800
like, ah, this is something we that might actually have a chance at changing things. So as you said,

871
01:24:54,800 --> 01:25:00,880
you know, we can stop, stop larking as libertarians. Like this is, this is something that actually

872
01:25:00,880 --> 01:25:05,440
makes sense and has a chance at working and also happens to appeal to people who are not just

873
01:25:05,440 --> 01:25:10,400
self identified as libertarians, but who identify as progressives or conservatives or whatever. And

874
01:25:10,400 --> 01:25:14,800
that's like the beauty of it, that it completely brings, it brings so many ideologies into the

875
01:25:14,800 --> 01:25:19,200
fold because everybody can interpret it through their own lens. But the incentives are structured

876
01:25:19,200 --> 01:25:29,120
as such that it, it, it works like it works because it works for people and it allows them to work in

877
01:25:29,120 --> 01:25:34,000
their own self interest and to apply it to their own ideology in such a way that it can in their

878
01:25:34,000 --> 01:25:39,760
minds further that ideology. And I think that that's kind of a really unique, a unique thing.

879
01:25:39,760 --> 01:25:46,160
I'm curious, you know, are you, would you consider yourself an, an optimistic person,

880
01:25:46,160 --> 01:25:49,600
an optimistic realist perhaps? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

881
01:25:49,600 --> 01:25:55,920
If anything, I probably lean into that for comic effect a lot of the time. I try to, I try to

882
01:25:57,040 --> 01:26:03,280
be mindful of where, you know, my somewhat ridiculous Twitter persona ends and reality

883
01:26:03,280 --> 01:26:09,040
begins, but it's, it's fuzzy. Yeah. What do you, what do you say, like,

884
01:26:10,720 --> 01:26:14,960
what do you say to the nihilists out there or to the, to the pessimists, to the people who are

885
01:26:14,960 --> 01:26:18,800
like, it's, it's just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. There's no bright spot on

886
01:26:18,800 --> 01:26:24,320
the horizon. Like, is this like the, you know, Bitcoin fixes this or is that a bridge too far

887
01:26:24,320 --> 01:26:27,920
for too many people and there's a different approach to you that you take? How do you address

888
01:26:28,880 --> 01:26:35,360
nihilism that you see? I mean, yeah, I, I really like Bitcoin fixes this as a meme, but

889
01:26:37,520 --> 01:26:43,520
only when applied appropriately, I think it can definitely be unhelpful if you're, if you're not

890
01:26:43,520 --> 01:26:49,040
not mindful of the context in which you're bringing it up. I think basically the person you're saying

891
01:26:49,040 --> 01:26:55,680
it to needs to already understand quite a lot of what you would like them to understand. It's

892
01:26:55,680 --> 01:27:03,440
not going to convince anyone who is genuinely nihilistic, right? Your question is, yeah, what,

893
01:27:03,440 --> 01:27:12,160
what would I say to someone who's, who's genuinely nihilistic? I'm not sure that I'd even link that

894
01:27:12,160 --> 01:27:18,880
to Bitcoin so much. I can, I can make what's maybe kind of an interesting point here just about how

895
01:27:18,880 --> 01:27:25,680
I think about all of this to be honest, kind of what we get like unhelpfully, I don't know,

896
01:27:25,680 --> 01:27:32,080
deeper, almost hippiest or something, but like what, what motivates me in the first place and what

897
01:27:32,080 --> 01:27:42,800
I kind of what I assume motivates other people to some extent that I, I try quite hard to

898
01:27:45,520 --> 01:27:55,280
stay cognizant of Bitcoin being a tool as in being a, being a means to an end rather than

899
01:27:55,280 --> 01:27:58,880
an end in itself. And I think that, that can be for me, at least it can be quite hard again,

900
01:27:58,880 --> 01:28:04,240
just going back to, you know, my, my ridiculous Twitter persona and trying to remember where

901
01:28:04,240 --> 01:28:11,040
that ends, like where, where reality actually begins because you do have to play that up,

902
01:28:11,040 --> 01:28:14,640
I think, but you know, I mean, no one has to do anything, but it's fun to play that up

903
01:28:15,760 --> 01:28:21,200
in a more Twitter centric context or even in, you know, like going on Bitcoin podcast,

904
01:28:21,200 --> 01:28:25,680
being a Bitcoin conferences, obviously that's what people want to focus on. It's a, it's an

905
01:28:25,680 --> 01:28:32,560
amazing shelling point for, for talking about these ideas at all. But I think it's healthy and I

906
01:28:32,560 --> 01:28:37,040
guess I, maybe I just encourage other people to, or at least to, to try it if they haven't

907
01:28:37,040 --> 01:28:43,920
considered this perspective that it's very much a no end in itself. And if anything, I, I feel like

908
01:28:43,920 --> 01:28:48,960
that probably nobody does take that too seriously, but for the sake of argument, if you were to,

909
01:28:49,760 --> 01:28:55,040
that would be quite nihilistic, I think, like, or it would lead you to quite a nihilistic place

910
01:28:55,040 --> 01:28:58,800
because it's almost like, well, okay, then, then what do you do? Like, why did you bother

911
01:28:59,440 --> 01:29:04,880
doing any of this really? So where I'm going with this in terms of the, how I'd address someone

912
01:29:04,880 --> 01:29:13,280
who's genuinely nihilistic, I guess probably first and foremost, I wouldn't, I wouldn't assume that I

913
01:29:13,280 --> 01:29:23,920
have the skill, I guess, I don't know, or, or ability to reach absolutely anybody in, in that

914
01:29:23,920 --> 01:29:27,520
position. And like, I have some kind of silver bullet that's, that's going to work for them. But

915
01:29:29,600 --> 01:29:35,760
to the extent I was, you know, making any effort, probably just encouraging them that

916
01:29:36,800 --> 01:29:43,680
there are these tools, like maybe they're not as aware as they, as they could be as they, as they

917
01:29:43,680 --> 01:29:50,160
should be that it's, it's not that they're wrong, that things are really, really bad, because I do

918
01:29:50,160 --> 01:29:55,360
kind of agree with that. And, you know, if you, if you contextualize it appropriately, it's that

919
01:29:56,720 --> 01:30:03,760
yes, things are bad, but you don't need to, there's, there's nothing that necessarily

920
01:30:03,760 --> 01:30:10,480
follows about what you should do or what your attitude should be. And hence, you know, again,

921
01:30:10,480 --> 01:30:14,080
if they, I think this is the way you set up the question, right, that they, if they don't know

922
01:30:14,080 --> 01:30:23,520
about Bitcoin, maybe they should look into it for that reason that this could be a tool that will,

923
01:30:24,480 --> 01:30:29,440
you know, not change how you, not change your assessment of how, if anything,

924
01:30:29,440 --> 01:30:34,480
you'll probably make your assessment even worse once you, once you actually grasp it to begin with,

925
01:30:34,480 --> 01:30:42,480
but, but we'll give you a real reason to be hopeful rather than, well, presumably they, you

926
01:30:42,480 --> 01:30:48,640
know, given the way you set it up, presumably they, they have none or maybe they're, maybe they're

927
01:30:48,640 --> 01:30:54,960
kind of, what would be the best way of putting it? There's a, one of the,

928
01:30:54,960 --> 01:31:03,760
Malays escaping me, I'm just blanking on, maybe they've become cynical by, you know, bad or cheap

929
01:31:04,880 --> 01:31:10,320
explanations as to, as to why they ought not be nihilistic and they're, they're, you know, that's

930
01:31:10,320 --> 01:31:16,880
kind of, that's pushed them even deeper. So yeah, maybe that would, you know, chip away at the margin.

931
01:31:17,520 --> 01:31:23,600
I like that. And now this is a, a slight departure, but still on the topic of Bitcoin,

932
01:31:24,160 --> 01:31:28,240
but getting more into your Twitter personality or your Nestor personality.

933
01:31:29,360 --> 01:31:34,800
What is the dumbest debate in Bitcoin right now? What's, what's, what's, what's the, what is the

934
01:31:34,800 --> 01:31:45,280
dumbest one? I don't know. Cause I, uh, hmm, I honestly, nothing's even really coming to mind

935
01:31:45,280 --> 01:31:52,560
for me because for one thing I've muted a lot of words on Twitter. I maybe missed some of the

936
01:31:52,560 --> 01:31:59,120
dumber ones. I'm, I'm muted a lot of people. I'm muted a lot of words. I, I honestly, I, I tend to

937
01:31:59,120 --> 01:32:07,200
get involved in deliberately really silly debates and issues just because I find that and like that,

938
01:32:07,200 --> 01:32:10,960
that's kind of what it just, in case anyone of the audience doesn't know that is kind of my

939
01:32:11,520 --> 01:32:15,200
Twitter, at least this is what I try to make my Twitter. You can tell me if I'm, if it actually

940
01:32:15,200 --> 01:32:19,680
is coming off in some completely different way, but what I tried out my Twitter personality to be

941
01:32:19,680 --> 01:32:23,440
is just very silly and trolley and, but, but like well intentioned.

942
01:32:23,440 --> 01:32:28,960
You identify as a layer too on Twitter. Like relatively lighthearted about everything. Um,

943
01:32:29,600 --> 01:32:35,200
so yeah. So the kind of things that I get, well, I basically, actually to be more specific about

944
01:32:35,200 --> 01:32:44,640
my, my Twitter MO, I find completely serious debates and then just reply guy with nonsense.

945
01:32:44,640 --> 01:32:51,280
That's, that's mostly how I go about it. It's a, it's a good strategy. And I always get a

946
01:32:51,280 --> 01:32:56,480
chuckle from both your, your Twitter and your Noster, but there's that I, somehow there's

947
01:32:57,120 --> 01:33:01,120
more humorous reactions to your trolling on Twitter, I think still probably just because

948
01:33:01,120 --> 01:33:05,680
it's more, it's more people there. I mean, you had, you had some great ones. I, I like the way

949
01:33:05,680 --> 01:33:12,080
you think about things. And, and again, trying to like just to dissect them because it's very easy to

950
01:33:12,080 --> 01:33:18,640
get, we're all subject to knee jerk reactions, right? Like when it comes to like the ordinals

951
01:33:18,640 --> 01:33:22,800
and inscriptions debate versus like, oh, we should filter all this out and all these things.

952
01:33:22,800 --> 01:33:28,240
And like, you know, our, our, is all of this a scam and does any of this have any value in,

953
01:33:29,520 --> 01:33:36,240
you had one, you know, tweet that's basically like, uh, about like, I think it was like ordinals

954
01:33:36,240 --> 01:33:42,320
are retarded, but like, that, that doesn't mean that you have to enhance that with caveats that

955
01:33:42,320 --> 01:33:49,440
proving that you are also retarded. Or ordinals is retarded, like quote ordinals is retarded,

956
01:33:49,440 --> 01:33:54,240
or ordinals are retarded is like, it's perfectly sufficient as a criticism.

957
01:33:55,200 --> 01:34:01,840
Yeah. And, and I like that approach to it. And it's a, I think it makes people step back and

958
01:34:01,840 --> 01:34:08,160
think a little bit and like with a lot of these debates, I think that many of us, like myself

959
01:34:08,160 --> 01:34:15,840
included from a technical standpoint, we're not always equipped to, to discuss them from a technical

960
01:34:15,840 --> 01:34:22,320
standpoint, but many people seem to try to, but it's like, it's, it's okay for you to not have a

961
01:34:22,320 --> 01:34:28,080
super deep nuanced opinion on everything from anyone listening. Like you don't have to, like it

962
01:34:28,080 --> 01:34:32,720
is sometimes, as you said, like the simplistic definitions, like it's, it's perfectly acceptable,

963
01:34:32,720 --> 01:34:37,520
acceptable just to say that and, and, and to leave it be that like, and the more you try to

964
01:34:37,520 --> 01:34:41,360
explain your position, you know, that one in a bit more detail. I don't want to pick on people

965
01:34:41,360 --> 01:34:45,440
and go and find a thread. Like I have people in mind obviously, but I don't, it doesn't feel

966
01:34:45,440 --> 01:34:50,800
appropriate to just throw them under the box. The reason I, like the way I came up with that was

967
01:34:51,920 --> 01:34:57,600
noted, basically just noticing a lot of really stupid and in some cases, to your point,

968
01:34:58,400 --> 01:35:06,160
quite technically stupid, in my opinion, arguments against ordinals that are inscriptions,

969
01:35:06,160 --> 01:35:10,400
I guess to be more specific. I actually know, sorry, a lot of it was, it was like,

970
01:35:10,400 --> 01:35:19,680
ordinal theory and the whole, the rare sat thing with the, with the having. In my mind,

971
01:35:22,080 --> 01:35:27,440
making really, not just bad or not, not like, you know, controversial or whatever, but like

972
01:35:28,880 --> 01:35:33,760
wrong and or meaningless, like so wrong, it's not even wrong anymore, arguments, I mean,

973
01:35:33,760 --> 01:35:37,600
probably against anything, but in particular this, because I do think ordinals are retarded,

974
01:35:37,600 --> 01:35:44,240
right? But making even more retarded arguments against them damages the credibility of the

975
01:35:44,240 --> 01:35:51,120
people who've made good arguments against them, because people will see that and rightly or wrongly,

976
01:35:51,120 --> 01:35:54,400
is this again, this is like an is all thing is right, this will happen, whether you want it to

977
01:35:54,400 --> 01:36:00,160
or not, people will see your stupid arguments, recognize that they're stupid and think all

978
01:36:00,160 --> 01:36:07,040
arguments in that vein or making that point are stupid. And so, so that's where this came from,

979
01:36:07,040 --> 01:36:11,840
that because I'd identified, I thought at least identified a bunch of really stupid arguments

980
01:36:11,840 --> 01:36:16,880
that were undermining, I would say mine, like I don't feel particularly strongly about it,

981
01:36:16,880 --> 01:36:24,880
but I know people who do who I take seriously and who have put out very thorough, well considered,

982
01:36:24,880 --> 01:36:32,160
well argued arguments that I thought were making them comparatively stupid, which is bad thing.

983
01:36:32,160 --> 01:36:37,360
So that's where that came from. Well, right. And it's, I always find it funny, like the, you know,

984
01:36:39,760 --> 01:36:44,080
perhaps I, maybe this was one of your tweets or maybe I didn't even read it a tweet, maybe it

985
01:36:44,080 --> 01:36:48,160
was something I constructed after the fact, but like, you know, you remember like Animal Farm,

986
01:36:49,040 --> 01:36:52,560
you know, like all animals are equal, some are more equal than others, it was just, it's like

987
01:36:52,560 --> 01:36:56,640
all subjective value is equal, but some subjective value is more equal than others.

988
01:36:56,640 --> 01:37:02,240
No, I remember, I remember the one that I think you got this from, I didn't say exactly that,

989
01:37:02,240 --> 01:37:07,920
but it was the, the Mad Men meme template where, where Don Draper's like, you know,

990
01:37:07,920 --> 01:37:14,960
he's pitching something, right? And I'd filled it out with something like radical subjective value.

991
01:37:14,960 --> 01:37:21,040
Yes. But for the things I value. Yes. Yes. That, that is exactly what I was thinking of there.

992
01:37:21,040 --> 01:37:26,480
And it made me think of Animal Farm and just that, that quote, because it's like, okay, well,

993
01:37:27,200 --> 01:37:32,480
you can't have it both ways. Either all value is subjective or, you know, like,

994
01:37:33,280 --> 01:37:37,520
it's kind of like the basis for, for a lot of this, unless you're larking about that.

995
01:37:38,320 --> 01:37:43,920
But, you know, hey, to each their own, I guess you can choose to subjectively value which

996
01:37:43,920 --> 01:37:49,440
subjectively value, which subjective value is more subjectively valuable to you and which

997
01:37:49,440 --> 01:37:54,560
other people should also, should or should not find subjectively valuable. That's a lot of

998
01:37:54,560 --> 01:38:02,160
subjective value. You know, last, right? Maybe one, one more thing, because I want to be conscious

999
01:38:02,160 --> 01:38:10,240
of your time here. What do you think of the idea of intrinsic value? And, and can you, can you

1000
01:38:10,240 --> 01:38:16,640
speak to the perhaps absurdity of the argument that like, whenever you hear like, and I saw this pop

1001
01:38:16,640 --> 01:38:21,440
up recently, a little, some video clip I saw, like, Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. It's like,

1002
01:38:21,440 --> 01:38:26,160
oh my God, I thought, thought we were, we were past this. Like, what does that, when somebody

1003
01:38:26,160 --> 01:38:30,800
says that, like, what does that, what does that say to you, I guess, about that person or the way

1004
01:38:30,800 --> 01:38:38,320
that they're thinking about? I mean, there is hopeless, probably is, like, there's where do

1005
01:38:38,320 --> 01:38:45,600
you even start with that? They're like, five years away. I mean, maybe never, maybe they will never,

1006
01:38:45,600 --> 01:38:53,760
ever be orange pill because they're, they're just too far gone. It's, it's sad. I'll give

1007
01:38:53,760 --> 01:38:58,080
a bit of that. That's like, obviously the glass half empty, the glass half full on that is worth

1008
01:38:58,080 --> 01:39:01,440
considering as well. Like, I mean, you don't necessarily know why the person has said that.

1009
01:39:01,440 --> 01:39:07,600
It would probably be something like, they don't actually believe that. Like, they've never thought

1010
01:39:07,600 --> 01:39:12,480
about whether it even makes any sense or not. And hence, maybe can be reached by at least to start

1011
01:39:12,480 --> 01:39:17,600
with teasing apart whether intrinsic value does make any sense, which obviously we think it doesn't.

1012
01:39:18,880 --> 01:39:24,400
They're saying it, it's like a meme for them, right? They're saying it because they've heard

1013
01:39:24,400 --> 01:39:30,720
other people say it. It's like a thing. Allegedly smart people have said in circumstances that

1014
01:39:30,720 --> 01:39:37,120
seem similar to this one. And like, this is the thing you say. So they said it. And that's preferable.

1015
01:39:37,120 --> 01:39:45,840
I mean, it sounds maybe even more stupid, but it's like, there's more promise at the same time.

1016
01:39:46,480 --> 01:39:52,240
It's like, it's been in a resolvable way. Like they can be deprogrammed with the right meme. If

1017
01:39:52,240 --> 01:39:55,760
they were programmed with the right meme, they can also be deprogrammed by that same

1018
01:39:55,760 --> 01:40:03,200
memetic action, basically. Yeah, very well put. Yes. I like that. The memes are,

1019
01:40:03,200 --> 01:40:12,080
our memes are so powerful. It's incredible to think about that. I was in the midst of reading

1020
01:40:12,080 --> 01:40:20,080
it's René Girard. All right. It occurred to me to mention that as part of that. But I thought,

1021
01:40:20,080 --> 01:40:26,560
like, I don't want to have to explain what. Don't have to go all the way into the history of

1022
01:40:26,560 --> 01:40:33,200
of acquisitive memetics in this. We're gonna need like, you need like two days for that,

1023
01:40:33,200 --> 01:40:38,720
just nonstop. It's a, I need to, I need to finish it. I'm only about halfway through.

1024
01:40:38,720 --> 01:40:43,760
But it's a fascinating exploration of that. And I'm sure some people would say that

1025
01:40:43,760 --> 01:40:51,600
his analysis is too reductionist. But at the same time, it's like, it all comes down to memes,

1026
01:40:51,600 --> 01:40:57,040
right? And, and, and the, from the perspective of acquisitive memetics, it's like, you're,

1027
01:40:57,040 --> 01:41:01,280
you're just trying to copy things. Like we're, we're all just, this is kind of how we're

1028
01:41:01,280 --> 01:41:04,880
programmed. And you see so many examples of it throughout history. And then you start looking

1029
01:41:04,880 --> 01:41:10,880
at that. And it's like, Oh, I need a Miller light after, after this, you know, and we,

1030
01:41:10,880 --> 01:41:15,120
and we brought it back full circle. Crush some instruments. Yeah, I need to, I need to just

1031
01:41:15,120 --> 01:41:22,560
do some culture press. Yeah. Well, well, I appreciate it. You know, I'll ask you one more

1032
01:41:22,560 --> 01:41:28,000
question that is just completely unrelated. And, and I don't think you can skirt it either, which

1033
01:41:28,000 --> 01:41:35,440
is good. I can't give an evasive nonanswer to this. When, when you are not, when you are not writing

1034
01:41:35,440 --> 01:41:40,000
yourself, well, what are you reading right now? Or maybe what have you read recently that you

1035
01:41:40,000 --> 01:41:44,720
really enjoyed and you'd recommend for others? Yeah, it's an interesting time to ask this

1036
01:41:44,720 --> 01:41:51,520
question just because since we got axiom up and running, I just have way less time. And I've also

1037
01:41:51,520 --> 01:41:55,520
shifted my right. This has come up in a couple of previous answers, I think that I've shifted most

1038
01:41:55,520 --> 01:42:00,080
of my writing to stuff that's for axiom. And if it's not me writing it, it's like I'm putting a

1039
01:42:00,080 --> 01:42:04,960
lot of time into, into editing it as well. And I actually think the most recent book I read,

1040
01:42:05,680 --> 01:42:11,680
I'm just trying to think if I maybe read something light, like something maybe fictiony over Christmas.

1041
01:42:11,680 --> 01:42:17,120
Yeah, I did, but I'm, I don't even remember what it was. But the most, the most recent nonfiction I

1042
01:42:17,120 --> 01:42:22,240
read was actually Broken Money, which is excellent. Which is kind of boring as an answer for this show,

1043
01:42:22,240 --> 01:42:27,840
I guess. It really is. Maybe if I can remember, oh, no, no, I do, I do remember what it is, right?

1044
01:42:27,840 --> 01:42:31,680
So this is, this is, I was going to say it's better than broken, like broken, again, broken money is

1045
01:42:31,680 --> 01:42:37,760
amazing, but it's, it's too on topic to be an interesting answer. Yeah. Yeah. The, the novel that

1046
01:42:37,760 --> 01:42:43,680
I actually finished because I'd started it years ago and it's frigging huge was Life and Fate

1047
01:42:43,680 --> 01:42:49,200
by Vasili Grossman. It's very, very good. It's like 900 pages or something ridiculous.

1048
01:42:49,200 --> 01:42:54,560
Oh, dear lord. But I, I've got like 600 pages into it. I think about a year or two years ago,

1049
01:42:54,560 --> 01:42:56,560
and then I finished that off.

1050
01:42:57,760 --> 01:43:03,120
We all have books like that that it's like, made it this far, like, gonna finish this, then you

1051
01:43:03,120 --> 01:43:06,880
start reading something else at the same time. And whenever I do that, I end up reading it.

1052
01:43:06,880 --> 01:43:10,400
Whenever I do that, I end up like finishing the new books that I started and then not,

1053
01:43:10,400 --> 01:43:14,240
you know, going back to the old one, but I'll, I'll have to, I'll have to check that out.

1054
01:43:14,240 --> 01:43:19,600
Nine, nine hundreds a tall order, but, you know, it's chunky. You can have one with that book.

1055
01:43:19,600 --> 01:43:23,120
For sure. Well, that's good. It's a, it's a, you know, good for the protection of one's private

1056
01:43:23,120 --> 01:43:28,720
property, I suppose. Well, I appreciate your time very much here today. I appreciate the

1057
01:43:28,720 --> 01:43:34,400
tangents that we were able to go on a for folks that I'll link your, your no-ster, I'll link your

1058
01:43:34,400 --> 01:43:41,360
Twitter, where should, and maybe your, you have your website where you, the, the Uncerto,

1059
01:43:41,360 --> 01:43:45,040
where you publish some stuff, but then you're also, what's the, what's the AXIUM website?

1060
01:43:45,040 --> 01:43:52,800
So the AXIUM is AXIOMBTC.CAPITAL. That's the URL there.

1061
01:43:53,600 --> 01:43:59,280
Okay. Awesome. Well, I'll, I'll link that as well just for folks. I saw you guys, I'm, I want to dig

1062
01:43:59,280 --> 01:44:05,120
into, you guys just published something recently about layers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just go this weekend.

1063
01:44:05,120 --> 01:44:06,640
Or this past weekend. Again, I don't know when this will come out, but.

1064
01:44:07,440 --> 01:44:12,320
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, good deal. I'm looking forward to digging into that. Maybe, maybe I'll

1065
01:44:12,320 --> 01:44:17,840
read it. Sometimes I do read out loud episodes on this show. So perhaps I'll, yeah, read in a real

1066
01:44:17,840 --> 01:44:23,520
sultry voice as a bedtime story for folks. But Alan, I, I, I, I'm trying to say that it'll put

1067
01:44:23,520 --> 01:44:27,520
people to sleep. No, no, no, no, but I've just been told sometimes no matter what I read,

1068
01:44:27,520 --> 01:44:32,000
my voice does put them to sleep. If I, if I read it too slowly, so it's, it's not a you problem,

1069
01:44:32,000 --> 01:44:37,600
Alan. It's a me problem. It's not me. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, that's exactly what I'm saying.

1070
01:44:37,600 --> 01:44:41,120
Well, I appreciate your time here. You know, thanks for, thanks for having me on.

1071
01:44:41,840 --> 01:44:48,560
Time is scarce and, and, and, and well, if we're talking about subjective valuations of time,

1072
01:44:49,280 --> 01:44:54,960
we can subject valuations of subjective valuations. Exactly. And you know, but Bitcoin

1073
01:44:54,960 --> 01:45:01,280
podcasts are abundant. Do they have a theory? I don't even think, I don't even think you can,

1074
01:45:01,920 --> 01:45:07,280
like that, that, that short circuits, like that, though universe collapses into a black hole as

1075
01:45:07,280 --> 01:45:11,280
soon as an MT person starts thinking about subjective valuations of subjective valuations,

1076
01:45:11,280 --> 01:45:18,480
I think that's just like, we, we create a, yeah, we all collapse and die. But yeah, on that happy

1077
01:45:18,480 --> 01:45:24,480
note, appreciate your time here. And looking forward to hopefully seeing you in the flesh,

1078
01:45:24,480 --> 01:45:30,400
one of these days soon. And until then, you know, take it easy, keep writing, keep, keep trolling.

1079
01:45:37,440 --> 01:45:44,720
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast. If you're a Bitcoin only

1080
01:45:44,720 --> 01:45:50,560
company interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin podcast, head to Bitcoin podcast.net

1081
01:45:50,560 --> 01:45:56,560
slash sponsor. If you're enjoying the Bitcoin podcast, consider giving a five star review

1082
01:45:56,560 --> 01:46:02,240
wherever you listen or sharing this show with your network, or don't Bitcoin doesn't care.

1083
01:46:02,240 --> 01:46:07,840
You can find me on noster by going to primal.net slash Walker. And if you want to follow the Bitcoin

1084
01:46:07,840 --> 01:46:14,240
podcast on Twitter, go to at Titcoin podcast and at Walker America. You can also find the video

1085
01:46:14,240 --> 01:46:21,120
version of this podcast at YouTube.com slash at Walker America and at Walker America on rumble.

1086
01:46:21,120 --> 01:46:27,920
Bitcoin is scarce. There will only ever be 21 million, but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant. So

1087
01:46:27,920 --> 01:46:33,200
thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast.

1088
01:46:33,200 --> 01:46:44,560
Until next time, stay free.