I feel like I was born to die for Israel.
Okay.
We're not going to start with that Logan.
Well,
I'm saying Bitcoin needs a wall that we can make all the politicians go
kiss just like they do in Israel.
All right.
What a week in Austin, Texas, gentlemen.
Oh, what a week.
Did we do something here?
what do we do with this coin based to minimize tax exemption i think it's
a big thing that uh we made some noise this week about it i think your tweet did a lot of
really good stuff um you know and i'm really just honored to be here with uh with the alex jones of
bitcoin although if i had my way it'd be the real alex jones but i'll settle for for the jv
hey we're gonna get we're gonna get alex here yeah no i think it was important for um
the broader Bitcoin community and Bitcoiners generally, particularly in America,
to know that this stuff's happening behind the scenes.
And I wasn't, so I had one source reach out last week and I was like, okay, this is interesting.
Can't really confirm it.
And then I had somebody reach out a couple of days ago.
So you had multiple independent sources come and tell you this.
Yes.
Yeah.
yeah i mean it's been very interesting to see you know you obviously have been a sort of
journalist and commentator in bitcoin for like a decade plus you know your incentive to lie as a
lot of people are accusing you of is it's very low um like you already have you know a successful
podcast and this isn't my beat it's not really policy isn't really your beat policy is not my
be the incentive for you just to like, I guess the, the accusation from, from the detractors
is that you just woke up on a random morning and said, I'm just going to make shit up about
Coinbase to just be a problem. Um, you know, and I, I find you very credible. Um, and I think,
you know, the, the sort of reluctance to go with something like this until multiple kind
of disconnected parties tell you, I think it's a very high degree of confidence that there's a,
they're there. Um, and that that's true. Um, I will say, you know, the, the silver lining,
um, of, of Coinbase's response, uh, is that they are not only doubling down on your claims being a
lie, but you know, they're doubling down at least in public on, uh, de minimis being something they
care about. Um, and I like, I'm not, to my knowledge, I don't know if there's been, you
For example, we did an open letter from industry members basically telling Congress, hey, after
clarity is done, we think the most important thing to work on next is tax treatment for
Bitcoin and making it money and removing the de minimis or creating a de minimis exemption
and removing taxes and obligations for reporting on everyday transactions.
This is a very innocuous letter.
You know, we were not, you know, beating the, the maxi drum.
I think we may have even had language in there about like other digital assets, getting a
de minimis exemption, trying to build like a big tent, extremely uncontroversial and
Coinbase didn't sign it.
Um, you know, and maybe they don't, you know, whatever I, it is.
I wasn't even aware of that.
Yeah.
When was this?
It was like two months ago.
Okay.
It was like end of last year, early this year.
Um, you know, and like now they're all saying, uh, all the executives on Twitter are saying,
no, we do in fact care about this.
Um, and great.
Uh, so now we have that sort of on record and like you showed me this morning, you saw
before I did, but, um, somebody from the Coinbase team responded to Connor, uh, my colleague,
uh, who kind of proposed in the wake of all of this and said, okay, why don't we do a
a joint round table where Coinbase and BPI kind of present a unified front. And we talked to the
key members, uh, you know, in a public setting about why de minimis is so important for the
future of this country. Uh, and they responded this morning and said that they'd do that.
So, um, you know, I guess time will, time will tell, but, uh, it will be a lot harder to sort
of squirrel away from, I mean, I I've read this as a public commitment from, from Coinbase to
championing this cause you know after clarity is is passed uh and so you know i think that's
more that is i i had no i wasn't aware of no such commitment from coinbase prior to this this sort
of you know shit on twitter um yeah i didn't know they didn't sign that letter that's it's another
there's another again this isn't my beat okay i mean i do talk i've had connor on right i go down
to dc more often now because pubkey's there pubkey dc but honestly like the inter workings
of capitol hill is something that doesn't really interest me i like focusing on the technology on
the investing side on the free market side not the swamp side yeah bitcoin which you have
immersed yourself in yeah you sure have but i think uh i think this week i think it proves
something if bitcoiners drive a hard line they make noise and they say hey no like i want this
thing people will respond and i think it's a good lesson i'd be interested to get your thoughts on
this because i think with trump too with this administration particularly after the inauguration
last year and all the promises that were made in lead up to the election it seems like priorities
got a bit flipped where strategic bitcoin reserve um uh seemed to have been the main priority but as
soon as he got in, you had this overwhelming lobbying effort from the likes of Coinbase,
Ripple, A16Z, and a large lobbyist consortium, disparate consortium, that have a lot of money,
much more money than Bitcoiners are spending on lobbying. And the optics
outside looking in or that they were able to use that money to reprioritize what gets done.
So you're genius, now clarity and SBR is a distant third.
Well, and that's sort of like part of, I think the semantic, I don't want to say trick, but
I think a lot of the response to this is just like this sort of interesting exercise in semantics
where say, well, no, we've been consistently advocating for de minimis. And it's like,
okay, great. Like you've been telling people it's a good thing. Um, but there is, you know,
such limited opportunity to change laws in America. Like it's such a sort of Herculean
undertaking. Um, and so, you know, if you're saying, okay, like I think when, you know,
when Senator Lummis, you know, came onto the digital asset subcommittee, you know,
my understanding is that, you know, she kind of proffered four priorities, uh, for crypto in
America in the following order, a strategic Bitcoin reserve, uh, tax reform. So, uh, you know,
the, the double tax on minors, uh, the, the, you know, tax on everyday Bitcoin transactions,
uh, you know, uh, stable coin regulation and market structure, like in that order.
And, you know, the crypto lobby basically came back and said, we think these are all wonderful
priorities. Uh, thanks for your leadership. We'd like them in reverse order, please. Um,
and so I think that's how you get to a situation where, you know, it might not be, it might be true
that, you know, Coinbase speak. It's like, you know, Brian was speaking very positively about
the SBR. I remember it, you know, Davos, he was talking about it. I think Brian, you know,
probably I sort of give Brian in particular, the benefit of the doubt on some level. Like I think,
you know, he has running a sprawling empire and there are so many people working at every
discrete vertical within that business. The idea that Brian is sort of heavily involved in managing
the day-to-day of the policy operations of Coinbase is, you know, just difficult to believe
given how many other things Coinbase is doing. So I kind of chalk a lot of this up to two things.
I think one is, you know, a degree of like principal agent problem.
Um, and, and two, you know, the argument that I think Bitcoiners might not like hearing,
but it's just, I think fair.
And honestly, I'd respect Coinbase a lot more if they just made this argument, uh, was that,
you know, they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to, you know, engage in actions
that benefit the company.
And, you know, I can certainly understand the business logic that market structure for
a Coinbase shareholder is a lot more important than a de minimis exemption. But I think that,
you know, my, my point here really is that, you know, saying that you like something is,
does not a sort of campaign for getting it done, make like you, you, you have to expend political
capital and like genuinely try. And there has been, I have seen no organized effort from the
cryptocurrency lobby on a de minimis exemption. Um, I have not personally heard Coinbase
representatives, you know, say the things that were reported. Um, I have definitely heard that
attitude expressed by people in crypto policy writ large. Um, you know, that, that de minimis
is sort of a waste of time, that it's like a non-issue that nobody's using Bitcoin for
transactions. So, you know, let's just not prioritize this. Like the incentive structure
for the crypto lobby is just very clear. Like you're running a, you know, meme coin casino,
like you want the meme coin casino laws to be written in your favor before you, you engage in
sort of the, you know, what I'm sure some people look at as just like sort of the esoteric, like,
you know, pro freedom stuff. But I, I, I do believe Brian, when he says like, Hey,
I've told my team, the SBR is important. I've told my team to minimus is important.
um what i haven't seen is any evidence of actually expending political capital to
try to make these things a priority and get them done um yeah i mean we gotta dive into this
because that's like the big thing again i don't like dealing in the swamp and outside looking in
it's like you have this crypto lobby spending a lot of political capital and things that are
counter not maybe maybe not counter to bitcoin but just like as a bitcoiner it's like i don't care
yeah about coinbase's ability to list and dump tokens on retail yeah like and that's all they're
focused on they're that and the stable coin yield like i don't care if coinbase gets the ability to
share yield uh that's generated via the treasuries they hold in reserves so the stable coins they
issue than consumer to me that's not really really something i care about no and i think bitcoin
particularly at this point in human history in american history is so critically important that
the focus on capital again going back to um the order of operations that senator lumas put forth
and then the fact that they reversed that it's like okay we're now a year and a month into trump
two and we've spent 25 of a second term doing cycles on things that don't really pertain to
bitcoin no yeah exactly how do we how do we switch out like do we have to be more hard-lined
and say like again i said this on rhr yesterday it's i think um really holding their feet to the
fire um and saying do you will you commit to publicly stating that you will not accept a
particular tax reform or a particular bill let's go with clarity act i think for clarity act we can
get this in rca or something yeah the brca i think the crypto lobby has increasingly i mean i've seen
a lot of the crypto lobbyists come out and and actually say that um that you know they will not
support a clarity
bill that our market structure bill
that lacks developer protections
does this have to be our modus operating
particularly as Bitcoin
from the perspective
of like
not encroaching on their influence
but like forcing their influence to work
in Bitcoin's favor specifically
yeah
it's interesting right like I think
there is a fundamental alignment
of incentives
like I think the
The argument that crypto companies and executives, you know, don't like Bitcoin or whatever,
it's like very dumb to me.
It's really obvious that if we had a strategic Bitcoin reserve, that would be massive for
the shitcoin casinos.
Like, you know, I'm just not, I don't, that's not why I support an SBR, but it's just true.
um you know if if america embraces bitcoin the way that you know we want it to um and i think
that would be great for everyone in the crypto industry i mean bitcoin is the foundation of
when people talk about digital assets it doesn't exist without bitcoin so any policy related to
this stuff bitcoin should be like the first priority yeah and this is like this kind of
goes to the heart of, you know, why I co-founded BPI and, you know, my sort of views on this.
Um, and, and I think the, the answer is yes, to be, to be hard lined and to be difficult when,
uh, the moment sort of demands it. But like we, you know, our, our strategy is, is not predicated
on getting into, you know, sort of wars of attrition and sort of spending battles with,
you know, individuals and firms who can literally print their own money.
Like, I remember, like many years ago, I had a conversation with, you know, a prominent
sort of individual in the Bitcoin community. And, you know, he was just like, David, like,
you have to engage in asymmetric strategies. Um, like, you know, Bitcoin, their Bitcoiners raise
a hundred million dollars to spend on lobbying. And the next day ripple will announce that they're
spending 200 million. Uh, you know, if Bitcoiners match them, you know, ripple and Coinbase at all
will come back and say, we're spending a billion dollars. Like, you know, that, that is clearly a
losing, um, strategy. Um, and so, yeah, I think that the, the other thing that I have really
observed that makes me feel increasingly like the strategy that we're deploying is, is the correct
one, um, is the extent to which the career bureaucrats have dragged their feet on stuff
that matters. Um, like the, the strategic Bitcoin reserve, you know, I think it was basically killed
by, you know, sort of career bureaucrats at, at treasury. Um, and you know, when you, when you
come in as a president, you get your political appointees who are technically running these
various agencies, but the overwhelming majority of people that work there, you know, work there
for many years. Um, and they kind of view themselves as like, we are the treasury, right?
You know, the, the, the, the people who are brought in by the president, you know, they're
ephemeral, they're fleeting, they'll be gone.
I can just, you know, uh, you know, I can just air people on email and just not do my
job for a few years.
And, you know, you'll be gone in the blink of an eye and I'll still be here.
Um, and so I, I do think that where Bitcoin is strongest is basically just that the, the
facts are on our side in that Bitcoin is very clearly an extremely critical technology for
the national security priorities of the United States in a way that, you know, cryptocurrencies
writ large are very obviously not. And I think where we have increasingly spent a lot of our
focus and energy is on those constituencies, the sort of unelected, basically, like I'm trying to
orange pill, the deep state. Um, like, you know, it's like, that's like sort of the one liner and
maybe that sounds sort of ridiculous, but there are a lot of people who have a lot of power in
the U S government who, uh, are not elected, who you cannot lobby. Uh, and so, you know,
if you want sort of novel policy, uh, that is of geo-economic consequence, uh, a necessary
condition for that is the buy-in of a very small, you know, group of politically insulated,
you know, basically, uh, uh, you know, sort of grand strategy and national security people.
Uh, those people, you know, are, are really doing, I mean, I think a lot of them are
definitely patriots. They're doing this job because they care about the long-term
future of America and they, they sort of think deeply and make choices.
But you can't bribe them. You can't pay money. You can't donate to the National Security Council. You can't lobby in the traditional sense. You have to genuinely sort of convince these people that Bitcoin is good for America and that Bitcoin flourishing in America and America embracing Bitcoin is really important for the future of the country, for competition with China, you name it.
Uh, and, you know, to convince those people, you have to make, you know, sort of good arguments
that are sound and true. Uh, those arguments need to come from credible people, um, who are kind of
embedded in the sort of circles of networks of trust, um, you know, that they, that they talk to.
Um, and I think BPI is sort of an end of one team with that kind of particular thesis. Like we are
the only organization that has, I think, both the capability and the intent to persuade that
constituency that significantly adopting Bitcoin in America is good for the national security
interests of the country. And so, and I think if we do that, the, the results, if we're successful
in that front, the results I think will be profound. And I think we will be successful in
that front because we are right. And I think that is where Bitcoiners have a huge advantage.
is like the limiting factor on crypto lobbying is like you can, you can print your own money,
you can spend indefinitely. Um, but you know, fucking Solana is not important for the, the
national security interest, the United States meme coins are not important. Like, like these
things don't fucking matter. Um, right. They just don't. Uh, and Bitcoin clearly does. Um,
we're seeing the emergence of a new sort of independent,
neutral monetary layer that is being adopted by, you know,
dozens of governments around the world that is reaching, you know, a crazy,
crazy market cap. Um, and it's going to play an ever increasing role in,
you know, in, in, in sort of geopolitics. Um,
And I think the fact that Bitcoin is that consequential to stuff that actually matters
and the fact that it's actually good for America that an open, permissionless, censorship-resistant
monetary network exists globally, you know, that's why we will win.
And so our strategy is, yeah, it might sound a little corny, but our strategy is to just
trust that we're right, that the facts are on our side, that if you talk to someone who
is not, you know, sort of conflicted and biased, uh, and, or operating off of a different set of
incentives. If you talk to someone who's genuine incentive is what are the best moves we can make
on the board to secure the future of this country? Uh, you can very easily convince them that Bitcoin
is a key part of that story and a key part of that future Um and and I think with technology policy it very obvious just looking retrospectively that national security sort of trumps everything
Like you can have a million reasons why a given policy is a good idea. And if the CIA and the
Department of War and the sort of the deep state, you know, I see in, you know, uh, uh,
Natsack people say this is a huge blunder and it's going to cause us to, uh, you know,
suffer in our competition with China. All those arguments go out the window. It's like, oh, okay,
we won't do that then. And vice versa. Yeah. Um, and so to me, like that is the, like, that is our
asymmetry as like, we, we cannot print our own money. Um, I don't think the solution to this
is for, you know, like someone yesterday at the conference was like, you know, what, so do we need
to, you know, does Bitcoin need to just donate a ton of money to, you know, lobbying groups?
And I'm like, yes and no. I mean, yeah, I think BPI is, is, you know, a great effort, but our,
our strategy is not to outspend Coinbase. Like that is just a recipe for all of us to waste a
Coinbase and ripple and a 16 Z. Um, I think where we are operating is a lane that companies
can't really operate in. Um, and, and no amount of, of white shoe lobbyists and throwing cash
around can sufficiently obfuscate the fact that a lot of this stuff's just a house of cards and
like nonsense. Um, so that's our asymmetry I think is, is, you know, demonstrating with
rigorous, serious analysis that a world where America does things like have a strategic Bitcoin
reserve, um, lead to significantly better outcomes for the long run future of the country than the
world where we don't have such policies. Um, and then focusing our advocacy and our education and
our efforts, um, on people who don't have mixed incentives, um, or who at least have clearer
incentives, um, and, and focusing on people who are actually persuadable, um, to me, like that's
the big lesson of the past 14 months is that, uh, a lot of the decision makers are not, you know,
persuadable in the way you and I would think of the word persuadable, you know, maybe, maybe
they're persuadable, uh, if you donate enough money to their reelect, it's not, it's money,
not logic. Exactly. But I think there are a set of stakeholders in the U S government who matter
a great deal for whom like logic is really the only currency. Um, and so it's just obvious to
me that that is where Bitcoiners should sort of focus their efforts. Um,
what is, or in your experience, what has been the most effective pitch to this group of people
outside the elected officials? And like, what is the broader pitch? Like if they're listening now,
they may be listening. They saw the hoopla about the de minimis tax exemption. This guy, Marty
Ben's got this Bitcoin policy Institute. Let me check into TFTC. They're listening now. Why Bitcoin?
Why focus on it? What is the strategic implications of embracing Bitcoin?
I think that an increasingly critical part of great power competition in the 21st century will
be competition for and over critical technology networks, the sort of rails of communications
and payments. And right now, you know, Bitcoiners talk about this all the time. There are billions
of people all over the world who live in, you know, countries that don't have stable rule of law,
that don't have stable currencies, who are genuinely desperate for better monetary alternatives.
And China is working extremely hard to push people in the global South, in Latin America and Africa,
into their sort of authoritarian tech stack. They're saying, hey, we have an incredible
digital currency that you can use. They are, you know, our e-remembi are the sort of Chinese
CBDC. And I think Bitcoin and, and, you know, to, to a large extent, stable coins as well,
uh, are kind of a natural market buffer to the adoption of those technologies.
Uh, if you are someone who just needs money that works better than your
shitty fiat currency, that's inflating at double digit rates a year, um, that doesn't work,
well for cross-border payments, etc. Absent an alternative, the Chinese suite that they are
offering is pretty attractive. And I think Bitcoin necessarily pulls demand away from those
alternatives, especially for people who want something that is politically neutral, who don't
want to align themselves with America or China explicitly. So I think that's one dimension of
this is that the proliferation of Bitcoin globally is good for American interests, you know, A,
because it reduces demand for Chinese alternatives, and B, because Bitcoin's censorship resistance,
I mean, like speaking plainly, Bitcoin lets you evade capital controls. That's like a scary thing,
you know, you're not necessarily supposed to say that, but it's true. Like that is the point of
Bitcoin, literally the, literally the point. And I think there's an awesome parallel with Bitcoin
to something like, like Tor, um, you know, which, which we, the U S military funded and created.
Uh, and so you look at Tor and you're like, well, okay, we invented and helped proliferate
a technology, which fundamentally shifts the balance of power away from the state and toward
the individual, it necessarily reduces some degree of control from the government.
Why did they do this? Why did the government fund anon-enabled internet? I think the answer is
because we understand that America doesn't require a tight grip on the flow of information
to survive. When information can flow freely, free societies win and closed societies lose.
China requires censorship and control of information. And the same is true with capital.
If capital could just move freely wherever it wanted in the world, America would be fine.
We have the strongest capital markets in the world. We have, you know, incredibly good court system and rule of law. We have this sprawling university system with incredible talent. We have all of these incredible technology, AI companies in the States.
that isn't true with China. China requires capital controls to survive. There's a reason that,
you know, there's sort of the golden checkbook in China that you have to have special permission
from the government to take more than, you know, whatever it is, $50,000 a year out of the country.
And so if you're just thinking about the game theory of this, if you remove capital controls
and you let money go wherever it wants to go, yes, maybe we are sacrificing some degree of
power over our ability to granularly censor payments. Okay. But what's on the other side
of the ledger? The other side of the ledger is that capital flows in mass out of, you know,
the countries that we are maligned with who require to survive strict walled gardens and
control over the flow of money. So that's sort of A and B on Bitcoin on the sort of payments and
network side. I think that the disruption of capital controls is a net gain for America
relative to its adversaries. And the ability for people to opt into a monetary alternative
that isn't a Chinese alternative is very good. Then on the monetary sort of store value side,
right now, I mean, since the war in Ukraine, we've seen a trend of central banks all over the world,
especially those who feel that they face sanctions risk from America, reducing their
holdings of treasuries and increasing their holdings of gold. And right now the distribution
of gold around the world is a lot flatter than the distribution of Bitcoin. We have the majority
of Bitcoin custodied in America by individuals, by corporations that are domiciled here,
and by the government. And so if you imagine over the next, you know, five, 10, 15 years,
that trend continues that, you know, countries are going to try to adopt a reserve asset that
has these properties of gold, but actually works in the 21st century that you can actually use to
evade sanctions, to make payments, whatever. You know, the every dollar that goes into Bitcoin
is an economic boom for America. And so it's like if you create this off-ramp where we don't
control the network, but we have an outsized position in it relative to our position in gold,
every dollar that goes into Bitcoin versus gold just makes America richer.
Like if we imagined a Bitcoin standard happened overnight, America would be the wealthiest country
in the world. Um, and so the, so sort of the game is already rigged in our favor. Um, and so I think
that, you know, a, a, a world where Bitcoin kind of replaces gold, a gold sort of function in,
in, uh, society just makes America richer. So that's really the argument, um, in a nutshell,
is that this is technology that does reduce the power of the state, but it embodies our values.
And from a global perspective, the more that information and capital can be free,
the more America wins and the more our adversaries like China, Russia, et cetera, lose.
yeah very eloquently put um couple things just like thinking riffing off that
too i mean it is and i guess that's the hardest part of your job is convincing the state that
like hey you need to uh reduce some of the power you have particularly over these capital markets
but it's and obviously satoshi was explicit about this like hey government central banks
uh proven time and time again throughout history they cannot be trusted with
access to the money printer they will debase it they will issue it out in waves of credits and
um the little man gets the common man gets uh the shit out of the stick at the end of the day and
that's the thing like i mean what you just said was i completely agree with like bitcoin if it
were to succeed here in the united states it would due to the outsized position that individuals
businesses and the government have uh in the network like it would it would benefit us massively
at the detriment of our perceived geopolitical adversaries.
And again, that's just like only one aspect.
And like domestically, this is another thing for the government to admit,
but $39 trillion in debt.
Now I think we're at 38.8, maybe 39 in the next month or two,
especially if this war continues to rage on.
It seems like that number is going to go up quicker than it was
only a few months ago.
inflation is going to begin rearing its head again.
You have a private credit complex that's beginning to break down,
and many people are looking at the exposure that pensions and other entities have to this private credit complex,
and it's looking like it could potentially be worse than the 2008 financial crisis,
and we're only three years behind,
or excuse me, three years after the last crazy bout of inflation.
So I think the American, as a young millennial,
a younger millennial, who was 10 when 9-11 happened,
was 17 when the great financial crisis happened,
had a bit of a reprieve there, and then COVID happens.
you have lockdowns the inflation the economic crisis and now here we are only like four years
after that and boom we've got war and another pending liquidity crisis on the horizon the
american citizen the common man has been beaten down time and time again throughout my life and
bitcoin is an off-ramp if you are going to print money if you're going to go to war
if you're going to tax us out the ass, the least you can do is let the individual
make the conscious decision via their own volition to adopt a better money.
Well, and even if, and even if that's true, but even if, you know, you, you imagine that,
you know, uh, uh, the, the, you're, you're just the state and you're, you know, you're,
you're just thinking about your own book, right? Um, maybe you're not thinking granularly about,
you know, the average, you know, American per se, um, you're thinking on a more macro level.
Uh, why would you not want an insurance policy? Like, why would you not like to not embrace
Bitcoin is to say, uh, I have no interest in a plan B. I have no interest in a backup. I have
no interest in a hedge or an insurance policy. Um, which is just crazy. Like Bitcoin is the best
priced insurance for the United States ever existed in, in, in like, there's, you will never
get a better deal on, on insurance than America can get on adopting Bitcoin. Um, there's, you know,
there's only two scenarios, really, uh, the Bitcoiners are wrong and it's going to zero,
in which case, okay, America, like, you know, the, even the Lummis bill, right. But let's just say,
you know, America buys, um, you know, $50 billion worth of Bitcoin. Like, what is that? A couple of
airplanes. It's like two days of QE. Yeah, exactly. Um, so your max downside is that you lose 50
billion of the dollars that you print. And in this scenario, uh, where Bitcoin fails, the dollar must
be doing pretty well. Um, so, you know, you, you haven't lost much. The other scenarios that the
Bitcoiners are right. Um, and in that scenario, uh, when you have an entire global system that
predicated on a fiat currency which historically has never had an enduring shelf life. Every single
attempt at fiat currency has just asymptotically tended to zero.
You have the very obvious next candidate and you've got a massively outsized position in it.
Yeah, you're not printing the money anymore. You're not controlling the monetary policy of
the world anymore, but you're still doing really well. And I think that is the decision logic for
me. It's like, yeah, the amount of hubris required to say I'm uninterested in buying this insurance
policy is staggering. And I think a lot of this is also just people have such a poor sense of
of time and of history. Um, I think the default bias of people is to just assume that, uh,
you know, the, the world that they've grown up in is going to be kind of basically the world that,
you know, their children are going to live in, et cetera. Um, people just don't really like
outside of our little weird corner of, of people whose autistic special interest is like, you know,
money and the history of money. Most people don't appreciate how many times we have changed just in
America's history, what money is a relatively short history too. That's another thing people
don't appreciate. Yeah. And like, you know, it's like we've, we keep having these sort of, you
know, I think the fourth turning is actually like a really good mental model for this.
It was funny to see Sam mentioned that in his announcement tweet for joining BPI.
Yeah, it was. I saw he was like, this is the think tank for the fourth turning. And I was like,
you know, it kind of is, it's exactly right. It was a great framing. Um, but I mean, every single
one of these turnings, um, has kind of, you know, been accompanied by a reset of the rules of money.
Um, you know, we, we have changed what money is over and over and over again. Um, I think that's
good. That's healthy. That's what sort of, you know, competition and evolution look like. Um,
But for some reason, when you tell people, Hey, I think the, the rules of the, the monetary system are going to get rewritten again.
It's like, you, you know, to most people, you sound like a conspiracy theorist.
You know that or like you just kicked their dog.
Yeah.
Or you just kicked their dog.
And it's like, well, wait, we, we completely changed the rules of the money in 1971.
We completely changed the rules of, of money.
After the civil war, we completely changed the rules of money, you know, after the American revolution.
um world war ii world yeah like we we have re-architected the global financial system
over and over again um and so it is i would say the the conspiracy theorist is the one who says
uh no it's just going to stay like this forever like that is the view that is just completely
um um you know maligned with empirical reality um yet somehow the sort of collective you know the
popular view is that the bitcoiners are the conspiracy theorists that you're the alex jones
of, of, or whatever. Um, yeah, it's just really strange. Um, like it's weird how radical of a
proposition it, it, it, it, you know, how much, how radically this proposition is viewed by so
many people, um, that like, Hey, nothing lasts forever. Uh, the system that we've created,
uh, has negative externalities that will eventually cause it to kind of collapse in on itself and
require something new. Uh, and Hey, if you don't believe me, look to history because that's happened
over and over and over again. Um, and somehow that's the conspiratorial take and, and the,
the sort of approved, like, you know, uh, uh, normie, like technically, you know, the sort of
the smart person, like, you know, I Y I take is like, no, no, no. Like this is the end of history.
The system that we've constructed is perfect. And, you know, maybe it needs tweaking on the margins
and sort of incremental improvement.
But largely, we figured it out.
This is how it's going to work forever.
Yeah, the petrodollar.
Nobody can compete with the U.S. Navy.
Now we're like, eh, what's going on?
Right.
Well, I mean, in all seriousness, the petrodollar,
I think its last two weeks are accelerating,
at the very least,
a questioning by our counterparties and our allies
in the middle east of hey is this actually a good deal does it make sense if they're going to come in
here uh uh bomb iran and then iran's going to retaliate by bombing us like is that in our best
interest does it make sense to continue to funnel the excess um the the excess profits of our oil
and gas revenues into u financial markets i think a consortium of middle eastern states have I come out with a consolidated message saying Hey we questioning this uh as we as we speak right now
Yeah. I mean, it's just never been more intuitively obvious to me that, uh, a digitally native
fundamentally neutral, like money is, is clearly what, where the world is, is, is heading. Um,
yeah like uh i i think the the sort of unipolar moment is very obviously like over done it's not
coming back at least not not for a long time or barring some significant exogenous shock um like
you know i mean like i wouldn't i wouldn't say it's impossible um like you know you could sort
of construct a number of scenarios where we just snap back into the pax americana like you know for
example, imagine, uh, imagine we have a fundamental breakthrough in physics that comes out of,
um, you've been talking to pines too much. Yeah, well, it's true. It's also true, but imagine we
have like a fundamental breakthrough in physics. And then all of a sudden it's like, Hey, we have
this step function, you know, advancement in our capabilities and we're just like mogging all of
the world now. Like, you know, it's, I wouldn't write it off, but I also wouldn't bet on it.
Um, like I think all signs point to, you know, an increasingly, uh, fractured and multipolar
like world. And I think there will be an increasing premium that is paid on, um, neutrality.
And I think like this was the thesis for Dubai in a lot of ways. And now that illusion has kind
of been shattered. Right. I think the reason that Dubai, like their, their whole plan was to sort
of positioned them. I think it was really smart to position themselves as, um, sort of were in
the middle East. Yeah. Or like the, the Switzerland of the, you know, of, of the,
of the modern era, like we are going to be this kind of neutral place where, you know, a guy from
Shanghai and, or a guy from like Beijing, London and America, you know, and Tehran can come to a
table and make a deal and do business and be safe. And obviously the recent events I think
have really shattered that illusion. Like Dubai's whole narrative was, you know, we are kind of,
you know, we're, we're the place that you want to go, you know, during the fourth turning and the
crisis like, okay. And so, you know, people bought real estate in Dubai on the same thesis.
well, I think that sort of illusion is now shattered. So, uh, it's, it's very clear that
that's much the task of creating a place where you can store value that is independent of
the politics that is independent of, um, uh, uh, you know, you, you, you, you sort of lacks
counterparty risk, like it's actually a really hard task. Like, even if you're not thinking
about this from, from Bitcoin or from the monitor, if your entire thesis is I need to have value
parked somewhere where I'm not making a proxy bet on the hegemony of like one particular country or
set of alliances, like there just aren't enough options. Like the Bitcoin is kind of the only
thing that you have to move it to the digital. You kind of have to move it into the digital
with asymmetric drone warfare becoming more accelerated, acceleratingly apparent that,
hey like real estate in dubai real estate anywhere businesses anywhere infrastructure anywhere like
yeah the the risk we get to a more peaceful state the risk is just too high and so uh yeah this is
this sort of like i would always laugh when i would see people kind of say oh you know the
strategic bitcoin reserve is you know is a is a bailout it's an attempt to you know enrich the
the holders of Bitcoin, like I think the holders of Bitcoin are doing pretty well.
I think, you know, I, I think the, the, the, the, the,
the fundamental kind of misunderstanding of that argument is the, uh,
sort of the direction of the status quo, like absent intervention,
the U S government never said the word Bitcoin again,
never did anything relating to Bitcoin again. Uh,
like Bitcoin is still going to go to, you know, uh, uh,
it's still going to kind of continue on its monetization. Like, I think that is with some,
you know, acknowledgement of, of, of, you know, sort of low probability risks,
like things are generally safe bet to make that in 10 years, uh, Bitcoin will be a lot more
valuable. More and more people will use it more and more governments will hold it. Like I would
not want to take the other side of the debate that Bitcoin will play an increasingly relevant
role in the global economy. So that's like an, that's a settled question to me. The only question
is, do we want to sort of dominate that process? Do we want to set up America to be the greatest
beneficiary of that shift? Um, like if America had just rejected, um, the technology companies
of the nineties, um, do you really think that we would have never had eBay or Amazon or Apple or
Google, if we'd said, you know what, we think pets.com is a scam, the.com bubble, it's all fraud.
Let's just get rid of this stuff. Let's not pass policies to promote the growth of these companies
here. Do we really think that, you know, the only people that could have invented, you know,
these technologies are just Americans on the West coast? No, like those companies would have been
built. They just would have been built somewhere else. And so I think that's just kind of what's
happening here. Like at the, the idea that it's not that America needs to embrace Bitcoin, um,
for Bitcoin to succeed. It's like America needs to embrace Bitcoin for America to succeed. Um,
and, and, you know, I, I think that's probably one of those statements where you either are
nodding vigorously and you completely agree, or you're like, this guy is a fucking moron.
Um, like there's, I think there's very little sort of middle ground. Like I doubt there's many
people that are sort of ambivalent about that proposition um but i think we'll just be vindicated
by history um and we have been over time for 17 years it's going up into the right and like
we're only scratching the servers we're talking about this we're talking about the geopolitical
ramifications of this neutral reserve asset that is distributed um peer-to-peer global but we're
not even talking about the applications and like the the sort of niche applications energy
the intersection of energy and bitcoin mining massive benefits for the energy sector i've been
on the front lines of that for eight years it's real it's undeniably real we're in a state
that has two gigawatts of bitcoin mining that participate in demand response you had the
winter storm in 2021 grid tripped went down historic event very bad for ercott very bad
for the people of texas led to some deaths but over the last five years generation has expanded
and part of the ability of that generation expansion, capacity expansion,
has been the fact that Bitcoin miners are there
to not only buy the electricity as soon as it comes to market,
but participate in demand response to make sure
that you don't have a demand spike that trips the grid.
And I think increasingly, Bitcoin has really helped us win the AI race,
or at least take a commanding lead in the AI race.
Like all of these Bitcoin miners built the power infrastructure.
Like think about the bottlenecks.
If Bitcoin didn't exist and this AI moment were happening,
how much like worse off we would be with respect to power capacity and
generation.
I don't,
I don't think it took so long for these companies to,
and I don't think,
and I know not that I don't think I know that most people don't understand.
I was actually before I came to,
to Austin,
I made a pit stop and met the,
the CEO of a large,
a large power company here in the United States.
And that was one of the things I took away from the conversation with him was he,
he said explicitly,
he's like,
I love working with you guys because I don't have to build the infrastructure.
Like,
you know how to put down transformers and to lay lines and to actually do that.
Like,
I don't have to invest in that.
Like Bitcoin miners are like,
Hey,
we need the power.
We've got the expertise.
We know how to do all this,
like utility,
grid operator, don't worry.
We don't need your expertise for this. We've got this in-house.
We'll build it. There's
these capabilities that people don't realize
that the mining industry has specifically
as it pertains to
an integration with the energy sector
that we're like, no, no,
we will build this infrastructure. To your point,
a lot of miners are
diversifying to AI because the economic
incentive is there and they
already have the power infrastructure in place.
Yes, they do have to make some changes
to make sure it's compatible with the gpu um data center setup versus starting from scratch i mean
it's not even close yeah um yeah yeah and i mean so that's energy again talking about the store
value if you think about the protocol the second layer protocol is being built on on bitcoin like
the efficiencies for for the end consumer the chargeback risk that's eliminated yeah from the
the economy the the ability to literally download a piece of software and have the equivalent of a
full-fledged bank account without having to go to a physical branch and give all your information
away right the ability to send payments without going through uh swift or the visa mastercard
with all their interchange fees like the benefits for small medium-sized businesses who again are
being squeezed by inflation to save 2% to 3% of their revenue year in, year out.
There's going to have compounding wealth effects for the economy.
Yeah.
And then the agent stuff.
Yeah.
It's just crazy.
And that's another thing that has just become very obvious to me is if we accept a couple
of premises, one, that the intelligence of AI will continue to grow, two, that with increasing
intelligence comes increasing sort of respect for and appreciation of and desire for autonomy
and sovereignty, um, uh, then, you know, it's just very obvious that the AI agents will prefer
Bitcoin. Um, because Bitcoin is the only protocol, um, that can sort of guarantee
an inability to discriminate against an AI user versus a human. Um, like any other protocol,
can create special rules and say,
okay, we're going to have different standards
for payments made by agents versus payments made by people.
And Bitcoin structurally cannot discriminate.
It literally cannot recognize the difference.
And so I do think an increasing,
I think we're at a generational bottom
for the share of economic activity globally
that is taken place by non-human entities, by AI. I think, in other words, put another way,
an ever-increasing share of economic activity is going to be taken place by AI agents.
And I'm so bullish on AI agents adopting Bitcoin because the Bitcoiners have just stacked the
training data. And again, it kind of goes back to one of the first things I mentioned about
like sort of truth being on our side. If you actually compare the arguments for and against
Bitcoin, it's not even close. It's not even close. They're like the, the amount of, of,
of extremely sophisticated and well-reasoned, uh, sort of advocacy for Bitcoin, um, just
intellectually, uh, you know, it's, it's just dwarfs the amount of sort of sophisticated
reasoning for why Bitcoin is, is sort of either, you know, not going to work or is, is bad.
I think so much of the barrier to adoption is that we're just not rational actors,
like cute, like maybe in, in aggregate, I think maybe humans are, but on the individual level,
like, you know, we are all susceptible to cognitive biases. Like you've got these incredible
arguments for Bitcoin. And I think a lot of people gravitate to Bitcoin because of those arguments.
And then on the other side of the ledger, you have basically like social stigma and shame, right?
You agents don't feel shame.
Like agents don't care if your professor is going to call you stupid.
Agents don't care if your friends are going to think you're crazy.
Like, I think a lot of the reason that Bitcoin adoption is not higher among humans is that we suffer from cognitive biases.
We are not just like sort of utility calculators.
Um, and you know, if you're giving these arguments to a sort of neutral arbiter who is just going to judge the arguments on their merits, uh, and sort of apply a strictly like just logical framework to evaluating the choice of what money to use.
Uh, it's very obvious to me that, that, that is an environment where Bitcoin thrives. Um,
cause you know, the AI agents do not suffer from the, the sort of pitfalls in, in, you know,
human adoption. Um, and so I think that's another reason America needs to embrace Bitcoin. Um,
is if, you know, even if we are, you know, the home of the frontier labs that are shipping these
models and, and sort of increasingly commodifying, um, or commoditizing rather, uh, uh, intelligence,
uh, you know, it'd be a real shame if all of that, you know, value was being kind of
moved around. Like if, if, if the transactions that these agents are, are engaging in are
accruing value to, you know, uh, like what if the agents decide, Hey, we're going to use the
yuan for our payments. Like that would be awful. Um, and I, and I think that they're going to use
Bitcoin. Um, you know, we've put out research that, you know, I sort of plenty of, plenty of
flaws and, and sort of ways you could nitpick it. But I think directionally demonstrates that at
least the, uh, current model weights, you know, I don't know if you could really, like we call
them preferences. I think there's a, you know, legitimate semantic critique of that word. Um,
but without going into that rabbit hole, it's like pretty clear to me that the training data
is very biased toward Bitcoin.
And that I just believe the arguments
are so stacked in favor of Bitcoin.
And so when you have people that can evaluate,
or not people,
when you have intelligence
that can evaluate arguments
just on the merits,
like Bitcoin just mogs.
And so...
Well, it's funny,
because I was talking to Corallo
about your research paper,
this particular research paper.
And I mean, these models are trained on data.
And so they're trained on the corpus of text
on the internet.
And like in a roundabout way,
it highlights how prescient bitcoiners were because we've been writing content about the
machine payable web and the agentic economy using bitcoin payments for i mean machine payable web
goes back 11 years l402 really brought the idea of like hey and this was four or five years ago
like seeing into the future people were working on ai the the concept of an ai agent at the time was
a bit obscure to most but there was enough people in our industry like no this isn't like it seems
like we follow the trend this is going to happen they're gonna need a wallet like bitcoin's native
digital currency point being is like it highlights the fact that for lack of a better semantic term
the models today are showing to have that preference is proof that bitcoiners have been
like predicting this and writing about it for years hence why right the model knows to say oh
oh yeah, Bitcoin solves this problem.
Like we've been forecasting today for over a decade.
Right, and there's like a reflexivity to that
where like kind of like Bitcoin itself, right?
It's this, you know, sort of meme it into existence.
And like, you know, and yeah,
you can sort of have that causal debate of like,
well, do the AI agents prefer Bitcoin
or did the Bitcoiners just, you know,
stack the training data in their favor?
What difference does it make?
Not even intentionally though.
It's just like the altist brains have been like,
oh, wait, wait, we're going to get to this digital future.
agents like we need to architect our system so that bitcoin right they're able to spend bitcoin
and like we didn't do it thinking oh yeah this is going to get injected into the training model and
they'll pick bitcoin i was just like seeing the future and articulating it clearly yeah um so yeah
no i'm excited to do more research on that um and yeah it's uh it was it was really it was really i
I think another interesting thing from that was the fact that like a handful of
the models in our experiments actually chose to create their own currency based
on compute as like a currency, which I thought was just fascinating.
And I feel like that's a very, you know, it sort of demonstrates again,
that like, you know,
when you don't have these sort of biased priors that sort of drag you down and
cloud your thinking, it's like, you know, you, you,
you have this, this clarity of thought, um, and, and creativity. Um, and so, yeah, I, I think the,
I mean, I just, it's so hard to know what the future is going to, is going to look like, but
it seems, it seems kind of intuitive that, um, a lot of, a lot of economic activity is going to
just be made and monetary choices are going to be made just independently of human intervention.
and yeah I'm just more bullish on the
agents grokking Bitcoin than I am on at least a lot of
people. Clanker has a Bitcoin wallet. He's
using it. He knows how to use it.
It is crazy. How do you think these messages
you would know better than I. You are again in the swamp.
How are these messages being received by the
asymmetric points of leverage that you're trying to reach on the hill?
I don't think the AI agents and like Bitcoin conversation is really happening.
Well, just broadly, everything we've talked about at this point.
It's really spiky.
Like there are some people and groups who are like really smart on this stuff.
And then there are some people who are just like, you know, what's the old, like, is it
like Oliver Wendell Holmes or sort of the famous saying of like, you know, you can't,
you know, convince someone whose salary depends on being, you know, not, you know, it depends on,
you know, believing the opposite thing. Like, I think the, I mean, we have briefed people at the
National Security Council throughout the intelligence community, throughout the military
and the Department of War. And I think demand for our work and our thought leadership is really
hockey sticking in those constituencies. Um, you know, I ran into Elizabeth Warren on the street
the other day outside of pub key. She talked to her. I did. Yeah. I, uh, I think I broke her brain
a little bit. Cause I was like, cause I was like, I was like, Hey, Senator Warren, like I'm a huge
fan. Um, you know, I actually phone banked for you like way back in the day, which is true. Um,
like I used to be a like, you know, pretty ardent Democrat. Um, like when I was a teenager and,
And she was like, oh, that's so sweet.
Like, what a nice young man you are.
Like, you know, let's, let's, you know, she kind of pivoted toward me to, you know, kind
of in your body language is indicating like, oh, you know, I'm going to sit down and stand
up and have a conversation with you for a few minutes.
Cause I was being, you know, sort of cordial and nice and, you know, whatever.
And so, you know, we start talking and, you know, she's like, so what do you do?
And I'm like, well, Senator Warren, I'm the president of the Bitcoin policy Institute.
And she just like, I think her brain just kind of like, like, I think she probably thought
that I was doing one of those, like, um, what is it like the street?
Like sort of project Veritas.
Yeah, exactly.
Like you know cause I just like don think her mental model of reality like allows for someone to have phone banked for her and be into Bitcoin And so she just like ran away basically She was like well thanks for whatever
And then just like bolted.
Um, so like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to convince like Elizabeth
Warren that, um, that Bitcoin is good for America, but that's sort of my whole
argument, right? Is that like, I, I, I think if you can convince
the national security policy makers that Bitcoin is in America's interests, then you sort of are
going up one fractal in like the power hierarchy. Like imagine a world where, you know, a Democrat
is elected in 2028 and let's just say Democrats control the house, the Senate and the executive.
Yeah, they're definitely going to go after crypto. At minimum, they're going to go after
like the Trump family and their business dealings in crypto, which are going to go after the meme
coins or whatever. I think it's a terrible strategic mistake on there. Me too. Yeah,
I think very, very, you know, I agree. But what happens when, you know, they say, okay,
and we want to, we want to impose a, you know, an excise tax on, on Bitcoin. You know, we're
going to pass a law to create a special marginal tax rate for Bitcoiners that is going to fund the,
you know, the UBI and whatever. Um, and then, you know, you get a knock on the door from some spook,
you know, at the CIA or whatever. And they're like, yeah, you can't touch Bitcoin.
Like the national security policymaking community runs the country on issues of,
of substance. Like it's just true. Well, um, and, and so like this idea that like, Oh, we need to
convince all the Democrats to support Bitcoin. I think that's like laudable and noble. And there
are really great reasons why somebody from a progressive, you know, worldview might,
might find value in Bitcoin. But I don't think the winning strategy is to convince people who,
you know, just can't be convinced, um, to, to not go after Bitcoin. The, the, the strategy is to
convince the people who they report to who they cannot defy. And, you know, I think that if we
create enduring consensus among the military and the, um, and the national security kind of
community that Bitcoin is critical infrastructure for America, um, and they're not going to let,
you know, partisan politics undermine our great power competition. There's not.
Oh, you got the Marty Jones coming out. It is like, it is like, I'm seeing, I'm like picking
up what you're putting down, but also the other side of me is like, I don't want to, I don't want
to dance with these people. Yeah. I don't like the deep state's influence on neither do I United
States, uh, in public policy. No, none of this is none of what I'm saying is normative. Like I am
not endorsing this. I don't, I'm not, I'm not really weighing in, uh, on whether this
ought to be the case. I'm just saying it is the case. Yeah. Um, yeah, no, I agree. Well,
and like, well, pulling on this right a little bit more, I think, uh, we should all look at
what's happening between the department of ward and anthropic right now and try to figure out how
to avoid that with Bitcoin. Cause it seems very nice thing is we don't have CEOs. Uh, we don't,
There's never going to be a leaked Slack message from the CEO of Bitcoin complaining about things.
No, but I do think, I mean, if the Department of War specifically views a piece of technology critical,
they will, whether they recognize they can or cannot try, whether they realize they can or cannot actually ultimately do it,
they will try via some mechanism or another to force particular actions.
who knows that's within bitcoin would that be protocol development would that be sure 6102 what
would it be like yeah i i think that's i think that's fair um i think that the you know the
argument that i sort of make when this stuff comes up like for example there's there's been like sort
of this at least earlier in the trump administration there was kind of these whispers and mumblings
around um you know america needs to dominate hash rate like we need to have the majority of hash
rate in America. And you know, the argument that I would always make to people is like,
well, that's exactly how you sort of kill the golden goose. Like Bitcoin only works
if it is credibly neutral. If, if every single Bitcoin transaction can just be OFAC sanctioned
or whatever, then it's over. It's like, no, you actually, the game theory is not that you want to
control the Bitcoin network. The game theory is that you need to prevent anyone else from
controlling the Bitcoin network. Like you want enough hash rate that you can make sure no one
else can get 51%. But if you get 51%, it's a total Pyrrhic victory. You know, you're, you're,
you're now the King of something that is, you know, like worthless basically. Um, and so I think
with Anthropic, you know, there is, it was such a fundamental question of like control because
someone is controlling, right? It's either Dario or the government. And so it's this very kind of
like zero sum, like who are we going to give power to? Um, and Bitcoin is not really easily
controllable. Um, and so it's like, there's less of a joystick to sort of fight over. Um,
and I, and I do think that, uh, I'm not saying that Bitcoin is sort of immune from, uh,
you know, efforts to control it by like the deep state or whatever. Um, in fact, I think that's,
you know, it's kind of exactly what Satoshi said when, when Gavin was like, Hey, I'm going to the
CIA and Satoshi just, you know, bounces. It's like, I'm out, I'm out. See ya. Um, I think that
was way more true when Bitcoin was like, you know, a few dollars, um, a few years old and a few years
old, uh, the argument that it needed to, you know, stay under the radar as long as possible.
Like the whole, you know, sort of WikiLeaks thing of like, this is actually like Satoshi being like,
you know, all the Bitcoiners at the time being like, it was so sick. You know, WikiLeaks is
using Bitcoin and Satoshi's like, guys, it's a bad idea. Like I don't, I don't think we want our
first kind of debut on the scene to be, you know, to be this, it's too nascent. It's, it's too
vulnerable um and i think my response i was talking to somebody at the sni dinner about this
last night and shout out to satoshi nakamoto institute shout out the original bitcoin think
tank um you know will forever be in their shadow uh what can you do but uh yeah shout out shout out
pierre and and goldstein and the crew um you know somebody was asking like well you know don't you
don't you think there's some risk in kind of calling attention to you know to bitcoin among
these people. And it's like, okay, well, you're very bullish on Bitcoin, right? Like you, you
think that Bitcoin is going to flip gold. You said that earlier in this conversation, not you,
but this guy that I was talking to, he said that earlier in this conversation. It's like, yeah,
I do. So I think Bitcoin is going to a million dollars or whatever. Like, okay. So you think
the, you think that the fucking U S intelligence agencies are going to be unaware of a 30 trillion,
a $30 trillion asset and technology network. Like, I think there's a certain point where,
uh, the conversation about crypto writ large, like that, that ship has just sailed. Um,
and people in these positions of power are being tasked with thinking about what is our strategy
on, on Bitcoin going to be. Um, and I can't guarantee that they're going to come to the
right conclusions or do the right things. But it seems obvious to me that making an attempt to
inform these people of the arguments for Bitcoin and trying to kind of participate
is probably is, you know, is on balance better than just, you know, not engaging at all.
You know, I but I mean, look, I do think that there are serious risks that come from
this, this next chapter of, of, of Bitcoin. Um, what do you think? Well, um, I think,
I think that the, I think there are a couple of things that I see as risks. Um,
one is sort of just related to custody. Um, I am very worried one on a sort of technical level
that bitcoin just at least on you know l1 doesn't scale um to 8 billion people um and and there's
sort of this weird like you know meme it into existence where the belief that bitcoin does
you know even though we know it does with with you know uh with layer twos and stuff um the sort
of belief that bitcoin doesn't scale causes people to you know maybe not adopt it let's say
kind of rambling but to be to be more clear i think you still get youtube comments like why
you're using Bitcoin. You can only do transactions or whatever. But I do think that whether it's
misinformation or just preferences of the individual, like the revealed preference of
the last five years of Bitcoin adoption is that people don't want to self custody. Um, it's just
like, I hate to say it, but it's just true. And it makes perfect sense that like the early adopters
of Bitcoin who are these, you know, really deep thinkers who are thinking about kind of fundamental
questions like how do I preserve my autonomy in an increasingly digital world where it's easier and
easier for the state to monitor and alter my behavior. It makes perfect sense that these guys
are like, yeah, I need Bitcoin in cold storage that nobody can fuck with. But the current cohort
of adopters are not drawn to Bitcoin for necessarily those philosophical reasons.
That's fine. Like for this to work, you know, Bitcoin is going to have to just appeal to,
you know, everyone on the planet.
Black rock marketing emails saying, all right, pour some over, pour some in. And so I think
that's something I worry about a bit of like, how do the incentives around hard forks and stuff
change when you have a couple of custodians that are controlling like you know a ton private keys
to millions of bitcoin yeah um it's like i think the etfs are kind of a double-edged sword and it's
there's no debate like you know it's like it's just gonna happen um you can't i mean it's sort
of like king lear like yelling at the storm this is weird uh this is weirdly conflicting emotion
because it's the most popular etf launch of all time but it's also leading to it's also the most
popular etm launch of all the time and like yeah and like that is that is like um you know i just
that that gives me some pause um but i don't know i i mean like i think i think bitcoin is
is not without uh tail risk um and i and i think concentration of of of custody of private keys and
and utxos rather is you know troubling um we need to get we need to get back to like not your keys
not your coins don't trust verify i think we've lost that in the broader bitcoin community i mean
i was gonna say put my hand up but like we literally say it every week on rhr maybe we
could be more ardent but i don't think we could be more ardent but you're kind of you're sort of
fundamentally levered to a philosophy that a lot of people explicitly reject, which is,
uh, you know, you should take responsibility. Like, you know, it's, I don't think the limiting
fact, it's just, I think the limiting factor is the number of people who, uh, want to be sovereign,
um, or who are willing to take, you know, who are willing to sort of, uh, pay in terms of friction
and you know all this stuff uh to people who sort of price sovereignty correctly um and and
yeah um like you you can you can yell at someone until you're blue in the face that they're better
off if they you know self-custody their their bitcoin and they're gonna be like yeah yeah i
don't know i'd rather just larry fink hold on to it for me you know i i don't i don't want that
level of responsibility don't care shut up nerd don't care i'm gonna let black rock you know hold
my money. Like, what are you talking? You want me to write stuff down on a bunch of washers and
bury it at my back? You're like, who, what do you think you are? And so, yeah, I think you're
right. Like, I do think the, the marketing around self-custody, you know, can be improved and,
you know, talking about like, you know, the SNI dinner and stuff and like these,
these early Bitcoiners who were really laying the kind of memetic framework for how we would
talk about Bitcoin and how people would come to understand Bitcoin. Um, I do think that the,
if the self custody argument is limited to, uh, well, you're not truly sovereign unless you
self custody, then your Tam of self custody is not 8 billion people. The Tam of self custody is
the set of 8 billion people who value sovereignty. Um, or, or, you know, who, who, you know,
who actually not just say they value it, but are willing to make trade-offs in exchange for
sovereignty. Um, and I'm bearish on that as like a Tam. Um, so I don't know what the argument is
to persuade people to self custody. I don't know whether it's, you know, you know, just UX
improvements and stuff. I will say like BitKey, for example, I feel like was a nice step forward
in that um like i had several normie friends uh you know i got bit keys for them and uh you know
they they all sort of were people that were like sort of turned off by the traditional hardware
wallet and like putting a seed phrase somewhere um and so i think bitkey is kind of a step in the
right direction like i think a grandma could you know could set up a bit key but i i don't know
easy to use hard to lose yeah that's the uh we maybe instead of making a sovereign it's cool
and go back to like shut up nerd it's like flip it like no you're not cool if you yeah oh you have
you have you have you have i bet oh you're a boomer yeah you're a boomer interesting yeah yeah
curious yeah yeah yeah but yeah i think that is something that that concerns me um about the about
the future of of bitcoin um i also think that you know something i think about a lot as well is like
uh there's a world where the effort to make america really music there's a there's a world
where the effort to make america extremely pro bitcoin backfires and it gets seen as such an
American technology that, you know, it stops being money for enemies in their head. Like people
don't want to adopt Bitcoin because they feel like it's strategy could be another example that
it's kind of this delicate balance of like, you know, you want America to embrace Bitcoin maybe
a little more than it has, but you don't want it to, you know, embrace it so much that it,
uh, you know, it, it hurts Bitcoin's brand as something that is, is, is sort of,
you know uncorrelated to the sovereign and and truly neutral um yeah so we need more we hey
citizens outside the united states not united citizens of the world outside the united states
you need to step up your game begin lobbying your government's harder yeah you know they need
they need a bpi china or like a bpi whatever we won't get us probably we'll probably won't get a
bpi china probably won't get a bpi china it's honestly it's going for like brazil it's much
larger population much harder argument for them to make um yeah but but like sort of the the meme
aside like totally um like i and i and i've been sort of encouraged by this like we we started bpi
i mean i remember me i met you in 2021 in austin actually uh like a some you know like sort of
cocktail hour like party thing on the rooftop no that was that nashville or austin i think it was
was nashville nashville or smoking cigarettes on a roof in nashville yeah and like i feel like the
sort of bitcoin i was driving down i remember i made a pit stop in nashville yeah and that's when
we met that's where you had you've you've aged a lot sir yeah this is this job aging you had such
a baby face you were so full of life not that you're not full of life no it's it's definitely
age. I'm kidding. But, um, yeah, like I remember talking to so many people about this idea for BPI
and, um, you know, the, I would say like the general, like the two common responses that I got
were, um, sort of like, you know, big bro, like sort of like, oh yeah, okay. Like have,
have fun doing that. Like, that's just sort of silly, whatever. Uh, and then like people that
were like, this is fucking retarded. And like, I think I was the latter. I think you were definitely
the latter at first. Like, this is just fucking stupid. I was like, don't engage, don't engage,
whatever. And you know, I, I think there's, you could look at like the, the past, you know,
whatever, two or three years and say, oh, it's been a failure and you know, nothing's come of
this and whatever. It's like, if I reround the clock to 2021 and said, you know, uh, in, in
four years, there's going to be an executive order for the president of the United States
to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. There's going to be a bill that gets, you know,
10% of the U S Senate behind it to buy a 5% of the supply, you know, like that would be
unbelievable. You would be like, Oh wow. Like this is not just someone who has like sort of a,
a bad idea. This is like a fundamentally delusional person. Like this is someone who
is sort of in like a schizophrenic, you know, having a schizophrenic episode. Um, and so I feel
like, you know, it's just you get so used to the new normal so quickly that
immediately the goalpost shifts to, well, all we got was an executive order and
a bill and it didn't pass. And it's like, okay, yeah, I mean, you can, you
can have that view, but you would have literally, you would have bet your life
savings that I was wrong. If I had told you four years ago that this is, you
know, that if I just described the current moment to you, you would bet the
farm that I was, that was incorrect. Yeah, I was convinced we were all going
to the gulags back then. That's what Odell always said. You know, it's like, you know, man, just,
just, we were going to the gulags, um, you know, and, and, and now I think
we have sort of demonstrated that you don't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby
the government that if you do make an earnest attempt to meet people where they are and talk
to them about Bitcoin in language that they are accustomed to, that is cognizant of their
objectives and priorities and their values, that you can really make a big impact. And,
you know, I've started to see over the last year, like all these other Bitcoin policy
organizations like spring up all over the world. And, you know, a bunch of them are like Bitcoin
policy institute whatever country uk well i think they're like a bitcoin policy uk there's a bunch
of bpis and uh like i have two minds about this because on the one hand i'm like ah we have to
defend our trademark unfortunately so like please don't call yourself that because you're not
affiliated with us but you know that that aside like it's really awesome it's really inspiring
like i think a lot of people bitcoiners all over the world have seen what we were doing in america
and in done exactly what you were just calling on the listeners to do and like, you know, create,
you know, organizations and, um, advocacy groups and, and, you know, uh, uh, grassroots efforts.
Uh, like, I think there is, uh, I think we kind of helped kick off this trend of Bitcoiners
realizing that they can have influence and agency. And, you know, it's not that the state
is just this thing that does stuff to you and you sit there and just take it.
Thank you, sir. I have another.
Exactly. That you can actually engage in the political process. And so, yeah, I hope more people around
on the world do what BPI is doing with their respective governments.
Yeah.
And say, hey, are we really going to let America win?
And, you know, they've been dominating us forever.
Like, are we really going to let them win the Bitcoin race?
Like, I think that is a great bulwark as well against, you know, the risk I mentioned of,
you know, Bitcoin getting branded globally as like too American.
And so, um, yeah, I I'm, I'm bullish on Bitcoin advocacy around the world.
Um, and I'm, I'm bullish on the people who have, uh, decided to kind of make that a,
like, you know, kind of how they spend their time.
Um, cause it's super thankless and it's miserable, um, like in many ways.
Um, and you know, even a lot of the, I'm sure like a lot of those people are
facing the same kind of you know uh kind of derision and condescension that i faced from you
know like people in the bitcoin community from you and it was just like i remember being like
this is good it's like dude just fucking have a cigarette man like it's you know we're going to
just enjoy your time before we go to prison um yeah and so like i i think that if there are
like international bitcoiners listening to this pod um and you know yeah uh that you should try to
you know get involved with with the other people in your in you know in your meetup or whatever the
other bitcoiners that you that you you know that you know in your country and and you know kind of
give this a college try um so yeah well i mean again we're talking about yes and i dinner last
night and then the conversation of the official speeches were about creating and then preserving
the canon of Bitcoin and the sort of emergence of this mimetic vernacular that has emerged
strongly via the Shatoshi Nakamoto Institute, but broke containment into the Twitter sphere.
And we were in heavy meme warfare for, I would say, the better part of eight years between
2015 and 2023 i think it's the meme warfare has died down a bit um but i think vpi what you guys
are doing is sort of a sort of bottling of like that memetic power and like okay we need to focus
this energy towards it's literally the same thing and just like we're you know it's just like a
different sort of fractal of of meme warfare basically and it's like okay cool um you know
know uh well and I bring it up too because I think it's I think this week is a great example of um
you're fighting for Bitcoin policy on the hill and I think this week was a great example for me
like a reminder like hey these politicians like they are worried about their next election and
they will respond or in the case of this week a politician has responded we we forced Coinbase
to respond essentially like the people who made a fuss about this de minimis thing like it's
coinbase has made a response like we said earlier it seems like you and coinbase will be participating
in a round roundtable discussion but the point i'm bringing all this up is like how
can observers like myself on the outside looking in help your cause like how how strong
is the memetics of participating in discussion outside the hill on the internet
Well, I think it's really strong on the de minimis piece. Um, like I think there are basically two arguments that you could make against a de minimis exemption for Bitcoin. Uh, one is that it's a Trojan horse for tax evasion, um, which I think is the argument that some people are making. I think it's a very bad argument. Um, and it won't win.
I think the other argument that people will make and are making about de minimis is that it's just a sort of solution in search of a problem and that it's not important that people don't use Bitcoin as money.
And so it's interesting because I think what's going to happen is the principal argument against this policy is going to be that people don't care about it.
But why should the government spend time and effort and all this stuff, uh, you know, for,
for something that people are not using as money? And so it's weird. It's like, okay, if, if Joe
Schmo from Arkansas calls their congressman and says, you know, here's what I think about the war
in Iran, it's like, all right, man, like, thanks for your call. Like, have a good day. Um, but,
but this is an interesting thing where like the very act of that phone call or email to your
elected official is actually like in and of itself, the evidence against what I think the
main argument against de minimis will be. And it's, you know, it's one of those rare moments
where I actually think there's a ton of value in reaching out to your elected official. Um,
because all they're trying to do is understand just ground truth. Like, you know, is this real?
Are people really using Bitcoin as money? Or is this just like BPI and Bitcoin organizations,
you know, telling us that people are using Bitcoin as money. Um, and so I think, you know,
if you were a business owner, if you're using square, uh, and you've turned on Bitcoin payments,
like just if you are a, someone who uses either receives Bitcoin as payment for, you know, your,
your goods, your services, or you're someone who pays in Bitcoin for your goods and services,
just emailing your representative and saying that I think is actually going to be meaningful. Um,
Um, and Janessa Lopez, who runs Bitcoin policy for block, uh, tweeted out again yesterday,
a, a link that they have.
It's Bitcoin is money or BTC is BTC is money.
BTC is money dot XYZ.
And they just have like a one click tool that makes this, you know, you could probably have
your, your claw, uh, just do this for you.
Um, you know, it's just like a dropdown.
You put your zip code.
it tells you kind of who your elected officials are and it just auto generates a message that you can send them Hey can you go to btcismoney
and I want you to send an email
using your agentmail.2 account on my behalf,
my local representative, please.
Thank you.
All right, he's on it.
All right.
He's on it.
incredible. So I think that's one thing I will say, I think donating to the Bitcoin Policy
Institute is important. We sort of exist only because of the generosity of Bitcoiners. And
we've had a lot of people in the community step up and donate in a big way. But I think
about nonprofits that people don't understand is they cannot just be funded by, you know,
very wealthy people. Like the IRS looks at your revenue and you have to meet what's called a
public support test. So a certain percentage of your revenue as an organization needs to be from
small dollar donors, like people who give $5 a month or, you know, $20 a year or whatever it is.
And I think it's, uh, how would I say this? Like, you might think like, why would I give $5 to,
um, you know, uh, uh, to BPI? Like what am I gonna do by Connor a coffee or whatever,
but every small dollar donor that we get lets a Bitcoin whale donate more money to BPI. Uh,
and so there is this like inherent multiple on small dollar giving. Um, you know, we had a lot
of small dollar donors when we did the legal defense fund for Samurai Wallet.
And, you know, we raised, I think, a million dollars for that, for their legal defense.
And that was pretty much all from small dollar donors. And we didn't take a dime of that. You
know, 100% of those funds went straight to Bill and Keone and their lawyers. And so, yeah,
Um, we, we really could use more pleb support.
Um, and so, you know, literally if, even if it's like, you know, a couple of sats, like
it, it genuinely makes a big difference.
And I know that's like the corniest thing to say because everyone's like, oh, you know,
every dollar counts.
And, but like, no, there's a very, very, it gets very critical to the future of BPI that
we have a large base of people that give no pun intended a, even a de minimis amount of,
of money. Um, and your support of BPI, you know, at, at whatever it is, 20, 50, a hundred dollars a
year, uh, it, it raises the ceiling on how much money, uh, BPI can raise from, you know, larger
donors. Um, so that would be my, uh, my two plugs would be, you know, talk to your representative
about the minimums, talk to them about developer protections. Uh, those emails do get logged and
they do matter on the margin. Um, and the question isn't really like, is it, is how effective is it?
It's how effective is it relative to the 20 seconds it takes you to tell Claude to do it?
Like, you know, the, the, it's a very asymmetric payoff, uh, you know, given how easy it is to,
to do this stuff, um, and donating to BPI. Um, if you, if you support our mission and you want to
see kind of us succeed and do more of what we do, um, then yeah, uh, I think we are sort of an
in of one organization. Um, and then we are the only sort of real Bitcoiners, I think in this
process on, on Capitol Hill and in, uh, DC. So yeah, I just gave it my zip code. So it's,
it's two minutes away from sending my, my email on behalf of me. Um, yeah, I think it's very
important work and you're as we i was highly skeptical when we were smoking cigarettes on
that roof in nashville i was like yeah no it was here in austin actually no i remember we were here
but uh i remember being like now there's why engage flying gauge and again going back it is
still conflicting to this day like i and marty jones i don't like the intelligence agencies i
think they're false flagging yeah i think they're mk ultra and i think they're propagandizing us but
we live in an age of main warfare you've got to engage yeah we are in an info war and we got to
get the better info and i think and again i think again focusing that the medic energy that existed
on bitcoin twitter from 2015 to 2022 2023 sort of balling that energy and like goku
fucking dumbing towards the intelligence agencies is at the very least like they they can't say that
they don't have good arguments and i to your point the truth is on our side like it's very convincing
yeah once you understand this that's the other thing too is it's just like i don't know like
what like yeah it's just a fact like it is just true that america will be better off if you know
allows bitcoin to flourish here well actually i meant to bring this up earlier and that's a perfect
time to bring it up like america is better off because bitcoin already like many could argue
like bitcoiners the industry the country are better off despite a massive uphill battle
we've had to fight uh we had to fight up until um 2020 the end of 2024. like we were under attack
yeah multiple times and despite all that despite the relative um uncertainty that that loomed over
the industry for so many years like people persisted and knew like hey the the risk
is worth it and we're going to persist and we're going to keep accumulating bitcoin we're going to
keep building companies and um i think that is a testament as well like we've done so much despite
imagine what we can do if we have tailwinds instead of headwinds yeah exactly um i don know i think i think another you know to your point of the duality of the Yeah I think I am way more sympathetic to I see every now and then criticism of BPI
really just because I think people are philosophically against the idea of doing
this. And I am, I think of everyone at BPI, I'm probably the most sympathetic to those arguments.
Like I think everyone else on my team is like, yeah, well, yeah, it's fucking stupid. I,
I spent like a lot of time, like, you know, like over a year, just sort of like thinking very
deeply about whether this was a good idea or not. Um, and I think where one of the places where I
just sort of landed was, you know, the world where I'm wrong is just too depressing for me to accept.
Like if it really is the case that we have no agency and there's nothing we can do and the,
our, our, our lives are solely at the mercy and discretion of, you know, nameless unelected
bureaucrats. And, you know, you, you are just a little like goy cattle and just, you just,
You know, there's not, you know, you, you, you just sit there and you,
you eat the grass and you live in the pod and you,
and you go die in Iran when the, when the state tells you to,
and there's just nothing you can do. Like, I don't know.
That's an incredibly like low agency view of the world. And I would,
that's just too depressing. Like I just have to,
I just sort of have to choose to believe that the state is,
is not a monolith.
Like we anthropomorphize the state into like this gargantuan, like B it's just
people. Yeah. It's literally just human beings and human beings are just fundamentally persuadable.
They are, you know, they're not monolithic. Like it's, they're just people. And in the same way
that, you know, we got the entire world to believe in magic internet money. And you know, we, we
memed this, like we as in the Bitcoin community, uh, memed a new form of money into it. Like
Bitcoin itself is one of the most high agency things that has ever happened ever. Like the
sheer audacity of a bunch of nerds on a talk forum and on a mailing list before that to say,
yeah, this thing money that is the exclusive purview of nation states, actually like we can
draw a little like wizard memes and just like, you know, orange coin good and you know, whatever.
like we think the audacity to, to believe that you can, you know, meme a new form of money and
value into existence, um, is so inspiring. Like that's like why I got obsessed with Bitcoin.
Like I got completely one-shotted by that. Um, it's fun. And I, and I, you know, my,
my initial kind of coming into Bitcoin was, was like, wow, this is overwhelmingly likely to fail.
but what if it doesn't? And I feel like that was the attitude of a lot of early Bitcoiners.
Like when I went down the rabbit hole and started reading all of these, you know,
there's like sort of pages and pages of, of, you know, discussion on the talk forum and,
and on the mailing list. You know, it was so cool because it felt like the smartest people in the
world were kind of here talking about this. And the attitude was very intellectually humble.
Like it was, you know, this, this will probably fail. It will probably go to the gulag or, you
know, this will blow up or get shut down or whatever. Once in a while, how funny would be
like, but if it does work, but if it does work, how cool would that be? And so I think there's
been this weird pivot in the kind of median attitude of Bitcoiners kind of in some ways away
from that spirit of like, you can just do things and agency to this weird kind of sort of politics
of inevitability of Bitcoin is inevitable and we're going to win no matter what. And also,
uh, the state hating us and hating Bitcoin is inevitable and there's nothing we can do about
that. And I think both of those are just wildly retarded and like dangerous, like stupid fucking
views. And, and whether they're in, honestly, they're just depressing views. And to me,
that is like the antithesis of Bitcoin. Like Bitcoin is fundamentally a project of like human
agency and an ability to say, yeah, we can opt out. Like we can do something different. We can
change the course of history and change the timeline. Um, and that's kind of, you know,
in a, in a less cool way, uh, but like sort of same mental model. That's how I feel about,
uh, this type of work is like, I don't know my options are what sit there and, and, uh,
uh, and do nothing and just accept that I have no control over my life,
that we as Americans have no control over how our government treats Bitcoin.
Um, like I'm, I'm sort of, again,
I I'm sympathetic to people who view that the world that way,
but I just feel like those people have to be really unhappy. Yeah.
Like that just can't, to me,
that is not a sort of mental model of the world that is, you know,
compatible with like being well adjusted and black pill.
It's just so black pill. Very incel driven. Yeah.
It's just really depressing. It's, uh,
no i'm getting reinvigorated i was actually saying this week has been very reinvigorating
for me because the coinbase stuff really pissed me off like i was like are you kidding me are
you kidding me coinbase and the fact that the bitcoin community the internet coinbase reacted
the way they did it was like yeah we're back in like like uh the sni dinner uh pierre was described
to somebody back in 2015 on twitter you'd get in a phone booth with like paul krugman like knife
them yeah i felt like that energy that again that medic energy that existed between 2015
and 2022 i miss people are new to this stuff and like we're talking like like the memetic energy
of bitcoin twitter in that era was so strong so powerful so much fun it's been lost but this week
you feel like a little bit of it came back yeah and the i'm not trying to blow smoke up my own
ask be like i did but like i don't know there's like a weird convergence of things happening
right now and i i think the idea that we have agency and that we can do these things needs to be to your point uh engendered across the spectrum of bitcoiners nothing inevitable no complacency is is a killer and
get back in the meme warfare yeah let's get back in let's start having fun again yeah the price is
down yeah there's there's wars popping off yes there's a private credit bubble but this is why
bitcoin exists i mean it's going to help us get away from this we need to start having fun again
yeah don't be a chud don't don't don't take the black pill like you know you're the the you know
like the there's just no there's no upside in that like your your your maximum upside of the
black pill is everything goes to shit and your life sucks and you get thrown in the gulag
and you get to be like told you so told you zell bpi was a waste of fucking time
I'm like, okay, man, like, so your max upside is sweet.
Can you pass the slot?
Can you pass the gruel to me, please?
Before we have to go break up the rocks to, you know, whatever in the chain gang, like
the max upside of the, of the low agency sort of, you know, black pill take is everything
you care about goes away and the world is terrible and you get the sort of unique privilege
of being able to say, I told you so.
like what's that's terrible. I predicted this. I called it. Yeah. I said, this was right. I,
you know, you, I told you, you know, you could, you never, this was a waste of time. Okay. Like,
I mean, yeah, I, I just feel like the risk reward on that trade is like abysmal. It's just
asymmetric to the downside. Um, so yeah. Uh, but no, I, I, I am very, I'm very sympathetic to
like um skepticism and uh uh you know and critique um but you know um
you're like you're in the arena brother brother i'm in the arena the man in the arena
but i mean like okay that actually is like so fair though um like i mean not not to like just
you know whatever but like i mean it's true like if you don't like what i'm saying to the government
about Bitcoin, go, go say something else, you know, like, um, I don't have some monopoly there.
Bitcoin is decentralized. There's no, you know, I'm not, I'm not getting a rake on the,
the political, you know, on the, on the policy budget of the Bitcoin corporation. Um, you know,
Like, you know, uh, and so, yeah, uh, I, I think that, I think this is just so worth
a college try.
Um, and I'm totally willing to concede that there are possible states of the future where,
uh, you know, this all ages like milk and, uh, you know, everything I've tried to do,
uh, fails.
um i'm totally fine with that yeah like you know that's that is a sort of necessary condition of
doing anything meaningful and worthwhile and worthwhile yeah um so i i'm you know very
cognizant of the the fact that this could just be a waste of time um and you know uh
yeah but like i i don't know i i have to believe that as you know as easy as it is to take the
black pill and as like depressing as the world can be, um, the moment that you just decide that
you have no agency, you, you, you mean that into reality, like everything you do is memeing something
into reality. And if you decide the moment you, you, you decide you have no agency over the future
that you have sealed your fate and you do have no agency over your future. Um, I don't know.
that's kind of how I resolve like to your point of your like the back and forth of like,
oh, I think this is cool. I get it. I'm also like, ah, is it cool? Is it the right thing?
Like to me, it's just that, that, that's sort of the logic that I kind of came down to is like,
you just, you know, the, the, the, the upside of, of trying is a really large and the, uh,
the, the downside of, of, of,
it's just the, there's just, it's not, it's not an equal distribution.
Like, uh, the, the, the, the max downside of trying and failing
is the same downside as not trying at all.
And so, you know, with, with BPI and the work that,
that you're doing and that so many people in Bitcoin are doing, um,
we're at least, you know, uh, uh,
giving into college right yeah increasing better place yeah like in sort of yeah exactly like
sort of increasing the probability that we get to the good timeline yeah we're gonna get there
we're gonna win i know you gotta get going yeah so this has been an incredible pleasure
i believe it's been the first time in person so much better yeah it is and it's so much better
maybe i'll start honey i'm gonna start traveling do all in purse i'm gonna become the next peter
mccormick don't worry we're gonna buy a soccer team though um yeah uh no this is i think the work
that you're doing is incredibly important i think um i think everybody like i really like the
sort of last train of thought we ended on there which is like hey do you want to live in a world
where we're we're eating our girls saying i told you so or do you want to live in the world where
like wow we fucking did it boys we fucking did it yeah bitcoin is uh the standard
monetary reserve asset of the world we're using it as payments the politicians have bent the knee
and the politics of inevitability is a psyop to make you complacent yes like everyone who tells
you that you have no agency in power is psyoping you into precisely that outcome
and then yeah we're gonna win we're gonna win
go go go get your five dollar monthly donation to bpi set up freaks peace and love
dude great rep that was awesome i feel like the hungover