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You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

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You talk about a Fed just gone nuts.

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All the central banks going nuts.

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So it's all acting like safe haven.

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I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency,

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Bitcoin wins.

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In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

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I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

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If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

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Yeah, Al, everything is fake.

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Really, everything is made of plastic.

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It's covered over, papered over in some function.

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It's all fake.

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So is it paper Bitcoin summer, plastic summer?

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It's all of them rolled into one.

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It really is.

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The only thing we can trust is the ledger itself and the private keys.

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that give you access to the utxos you hold is that the only truth we have left in this world

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i'm one of the only ones i think now everyone's roaming around with ai devices i mean you've heard

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this from other programs and shows you know the intimate relationships people have with their

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chatbots is insane and i don't think we've put out a good number of you know resources data

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polling on this stuff but i think people are in the movie her it's like happening in real time

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especially with this new grok model the waifu waifu is out i don't pay enough for this yet on the on

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the x so i couldn't tell you too much about it for the moment but uh probably where i am there's

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gonna be a lot of people roaming around the halls uh looking at their phones and uh communicating

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with their new companion great movie by the way companion if you haven't seen that one

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about ai robots and uh sort of the future of companionship uh there's too many of these

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movies about AI are very dystopian. There's very few that are like tech positive. This one actually

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had a gleam of positivity. So one thing to recommend. Yeah, I think as with all things in

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life, everything in moderation, except for nicotine. But the like I've been using it,

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I'm not gonna lie. I've used all the models, Chachi Bt, Grock, Claude. And they're helpful,

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But I use them in moderation for research purposes only, and they're very valuable.

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It helped me do research for this episode on Earth.

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A lot of things that you've talked about in the past that I wasn't aware of that we'll probably talk about during this discussion.

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But I agree. I saw your tweet earlier.

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I think we are, as a society, highly disregarding the need for end-to-end, locally hosted, encrypted sort of chats with AI because I think that's very important.

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I use Maple AI, which isn't locally hosted, but they use secure enclaves in the cloud to make sure that your prompts, your inputs are end-to-end encrypted.

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Maple AI has no way to see what you're actually chatting with the model about.

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I think that's going to be very important that there's a section of the market that caters to that need, which is going to be increasing moving forward.

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I mean, it's an open space for entrepreneurs because I know you've seen it. And there's so many anecdotes of people who go to the doctor and they just chat with them. And like in the corner on the browser, there's a tab there. Chat GPT. If you were to go over there and look, are there patient scans? Are there questions? Because doctors are supposed to be very caught up on the literature, you know, journal articles and everything else.

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I don't know if many normal, you know, family, doctor, general practitioners are.

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Probably AI tools would be very good for them.

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I just don't know how much information they're inputting into things like chat GPT that relate to your own patient information or scans.

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And there's a lot of people doing that now.

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I think people just have to think about it.

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And it's much like your own money, right?

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Where are you going to bank?

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Where are you going to host your keys?

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Where are you going to put all of that cash, all of your savings?

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And we have to start thinking about our data a lot, too.

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I think this has been obfuscated by cloud computing and people not even understanding what data centers are or data, the cloud generally.

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And we're seeing it more and more.

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There's a lot of debates across the U.S. about data centers and building up and we need things for AI.

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And people are like, why do we need all this stuff?

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It's all in the cloud.

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Like, well, what do you think the cloud is?

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But it's someone else's computer.

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We've got to build this stuff.

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So there'll be a lot more debates on that.

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I'm hoping we have an interesting point in at least the country on the federal level because Trump is there and he does suck up a lot of the oxygen and does lead a lot of the conversations.

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And he's been very pro innovation and AI.

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He's a bit muddy on Bitcoin and crypto stuff, as you can see this week.

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It's crypto week.

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Marty, if you didn't see that.

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Gotta love crypto week.

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It's a big week.

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Yeah, crypto week.

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So he's definitely taking a lot of that.

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It would be such a shame if the entire Bitcoin agenda of Trump, which maybe it's different from the average Bitcoiner, if all of that is sunk because Democrats did not like Trump coin.

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And that's what it seems like is happening, unfortunately.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. So to add context for the buildup to this conversation for anybody listening, Yael is a fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute.

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We met last month in DC, actually sat next to each other at dinner, at the BPI dinner after the event and had a great conversation.

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I wanted to bring you on here because I think you have a well-rounded understanding of many things going on, not just in Bitcoin, but energy, AI.

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And it's funny, as we're starting this conversation, I'm being reminded of the last conversation I had with Matt Pines, who's also at BPI.

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And we're going to have some F-16s flying over here.

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So please, please don't be startled by the engine noise that comes in.

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Pretty cool.

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They're about to figure out why health care ain't free.

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Yeah, they've got a fuel plane in front of them, too.

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But I think it's interesting because all these topics, Matt and I talked about it the last time he was on the show.

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They're beginning to intertwine, like AI, energy, Bitcoin.

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Like they're all meeting at this singularity almost.

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And I think it's important that we get policy right for all three of these industries as they begin to converge into some sort of homogenous – I don't want to say homogenous sector.

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but they're all going to interplay with each other to a certain extent.

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Yeah, I think so. And ideally, what we want to forward are good principles,

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because the last thing that you really want when you're actually creating laws is just

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paper upon paper upon paper of complex rules that are very complicated, that are very long.

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And I think I'm doing policy as I have done for the last decade. You just realize that everything

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that people are upset about, you know, stuff is already illegal. It's already on the books.

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And they just want to adapt the old rule to something new when realistically you just need

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an interpretation. You don't need an entirely new law, something else on the books. Like if you look

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at the entire federal code, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of pages, you know, no human

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being could read through this right now. I mean, you can only do it realistically with an AI at this

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moment. But we have to try to figure out what are the main principles that we want to advocate for?

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What are the things that we would like to see? And what are the things that are public behavior

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or public rules and things that are private behavior and private rules? And I think for

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many different industries, people get very caught up in that public, like public obligations,

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because whenever you write new rules in the government, your point is you're restricting

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the freedoms of individuals, of businesses, of people. Whereas when you have private regulation,

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you have people competing, you know, there are essentially just the rules of the market and they

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have to provide the best product, do the right thing, figure out how they can offer the lowest

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prices for consumers, all the rest. And we focus so much on that public thing that it just constrains

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more individuals, more individuals, more companies, more entrepreneurs. So they really have to figure

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out, you know, if they want to start a business, if they want to do something that's AR Bitcoin

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related, they essentially need to have a lawyer on staff to like tell them, is this compliant?

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Can I do this? You know, Google Bitcoin guys would love that. It's just compliant. And I think we

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want to figure out what are the good principles that we want to advocate for, particularly for

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Bitcoin. You know, there's a lot of crypto lobbying in D.C. I've seen a lot of it. There's a lot of

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money. Every single PR firm on K Street has gotten some quiff of crypto money, which normally

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as opposed to Bitcoin. So you can read through the tea leaves there. But it's all about these

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like super complex rules that come out about defining X and Y. And most Bitcoiners just want

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to be left alone. And we want to know we're not going to go to jail and we can use this stuff for

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ordinary things, that we can use it to get a loan for a house, that we could buy a car,

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that we can get paid, that we can just live life. And I think this is the key difference that does

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open up in the crypto versus Bitcoin policy realms is that Bitcoiners want actual real stuff

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and want to use it in the real world, real world. And then the crypto world is more in a

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kind of cloud-esque things of they're creating new industries and bureaucracies and new layers.

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And it's super complex, but there's a lot of money that's funneling it. And unfortunately,

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I think that'll kind of carry the day in DC for a long while, long after Trump.

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new rube goldberg machines that in my mind really don't make any sense uh if i'm being frank here

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no and that is the frustrating thing about being a bitcoiner who wants all the things

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that you described and i was actually happy i mentioned this on rabbit hole recap last week

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but one of my favorite talks at the bpi event dc last month was alex gladstein particularly

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the three minute section where he said on capitol hill like you need to be specific like

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When you say crypto, it doesn't mean Bitcoin and everything else.

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It doesn't even mean everything else either.

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Be specific.

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Are you talking about Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, Ripple, God forbid, whatever it may be?

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And I think it's important that DC really does create those demarcations between the different assets

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because I think they're ultimately trying to achieve different things.

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And Bitcoin overwhelmingly trying to achieve something grand in what I think is incredibly beneficial for the world.

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And I'm sure you know this already, but I think the rest is just pure, pure noise, pure scams, pure easy money scams.

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I do have a new term for you.

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This came out of the Clarity Act, which is one of the bills that will be debated on here in Congress this week.

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uh bitcoin is technically according now to the proposed law a so-called mature blockchain system

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is it the only mature is there another mature blockchain system so the i have the document

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here so basically like the definition of a mature blockchain essentially it means that there's no

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control um and then essentially you cannot have any one person who has more than it says 20 stake

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in the network uh so it's talking about the tokens so principally i guess bitcoin i mean

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they're talking about commodities versus securities and kind of making this whole

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difference but this mature block i don't know who pushed for this i've never heard of this before

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uh certainly you know this is not in any any meetings i've ever had with legislators talking

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about mature blockchains i think it's interesting maybe it is something that you need if they just

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mean the ones that are decentralized and the ones that are essentially open source and can't become

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humundeered by a committee of 12 people or like a board of directors.

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I guess that's what they mean.

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But interesting that we're going to be stacking our mature blockchain network and system the

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rest of the summer.

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Yeah.

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It's very frustrating because, I mean, what would you say to the extent that or the confidence

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that you have that these politicians and the lobbyists behind them and the lawyers behind

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them writing these bills actually understand these things from first principles?

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yeah i think there's not much understanding you know they know it's a technological thing and

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they're basically the existing rules make things difficult i think that's the extent of it some

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people might know because they this is the example that everyone brings up is oh i have an exchange

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on my phone i've got coinbase or something and i tried to do this and i couldn't send this amount

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until i verified at a different tier and i had to take a selfie and it's like well that's because

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of the bank secrecy act and that's because of the things that you've done and i i think there you

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haven't had too much information. What I think is a good thing, which many people might call the

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weird corrupt system, is that a lot of people who were in government, who are staffers, are all now

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working in the industry a bit. So they're working for various wallets or various crypto exchanges,

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some Bitcoin firms. So at least there, they're coming to learn a lot more. And then they're

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going back to their former colleagues and just like teaching them a bit, showing them. So I'm

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not super blackpilled on that. I think definitely there's a lot more knowledge, more information.

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The easier that developers make tools and apps and everything else, we can actually show people

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and it's a lot easier to do. I mean, the number of times that I've just showed people

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mempool.space so they can understand a bit more about the blockchain and how it works and

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all the different transactions that are being confirmed, that is really helpful.

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and realistically if we can get a bit more of that it just means that they're not going to

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push forward bad rules because that's realistically what we want that i've done this a lot at the

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state level and talking to state legislators or talking in media is that you know the goal of

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people who are in bitcoin policy is not that we want you know the rule that it's only bitcoin and

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we win right it's just let us be free and restrict the government from doing more to make our lives

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harder to use this stuff. That's principally it. It's a negative freedom argument rather than a

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positive freedom. We're not looking to have the license to do something. We just want to have our

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enshrined right that we already have be protected so that developers don't go to jail for creating

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decentralized tools that we really like. And I think that attitude goes back to that principle

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that I mentioned. The more that we can do that with things like AI, the less that we're going

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to have a super regulatory regime like in the European Union where they have the precautionary

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principle and you always have to essentially get permission before you launch something or you have

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to be sure that everything is in order, no one's going to be harmed. And I think the reason why the

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United States is different and we have a different attitude for it and we have a republic is because

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we've turned that on a dime and we say, well, no, the most important thing is you have rights that

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are natural to you as an individual. And we as a government, the only time we can step in and

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restrict you from doing something is if you're harming other people. And that, because it's

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ingrained in the Constitution, because it's ingrained in the Declaration of Independence,

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it does make things a bit different here which is why in all of my work wherever I go still in the U you just have like the healthiest of democratic systems We actually able to do this stuff have a voice and I think have good principles behind a lot of it

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So however bad it might feel that people don't know how to send a Bitcoin transaction and change addresses and everything else,

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we still have the opportunity in the system and the infrastructure to actually make that case and say, hey, just leave us alone.

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Let the people build, let the innovators create products that users and consumers want.

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So I'm much more hopeful on that than I probably have been.

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Well, let's dive into that because I'm very happy you brought it up because that's the next thing I wanted to talk about.

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The one phrase that stuck out to me from our conversation at dinner in D.C. last month was negative freedom versus positive freedoms.

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And you were describing it in the context of your efforts at the state level and some of the bills that have been passed there.

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I think from first principles, just like really dive into this concept of negative versus positive freedoms, just describing that from first principles and then applying it to things Bitcoiners want, whether it's the ability to participate in collaborative self-custodial transactions and coin joins or the ability to run a node or a miner, whatever it may be.

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Yeah, I think the most important one, we go right back to the origin. We go to the OG. We go back to the Constitution, First Amendment. Congress shall make no law. That's it. That's that's the ultimate negative freedom. It just says, like, we cannot legislate in this domain when it comes to your speech, when it comes to your religion, when it comes to your freedom of assembly.

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So that started the trend of limiting the actions not of people, but of the government, of this common institution that, yes, we are building.

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We are building the government at this moment, but we've set up these safeguards to defend your individual rights from the over encroachment of this authority that we're building.

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And I found that realistically throughout the years, you had most laws that really would comply with this.

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And they say, well, the government can regulate that or can't get involved in this scenario.

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The courts began to interpret things, you know, interstate commerce.

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OK, well, if you have your riverboat and you're selling commodities, you know, from Missouri and you go over to this other state, maybe there we can have some regulatory rules.

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and at the state level, you know, people don't really know that many of their localities,

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their cities, their municipalities, I know we're all very Jeffersonian about our system and we say

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local is better. But to be frank, a lot of localities are just absolute tyrannies and

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they're not very well run. Many people are corrupt. If you just look at any construction company or

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orange cones that you have in your street and you wonder why they've been there for so long,

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just look at the contract of the construction company and the city commissioner who signed off

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on it. There's probably a family connection or something. So one thing that we started looking

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at is at the states, you do have a good amount of ability to constrain various levels of government.

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And this is something that I've learned more from. Realistically, I would say in the 1990s,

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you had a lot of these preemptions. So in the state of Michigan, the Republicans, when they

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got their small majority. I don't even know what it was, like probably late 90s.

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They had a majority for the first time in a long time, and they found it their duty

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to constrain the localities and municipalities from doing bad stuff and dumb stuff,

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such as banning plastic straws. So they come up with preemptions and say, hey, the government,

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local governments, local jurisdictions cannot make rules on the use of plastic straws.

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It sounds petty, but realistically, what it means is that you're actually protecting the

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rights of people to use plastic straws from a different level of government from the locality

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that would otherwise do that rule. This is the same thing in Texas. Austin City Council does

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some really weird stuff with their laws. Texas finds ways to constrain them. Either they tie it

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to funding or anything else. And I think that's the better way that we can do Bitcoin policy as

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well. We do not need to have a full scope Bitcoin law that's figured out and drawn out. I mean,

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realistically figure out where the government and the state is intervening when it comes to Bitcoin

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usage and Bitcoin users and just restrict the government from doing that. It's much better than

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a positive law approach, which would be people must do X or Y rather than the government is

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refrained from doing X or Y. And this mentality shift with how we do policy is also very advantageous

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because it's protected for a longer time. This is the problem with many of the things that Trump

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is doing is it's not actually enshrined in law. You know, they can turn around and just like do

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an executive order day one. You know, I don't know, 100 Biden is president or whomever,

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the next Democrat. He come in and 86 everything. And we have to think always from a negative rights

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approach because it's how the Constitution is built, how the American system is built.

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And when you're living in a free society, you want to have all your laws like that.

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It's about constraining the powerful institution that is the government,

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of which we're all forced to play a part, right? We're not forced to work for a company,

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but we're forced to pay taxes and be in the government and everything else.

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The more we can have that approach, I think would just be a lot better.

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There are a lot of activists who go around different states and want to have positive

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Bitcoin rules and have this for Bitcoin and like a special tax exemption for this Bitcoin mining

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thing. It's just not principally where I think we should go. I think it's a waste of our resources

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and realistically will just be repealed and done away with and probably creates more opposition

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than support. And I think that's why people like Alex, who are doing great work, elevating the

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stories of human rights activists is super important. People who are entrepreneurs and

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developers who are launching stuff on GitHub or in app stores every day are important. And then

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also the people using that stuff for everyday use, whether they own a hair salon or, you know,

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some kind of doggy daycare and they're accepting Bitcoin or, or now apparently where I am every

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Steak and Shake. So it's good to see. You're in Steak and Shake country, sir.

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I am. I was very surprised. It's kind of everywhere. And Bitcoin lightning is the

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native token of the Steak and Shake. Who would have known? It's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing.

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I went to college in Chicago and played club lacrosse and we would caravan through the Midwest

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and Steak and Shake was our, was our staple road trip stop. So very proud to see that they

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adopted bitcoin they wanted a bit maha with it they got the tallow now i've seen the ads they

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did a eat more chicken ad that's supposed to be making fun of chick-fil-a it's just like have more

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tallow have more kale have more tallow and they're selling it too they're selling the tallow by the

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jar now it's really a steak chick really making the comeback riding uh the bitcoin marketing boost

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to the best of their abilities it's beautiful to see but as it pertains to negative rights and

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positive rights and our efforts to get good legislation in from the negative rights perspective

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for Bitcoin? How would you rate the success of that journey up to this point?

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I think it would depend. I mean, if you just look at a simple one is anti-CBDC rules.

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So many states have passed these and they've essentially just restricted

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any state agency from requiring or accepting a central bank digital currency, which again,

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does not do away with the issue, but it just it ties their hands. And the more that you can tie

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the hands of government from doing something, that means that people's liberties are somewhat

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preserved and good. And that's what they're voting on in D.C. as well. It's just sort of

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an anti-CBDC thing that'll be enshrined. I think there's a lot more to do. Again, there's a lot of

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I would call them the positive, positive rights activists who are in the crypto industry,

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you know, want to have certain implementations. And this is stuff that we don't really see in

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the headlines, you know, want to force blockchain usage in various government agencies,

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and their company will be the blockchain. And there's a lot of lobbying for that stuff.

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That's pretty gross, if you think about it. It's not really highlighted because it's in

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small appropriations bills. It's in, you know, weird committees nobody's ever heard of.

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And that is essentially jockeying to make XY token like the token of the HHS or the token of

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the Defense Department. And it's not something that you need to have and that you need to have

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neutral money. And we need to have our law be neutral as well. And too much of the positive

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stuff says we should have this company follow this procedure with this law. And there must be

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one example is they use you have to use a qualified custodian, which I think everyone

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has accepted and financial regulation is normal. And that'll be the same with crypto brokerages and

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all the rest. But, you know, a lot of this stuff, they're setting up too many guardrails and putting

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up too many that make it so that it is somewhat crony capitalism. And I think if you have negative

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rights regulation, you avoid all crony capitalism. You increase competition by not, you know,

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enshrining certain rules that people need to have in order to provide services to the government or

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anything else. And you just constrain government from doing stuff. So we could always be better.

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Look, the U.S. is always going to be the better place for this. I'm not sure how much state

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legislation will matter because realistically for for Bitcoiners, all that matters is our ability to

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get Bitcoin, earn Bitcoin and then spend Bitcoin. And a lot of that is tax policy, unfortunately.

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some of it is in money transmission license rules and things that are happening with the bank

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secrecy act at the federal level which according to the rules this week uh this is what i read if

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if every crypto exchange so-called or commodity broker of the mature blockchain system they would

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be considered a financial institution which sucks for other regulations they'll have to follow

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But it does mean that the Bank Secrecy Act threshold that is applied to crypto exchanges, Bitcoin exchanges right now is like $2,500.

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So anything you send that is Bitcoin that you withdraw over $2,500, there's a suspicious activity report filed that would now be raised to $10,000.

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Which, again, small advantage.

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Ideally, we would do away with Bank Secrecy Act.

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It's a whole other conversation.

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But it's small improvement.

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So we're never going to have a huge window change through policy, anything else.

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I think it really just comes down to instituting rules that prohibit and restrict government agents from doing too much.

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Obviously, the laws against fraud are already on the books.

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We can apply them easily.

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Extortion already on the books.

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All this stuff is already illegal.

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Just let us use our money and do it in a way so that we're not penalized.

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It's getting better.

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All right.

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It's good to hear it's getting better.

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But you brought up the Bank Secrecy Act and said it's a whole other conversation.

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Let's have the conversation because this is a topic I've been beating the drum about in the newsletter and on the show for well over six or seven years now.

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At this point, it is the boogeyman in the corner of the industry that really forces the hands of industry participants to bend over backwards to comply with something that I would argue.

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didn't even achieve the goals it set out to achieve when it was originally enacted into law

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in the 70s and is being applied to to an asset in bitcoin that really doesn't fit into the

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framework that was set forth decades ago yeah and realistically set up in the 70s 1975

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the same dollar amount it's like how much is the dollar devalued and how much has inflation gone up

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since 1975 and we're still on that ten thousand dollar limit so it what it makes the bank secrecy

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act so bad it has nothing to do with secrecy and uh realistically it's just a bank regulation

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and you'd be surprised to learn that most banks actually hate this they actually don't like it

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they don't like complying with it it's very burdensome they need to hire entire departments

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that only do compliance related to it. And it's enforced in a way that they can track so-called

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illicit finance, bad behavior, criminal activity. But again, it's they're sending reports preemptively

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to the government. So every transaction that's over $10,000 essentially has to have the suspicious

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activity report issued that goes into the central database at FinCEN, a financial crimes enforcement

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network where they're supposed to sift through it. And if you ever have one of these filed on you,

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it's like a notch on your kind of internal credit score. So it deems that you are as a consumer,

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someone who's kind of a, you know, hard to deal with. And it means that you are not going to be

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able to open up as many bank accounts or take out a loan or do anything else. And it may have

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nothing to do with what you're transacting. It's just the amount and where you send the money

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doesn't even matter. And this was actually ramped up a lot by Trump in the last couple of months.

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Basically, anybody in a border state, if you are sending any transaction that's over like $200,

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they want to have it. So you have suspicious activity reports that are filed. So anybody

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who happens to live in Arizona or Texas or Nevada or California and all of the northern states as

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well. And what the Bank Secrecy Act really does is forces this compliance and is realistically

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weaponized. And we learned this through Jim Jordan, who's the congressman from Ohio,

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had this entire government weaponization subcommittee. It was covered a bit in the

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headlines, but they produced this report that basically said that so much of the Bank Secrecy

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Act was actually weaponized against ordinary people, people who bought guns, people who went

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to Trump rallies, just people were buying things online, people were sending money to their

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grandmother. They were all thrown into this database and then at some point were denied

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financial services. And that is not because the government forced these banks to do so,

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but it's because the banks didn't want to deal with the additional compliance.

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And what the weaponization committee said is like, look, we got to figure out a way to get

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rid of the Bank Secrecy Act or ratchet up that amount. They were looking at it through a more

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MAGA, you know, going after President Trump lens. But, you know, you call a spade a spade.

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And I think that was a good momentum for the movement. Senator Mike Lee has a really good bill called the Saving Privacy Act, which I think alleviates all of this. And thanks to some of our efforts, also includes a protection for self-custody of Bitcoin.

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But what it would do is just essentially get away with the ability to send the reports to FinCEN and the government.

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Banks would still have to keep records, but we would not force the suspicious activity reports to be sent to the government because that just creates all this additional compliance and is financial surveillance.

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So this is being talked about also on the left.

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The Democrats actually not far from where you are There the New Jersey Senator Andy Kim So he is super anti Bank Secrecy Act I don know where he coming from for that

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You know, he was a guy who was big into the drone stuff that happened over the Christmas break.

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But he's come out in hearings and said, look, this is hurting ordinary people.

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He's not necessarily a Bitcoin guy, but he talks to his constituents and ordinary people who try to open up accounts.

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And he said this stuff is actually hurting people.

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There's a lot of reporting requirements and it puts people in danger because their information somehow can also get leaked.

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You know, you don't have the best databases at these banks, particularly local credit unions have to file this stuff.

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So, again, that's a positive rights thing, right?

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They've made this law that forces banks to do X or Y, keep tabs on on their customers and they have to keep all that data.

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There's no requirement that it be encrypted.

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There's no requirement that it be held in some secure location.

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It's just there.

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And I don't know how many you've seen, but you've seen it either on NOS or on X.

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There's exchange hacks that happen all the time, bank hacks, the photo of people holding

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the ID.

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That stuff gets out into the ether.

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And if people hold significant amounts of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, they become a target.

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And we don't talk enough about that, too, because a lot of younger people who are millennials,

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oftentimes minorities, have been stacking sats for a long time.

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And they've done it because they haven't trusted the system. And if they've been using a lot of these centralized exchanges, which, again, points to the kind of reason you should be always very cautious, that could be very dangerous to them. And who knows what could happen?

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So overall, I think Bank Secrecy Act reform is being discussed more and more on both left and right, which is a very good thing.

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I think if somebody got in the room with Trump and just explained it a bit more, he'd probably come out against it tomorrow.

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But we'll see what happens. But but for right now, removing that as well from the from the Bitcoin conversation also helps because it is harming people in the normal non-Bitcoin economy, which will be a statistic we'll see at some point by the Federal Reserve.

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Like what is the Bitcoin economy and what's the non-Bitcoin economy?

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But it is harming ordinary people a lot.

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And I think there is some good impetus to change that.

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Yeah, it's completely insane.

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I think somebody in the industry ran the numbers too.

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I mean, the whole reason that it exists in the first place is to prevent money laundering.

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And it's not effective at doing that.

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I think the last stat I saw was probably three or four years ago.

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Who knows how fresh this is or how more advanced the government has gotten to be being able to leverage the advantages that Bank Secrecy Act affords them from an information perspective to get better at this.

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But I highly doubt it.

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But some like point one percent of money laundering is actually stopped by Bank Secrecy Act suspicious suspicious activity reports.

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Yeah. And this could be done by by the banks themselves.

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I mean, look, they don't want they don't want to be held liable for any of this stuff.

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I think that's what a lot of people don't don't think about in the conversation is that the banks hate this part because it's just additional compliance.

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Like they're just looking out for their own backs and their own skin when they give people credit cards and accounts and everything else like they have to protect their own assets.

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So, of course, they're going to implement their own systems of kind of control and making sure things are nobody's being scammed or something.

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But Bank Secrecy Act just introduces this additional layer through this very weird system where they have to file all of these transactions through this old school system.

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And it's just additional work and doesn't really do anything.

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Nick Anthony at Cato is really good on this because he's gone through the number of reports filed each year.

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It's like millions upon millions of these suspicious activity reports that no human being could ever review, but that are filed, that are there, that are in a database that could be activated if somebody is part of an investigation or something happens.

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And I think we have to also think of the industry perspective of these guys have to comply with this stuff.

391
00:34:51,970 --> 00:34:56,830
And man, I've gone to European like Bitcoin and blockchain events and stuff.

392
00:34:56,830 --> 00:35:02,850
it's like there's a reason that 75 percent of the sponsors are you know compliance organizations

393
00:35:02,850 --> 00:35:08,510
you know it's like identity providers and stuff it's like that's where they're forced to buy this

394
00:35:08,510 --> 00:35:13,690
stuff they're forced to get it they're forced to use it and implement chain surveillance as much as

395
00:35:13,690 --> 00:35:19,150
possible this is the way that the rules are set up right now and if we actually want to effectively

396
00:35:19,150 --> 00:35:24,290
help people and allow people to have their freedom again you got to figure out a way to curtail that

397
00:35:24,290 --> 00:35:28,470
and remove it really from the remit of the federal government at all.

398
00:35:28,870 --> 00:35:30,530
So hopeful, getting there.

399
00:35:31,690 --> 00:35:34,830
Are you optimistic that Mike Lee's bill or something else?

400
00:35:34,910 --> 00:35:37,690
I would love to just repeal it outright, if possible.

401
00:35:38,250 --> 00:35:39,850
Yeah, and that's kind of what this does.

402
00:35:39,930 --> 00:35:41,650
It goes through, I mean, it does a lot more.

403
00:35:41,950 --> 00:35:43,750
There's all this stuff related to the SEC

404
00:35:43,750 --> 00:35:45,850
and this like audited financial trail

405
00:35:45,850 --> 00:35:48,450
and just all the different things

406
00:35:48,450 --> 00:35:50,630
that if you happen to be a public company,

407
00:35:50,630 --> 00:35:53,210
you have to deal with, which is pretty onerous.

408
00:35:53,210 --> 00:35:57,350
I'm not rich enough to be in that position, but but, you know, this stuff is very onerous as well.

409
00:35:58,330 --> 00:36:09,150
The problem is that most of these pieces of legislation are very good, but they're tied to politicians whose wins are always, you know, the sales are going in a different direction.

410
00:36:09,870 --> 00:36:12,630
So Mike Lee is kind of a MAGA guy right now.

411
00:36:12,730 --> 00:36:18,470
People like him, but they didn't like him because he had a bill to sell off some federal lands, which I think you talked about.

412
00:36:18,470 --> 00:36:24,810
so it's it's hard because you have that stuff happening all at once and sometimes it always

413
00:36:24,810 --> 00:36:30,890
just takes a crisis or an outrage some kind of raging moment to change things so that's why i

414
00:36:30,890 --> 00:36:34,390
said it's going to take like trump coming out one day it's like man that bank secrecy thing you know

415
00:36:34,390 --> 00:36:39,990
that really sucks and that's why the trump uh sons when they've gone to the bitcoin conference and

416
00:36:39,990 --> 00:36:47,050
stuff uh when apart from saying uh you're welcome for pumping the price which whatever uh they always

417
00:36:47,050 --> 00:36:51,790
say too, it's like we were we were as a family targeted by the system and we had our accounts

418
00:36:51,790 --> 00:36:56,490
closed. And that's why we looked at things like Bitcoin. And I think the more that that message

419
00:36:56,490 --> 00:37:03,110
is kind of heard, that will also have an impact. So I'm not sure there's there at least there's

420
00:37:03,110 --> 00:37:07,330
one Republican, I believe one Democrat who are on board now. They're talking more to other people

421
00:37:07,330 --> 00:37:14,050
to get the kind of bill going. It's just. You never really know. And, you know, I thankfully

422
00:37:14,050 --> 00:37:18,510
never worked in Congress, you know, as a staffer or something, I probably would have lost all my

423
00:37:18,510 --> 00:37:24,270
hair. But overall, the more that people can discuss these issues, maybe it gets cut up into

424
00:37:24,270 --> 00:37:29,510
various pieces and we go for just an outright appeal or limiting. It'd take a bit of time,

425
00:37:29,510 --> 00:37:36,450
but I think Trump can open the Overton window on that. Yeah, let's do it, Donnie. I know you

426
00:37:36,450 --> 00:37:41,150
listen to the show. It's time. I heard he's on Fountain. You know, he's he's actually earning

427
00:37:41,150 --> 00:37:46,570
sats while listening to you yeah i mean he's boosted us too it's uh it's incredible thank you

428
00:37:46,570 --> 00:37:54,430
um no like the other thing i'm not sure if you call it thomas massey's conversation with tia

429
00:37:54,430 --> 00:38:01,630
vaughn the other week that's one thing i wonder with all these individual bills like is the nature

430
00:38:01,630 --> 00:38:08,530
of what's happening on capitol hill these days and how anything gets passed such that it gets

431
00:38:08,530 --> 00:38:15,750
harder for specific bills like this to actually get passed? Do they have to get swept into an

432
00:38:15,750 --> 00:38:21,730
omnibus bill with some concessions being made in the process? Yeah, nobody wants to defend their

433
00:38:21,730 --> 00:38:27,810
vote on anything, right? So if it's just one bill instead of 12 bills or 13 bills, they don't have

434
00:38:27,810 --> 00:38:33,750
to explain it. It's not in some attack ad. So I get that perspective of why they don't want to have

435
00:38:33,750 --> 00:38:37,710
all these individual bills. Realistically, they're just lazy. They don't have enough time.

436
00:38:37,710 --> 00:38:44,430
And, you know, sometimes I'm actually thankful we don't have a super hyperactive Congress because then they would be passing bills left and right.

437
00:38:44,890 --> 00:38:49,250
And, you know, the Supreme Court would be very slow to strike them all down.

438
00:38:49,550 --> 00:38:52,550
But at the same time, it would be a lot more accountable if we did have that.

439
00:38:53,010 --> 00:39:07,410
Because like we the I think I heard Odell talk about this on Rabbit Hole Recap is the amount of money that's going into Department of Homeland Security and agents and stuff like these are not just people who are going to Home Depot.

440
00:39:07,410 --> 00:39:11,150
parking lots, you know, they're getting, they're getting laptops, they're getting tools, they're

441
00:39:11,150 --> 00:39:16,170
getting chain surveillance stuff. Like they're, this is a weaponized police force that is yes,

442
00:39:16,170 --> 00:39:22,150
used for migration. Forgive me for sounding like a progressive, but you know, we're, we're sort of

443
00:39:22,150 --> 00:39:27,090
militarizing a part of our government that hasn't really been uber militarized before and giving

444
00:39:27,090 --> 00:39:34,350
them really awesome tools that are emerging from the private sector, whatever companies might be

445
00:39:34,350 --> 00:39:40,190
offering stuff. And that is something that really would harm our own individual liberties as

446
00:39:40,190 --> 00:39:47,350
Americans, which I'm very concerned about. But yeah, overall, it's a complicated space.

447
00:39:47,710 --> 00:39:52,590
I think congressional reform is just like super boring. Nobody wants to cover it.

448
00:39:53,110 --> 00:39:57,970
The reporters who cover it are super bored. It's a lot of like infighting. People are trying to

449
00:39:58,750 --> 00:40:03,170
represent their constituents and then also the people who give them money. And it's just hard.

450
00:40:03,170 --> 00:40:07,370
I think we don't necessarily need to look to Congress always for our solutions.

451
00:40:07,790 --> 00:40:10,190
Definitely don't need to look just to the president for our solutions.

452
00:40:10,610 --> 00:40:18,770
It's, again, just figuring out the stuff that would be in place and protect Bitcoiners that we don't have to worry about going to jail or being hauled before a committee.

453
00:40:19,150 --> 00:40:23,650
That would be better. So obviously, I'm a huge admirer of Thomas Massey.

454
00:40:23,730 --> 00:40:26,650
Love a lot of his of his work and principles.

455
00:40:27,110 --> 00:40:28,830
You know, we don't have too many of these people.

456
00:40:28,830 --> 00:40:34,750
it's pretty much uh you only have one or two of these uh sort of congressmen or senators every

457
00:40:34,750 --> 00:40:40,950
generation and right now it's thomas massey ran paul as well they're fairly good but again i don't

458
00:40:40,950 --> 00:40:45,610
get all my hopes up on just what's happening in the halls of congress that's why the what's

459
00:40:45,610 --> 00:40:49,970
happening with bitcoin builders and users in the community and people on nostr and like these

460
00:40:49,970 --> 00:40:55,690
projects are really what i think give people a lot of fire and show the potential of this technology

461
00:40:55,690 --> 00:40:56,890
which I'm excited about.

462
00:40:57,830 --> 00:40:57,950
Yeah.

463
00:40:58,990 --> 00:40:59,550
No, it's funny.

464
00:40:59,650 --> 00:41:02,870
I had a discussion with Balaji last week.

465
00:41:03,030 --> 00:41:06,010
It's like we're reaching like a singularity in the private sector

466
00:41:06,010 --> 00:41:08,110
and nothing ever happens in the public sector.

467
00:41:08,270 --> 00:41:10,690
And I think over the last few months.

468
00:41:13,030 --> 00:41:14,850
Can I ask you quick though about Balaji?

469
00:41:15,010 --> 00:41:16,910
Because I love the network state.

470
00:41:17,010 --> 00:41:17,610
I've read it.

471
00:41:18,930 --> 00:41:22,270
It was really interesting just hearing him talk

472
00:41:22,270 --> 00:41:24,470
because like I think you get about four questions in.

473
00:41:24,470 --> 00:41:32,090
but what is like for your response to that like what is your what's your overall takeaway from

474
00:41:32,090 --> 00:41:38,030
what he's trying to build uh because i think he gets always very tied up in taxonomy of you know

475
00:41:38,030 --> 00:41:41,890
you have like the the red america and the blue america and this and that and the grays and ccp

476
00:41:41,890 --> 00:41:46,950
and it's just like he's caught up a lot he's created an awesome framework i just don't know

477
00:41:46,950 --> 00:41:53,230
what it means specifically for me who might be sitting in whatever you know dover delaware what

478
00:41:53,230 --> 00:41:57,210
am I going to do about X or Y? Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I mean,

479
00:41:57,270 --> 00:42:00,870
Blasch and I have a good relationship. We talk off air probably

480
00:42:00,870 --> 00:42:04,330
pretty frequently. And I don't agree.

481
00:42:05,270 --> 00:42:09,230
Like, I love his perspective and the way he distills everything and the

482
00:42:09,230 --> 00:42:13,250
sort of how he places everything on the chessboard

483
00:42:13,250 --> 00:42:16,650
from his perspective. I do think

484
00:42:16,650 --> 00:42:21,430
the sort of doomerism about

485
00:42:21,430 --> 00:42:28,210
America's future is a bit overstated. And the whole concept of the network state is really

486
00:42:28,210 --> 00:42:33,130
interesting. And I can see it. But I think the application, I would argue that the application

487
00:42:33,130 --> 00:42:39,390
is not something that I would want to participate in because I come from a big Irish Catholic family

488
00:42:39,390 --> 00:42:47,150
in the Philadelphia area. I'm very tied to my roots, my nuclear extended family, friends, network,

489
00:42:47,150 --> 00:42:51,490
community that I grew up with part of the reason why I moved back to the area, despite

490
00:42:51,490 --> 00:42:56,410
the fact that many people warned me I'm moving back to a shit lib capital of the country. It's

491
00:42:56,410 --> 00:43:01,790
like, yeah, I love my family more than I hate the shit libs. I'm willing to go back and fight for

492
00:43:01,790 --> 00:43:06,950
it. But I do think the idea of network states in the sense of you have like minded individuals who

493
00:43:06,950 --> 00:43:12,610
meet in the digital realm and talk about ideas and build things. I don't think they need to all

494
00:43:12,610 --> 00:43:19,270
just like uproot and meet in a physical location and then go restart individual city states whatever

495
00:43:19,270 --> 00:43:25,170
it may be in those places i think you just share ideas build things in the digital realm and then

496
00:43:25,170 --> 00:43:31,650
get to hand-to-hand combat and meet space in your locality and try to make where you live

497
00:43:31,650 --> 00:43:38,870
a better a better place and i i brought this up at the end of our most recent discussion um that

498
00:43:38,870 --> 00:43:45,070
was released earlier this week but like i think part of the degradation and the social fray that

499
00:43:45,070 --> 00:43:50,530
we're seeing in society today these days really stems from the degradation of the nuclear family

500
00:43:50,530 --> 00:43:57,310
and i saw this up close and personal when i was in living in chicago i volunteered at an inner city

501
00:43:57,310 --> 00:44:03,470
lacrosse program that started in 2011 and i worked there for three years and that was

502
00:44:03,470 --> 00:44:10,030
the one stark thing that really stood out to me throughout the three years volunteering there is

503
00:44:10,030 --> 00:44:17,010
like the south side west side southwest side of chicago is really a terrible place these days

504
00:44:17,010 --> 00:44:20,770
because the nuclear family just doesn't exist kids are being raised by their aunts and their

505
00:44:20,770 --> 00:44:28,250
grandmothers and their the family isn't there and you have this sort of a negative feedback loop that

506
00:44:28,250 --> 00:44:31,090
leads to these negative consequences.

507
00:44:31,610 --> 00:44:38,590
And I think the idea of uprooting and just meeting with like-minded people to build community

508
00:44:38,590 --> 00:44:43,850
doesn't really jive with what I've experienced personally.

509
00:44:43,850 --> 00:44:50,370
I think culture and community are important and you can't really, they're emergent things.

510
00:44:50,470 --> 00:44:52,030
You can't just centrally plan them.

511
00:44:52,130 --> 00:44:54,710
It's like similar to El Salvador's Bitcoin City.

512
00:44:54,850 --> 00:44:56,130
It was always a bad idea to me.

513
00:44:56,210 --> 00:44:57,450
You can't centrally plan.

514
00:44:58,250 --> 00:45:02,910
a decentralized city. Like it doesn't make any sense. That's an interesting point. I mean,

515
00:45:02,970 --> 00:45:06,870
like Bellagia, I've been an expat, you know, living outside the U.S. for the last couple of

516
00:45:06,870 --> 00:45:12,230
years. And I always think about that as being very purposeful with your migration, where you go,

517
00:45:12,350 --> 00:45:17,150
the community that you build. And oftentimes you're just sort of a victim of a victim of

518
00:45:17,150 --> 00:45:20,470
circumstance, like where you happen to be, you know, whatever relationship you're in,

519
00:45:20,530 --> 00:45:23,910
whatever job you have. You know, most people don't have the will or the money

520
00:45:23,910 --> 00:45:28,270
to create like a whole facility with digital nomad types.

521
00:45:28,470 --> 00:45:33,570
And often this is the ideas of the 1930s and the 40s in Spain.

522
00:45:33,710 --> 00:45:35,810
We had all these like left wing communes.

523
00:45:35,930 --> 00:45:37,590
People thought they were reinventing socialism.

524
00:45:37,590 --> 00:45:40,630
And these things always turned out chaotic and, you know,

525
00:45:40,650 --> 00:45:44,650
nobody cleaned the dishes or took out the trash and didn't tend to work very well.

526
00:45:44,750 --> 00:45:46,110
But I like that.

527
00:45:46,430 --> 00:45:52,190
I like the the small cities like Prospera, the idea of Liberland as well,

528
00:45:52,210 --> 00:45:53,350
if you've ever heard of Liberland.

529
00:45:53,350 --> 00:45:58,430
And well, this is another. Yeah, I think these are great, good experiments.

530
00:45:58,970 --> 00:46:04,930
Most people are not going to choose to move to these because of familial ties and everything else, which I totally get.

531
00:46:04,930 --> 00:46:10,190
And I understand. And if Balaji's network state makes sense, then we're also way more digital anyway.

532
00:46:10,390 --> 00:46:26,665
So in a sense it didn matter about our actual locality and where we live And it is more of these online communities somewhat But yeah I think we have a lot of choice of that I mean Americans are super super privileged that we can move to like 50

533
00:46:26,665 --> 00:46:31,145
states and there's all types of flavor of what you want. Hawaii, Alaska, you can go to Puerto Rico,

534
00:46:31,325 --> 00:46:36,605
you can go to Texas and go to Washington, Oregon, North Carolina. There's a lot of choice there. And

535
00:46:36,605 --> 00:46:41,225
it's pretty good. Most people who live in small European countries with like 2 million people

536
00:46:41,225 --> 00:46:47,305
don't have that choice so yeah pretty lucky i've got pennsylvania illinois new york texas and south

537
00:46:47,305 --> 00:46:52,625
carolina on my belt states i've lived in and all very different in their own regard and south

538
00:46:52,625 --> 00:46:58,625
carolina is just always one of my favorite choices man this is a place most people do not travel to

539
00:46:58,625 --> 00:47:06,805
but it is a place that has just so much potential just like great culture laid back low country

540
00:47:06,805 --> 00:47:13,905
living baby and yeah i'm a big boy back no and i would i do want to make it clear like network

541
00:47:13,905 --> 00:47:20,005
state this whole model of uprooting and moving and trying to create these communities doesn't

542
00:47:20,005 --> 00:47:24,925
make sense for me it may make sense for other people and i wouldn't be surprised that some of

543
00:47:24,925 --> 00:47:31,185
them have massive success in our sort of prototypes for for how to do this in the future but for me

544
00:47:31,185 --> 00:47:37,785
the family ties way too strong absolutely yeah i mean i was an immigrant twice in my life so i guess

545
00:47:37,785 --> 00:47:42,945
i'm i'm always searching for that familial connection uh and getting back to the to the

546
00:47:42,945 --> 00:47:49,425
origin but it's it's tough man it's um finding out where to live where to be and i think having

547
00:47:49,425 --> 00:47:55,305
purpose and ideology and technology and the promises of everything biology talks about

548
00:47:55,305 --> 00:47:59,925
But yeah, it's it's awesome. It depends on which one you want to have. Right.

549
00:47:59,945 --> 00:48:02,505
It actually is the total free market in action.

550
00:48:04,605 --> 00:48:08,565
Very different from today's discussion on immigration policy. But again, that's another topic.

551
00:48:09,165 --> 00:48:12,645
Yeah. No, and I don't want to sound too idealist, but yeah.

552
00:48:12,845 --> 00:48:15,545
And maybe it's Stockholm syndrome.

553
00:48:15,845 --> 00:48:22,325
But I do earnestly believe that the fire of the American spirit does still exist to many Americans.

554
00:48:22,325 --> 00:48:25,625
maybe not a majority, maybe a very small minority.

555
00:48:25,745 --> 00:48:30,125
And I do believe in the intolerant minority's ability to sort of prevail.

556
00:48:31,065 --> 00:48:35,505
And having lived in all these different states, particularly Texas, South Carolina, even Pennsylvania,

557
00:48:35,645 --> 00:48:40,785
Pennsylvania west of Philly is very freedom oriented until you get to Pittsburgh.

558
00:48:42,385 --> 00:48:48,725
But I do think that the ideals of liberty, the fire of liberty still exists in the bellies of many Americans.

559
00:48:48,725 --> 00:48:54,005
It's just figuring out how to get the government out of the way and do it tactfully.

560
00:48:54,085 --> 00:49:01,085
And that's why I'm so passionate about Bitcoin, because I think it's an incredible vehicle to do that in a nonviolent sort of roundabout way.

561
00:49:01,625 --> 00:49:10,885
Absolutely. Yeah. And all the lessons that we also learn through Bitcoin are just being applied to every other industry and every other technology, too.

562
00:49:11,945 --> 00:49:16,385
It's always like that constant meme of was it James Franco who is there?

563
00:49:16,465 --> 00:49:18,625
He's got the noose around his neck in the first time.

564
00:49:18,725 --> 00:49:27,465
I think there's so many other industries that are facing like the talk about the environmental stuff with AI data centers, talking about the illicit finance things.

565
00:49:27,545 --> 00:49:29,865
I mean, Bitcoiners have been talking about this stuff for years and years.

566
00:49:30,305 --> 00:49:32,465
And these other industries just have to learn now.

567
00:49:32,465 --> 00:49:35,545
It's like, well, thankfully, we thought about it for a long time.

568
00:49:36,045 --> 00:49:40,785
We've come up with like proposed solutions and we figured out workarounds where necessary.

569
00:49:41,105 --> 00:49:42,565
So you don't need to do this.

570
00:49:43,785 --> 00:49:44,225
Yeah.

571
00:49:44,225 --> 00:49:51,405
No, the energy side of things is something I've been passionate about for seven years now, having been in the mining industry.

572
00:49:51,665 --> 00:49:59,345
And I think that's one thing in the research that ChatGPT helped me with is something that you've written about.

573
00:49:59,785 --> 00:50:01,825
And do I exist in ChatGPT?

574
00:50:01,925 --> 00:50:02,625
Like it actually worked?

575
00:50:03,125 --> 00:50:06,865
I gave them your website and said it's called this and look at everything.

576
00:50:07,185 --> 00:50:10,745
But I'm sure if I asked them, you would come up as well.

577
00:50:10,745 --> 00:50:18,045
But this idea of Section 230 for energy policy really, really struck a chord with me.

578
00:50:18,165 --> 00:50:20,965
It's like, oh, I've never thought about it this way, but this makes a lot of sense.

579
00:50:22,765 --> 00:50:24,205
Yeah, and I guess to explain it.

580
00:50:24,365 --> 00:50:30,585
So Section 230 is what we colloquially call the 26 words that created the Internet.

581
00:50:31,085 --> 00:50:33,345
It was part of the Communications Decency Act.

582
00:50:33,885 --> 00:50:35,805
It was a bill in Congress, 1996.

583
00:50:35,805 --> 00:50:42,505
The point was to essentially figure out how to deal with all that smut online, all that dirty stuff.

584
00:50:43,305 --> 00:50:49,045
And basically, if people could be liable for what types of information is put on their website.

585
00:50:49,045 --> 00:50:57,585
So if you have a forum or if you have comments, you have a blog, are you as the website provider liable for whatever comments?

586
00:50:57,585 --> 00:51:03,625
So if somebody disparages someone or liable someone, are you liable as the website provider?

587
00:51:03,625 --> 00:51:08,285
is, you know, at that time, it was like GeoCities or Blogspot or something like that.

588
00:51:08,725 --> 00:51:14,365
Are you the one that's going to be liable in a civil trial if, you know, somebody sued?

589
00:51:15,065 --> 00:51:19,865
And what Ron Wyden did, and it was realistically Ron Wyden, who's this Oregon

590
00:51:19,865 --> 00:51:26,665
representative, congressman, he put in those 26 words and basically said that, you know,

591
00:51:26,665 --> 00:51:32,225
no publisher will essentially be the person who owns the words.

592
00:51:32,225 --> 00:51:50,565
So anybody using an open communication platform, if you're just like the publisher, people are writing on it, you're not liable for what people are writing it. Now, that has allowed the Internet to bloom and to blossom and not having to deal with lawyers for everything that's published on a website opens up all this creative freedom.

593
00:51:50,565 --> 00:51:59,725
Now, if you look at the energy sector right now, we have this immense need for more grids, more technology, more gigawatts, absolutely everywhere.

594
00:52:00,265 --> 00:52:17,185
And most of our energy providers, from the dirtiest ones that deal with oil to the natural gas, even the nuclear industry and even some solar guys, they're being caught up in all these weird lawsuits themselves where people are using their products, energy products.

595
00:52:17,185 --> 00:52:21,325
People are using their energy power and then they're being held liable for something.

596
00:52:21,645 --> 00:52:24,205
So the example that I used are these climate change lawsuits.

597
00:52:24,665 --> 00:52:30,925
So a lot of industry, a lot of groups like Greenpeace or pro solar activists will sue

598
00:52:30,925 --> 00:52:36,885
people like Exxon or BP, Chevron, BP and Shell merger, by the way, is a huge deal.

599
00:52:37,365 --> 00:52:42,345
But they're they will sue these companies and say, well, A, you cause climate change.

600
00:52:42,345 --> 00:53:07,365
B, you lied about it. And C, you are now on the hook for everything that's ever happened related to environmental disasters, climate change and everything else. And what we're kind of proposing is, well, we need to have a kind of Section 230, like no individual company, institution, gas company, oil driller is itself responsible for climate change.

601
00:53:07,365 --> 00:53:15,285
we cannot have a system that then starts to dole out liability based on something that is very

602
00:53:15,285 --> 00:53:23,305
general very broad disputed in terms of measurement and causality we cannot have that go into the

603
00:53:23,305 --> 00:53:28,405
court system and say okay yeah they're they're the ones who are liable and therefore you know

604
00:53:28,405 --> 00:53:32,905
everything that bp's done they need to pay like one billion dollars to someone who died in a heat

605
00:53:32,905 --> 00:53:41,865
wave. So finding out a way that we can extract the energy production from the energy use and to

606
00:53:41,865 --> 00:53:47,085
protect the energy producers, because that's essentially what energy producers want to do,

607
00:53:47,145 --> 00:53:50,645
is they want to get this stuff out of the ground. They want to be able to produce it.

608
00:53:51,125 --> 00:53:54,985
If they're dealing with cooling stations or something else, they want to get that stuff

609
00:53:54,985 --> 00:54:01,685
out into the grid. We cannot saddle them with the great American tradition of suing them like crazy

610
00:54:01,685 --> 00:54:05,925
and expect that we're going to have affordable energy or expect that we're going to have great

611
00:54:05,925 --> 00:54:10,325
cutting edge innovations in AI or expect that we're going to have anything propelled in Bitcoin

612
00:54:10,325 --> 00:54:14,425
or anything else because they're constantly just going to be beefing up their legal departments

613
00:54:14,425 --> 00:54:19,025
and they're not going to be giving us better technologies. They're not going to be figuring

614
00:54:19,025 --> 00:54:23,945
out a way to better refine the stuff that comes out of Alberta and that is shipped through Keystone

615
00:54:23,945 --> 00:54:29,305
Pipeline or something like that and thrown out to the markets. And unfortunately, it's like we're

616
00:54:29,305 --> 00:54:34,805
we oscillate between hating energy companies and loving them. Generally, in the United States,

617
00:54:34,805 --> 00:54:40,365
we're at an OK moment right now. But if gas prices go a bit higher, you know, we'll have a Joe Biden

618
00:54:40,365 --> 00:54:43,965
figure who say we should probably criminalize these guys for raising prices. And maybe Trump

619
00:54:43,965 --> 00:54:48,765
would do the same, to be honest. I don't know. The idea of a Section 230 is just figuring out a way

620
00:54:48,765 --> 00:54:53,365
to get rid of the lawfare and the liability concerns when it comes to energy producers.

621
00:54:53,925 --> 00:54:58,565
And I think we need it right now. If you look up any state in the union, there's some kind of

622
00:54:58,565 --> 00:55:04,785
lawsuit against any kind of oil company, energy industry right now. Even in my home state of North

623
00:55:04,785 --> 00:55:10,725
Carolina, you've got the nuclear provider, Duke Energy. They're being sued. And they're the ones

624
00:55:10,725 --> 00:55:15,325
who've turned North and South Carolina into these nuclear behemoths, super renewable, sustainable

625
00:55:15,325 --> 00:55:20,965
energy. And they're being sued for causing climate change, much the same. Like we're not going to

626
00:55:20,965 --> 00:55:27,045
find the ultimate climate change culprit in court. And I think it's a folly to do so. And it's just

627
00:55:27,045 --> 00:55:30,965
very expensive and it means that all of our energy prices are probably going to go up because they

628
00:55:30,965 --> 00:55:36,585
got to deal with it i i hope we can i hope we can reason with that but i'm figuring out more and more

629
00:55:36,585 --> 00:55:43,705
that most people don't know anything about energy which you've learned a lot about no i didn't know

630
00:55:43,705 --> 00:55:49,825
a lot about energy until i was forced to by way of getting into the bitcoin mining industry and i

631
00:55:49,825 --> 00:55:59,665
was astonished it i was 26 when i started and i had even started my career uh at a commodities fund

632
00:55:59,665 --> 00:56:05,705
we traded energy but like i was more looking at the macro but once you get down to the micro of

633
00:56:05,705 --> 00:56:10,525
how you actually extract oil and gas from the earth and then get it to midstream and get it

634
00:56:10,525 --> 00:56:15,625
downstream get it to a power facility and a substation and the rest of the grid the transmission

635
00:56:15,625 --> 00:56:25,945
lines, all that. It's highly complex. It is a feat of human ingenuity that should be marveled at and

636
00:56:25,945 --> 00:56:31,285
celebrated vigorously by anybody who appreciates the fact that you have air conditioning and you

637
00:56:31,285 --> 00:56:36,965
can walk into your house and turn on a light switch and there will be light. It is, I mean,

638
00:56:37,065 --> 00:56:42,845
just the energy infrastructure is probably one of the best things that humanity has ever brought

639
00:56:42,845 --> 00:56:46,905
to the world and to your point like it goes through this ebbs and flows with the energy

640
00:56:46,905 --> 00:56:54,605
companies of hate and love and particularly right now where we sit in 2025 looking at the future

641
00:56:54,605 --> 00:56:59,785
looking what china has done in terms of energy production over the last two decades and how we've

642
00:56:59,785 --> 00:57:05,365
lagged like i think something like this is incredibly important especially if we have the

643
00:57:05,365 --> 00:57:11,305
the goal and the intent to go out and expand generation by as much by like orders of magnitude

644
00:57:11,305 --> 00:57:15,345
over the next two decades, something like this probably needs to exist.

645
00:57:16,365 --> 00:57:20,885
Oh, yeah. And you'd be surprised to learn just how much many of the big tech companies are just

646
00:57:20,885 --> 00:57:26,885
not even looking at city grids or different ways of generating electricity. They're just like going

647
00:57:26,885 --> 00:57:31,665
all in on their own projects, you know, putting $10 billion in nuclear, owning their own

648
00:57:31,665 --> 00:57:35,945
infrastructure. I mean, one thing that's fascinating to me that I've learned a lot about,

649
00:57:36,265 --> 00:57:40,785
you know, of course, with the energy is the submarine cables. So how we have the internet

650
00:57:40,785 --> 00:57:45,705
around the world is not because we have satellites, but actually because we have these huge networks

651
00:57:45,705 --> 00:57:52,025
of cables that are just laid in the ocean and they connect everything. And we've had sort of

652
00:57:52,025 --> 00:57:56,365
special purpose companies that are developed to put these submarine cables together. And it's

653
00:57:56,365 --> 00:58:01,805
essentially all of the internet of the European continent and Latin America. And we've had sort

654
00:58:01,805 --> 00:58:06,705
of the same companies doing it for years and years. Not much innovation hasn't changed. Now,

655
00:58:06,705 --> 00:58:10,805
a lot of the tech companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, they're just like, bro,

656
00:58:10,805 --> 00:58:15,925
we're going to lay our own cables because we cannot rely on this. We don't know if there are

657
00:58:15,925 --> 00:58:20,805
Russian or Chinese submarines that are going in and trying to tap these lines. Like there's just

658
00:58:20,805 --> 00:58:26,645
so much that's vulnerable that's right there that we don't understand. And going back to Energy

659
00:58:26,645 --> 00:58:34,185
Canada, my home nation, you know, we are a energy exporting nation. Literally, that is our major

660
00:58:34,185 --> 00:58:40,965
product. And we've had governments now for over a decade who've denied that reality and made Canada

661
00:58:40,965 --> 00:58:47,885
much poorer, have essentially made it so that is not the top G7 country it used to be and have

662
00:58:47,885 --> 00:58:53,445
really harmed a lot of the workers there because there aren't as many opportunities, whether it be

663
00:58:53,445 --> 00:58:59,665
nationalizing energy projects, stopping transmission of energy, transportation of energies, making

664
00:58:59,665 --> 00:59:05,005
exports illegal. There's just so much of the energy that's tied to absolutely everything in

665
00:59:05,005 --> 00:59:08,765
our lives. And I think people forget that they just assume we just can all just log into the

666
00:59:08,765 --> 00:59:13,525
computer with our laptop job. And as you said, the air conditioning will run, everything will

667
00:59:13,525 --> 00:59:19,185
just function. But if we don't have electricity for two hours, there's a lot of stuff that would

668
00:59:19,185 --> 00:59:24,025
fail. Like a lot of people would be harmed. Hospitals on edge. We'd run out of diesel.

669
00:59:24,605 --> 00:59:29,205
The toilets don't work because you can't get the water up. There's just so much stuff tied to

670
00:59:29,205 --> 00:59:35,725
energy. And I think we have been in the Yosef Schumpeter model. We've been a sort of, we've

671
00:59:35,725 --> 00:59:40,545
enjoyed the benefits of this great capitalistic market for so long that we kind of forget about it.

672
00:59:40,925 --> 00:59:46,025
And we can, we kind of leave that to decay and rot and that could harm people if we don't

673
00:59:46,025 --> 00:59:52,525
continue to build and continue to allow producers to get that to the marketplace that we can use it.

674
00:59:52,525 --> 00:59:59,025
And I don't want to be again in a scenario like in the European Union after the invasion of Ukraine,

675
00:59:59,025 --> 01:00:04,525
where all of a sudden the Russian gas is gone. And where I live in Austria, you know, we saw our

676
01:00:04,525 --> 01:00:10,265
energy prices double and sometimes triple depending on the month. And we didn't have reserves. We don't

677
01:00:10,265 --> 01:00:16,065
have our own natural supplies of natural gas for heating homes and everything else. What are you

678
01:00:16,065 --> 01:00:20,925
supposed to do? It's the lifeblood of our entire civilization. And we have to figure out ways to

679
01:00:20,925 --> 01:00:26,845
incent more energy producers and ensure they're not caught up with these like crazy lawsuits that

680
01:00:26,845 --> 01:00:36,585
will ultimately drag them down and make all of our prices too high yeah it is baffling how idiotic

681
01:00:36,585 --> 01:00:43,405
both the u.s and european energy policy has been over the last two decades and it is like it makes

682
01:00:43,405 --> 01:00:52,325
you wonder like is this just like a civilization cycle where we're you didn't say this exactly but

683
01:00:52,325 --> 01:01:02,785
I think along the same lines of we've reached a state of decadence where we forgot what got us to the ability to be decadent or completely letting it rot below us.

684
01:01:03,845 --> 01:01:07,365
Yeah, no, 100 percent. And it's the same in our political institutions.

685
01:01:07,585 --> 01:01:11,885
You know, we have this mayoral election in New York City, which, yeah, whatever.

686
01:01:11,945 --> 01:01:14,265
Nobody cares about New York City, but everybody cares about New York City.

687
01:01:14,425 --> 01:01:21,245
It's where the media is. And there's a guy who's very open about socialist ideas and government run grocery stores.

688
01:01:21,245 --> 01:01:23,145
who's probably going to be the next mayor.

689
01:01:23,145 --> 01:01:26,245
And what I was mentioning with the Schumpeter model,

690
01:01:26,245 --> 01:01:30,585
it was this great Austrian economist basically said that you you have capitalism.

691
01:01:30,585 --> 01:01:32,445
Everything is great. People are rich.

692
01:01:32,445 --> 01:01:34,845
You know, they get very decadent, as you mentioned.

693
01:01:34,845 --> 01:01:37,985
And then they kind of forget how they got there, why they got there.

694
01:01:37,985 --> 01:01:41,305
And they just start essentially turning the state more into socialism,

695
01:01:41,305 --> 01:01:45,305
giving people more benefits without actually providing the same incentives.

696
01:01:45,360 --> 01:02:09,440
And then it just breaks. You have creative destruction. It all is gone. And then you have to rebuild again. And we're going to continuously have these cycles. I think Trump was a kind of force of that cycle. He stopped something that was happening. I don't know exactly how to define it. You know, but whatever the sort of Obama Biden era stuff was, there was Trump who was stopping it. But we have to admit he's oscillating in the other way pretty hard, too.

697
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:16,160
and while there is a lot of advantages there's any number as uh matthew said on your program uh

698
01:02:16,160 --> 01:02:20,940
recently there's a lot of disadvantages too i think many people realize that yeah what was the

699
01:02:20,940 --> 01:02:28,160
uh we just did i mean it's the department of defense just by a large stake and a rare earth

700
01:02:28,160 --> 01:02:33,920
metal producer here in the united states yeah and i i'm just peeved i didn't have a share in it

701
01:02:33,920 --> 01:02:41,260
myself but yeah but no that's a step towards like number one it's like overt positioning like we're

702
01:02:41,260 --> 01:02:47,000
getting back to industrial policy but number two like teetering on the edge of like quasi nationalizing

703
01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:54,880
a critical sort of rare earth metal extractor yeah and uh you know related to uh to bitcoin

704
01:02:54,880 --> 01:03:01,100
again the fannie mae freddie mac are these you know mortgage providers and stuff you know that

705
01:03:01,100 --> 01:03:05,580
was set up, yes, as like a quasi-government thing, but now it's just like completely owned by the

706
01:03:05,580 --> 01:03:11,620
government. And Trump has even mentioned with a few of these deals that the United States would

707
01:03:11,620 --> 01:03:16,580
own, like the Ukraine deal was kind of mentioned. It's like, well, the U.S. would just own this and

708
01:03:16,580 --> 01:03:21,880
that. It's like, well, we're getting into the nationalization game here. I didn't know I did

709
01:03:21,880 --> 01:03:27,380
not sign up for this part where we're nationalizing certain industries and lands. And you typically

710
01:03:27,380 --> 01:03:32,380
don't want that because government is not very efficient at allocating resources and understanding

711
01:03:32,380 --> 01:03:37,920
supply and demand pricing and prices a lot of other people out and makes it so that things are

712
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:42,360
not looking too good. That was actually one of the problems of this CHIPS Act that people are very

713
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:46,080
enthused about is that we're going to give a billion dollars to these companies to build in

714
01:03:46,080 --> 01:03:51,620
Arizona. But, you know, what are you really getting for that? Are they actually building

715
01:03:51,620 --> 01:03:58,100
the real stuff here? And what are you doing to deleverage Taiwan from China? It's like super

716
01:03:58,100 --> 01:04:02,300
complicated questions. And there's not really a way that governments can centrally control it,

717
01:04:02,820 --> 01:04:06,260
which is why it's good to be skeptical and good to limit government wherever possible.

718
01:04:06,960 --> 01:04:10,520
But yeah, a lot of scary stuff. Yeah. You think about like the Sovereign Wealth Fund announcement

719
01:04:10,520 --> 01:04:15,000
of Howard Lutnick, like we're going to get equity stakes in Moderna and Pfizer so they can

720
01:04:15,000 --> 01:04:19,020
inject you with mRNA vaccines. It's like, what? What are we doing here?

721
01:04:19,020 --> 01:04:22,720
i haven't seen any other proposals of what would go in there though uh

722
01:04:22,720 --> 01:04:30,020
i i guess uh because realistically we don't want the government owning a bunch of stuff when we're

723
01:04:30,020 --> 01:04:34,400
are what 38 trillion dollars in debt like there's stuff to pay off we don't need to

724
01:04:34,400 --> 01:04:39,600
you know put things on the robin hood uh brokerage right now like we need to actually be selling

725
01:04:39,600 --> 01:04:48,620
things yeah it's uh it's very chaotic times and that's why again that's why i anchor to bitcoin

726
01:04:48,620 --> 01:04:54,600
I do believe it's that sly roundabout way to take control of money out of the hands of government and central banks.

727
01:04:55,060 --> 01:05:01,420
And if you fix the money, you can begin to really limit the government and what they can do.

728
01:05:02,100 --> 01:05:12,660
And that, I mean, that brings up like the topic of the week, which is the constant berating, not only the week last month of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and this sort of back and forth on D.C.

729
01:05:12,660 --> 01:05:17,340
You have many reps and senators tweeting, it's time for you to resign.

730
01:05:17,340 --> 01:05:24,320
And there was a rumor that Trump was writing his letter that was going to fire Jerome Powell.

731
01:05:24,520 --> 01:05:29,500
And then he stepped back from that in a press conference right before we came on to record.

732
01:05:29,660 --> 01:05:34,200
But I wrote a newsletter about this last night, and it seems pretty obvious.

733
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:35,780
They've been as close to explicit.

734
01:05:36,380 --> 01:05:39,080
The Trump administration, Scott Bessent, others have been.

735
01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:47,040
Obviously, they don't like Jerome Powell, but it seems like they want to go to full merger between the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

736
01:05:47,040 --> 01:05:53,540
so that they can turn things on turbo and sort of make sure that there is no independent Fed chair

737
01:05:53,540 --> 01:05:57,600
stepping in the way of their fiscal policy goals.

738
01:05:59,120 --> 01:06:00,900
Yeah, and then we're one way stop to funny money.

739
01:06:01,820 --> 01:06:08,600
Look, there's a look in a pure, the way that it should be is that there would be no central bank.

740
01:06:08,740 --> 01:06:11,520
Interest rates would be set, you know, just by the market.

741
01:06:11,600 --> 01:06:12,560
It'd be fine, right?

742
01:06:13,020 --> 01:06:14,000
La la land.

743
01:06:14,000 --> 01:06:16,160
But that's ideally how it should be.

744
01:06:17,040 --> 01:06:23,920
when you have this kind of politicization i don't just say like nobody wants to defend pal right you

745
01:06:23,920 --> 01:06:30,000
just you need i feel weird somebody's criticized him for years like last time i'm writing the news

746
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:34,660
there i'm like this is like listen i don't not like the biggest fan of the guy either but but

747
01:06:34,660 --> 01:06:39,760
he's also the devil we know right like if if you did have a merger you had a thing where like trump

748
01:06:39,760 --> 01:06:44,520
would set the interest policy i mean he'd be at zero rates forever he's a real estate guy like

749
01:06:44,520 --> 01:06:48,660
This is what he wants is zero rates forever, which have their own unintended consequences.

750
01:06:49,000 --> 01:06:53,520
And I think one of the greatest distillations I ever had on this was actually Ron Paul's

751
01:06:53,520 --> 01:06:59,500
book in the Fed, which talked at great length about, I mean, his in cases that we should

752
01:06:59,500 --> 01:07:02,180
just audit the Fed and try to curtail some of what it can do.

753
01:07:02,320 --> 01:07:06,720
But he goes through a lot about the Great Depression and sort of the jiggering that

754
01:07:06,720 --> 01:07:10,980
they did with a lot of the rates actually caused a lot more harm that people may realize.

755
01:07:10,980 --> 01:07:16,460
And I think because we haven't really had that good historical lesson brought up too often.

756
01:07:16,460 --> 01:07:20,420
Yeah, we'd go ahead. We'll have the interest rate at this and then whatever it might be.

757
01:07:20,420 --> 01:07:28,320
It's like this stuff is the central price signal price of money signal for absolutely everything in the economy.

758
01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:39,948
There no way you can actually make a good determination of what it should be It all just market reaction And this stuff is it always very concerning to see Again I don like more government institutions

759
01:07:39,948 --> 01:07:42,247
I don't like more rules and laws and things like that.

760
01:07:42,247 --> 01:07:54,068
But the only other alternative is to introduce, yes, some kind of Bitcoin system that wouldn't even have to deal with this because the Bitcoin interest rate is whatever I set it at rather than what the government sets it at.

761
01:07:54,668 --> 01:07:56,207
Yeah, it's completely insane.

762
01:07:56,207 --> 01:08:10,207
And whether it's how D.C. operates just plainly with the laws they're creating and putting out there or central bank policy or potentially soon to be Treasury central bank policy, whatever it is.

763
01:08:11,928 --> 01:08:16,767
To me, I'm a keep it simple, stupid. I'm left curve, left curve. I'm the caveman.

764
01:08:17,088 --> 01:08:25,648
But it literally comes down to information systems like you cannot make good decisions in a central location for people thousands of miles away from you.

765
01:08:25,648 --> 01:08:31,868
You are so far removed from the data inputs that is quite literally impossible for you to make a good decision.

766
01:08:32,408 --> 01:08:42,467
And you need to decentralize and distribute that information or the decision making based off those informational inputs to as local level as you can get.

767
01:08:42,628 --> 01:08:45,568
We've gotten so far away from that in the United States.

768
01:08:46,288 --> 01:08:47,068
You're a good Hayakian.

769
01:08:47,227 --> 01:08:48,868
There's good price discovery right there.

770
01:08:49,628 --> 01:08:49,847
Yeah.

771
01:08:49,847 --> 01:08:49,967
Yeah.

772
01:08:49,967 --> 01:08:51,088
it's uh

773
01:08:51,088 --> 01:08:55,887
yeah and like how so how do you

774
01:08:55,887 --> 01:09:00,448
that's wrong with the assumption that um they're successful in kicking pal out

775
01:09:00,448 --> 01:09:04,668
like i'm sure you saw but like july 3rd scott percent was on cnbc it was

776
01:09:04,668 --> 01:09:08,368
bluntly asked like will you become the fed chair is that a possibility

777
01:09:08,368 --> 01:09:13,648
and he said it has happened historically and then she pressed him like is it going to be you and he

778
01:09:13,648 --> 01:09:19,347
just gave a non-answer and it was like the most blatant admission by omission

779
01:09:19,347 --> 01:09:26,328
I've ever seen. Who knows whether it'll be Besant or Warsh or Hassett. It seems like those are the

780
01:09:26,328 --> 01:09:32,628
three front runners. But I think all three of those front runners will effectuate the plans

781
01:09:32,628 --> 01:09:37,807
of the Trump administration would seem to be, it's like teetering on the edge of explicit.

782
01:09:37,807 --> 01:09:44,008
I think it's still an implicit sort of signaling that we've been getting over the last,

783
01:09:44,267 --> 01:09:48,328
even before the election, that they're going to merge the Treasury and the Fed so that

784
01:09:48,328 --> 01:09:56,307
they can drop interest rates and the federal reserve under the purview of of the treasury

785
01:09:56,307 --> 01:10:03,727
will be there to to buy the bonds to make sure yields are low um yeah and what's interesting

786
01:10:03,727 --> 01:10:11,727
about besant is i mean he is a bitcoiner right he knows this stuff and you you know a lot of

787
01:10:11,727 --> 01:10:16,628
spent at least my professional career you know just in bashing the fed and centralized money

788
01:10:16,628 --> 01:10:22,007
creation and printing and everything else. But here's someone who like understands and actually

789
01:10:22,007 --> 01:10:29,688
owns Bitcoin and understands the unique qualities and would be in a position where he's determining,

790
01:10:29,688 --> 01:10:36,488
you know, so much of the central price that's put on money. I don't know what to think,

791
01:10:36,488 --> 01:10:40,448
because again, these are the institutions that we've tried to slay for many years, you know,

792
01:10:40,448 --> 01:10:47,088
um hails from the crypt hey trying to slay these monsters for so long and then you have people who

793
01:10:47,088 --> 01:10:52,887
are at least bitcoin adjacent who are in that and i don't really know who's holding them to just to

794
01:10:52,887 --> 01:10:58,028
discipline uh that'd be something very interesting you know was so much of it just a thing during the

795
01:10:58,028 --> 01:11:04,248
campaign and to get bitcoiners and crypto people excited or do they still hold those principles and

796
01:11:04,248 --> 01:11:08,668
that's what also i'd be really interested in because there's a lot of market confidence in

797
01:11:08,668 --> 01:11:14,347
best like super smart guy knows how to make money understands things but at the same time he does

798
01:11:14,347 --> 01:11:21,387
have that that eye on bitcoin and whatever stable coins could do as well so i i have to say that

799
01:11:21,387 --> 01:11:26,007
that would play a part somewhat so i don't know if he would go uber crazy uh if he were to do

800
01:11:26,007 --> 01:11:31,927
anything i don't even know if it'd be him oh i know kind of weird to talk about i i'm making the

801
01:11:31,927 --> 01:11:37,788
bet um on whatever the bitcoin version of polymarket is that basically pal stays until his

802
01:11:37,788 --> 01:11:39,847
term ends. What is that? Early next year?

803
01:11:40,828 --> 01:11:41,007
Yeah.

804
01:11:41,588 --> 01:11:43,868
I think this will

805
01:11:43,868 --> 01:11:45,608
be buried by some other story at some point,

806
01:11:45,708 --> 01:11:47,168
because the economy will still grow.

807
01:11:47,528 --> 01:11:49,807
People traveling a lot more. Gas prices will be

808
01:11:49,807 --> 01:11:50,168
low.

809
01:11:51,507 --> 01:11:52,528
I think it'll be okay.

810
01:11:55,028 --> 01:11:55,288
Yeah.

811
01:11:56,507 --> 01:11:57,767
Part of me wonders, is this

812
01:11:57,767 --> 01:11:59,548
all K-Fob, Kabuki,

813
01:11:59,748 --> 01:12:00,048
theater?

814
01:12:01,248 --> 01:12:03,468
Not half wrong. Another part

815
01:12:03,468 --> 01:12:05,468
is maybe they're serious.

816
01:12:05,608 --> 01:12:06,288
They do it.

817
01:12:06,288 --> 01:12:13,848
and like the the qanonomy is like they're gonna they're gonna speculative attack the dollar and

818
01:12:13,848 --> 01:12:18,368
then issue bit bonds or something like that like aggressively acquire bitcoin try the rug

819
01:12:18,368 --> 01:12:23,887
china and russia and then the third part is nothing ever happens like it'll go to term it's

820
01:12:23,887 --> 01:12:29,427
all k-fob and we'll transition yeah i mean i've heard a lot of it uh is obviously related to

821
01:12:29,427 --> 01:12:34,908
housing which is why bill pulte who's the head of the federal housing finance agency like he's been

822
01:12:34,908 --> 01:12:41,368
the number one fire too late pal guy on X and everything else is that looking at mortgages is

823
01:12:41,368 --> 01:12:47,568
super important because yeah, a lot of our economy is based on, you know, energy and the military

824
01:12:47,568 --> 01:12:53,168
industrial complex, but also on construction and building houses. And if you have like a,

825
01:12:53,168 --> 01:12:57,128
basically dearth of people who won't be working in construction anymore, because they've all been

826
01:12:57,128 --> 01:13:02,708
deported. Yeah, there's going to be like all kinds of problems in the housing industry. We already

827
01:13:02,708 --> 01:13:08,288
have higher prices for building materials because of tariffs. And then if people are not able to get

828
01:13:08,288 --> 01:13:13,548
lower interest rates to build homes or buy homes in the first place, that's also very problematic.

829
01:13:13,828 --> 01:13:17,767
So I think it would depend on how the housing numbers go. And I think that will determine

830
01:13:17,767 --> 01:13:28,775
anything Not 100 sure how to lean out But yeah that a big important thing because people in the u love their homes they do but let walk through this like because i been saying this

831
01:13:28,775 --> 01:13:34,095
for the last month or two like again don't want to defend pal but if you look at the cpi data you

832
01:13:34,095 --> 01:13:43,575
take out gas and electronics which have fallen like electricity food medical care medical cost

833
01:13:43,575 --> 01:13:49,675
and rent, shelter, have all gone up well over 3.5%,

834
01:13:49,675 --> 01:13:53,095
between 3.5% and 6% year on year based on the last print.

835
01:13:53,155 --> 01:13:56,535
So that's basically the basket of essential goods

836
01:13:56,535 --> 01:14:01,655
needed to go about your day-to-day life are well above.

837
01:14:02,475 --> 01:14:04,295
I don't even know if the target's two or three anymore.

838
01:14:04,295 --> 01:14:09,455
It's over both of them materially year on year, which is not good.

839
01:14:09,635 --> 01:14:13,455
So the free market, it's not even free market,

840
01:14:13,455 --> 01:14:27,395
But like if you're thinking interest rates sort of drive prices, like it makes sense to me that you would keep them high for longer because there is still inflation that exists in other parts of the economy outside of gasoline and tech deflation.

841
01:14:28,395 --> 01:14:32,255
And then when it comes to housing, like I think you're going to have high mortgage rates.

842
01:14:32,375 --> 01:14:35,735
There's two parts of the equation of the housing markets, the mortgage rate and the price of the housing.

843
01:14:35,735 --> 01:14:43,075
And like I think we just need to let housing correct from like a nominal cost perspective or a real cost perspective.

844
01:14:43,455 --> 01:14:48,975
and just let the market figure out what a house is worth in each individual market.

845
01:14:48,975 --> 01:14:54,075
And what were mortgage rates in the 80s and 90s were like 13 percent.

846
01:14:54,255 --> 01:14:58,975
It's not out of the realm of normality that the mortgage rates are this high.

847
01:15:00,095 --> 01:15:03,355
But to your point, like houses were not $800,000, right?

848
01:15:03,835 --> 01:15:10,495
And that correction would be a huge detriment to most of the boomers because that's the retirement plan.

849
01:15:10,495 --> 01:15:16,215
so in canada it's very explicit they say that you know our goal as a government is to ensure that

850
01:15:16,215 --> 01:15:22,175
housing prices do not go down like they're very explicit about it now because most of the people

851
01:15:22,175 --> 01:15:27,755
who own homes are older and that's their retirement plan is like their house whether they gift it to

852
01:15:27,755 --> 01:15:32,375
their children or sell it on the open market so this is going to be a generational battle too

853
01:15:32,375 --> 01:15:38,735
because there's a lot of uh housed older people who are doing very well and a lot of unhoused

854
01:15:38,735 --> 01:15:45,395
apartment dwelling youngins uh who just have bitcoin don't have too much fiat and like we're

855
01:15:45,395 --> 01:15:52,855
competing in the same space to try to live right yeah no i mean maybe it's uh the uh

856
01:15:53,675 --> 01:16:00,475
my selfish intent coming up like yeah i want to buy a forever house for my family i don't want to

857
01:16:00,475 --> 01:16:06,615
pay an obscene amount for it i'm okay to lock in a higher mortgage if the price is right like

858
01:16:06,615 --> 01:16:12,795
sell your goddamn houses, people. Yeah. And the, you know, the U S has always had a fairly active

859
01:16:12,795 --> 01:16:16,935
housing market, you know, had people flipping houses, people selling things and you have like

860
01:16:16,935 --> 01:16:22,635
a good used market and you do have a phenomenal amount of building and places like Texas and

861
01:16:22,635 --> 01:16:26,915
Tennessee, more of the red States. There's a lot of work on zoning that's happened. That's,

862
01:16:26,915 --> 01:16:31,715
that's kind of been done. It's getting there. And, you know, it's not always a finance equation.

863
01:16:31,715 --> 01:16:37,075
oftentimes, at least with kids, it's like, where are the schools and are they good schools and

864
01:16:37,075 --> 01:16:43,055
how close are you to family and so many of these other issues. But with housing, it's like a thing

865
01:16:43,055 --> 01:16:46,735
that we've never really solved. And again, in New York City, they're talking about, you know,

866
01:16:46,735 --> 01:16:51,975
even more rent control and everything else, which has never worked anywhere. And Argentina is a very

867
01:16:51,975 --> 01:16:59,075
good example. Milet got rid of rent control and you've just seen like rents fall, become so much

868
01:16:59,075 --> 01:17:04,235
more affordable for normal Argentinians, not just digital nomads from the U.S. who are going to

869
01:17:04,235 --> 01:17:08,955
Buenos Aires, but normal people actually able to afford stuff, which is why I think it's always

870
01:17:08,955 --> 01:17:15,275
helpful to have Millet and his story in Argentina, like always have that in the front of our mind of

871
01:17:15,275 --> 01:17:20,495
like this could be our alternative of what's happening. And it's all good so far and actually

872
01:17:20,495 --> 01:17:25,575
pretty great, apart from whatever crypto thing he was involved in. Well, I find the whole Argentina

873
01:17:25,575 --> 01:17:27,595
this story, particularly over the last year, it's so hard to discern

874
01:17:27,595 --> 01:17:29,415
the signal from the noise because you'll hear

875
01:17:29,415 --> 01:17:31,595
examples like

876
01:17:31,595 --> 01:17:33,675
this. It seems to make sense to me.

877
01:17:33,695 --> 01:17:35,555
Get rid of rent control, let the free market decide

878
01:17:35,555 --> 01:17:37,535
price to go down. That seems real. But then others

879
01:17:37,535 --> 01:17:39,255
are like, he's a webcook, like completely.

880
01:17:40,675 --> 01:17:41,715
Yeah, but that's all rhetoric,

881
01:17:41,895 --> 01:17:43,575
right? You just have to look at the data

882
01:17:43,575 --> 01:17:45,715
of the numbers and the debt and

883
01:17:45,715 --> 01:17:46,675
you know, they

884
01:17:46,675 --> 01:17:49,575
no longer have a deficit, which is like

885
01:17:49,575 --> 01:17:51,595
I can't even imagine when

886
01:17:51,595 --> 01:17:53,695
the United States will no longer have a deficit ever.

887
01:17:53,695 --> 01:17:59,275
like he was actually able to implement things i think there has been because it's you know

888
01:17:59,275 --> 01:18:05,675
governance is dirty it's gross like this following this stuff is hard difficult and remaining true

889
01:18:05,675 --> 01:18:11,135
to principles is very difficult but mille has done a fantastic job he's been very good that's

890
01:18:11,135 --> 01:18:17,335
like questionable stuff relating to like his sister who is a key advisor um but um there's

891
01:18:17,335 --> 01:18:22,315
zach over at reason who did a very good documentary on argentina and mille fairly recently

892
01:18:22,315 --> 01:18:24,155
we got him on Noster as well

893
01:18:24,155 --> 01:18:26,475
which is fairly cool but he put together

894
01:18:26,475 --> 01:18:28,535
something good on the YouTube that goes

895
01:18:28,535 --> 01:18:30,235
into the actual story and talks to people

896
01:18:30,235 --> 01:18:32,455
most of it is actually framed through the left

897
01:18:32,455 --> 01:18:34,575
wing unions who hate him

898
01:18:34,575 --> 01:18:36,095
because he's been doing a lot of union busting

899
01:18:36,095 --> 01:18:38,575
and I think that has

900
01:18:38,575 --> 01:18:40,535
much like the normal mainstream

901
01:18:40,535 --> 01:18:42,495
media kind of been the narrative

902
01:18:42,495 --> 01:18:44,255
so you haven't heard too much positive

903
01:18:44,255 --> 01:18:46,555
you kind of have to look at the

904
01:18:46,555 --> 01:18:48,475
numbers yourself to actually like send good people

905
01:18:48,475 --> 01:18:50,315
down there to get the real truth

906
01:18:50,315 --> 01:18:51,275
yeah

907
01:18:51,275 --> 01:19:01,135
no i have free market it works it's like and so what um in terms of priority list for you

908
01:19:01,135 --> 01:19:16,102
on the policy side of what we need to get past as it pertains to bitcoin energy whatever maybe like what how would you describe like your top two to five priorities of what you think we need to get done

909
01:19:17,323 --> 01:19:22,583
But there's this year throughout the rest of Trump's administration between now and midterms,

910
01:19:22,583 --> 01:19:26,862
like what's the window looking like and what do we need to get done?

911
01:19:28,003 --> 01:19:31,762
Yeah, I think like it's crypto week in D.C., as we mentioned, and it's the Clarity Act,

912
01:19:31,762 --> 01:19:35,023
It's the Genius Act and the Anti-CBDC Act.

913
01:19:36,102 --> 01:19:36,903
Yeah, sure.

914
01:19:37,063 --> 01:19:38,283
Anti-CBDC Act, very important.

915
01:19:38,362 --> 01:19:39,063
Get that enshrined.

916
01:19:39,482 --> 01:19:41,742
The others don't really matter for Bitcoiners.

917
01:19:42,023 --> 01:19:45,962
Realistically, it's a lot more about the crypto world for stable coins.

918
01:19:46,063 --> 01:19:46,923
Everyone has these arguments.

919
01:19:48,023 --> 01:19:49,342
I'm going to say steadfast.

920
01:19:49,462 --> 01:19:55,482
It really comes down to being able to use Bitcoin and not having to give the IRS every

921
01:19:55,482 --> 01:19:56,563
single transaction we do.

922
01:19:56,563 --> 01:19:59,083
So need to have de minimis taxation rules.

923
01:19:59,083 --> 01:20:04,903
anything that's under $10,000 that you spend in Bitcoin. You never got to declare it. Don't show

924
01:20:04,903 --> 01:20:11,382
anybody nothing. That would be ideal, especially if you're using brokerage exchanges, wallets.

925
01:20:11,842 --> 01:20:18,142
I think that is really important. There is a more beefed up IRS that is coming in the Trump

926
01:20:18,142 --> 01:20:21,802
administration. There's a lot more people who've been hired. So I don't know who they're going to

927
01:20:21,802 --> 01:20:27,443
go after. It could be Bitcoin people. I'm not sure. So having de minimis rules, I think it's

928
01:20:27,443 --> 01:20:33,642
very important for average everyday normal use of bitcoin as money that is definitely important

929
01:20:33,642 --> 01:20:43,482
and basically that apart from all of the developer issues and um you know with with samurai and with

930
01:20:43,482 --> 01:20:47,623
even tornado cash and these trials which you've talked a lot about you know something like the

931
01:20:47,623 --> 01:20:52,823
blockchain certainty regulatory act i believe it's called um is it's at different stages of

932
01:20:52,823 --> 01:20:56,382
being implemented into various parts of legislation, so I have no doubt it'll make it in.

933
01:20:57,142 --> 01:21:01,262
If it has the teeth to do so and actually protect developers who are working on decentralized

934
01:21:01,262 --> 01:21:07,722
projects is another question. I'm not sure. I do think that for me, the de minimis tax stuff,

935
01:21:07,722 --> 01:21:13,823
really important. The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act for developers is really important.

936
01:21:14,742 --> 01:21:19,882
And I think for me, that's about it. I don't need to have necessarily a reserve. I know my

937
01:21:19,882 --> 01:21:25,482
colleagues at Bitcoin Policy Institute are doing a yeoman's job of making that case and are very

938
01:21:25,482 --> 01:21:32,482
interested in it. And I think there are a lot of advantages to Bitcoin in the hands of a national

939
01:21:32,482 --> 01:21:38,242
policy. You hear my skepticism of government enough, but I think for me, those are the most

940
01:21:38,242 --> 01:21:43,823
important ones for now. Just letting people use Bitcoin as ordinary money every day in their lives

941
01:21:43,823 --> 01:21:48,802
and then also making sure that we're not arresting people who are granting us the tools to do so.

942
01:21:49,882 --> 01:21:55,163
yeah i think i'm aligned there on priorities it's keep it simple stupid just let me

943
01:21:55,163 --> 01:22:00,203
save in bitcoin let me spend it let me receive it and leave me the fuck alone please that's all i

944
01:22:00,203 --> 01:22:05,523
want yeah if i had like a specific you know project you know if i was on the board of something i'd

945
01:22:05,523 --> 01:22:10,823
be like well it'd be great if uh every uh whatever used a qualified custodian exchange that only

946
01:22:10,823 --> 01:22:14,582
passed start and this is the problem with lobbying it's the problem with government it's the problem

947
01:22:14,582 --> 01:22:20,182
with most of these rules is that they're catered to creating monopolies for certain companies.

948
01:22:20,542 --> 01:22:25,063
And I think most people don't call that out enough that that's what regulations do. The more that you

949
01:22:25,063 --> 01:22:29,482
instill regulations and you put things there, you're not harming the big companies. The big

950
01:22:29,482 --> 01:22:34,082
companies have the resources to fight it. You know, Coinbase and all these others, like they'll be able

951
01:22:34,082 --> 01:22:39,182
to do whatever, they'll comply, they'll hire more lawyers. It's the small developers and people come

952
01:22:39,182 --> 01:22:44,182
up with cool stuff who get harmed and then the users who can't use those products. So absolutely

953
01:22:44,182 --> 01:22:50,503
right. Keep it as simple as possible. Yeah. What can anybody listening to this do? Do they have

954
01:22:50,503 --> 01:22:55,982
agency or is it all dependent on the lobbyist? No, I think it's dependent on agency. You know,

955
01:22:56,703 --> 01:23:01,742
the de minimis tax rule has been talked a lot. I think that is something that Senator Blumis is

956
01:23:01,742 --> 01:23:09,063
pushing. But again, $600 is a right-tier congressman, bro. I can't. The more arguments I think that

957
01:23:09,063 --> 01:23:13,962
people hear in non-traditional channels is actually very important. That's most of what I do is

958
01:23:13,962 --> 01:23:18,042
speaking to consumers and people who just go to the shop or the convenience store.

959
01:23:18,242 --> 01:23:22,443
And like the more that people can hear stories, can hear anecdotes, can get articles written

960
01:23:22,443 --> 01:23:24,023
from their perspective.

961
01:23:24,023 --> 01:23:29,663
I think it's just helpful because unfortunately, if it's just the Bitcoin lobby that's talking

962
01:23:29,663 --> 01:23:30,703
about this, it's not good.

963
01:23:31,102 --> 01:23:35,823
It's got to be the person who has a hair salon in Minneapolis or, you know, the guy who owns

964
01:23:35,823 --> 01:23:38,242
a auto parts store in Detroit.

965
01:23:38,242 --> 01:23:46,063
You know, it has to be ordinary people who are using Bitcoin and the technology and want to be able to use it without being penalized.

966
01:23:46,323 --> 01:23:48,943
So those stories are more needed than anything.

967
01:23:49,082 --> 01:23:49,703
And it's not right.

968
01:23:49,742 --> 01:23:50,323
You're a congressman.

969
01:23:50,403 --> 01:23:52,102
It's just talk to more people about it.

970
01:23:52,783 --> 01:23:56,582
If you can, you know, find journalists to talk about it.

971
01:23:57,203 --> 01:23:58,842
Do your own podcast about it.

972
01:23:58,923 --> 01:23:59,623
Figure it out.

973
01:23:59,823 --> 01:24:03,382
You know, I couldn't tell you any any single solitary advice.

974
01:24:03,382 --> 01:24:08,102
But the more people who at least discuss it and make it known, people will listen.

975
01:24:08,242 --> 01:24:10,722
And they'll take that up and might take some time.

976
01:24:11,123 --> 01:24:18,523
But I think there's enough groundswell here that we could actually implement that change and make it so that we don't have ugly dates every year with the IRS.

977
01:24:20,423 --> 01:24:22,102
That's the least we can ask for.

978
01:24:22,482 --> 01:24:23,842
Keep talking about it, freaks.

979
01:24:24,283 --> 01:24:26,102
Yael, this was incredible.

980
01:24:26,362 --> 01:24:28,862
We're going to do this many more times in the future.

981
01:24:29,342 --> 01:24:37,123
Thank you for the work you're doing, not only at BPI, but also Consumer Choice Center.

982
01:24:37,123 --> 01:24:44,523
it's a very important yeoman's work to take a term you used earlier doesn't seem pretty i don't think

983
01:24:44,523 --> 01:24:49,602
i'd ever want to do it so i'm thankful there's individuals like yourself out there who like to

984
01:24:49,602 --> 01:24:54,823
get in the mud with the political side of things absolutely mate well we do it we do it for the

985
01:24:54,823 --> 01:25:00,163
cause so thanks so much all right see you peace love freaks okay