You know, the people who are in control right now aren't just going to say, OK, here's Bitcoin, you know, put their hands up and have a good time and just switch to Bitcoin.
It will be completely evident to the entire world that there is Bitcoin and there is the dollar.
And one of them is on the ascent and one of them is dying.
If I look back over the history of Bitcoin, it's only gone up and to the right the longer you look at it.
That to me is like the beauty of Bitcoins. When we see these tragic events play out is that I know that there's a glimmer of hope in these places, even if not everyone there has figured it out yet.
Like Donald Trump doesn't know you. Donald Trump is never going to sit down and have a coffee with you.
But, you know, your local mayor or your counselor, whoever that is, you can actually go have a coffee with them.
You actually can contact them. You actually can talk to them directly.
Hey, everyone. Michael here with the Bitcoin Way podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Today on the
show, I have Joel Hottleman. Joel is just a Bitcoin club. He's an awesome guy. He is such
a fascinating character, has some just great opinions. He was around Bitcoin in 2013, left,
came back in 2021 after his eyes were opened by COVID, the Canadian truckers protests,
all the other madness going on in the world at that time. We just had a fun conversation
talking about Bitcoin adoption, why Bitcoin, how it fixes so many of the problems that we see today.
You will enjoy this one. Hey, everyone. Like I said in the intro, I've got Joel here with me.
Joel, welcome to the Bitcoin Way podcast. Thanks for having me, Michael.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation. So I think we have a mutual friend or at least
a mutual Bitcoiner in Adam Semecka. And he told me, he said, hey, you should reach out to Joel,
talk to him. He'd be a fun guy and an interesting guy to chat with. So I'm looking forward to the
conversation. I told you, candidly, it's not like I had a bunch of topics that I knew you and I
should dig into, but I think we could probably cover a lot of ground. The big question everyone's
asking right now, obviously, is what's going on with price action? Why is it down? I mean,
we have war. Isn't it supposed to be a store of value? You told me offline, you started out in
2013, you kind of left, came back just in the last five or six years. As someone who's seen
Bitcoin go up and down and up and down, what's your general assessment of what we're seeing right
now? I think for myself, that's where I have the benefit, even though I would say like I'm a
Bitcoiner as of 2021. I was exposed to Bitcoin in 2013, kind of dabbled with it, you know,
kind of swung trade it in 2013, got out, saw it as mostly as something that would be used for
criminals and wasn't something that I wanted to associate myself with, if that makes sense.
But it was something that I continue to kind of keep my eye on. For times it was, you know,
say once a week, it was, you know, monthly, I would say is basically my general sort of,
you know, keeping tabs on it since 2013. And I think looking back, the benefit,
even though I wasn't really in it, but I was kind of keeping an eye on it was
I have basically just seen it go up. And as much as, you know, in times I was looking at it,
it's like, oh, you know, I was smart of not getting in here because, you know, it's dip back
down. But then I'm also was worrying about it that, you know, now it's at a thousand dollars.
And when I was first introduced to it, it was one hundred and twenty three US dollars.
And, you know, now it's $1,300.
But then thinking I'm smart again because it's now at $700.
But if I look back over the history of Bitcoin, it's only gone up into the right
the longer you look at it.
So when we look at it in the short term, and I think it's really easy for us to look at
Bitcoin over the last six months of downward pressure,
we can get worried and we can get emotional.
But when in doubt, zoom out like that's a cliche kind of saying, but it really is beneficial in looking at Bitcoin because the farther you look out on on the charts, the more you just see it's just going up.
You ignore all of those little dips and divots that are in that line and they're negligible.
And when, you know, when when Bitcoin started to crash in 2021 and then into the early 2022, it was pretty scary for me because I had just gotten in.
I basically got in right at the all time high.
I think my first real big buy in was was sixty seven thousand dollars, you know, and a couple of days later was like, oh, yeah, like everybody's cheering again that that we're at six nine K.
And we're all thinking we're going to go to like one hundred thousand, hundred twenty five thousand was kind of what I remember being.
kind of the consensus of the top that we were all kind of looking for.
And obviously that never came.
And that was kind of the short term hopium.
And I think if anything that I've learned over the last little while is to stop looking at the short term,
stop looking at Bitcoin in, you know, especially don't be looking at it daily.
Don't be looking at it as like a weekly, oh, it's going to go up.
But even six months to a year, the longer you can push that out,
I think the better. I was on a podcast in August and the host asked me, you know, what are your
price predictions for the end of 2026? And I had told him, I thought that the price by the end of,
or sorry, the end of 2025 would be like $200,000. And obviously we didn't come close to that at all.
So kind of looking back on that over the last, I don't know, what is that eight, nine months or
whatever. Or I guess shorten that, but I stopped looking at the price in Bitcoin in the short term
and just kind of look at it. You know, I saw something really great from someone a couple
days ago, I think it was, was, you know, it's a good day to buy Bitcoin today if you think that
the price of Bitcoin is going to be higher in five years than it is today. And, you know,
the more you can think about it in like a four year, a five year, a 10 year, a 20 year type
investment, if that's what you want to call it. I think that's where you're not going to get
emotional about, um, you know, these price swings and these price dips. Like I was happy to buy
Bitcoin at $126,000. I'm happy to buy it today at whatever it is, 66, $67,000. So, um, I personally
see it as a gift because I did value it as something that was valuable at $126,000. Uh,
the value of Bitcoin is the same today as it was then.
So, yeah, I actually I'll,
I'll expand upon that thought if I could for a moment, if you,
we take for granted in the West,
some of what we've just been talking about here.
If you're in Iran today, you, you, you, that's your option, right?
Like, I mean, if you, if you want to transfer value and you, I'm sure,
I haven't heard this, but I'm sure there are internet outages,
powers down in many places.
the Iranian real is completely failed. Like those people are getting a front and center seat to
why Bitcoin. And so it's easy to say, hey, like if you think about this over the long term,
don't worry about the price. And by the way, I agree with you on your sentiment.
But there are millions and millions of people that we sometimes forget about around the world who
need it for all of the things that have very little to do with number go up.
They need it because it's censorship resistant and it's permissionless and they can walk
across a border with it, memorizing 12 or 24 words in their head, you know.
And so that to me is like the beauty of Bitcoin is when we see these tragic events play out
is that I know that there's a glimmer of hope in these places, even if not everyone
there has figured it out yet.
So I'll just add that.
What was it that in 2021, what brought you back to Bitcoin?
Was it COVID?
Was it a combination of factors?
Combination of factors.
I think for me, definitely COVID.
I'm from Canada, but stimulus for you guys was no different.
But I think we had a lot more stimulus here.
Just payments going out.
I think for us, it was every two weeks we would get $1,200 if we were laid off,
not in like working or anything like that, which is just crazy.
And businesses were getting money on top of that.
And it was my son.
So our second child was born July or sorry, January 7th, 2021.
So it was a couple of days after his birth.
Actually, I remember holding him and looking at him and thinking that all of the money
that had just been spent over the last, you know, nine, 10 months, you know, he was going to be
paying for for the next 70 years, basically his whole life. And that's just the money that was
spent over the year of 2020. That wasn't me thinking about all the money that was going to
be spent in 2021, 2022, 2023. But knowing that the government was going to continue to spend
And at this point, stimuluses were still going out here.
Businesses weren't open.
I knew that the COVID shots were coming and there was going to be funding for that.
And there's going to be a whole lot of money printing and money debasement and inflation.
And where I was introduced to Bitcoin in 2013 as an inflation hedge, I actually laughed at the person who told me that because I said that the American dollar or the Canadian dollar doesn't experience inflation as for the Argentine peso.
And today I call the Canadian dollar the snow peso.
So that's kind of what I think of the Canadian dollar.
And unfortunately, the U.S. dollar is not a whole lot stronger, though I do think is obviously stronger than the Canadian dollar.
But yeah, I was really looking at my son and then now thinking as a father, I'm here to protect my son.
I'm here to teach my son.
And I'm here to try and make him into the man that I want him to be, the man that I think the Lord wants him to be.
And part of that is I need to be those those things, too.
I need to be the man that I want him to be.
I need to be the man that, you know, God expects of me to be.
So that includes a whole bunch of things.
But in that kind of moment, I was sort of looking at, you know, his financial health, his financial well-being, his financial security.
And it was kind of this, well, you know, I've been looking at Bitcoin for, you know, the last, you know, seven, eight years. I had just sort of started to think a little bit about, you know, stocks and all that sort of stuff.
And I've seen that sort of run out of grips and, you know, being able to accumulate.
And, you know, real estate was something that when me and my wife got married in 2017, we could have bought something that would have fit for us, but knew that we wanted to start a family and build and all that sort of stuff.
So sort of delayed that. And then by the time it was like we kind of felt like, hey, you know, we should buy a home.
Well, now the home acquisition ability is is far gone. Right. It just ran away from us.
So it's looking at him going, you know, how do I protect him? How do I protect his older sister? How do I protect, you know, future kids, myself, all that sort of thing. So it was kind of, you know, about eight or nine months of me studying and looking at Bitcoin because I didn't want to jump into Bitcoin.
I'm not someone who, like, I'm a rational person.
I think through my moves.
I do what needs to be done, not out of emotion.
And I didn't want to act on emotion because I kind of did that earlier in life, right?
So studied Bitcoin for a while.
And then basically, yeah, in, I don't know if it was September or early October of 2021,
decided, hey, you know, this is what I need to do.
though also bought some, you know, shit coins and some other stocks and that sort of stuff that way
that were presented to me as, you know, blue chip stocks like Google, Apple, those types of things.
So, yeah, it was all basically with the idea of I need to create financial security for for me and
my family and kind of have that generational thought. You're speaking my language. So my son
was born in March of 2021. So he's my only boy. And, uh, I, I spoke about this at Prague last
year because I, after he was born, it wasn't until 2022 that I found Bitcoin, but I, you know,
in the first year of his life, I was beginning to think a lot about like this, like when you're,
when you're a father, it resonates having a boy, I think in a different way than having a, having a
girl. And I was thinking about, um, just like, as I got into Bitcoin, I began to learn a little bit
to piece together like how the money sort of sits at the top and everything else is downstream.
You know, the forever wars. I mean, dude, look at us now. We're looking at this again.
You know, the way that I want him to take care of himself for like, how am I going to
feed and nourish my family? Like all of these things. And I sort of realized I was sort of on
the right track. And especially once I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, a lot of things became
very clear, but it makes you really question each of those little decisions because your kids are
watching everything you do. Right. And, uh, and one of the things for me is like, in like working
in the Bitcoin space now, I want my kids to look back and understand I'm not like, hopefully their
mom can tell them the story, but that when the whole world thought Bitcoin was a scam or a Ponzi
or it was going to boil the oceans or it would never work or whatever,
I was out there trying to educate them.
And that's where I was saving the value of my work.
Because I think all this stuff, it matters and it's going to influence the next generation.
So when you told me I've got three kids and one on the way,
I'm excited because I'm in the same boat.
And we need a lot more Bitcoin babies out there, in my opinion.
um how do you so so i well i guess it may be as a as a personal question when the price is dipping
like this do you have people in your life who know you're the bitcoin guy and are they mocking you do
they even pay attention are all your friends and family orange pill like what what's sort of the
status of your world um i think it's sort of shifted uh the last year uh there's been a lot
of people in my life that I don't want to necessarily say it's because of me. And definitely
it's not because of me. But yeah, I think there's been a number of people in my life, just like in my
general circle, who have found Bitcoin, which we've kind of started a Bitcoin meetup, but we
haven't done it in a few months. We kind of were doing it around campfires in the summer. It's now
winter out here, it's white snow and it's kind of difficult to do that.
I not saying that we can It just how we were doing it But yeah it been I think there been a bit of a sentiment change in general people around me When I talk about Bitcoin I find that people are being a little bit more receptive and
open to it than they have been in prior years, which I think is interesting and encouraging
because the price has gone down. And maybe that's because we didn't have that huge run up at the end
of the cycle, if that's what we want to call it, where people weren't getting exposed to the
hopium and the big, you know, FOMO Bitcoin and then see it all crash. I was talking with someone
last week about Bitcoin. And, you know, when I brought it up, it's always kind of this, you know,
I'm always assuming that when I bring up Bitcoin to a normie of someone who I don't know is in
Bitcoin, that they're just going to completely reject it and think that I'm an idiot. So that's,
I usually don't necessarily lead with Bitcoin. I lead with some other questions or, you know, statements that kind of get the feel of where people are at in what they might look at the economy or what they think of the world and that sort of stuff.
But yeah, I brought it up with him and he was just like, oh, like this Bitcoin thing, like, like, why don't you tell me more about it?
Like that's, that's really interesting.
And then, you know, for whatever reason, we ended up down like the heat punk sort of rabbit
hole of, of Bitcoin, which that's something that like just a sidebar conversation.
That's one thing that I would love to get into and explore the idea of that more.
But I'm just scratching the surface on, on that.
But yeah, I think there's just, there's a little bit more receptiveness to Bitcoin for
whatever reason around me.
And maybe that's just, I can talk about it better or, you know, the environment's a little
more fruitful that way to be able to do things and talk about it. But yeah, it's definitely not
like I'm walking around with like my whole family and everybody that I know is Bitcoiners.
Still definitely obviously feel the resistance. You know, for me, it's just, you know, when people
come to me and they're like, hey, you know, Bitcoin, like how you feeling today about it?
It's like, well, I have my own conviction on it and I've built into that. And there's not really
anything that, you know, a friend's going to say to me, that's going to, uh, make me think any
different. It's those moments that, um, you know, a friend reaches out to me who, you know,
over the course of the last year, I do have a number of friends who have bought above what the
price is today. And there's not a single one of them that are saying to me that they're, they're
fearful. They're, they're messaging me saying like they are buying the dip or, Hey, you know,
how much lower is it going to go? Should I put it all in now? Or should I, you know, and my response
to that is just DCA don't ever, you know, ape in, but at the same time, like to me, where I am with
my conviction is that if you're at ape in today and the price did go down to 40, 30, $20,000,
like, so what the price, and again, four or five years is going to be multitude and higher than
what it is today. So any entry point right now is a fair and good just entry point. It's not like
stocks that you have to exactly time your buy and exactly time your sell with Bitcoin. I think you
can just basically throw the dart at the wall, buy Bitcoin and spend it when you need to spend it.
Yeah, I love that. Well, hey, let's talk about that for a minute. Spend it when you need to
spend it. Are you like a, uh, are you a big circular economy guy? Like have you found vendors
or are you pushing to get folks in your life who will accept Bitcoin as payment?
It's so no, I have not really spent a whole lot of sats. Um, it's something that I think needs to
happen. Uh, it's something that as, as I develop my conviction of Bitcoin, I've turned from
seeing as something that I need to have for myself.
And this is kind of a very new shift for me.
So I don't think that Bitcoin should just be huddled for me.
I think for me to respect my time and my energy and my efforts
is to store that in Bitcoin, right?
But if I'm also to love my neighbor,
I should be giving them something that has the value that respects their time, energy, and effort
as well. So yeah, I would say over the last few months, I've been really convicted and really
struggled with this idea that I earn fiat, I earn Canadian dollars, I convert my Canadian dollars to
Bitcoin. I sell Bitcoin if I need to sell Bitcoin back into Canadian dollars to then pay expenses or
to buy things or give stuff for services. To me, there hasn't been a whole lot of services around
that I have found that use Bitcoin. We don't have square terminals here in Canada that allow you to
use lightning, though, you know, I'm probably not looking hard enough. There's probably ways of
doing it, but it's kind of having those conversations. And again, I think I maybe
unfortunately start in the wrong spot where I'm always assuming that the person's not going to be
receptive to Bitcoin. But maybe they are. And maybe I just need to ask and say, hey, would you
accept Bitcoin? Can we set up a lightning invoice and send sats that way? Because it's really not
that difficult. And the more I play around with lightning wallets and that sort of stuff and
figure those out. Like it's just as simple as sending an e-transfer. Like it's, it's no,
it's actually, I think it's quite easier than, than sending me transfer. So, um,
no, I I'm with you, man. I, so I have tried to make a very diligent effort the last six months,
call it to orange pill people. So like I've, for anyone, anyone listening, I'm sorry. I'm
going to just tell him the same thing you've heard from me a million times. I've been working
orange pill my church um so i've had a couple meetings with the leadership team with the uh
church council and i got them to accept my gift of bitcoin for that one there were no strings
attached because it's my home church and i didn't feel like that was the way to do it but i requested
that they would hold it for four or five years um and eventually i'm going to get them into self
custody they're on a good exchange right now but obviously especially as a guy who we sell you know
training for self-custody, not where I want them to be, but their conviction needs to get there to
where they're going to be able to learn the skills. And then I've got a farmer's market near my house
that opens sometime in May. And at the end of last summer, I had started to sort of ask some people
if they'd accept Bitcoin, but didn't really, it's kind of one-off short conversations.
my goal is to basically orange spill the entire farmer's market this year to get anyone who I
buy something from to accept Bitcoin or at least to commit to, hey, let me learn a little bit about
this before I accept it and then go from there. Because I think you're right. Most people are
going to think you're a little bit crazy. It's becoming maybe a bit more of an acceptable topic.
You know, if they're watching mainstream news, they're hearing Bitcoin probably a little bit more than they did five years ago.
But it's still an uphill battle, I think.
They still think it's magic internet money or there's, you know, something like that.
I don't know if that's been your experience.
Yeah, for sure.
And I think there might be a little bit of a difference being here in Canada, the United States.
I don't think our mainstream media at all is talking about Bitcoin.
I think Bitcoin is really only being talked about the mainstream media in America because the administration is talking about it.
If anything, from the mainstream media is it's been demonized here in Canada.
The whole trucker convoy here was, you know, to demonize Bitcoin.
And, you know, you had Trudeau kind of, you know, pushing back on Bitcoin and calling it what he called it.
And Pierre Polyev, who was the opposition leader, was supportive of it. And basically, since the trucker convoy has largely been mute on Bitcoin and all of that.
So, yeah, I mean, we don't necessarily have to go there for this conversation, but I do think that, you know, a political party that actually wants to do something good would be to adopt a healthy strategic Bitcoin policy.
That doesn't necessarily mean to have to have a Bitcoin reserve.
But I think, you know, for local level, you know, at the federal level, they can print money.
But, you know, your state for us, our province, you know, your local municipality, you're really hand strung to what the Federal Reserve, the Central Bank, Bank Canada, Bank England, like whatever that is, their policies.
And it would be smart for, you know, especially the local cities, townships, whatever, to opt out of that and be able to kind of control their own funding that way.
Yeah, that's an that's an interesting comment, because I I think I hate government more than anyone that I know. And I've thought about this before where I so I'm I think philosophically, I trend toward anarcho capitalism.
practically I look at the world and I say, you know, I think government on some level is going
to emerge. What's the best that we can do? And I think the more localized that can be, the better.
I've actually thought about, should I be pitching a strategic Bitcoin reserve to my local,
you know, to the town that I live in? Because that might enable them, you know, for 20 years to have
sort of an ability to do things that they just wouldn't otherwise be able to do.
whereas even at like for you know you at the provincial level or for us at the state
um still that government still feels too big to me you know like i live two hours away from our
state capital and i'm like you don't really care what's going on in my life and i live in a state
they don't they don't know you right um i i think like ideally it would be that
your local government your town your city whatever you're in would be the the level of
government that has the most impact on your life because they're the one who know you. They're the
one who can actually have a conversation with you. And the farther you get out from that being state,
federal, all of that, they're so much farther removed from you. They don't actually know you.
And that's not to say that they don't have maybe their spot in government or a need, but like
Donald Trump doesn't know you. Donald Trump is never going to sit down and have a coffee with
you. But, you know, your local mayor or your, you know, your councillor, whoever that is,
you can actually go have a coffee with them. You actually can contact them. You actually can
talk to them directly and they can know your needs and they can advocate for you. So I think that
if a city wants to do what a city wants to do for the actual people of the city that they represent,
they kind of have to distance themselves away from the control of, you know, a bigger, larger
government than them. And I think that if we were to shift to, you know, Bitcoin, you take away the
power of a federal government, you take power away from the state government, and you shift
the higher amount of power from the top right now being the federal government to the local
government than being at the top. And I think that that will, I think there's better incentives
running that way. And that's not to say that every city and every town is going to do it right.
But if a town's doing it wrong, you're just essentially going to move and you're not going
to, or you're going to vote them out. Right. Yeah. I think that's, yeah, I think that's a good point
because it's been a struggle for me because I just have like this, such a firm bias against
up against government. I'll just say that broadly. But I think I agree with you that at a localized
level, first of all, you're right. To some degree, they're your neighbors, you know, unless you just
live in a massive municipality where, you know, it's just it's like its own little state or
something. But you might have the ability to influence things in a way that you just can't
Once you're further removed.
Were you like when I understand you're Canadian, so maybe you don't follow this quite as closely.
But like when Trump announced the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, it was an executive order.
So it's not been passed into law or anything.
He basically just decreed it.
Was that something that you were excited about as a Canadian?
Like, hey, is this the way the world's headed?
or were you like, I was excited at first, but I wasn't as far along on my journey. And now I'm
like, I don't want the federal government to have any Bitcoin. They can only do that through theft.
Where did you stand on that? Yeah, I think maybe I'll answer your question for,
I was excited. Yes, I was bullish. I was happy. I was excited that Trump
had that executive order, I guess that's still on the table and more can be done with it possibly
over the next three or so years. Where I'm on it right now is sort of what you had mentioned.
I'm kind of murky on it. But at the end of the day, I think that Bitcoin is for everybody.
And that includes my enemies. And not to say that I think Donald Trump is my enemy,
But the worst person in the world, Bitcoin is for them. Right. And I think that Bitcoin.
Will make them a better person will because it drives incentives. So when we look on what's going on around the world, again, a large portion of that is government based.
if governments get into Bitcoin, I think that regardless of if that's through theft,
which I don't agree with, whether that's printing their dollars, which again, that's devaluing.
I don't actually think that that's a wise or smart move to do either. But I think that it's,
I don't want to call Bitcoin like an illness, but sort of like if they get the bug of Bitcoin,
like it's an illness, it's going to eventually spread throughout the body, right? But like in
the positive sense, not the illness being a negative sense, right? So I think that if,
you know, the United States goes that route and actually does what we kind of were hoping
Trump was going to do about a year ago, if, you know, other countries start to do that,
I think that just based on incentives, it's going to end up being a better world. So yes,
I am still happy and excited I not necessarily hopeful or thinking that Trump is going to enact on the executive order the way that we all were hoping he was going to
Yeah.
Okay.
I think that's probably fair.
Do you, hey, actually, hey, can we take a step back?
Because you mentioned, you said you didn't know if this was something we wanted to get
into, but the Canadian trucker protest, I meant to revisit that.
Did you have something in particular you wanted to say?
So you don't have to answer this question if this isn't interesting.
One thing I've always wondered that I've never asked a Canadian is what was the I know what the mainstream media was saying during the Canadian trucker protests.
I don't know anything about the sentiment of the average Canadian, so to speak, and to what extent they heard about Bitcoin being used.
and that led to them to distrust Bitcoiners
or if it led them to recognize it as a potential tool?
What was the climate like around all of this?
Yeah, I would say that I live in a fairly liberal city.
I definitely work in a very liberal environment.
What do you do for work?
um i work within a government entity essentially um yeah i work for the government i mean probably
40 of canada works for the government at at the end of the day so um but uh yeah so
yeah it's uh i definitely work in a in a liberal environment um so if i were to
take the general pulse of people that are around me. They probably
were neutral to not favorable
of the convoy, though I live...
So here in Ontario, we have the major highway. It's called the 401.
It's the most busiest highway in North America, though
I think that's kind of skewed. But basically, that ends up going through Toronto.
That goes all the way from Windsor to
Montreal. So, so Windsor is just the other side of Detroit and it goes basically right across,
you know, the Southern region of, of Ontario. So if you were to go like two minutes down the road
from where, where I live right now, and you were to go on to the bridge that goes over the 401.
So the overpass over, over the 401, you would not have found a spot if you did not get there
early enough. There were hundreds of people that were packing every single bridge. And that wasn't
even like, I remember I went down, like I drove down and, and, and, you know, did a loop on the
401. There were people on those bridges and it wasn't even the trucker protest convoy going
through yet. And, and like every truckers honking their horns. So there definitely was
a support even within, I would say the liberal environment that I kind of live in.
um but yeah i think there was obviously the a great support for it but there also was the
you know the people that that weren't for it they they saw the the truckers as as people who were
doing something wrong and then you had kind of what was going out in um in alberta at coots um
the the border blockage there that basically some some truckers had taken their trucks and and
blocked the port of entry going to and from the United States to Canada in Alberta there,
which kind of all got lumped into the same thing. And I think that's actually looking back,
I think that was how Trudeau had declared the Emergencies Act, which then gave him all the
powers to be able to do whatever he wanted to do during that. But yeah, I think a lot of it was
just mainstream media, which all media here is liberal. There is no conservative mainstream
media here in Canada. So at least like in the United States, I think it's, you know,
you're still sucking the same tit, but at least you have like a liberal and a conservative being
Fox and CNN or MSNBC or whatever that is. So at least you're sort of getting
both skewed sides of things here in Canada, it's all just the same jargon garbage, uh,
out of one side of the mouth. Though I would imagine you would echo the same
sentiment as myself. Like it's all just garbage. Um, but yeah, that's essentially what people are,
you know, fed here is CBC, CTV, city news, like whatever that is, it's all just mainstream liberal
biased, you know, government fed, because they're really funded by the government with all of our
subsidies and tax dollars that go towards them. So, I mean, of course, they're not going to say
anything that is, you know, goes against the Liberal Party. And I think we sort of saw a little
bit of a shift in the last year or so when it kind of looked like the Liberal government wasn't
going to get in and conservative government with Pierre Paliyev was at least, you know,
looking like he was going to become prime minister.
They sort of changed their tune a little bit, but with that not happening in Canadian politics
right now, it's just, just a mess.
But yeah, it's the trucker convoy.
Wasn't really looked at that great.
And, and, and Bitcoin was talked about in parliament though.
again, how many people actually watch the videos and stuff that come out of parliament.
But yeah, it was definitely by, you know, Trudeau was talked about negatively on the house floor.
Christine Freeland, who was our finance minister at the time, definitely talked about it negatively
at the time and basically demonized it. And, you know, I think there were 10 Bitcoin wallet
addresses that were told that, you know, you're, you're not allowed to transact with them, which
I'm like, who's stopping that?
But then anybody who did donate to those addresses were then linked back to their bank accounts.
Bank accounts were frozen.
You know, I do actually personally know someone who had donated and he's not a Bitcoiner, but had ended up donating in Bitcoin.
And he had his bank account frozen for a little bit of time.
And he's like, I didn't even know like much about the convoy.
Like it was just I was just trying to help support, you know, what I thought was was going on.
It wasn't like I was trying to be a terrorist, but now I'm being painted as a terrorist.
Right. But I think talking with some people that that were actually at the protest in Ottawa, there was a lot of Bitcoin going around.
You know, I've seen stuff and I've heard stuff of, you know, people walking up to truckers and just handing them an envelope,
which basically told them how to accept the Bitcoin, how to download stuff, and they would
have sats and all of that. So I do think that the atrocities that are going on in the world,
whether that's what's happening in Iran that you mentioned, whether that's the
trucker convoy protest, like all these things, they, you know, tough times create strong men.
And in these times, I think is when we find out how to use Bitcoin and when to use Bitcoin.
And it and it creates the moment of like, we need it where if I were to look at the price of Bitcoin right now, I think the price of Bitcoin is largely dictated on, you know, American policy.
It's it's it's dictated on American markets.
It's dictated on the pulse of America.
Right. But Bitcoin is global.
And I think where you will actually see adoption happen at the hyper Bitcoinized level is going to be in the countries that their dollar has collapsed, their dollar has failed.
It's it's in emergency purposes.
And I think we're seeing that in Iran.
You know, we're seeing that around the world of, you know, they no longer can trust their government.
not that they ever could, but there's an immediate need today where if I held my dollars in whatever
dollar it is of the country, you know, I go to work at seven o'clock in the morning and I'm holding
those dollars and then I come home at night to go buy eggs. Well, the eggs are now $12 rather than
$6, like hyperinflation happening around the world, right? So there's an immediate need to survive
day to day, week to week using Bitcoin, where for you and I living in Canada and the United States,
I mean, if I buy Bitcoin today, it doesn't really affect next week. It really doesn't
affect next month. It doesn't even affect necessarily next year. So I think adoption
in the way that we use Bitcoin is going to happen in the places that are having the difficulty,
and it's going to be the difficult situations in our lives in the West.
But I think those are going to be a little bit more isolated.
It's not going to be mass US has an issue or mass Canada has an issue.
It's going to be a subsect of Americans, Canadians having issues.
And for me, COVID was an example of that with the trucker convoy protests,
churches being locked down, all of that,
that that's going to wake people up to understand that they actually need Bitcoin today
and bring in the adoption and the use cases for it.
So you think to some degree we're waiting on some more dominoes to fall
for the hyper-Bitcoinized future?
We need, it can't just be Argentina waking up and Zimbabwe waking up.
It's just going to require,
in me like iran's actually a fairly influential nation in on the global scale um because they've
got oil at the very least and uh it seems to me like a nation like that finding bitcoin could
actually be very impactful because i'm i'm of the belief i'd love to hear your thoughts on this i'm
of the belief that we're we're approaching a time and i don't know if it's going to be two years from
now or 10 years from now, but we're approaching a time where the reason Bitcoin wins is obviously
for all of the properties it possesses, but also because of those properties, there are going to be
people producing real value in the world, oil, energy, raw materials for building anything and
everything, who wake up to the reality of our monetary system. And they say,
I'm done with this. You are no longer allowed to pay me in dollars or euros or yen. You have
to pay me in Bitcoin. I'm providing value to you. You need to provide it to me. And that to me is
like the moment that everything changes when major suppliers and shipping companies and
when they start saying, I understand Bitcoin well enough to know that I don't want your fiat.
But I think it could be some time before some of these dominoes fall.
And I think it takes some pain for those sorts of players in the global economy to wake up to what we're talking about here.
I don't know if you've thought through.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you envision the hyper-Bitcoinization thesis playing out to the extent that you fully buy it.
Yeah, I think if you asked me two years ago, I would say like the dollar, whether it was the Canadian dollar or the American dollar was close to collapse.
I would think today I've maybe softened my thought, at least on the American dollar, where I think we are going to see the lesser, weaker currencies experience collapse and obviously money in those countries.
So like money in Iran needs to flow somewhere.
Where is it going to find its safe haven?
And it's going to find its safe haven in something that, you know, people think that they can trust.
And unfortunately, I think that people are going to look at the U.S. dollar and they're going to see something that they can trust.
Likewise, they are going to find Bitcoin.
They are going to find gold.
They're going to find silver, other commodities like real estate, oil, whatever that is.
So I think like all of those assets, as well as the U.S. dollar move higher.
So I think that the U.S. dollar is actually going to basically suck off the life of other dying fiat currencies, which will ultimately be the demise of the U.S. dollar eventually.
Um, so I don't particularly think that the U S dollar is going to collapse, you know,
in the near term future.
So that like, even in the next 10 years or a couple of years ago, I might've said, you
know, I think in the next 10 years, the, the American dollar is gone.
Um, I think it, it does have some life.
Um, I think that's actually a benefit, uh, because if the U S dollar, Canadian dollar,
whatever just imploded tomorrow. Uh, there'd be a lot of my family and friends that are left
in the rubble. Um, so I think that there's a bit of a blessing and, uh, there's some grace
and some mercy that's happening, uh, right now, uh, by not just complete total utter collapse.
Um, but I mean, there is a path that I can see that that actually does happen tomorrow because
of how bad the dollar actually is.
So, yeah.
I would be interested.
I'll be very interested to see how this plays out
because I hear everything you're saying.
And then I see someone like Parker Lewis,
who I had on the podcast last year.
And his thesis, I need to go back and listen to it.
And I've heard him talk about it before,
but I think he thinks by the year 2030,
the dollar is dead.
which is not far off. I think I asked him, what do you mean by the dollar is dead? Like people
do not transact in dollars anymore. And I don't think it was that. It was something to the effect
of there. It will be completely evident to the entire world that there is Bitcoin and there is
the dollar. And one of them is on the ascent and one of them is dying. And you're going to have
like the competition where it just it becomes clear to everyone what the future of global money
is going to be. And that's Bitcoin. It's not that everyone throws out their, you know, cash registers
and they stop accepting dollars all at once. That's not what he means when the dollar dies.
Do you like is that a scenario? And to me, that kind of makes sense. It's like eventually what
you're describing. Yeah, like we're going to see, I think a lot of these fiat currencies fail. The
is going to suck it up I think that makes sense And while that happening Bitcoin I think is going to continue to ascend And so it sort of stands to reason in my mind that Parker onto something We going to basically be left with like here are your options And by the way let me throw one more little twist into this
I think that what the dollar looks like in 2030 could be different. I think it could be
than we know it today. It could be Tether. And by the way, we're going to censor transactions
and you only get you were going to do UBI with only so much per month. Like this is what I think
stable coins are scary as hell. And so those are the two options. It's like the slavery system.
It's the last man standing or the freedom system. And it's the only option. And that's why I think
Bitcoin is obviously ultimately wins. Is that a timeline that you just think, first of all,
is that a thesis that you think is interesting or compelling? And second, is that timeline just
insane to you? No, the timeline I don't think is insane. I think there's legs to that timeline. I
think if I look at history and I look at even what I would say is going on in the world right now is
dying power, dying countries, dying governments, dying, you know, people that are trying to hold
on to their power, they're going to lose it or they see the loss of it. And part of that I think
is is bitcoin part of that i think is just you know the nature of governments dollars all that
sort of stuff but it's the ugliness side of the the dying decrepit evil garbage that's going on
in the world and they're going to do everything that they can to hold on to that power so where
I think that there are legs to that thesis. I also throw into that thesis, the knowledge that
no evil entity, no, no government, nobody who has the power right now, because ultimately Bitcoin is
going to transfer the power to the people that hold Bitcoin, right? Nobody's going to go down
without a fight, right? So, you know, they're going to fight tooth and nail to the death.
And that's why I would maybe push that timeline out a little farther is that, you know, the people
who are in control right now, aren't just going to say, okay, you know, here, here's Bitcoin,
you know, put their, put their hands up and, and, and have a good time and, and just switch to
Bitcoin, right? It's going to be, I think it's going to be an ugly, nasty switch. And I think
you're sort of seeing that with Iran. I think you're seeing that with Israel, like you had
mentioned, you know, the forever wars, the wars that are going on. I don't think that the people
have the appetite for forever wars. I don't think that, you know, the American people, you know,
would allow government to, you know, go ahead and have Afghanistan 2.0 or Iraq, whatever,
you know, happen with Iran for the next 20 years. But can they get away with it for a few months
and inject money that way and then move on to Cuba and then move on to, you know,
pick the country of the month, right? So yeah, I just, I think that there's going to be,
more struggle that way and an ugliness side of things as the powers lose their collapse.
And there's going to be a resistance. And I think we've seen that, say with the trucker convoy,
that you have the resistance of the Trudeau government. You have the resistance from a lot
of people. And I think that's just going to come out uglier as time goes on, as Bitcoin wins. And I
And I do think that Bitcoin has won.
I think that Bitcoin will continue to win.
I'm not scared that Bitcoin somehow isn't going to win.
I think right now I'm a little bit more worried that Bitcoin doesn't reach the potential that it should and it can.
So how would you see that happening?
Like what would be an example of Bitcoin wins, but it doesn't really reach its full potential?
It's a thought I share, I think.
yeah I think you
mentioned Tether I think stable coins
are a way that you know the number
because Tether basically
if I understand Tether
correctly you know they're buying
bonds they're buying Bitcoin
to back it like
there's at least a
backing to it it's not a fiat
currency that you know basically
the government is just declaring is
and prints it that way
but
if we're just going to wrap up Bitcoin in fiat terms and fiat lenses and, you know,
not actually self custody and not have, you know, our actual Bitcoin and we just
make Bitcoin kind of what we've known the dollar to be. I think that's where,
like, I think we're in a better world, even in a fiat wrap Bitcoin, let's say,
Whether that's ETFs, whether that's, you know, you're just holding stuff on exchange, whether that's your loaning against your Bitcoin, whether that's you using Tether, whatever that is.
But it's all censorship, you know, controlled.
It's you can't actually do what you want with it.
I think when you actually hold Bitcoin, I think that's where Bitcoin is actually going to win.
And I think that's to me that the price of Bitcoin is probably the least interesting aspect of Bitcoin.
I think for me, the most interesting aspect of Bitcoin is the permissionless, the self-sovereignty ability to actually be able to hold it and do what you want with the money.
You don't have to ask the bank.
You don't have to ask a third party to do something.
But if we move away from that, I think that's where Bitcoin still wins, but it doesn't reach its potential.
It's not until the masses are actually holding Bitcoin.
And that's not to say that, you know, I think that ETFs or, you know, non self custodial entities out there are going to be gone in the next, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.
But there's no real need per se for them.
So I think.
Bitcoin's ultimate win is that everybody has Bitcoin in cold storage.
everybody has you know lightning wallets or you know whatever we're using at that point
and that's what we're using we're not trusting somebody else to interact spend save and do all
of that yeah i i agree i there's someone who who says um you know we'll all be rich and depressed
like if we if we have this world where bitcoin basically functions as a store of value
and probably not even to the extent that it could be a store of value with paper Bitcoin products
and all sorts of fiat layers sitting on top of it.
And that's, to me, why back to our conversation about building circular economies, spending Bitcoin,
that's part of the reason I think it's just so important we do that.
Get Bitcoin into more people's hands, get more people learning,
fewer people distracted by ETFs and treasury companies and all the other products
that have really, in my view, very little to do with Bitcoin.
And the reason that I'm here at least.
All right, man, I'm trying to think if there's anything else we haven't covered that I was hoping to.
Is there any topics that you'd like to touch on?
I've got one more question for you that I end the show with for everyone.
But anything that you'd like to talk about before we do that?
No, you can shoot with the last question.
All righty, man.
So this is a fun one.
What's an unpopular opinion that you have?
You get bonus points if you offend some Bitcoiners with it.
I guess to maybe go off of our last bit of the conversation is that ETFs are a net negative to the Bitcoin space.
And I think that's because it's wrapped up in, you know, fiat jargon.
And if I were to maybe throw something else into that is that, you know, lending against your Bitcoin is a net negative, even though I can walk down on both of them.
the financial gains on it. So if you have Bitcoin and you need to spend money and you were to sell
your Bitcoin, you are going to pay taxes on it, um, where you could loan against it. And there
are no taxes. Like it's not, it's not a taxable event. So you've a saved yourself money. You're
also someone who's against the state and you're not letting them get their cut for something that
you've held on. Like I can see there are philosophical reasons that I can see the
agreement for. There are, you know, financial decisions that I can see the agreement on,
but at the end of the day, it's just, it's just the fiat system that I'm trying to,
I'm trying to exit and to bring the fiat back into the Bitcoin world that we're all trying to
build, um, and leave the fiat world. I don't know why we're bringing that with us. Um,
And just to maybe go down to connect it to something else is, you know, this morning when I was reading my Bible, I'm in Deuteronomy.
And, you know, Moses in Deuteronomy is giving his last speech.
Essentially, it's it's you know, he's about to die.
He's not going to enter the promised land.
And he's kind of giving to the Israelites like the last hurrah, let's say.
And, you know, he's talking about when you enter the promised land and you go in.
It's not like the Israelites were just walking into milk and honey and they were just going to have a good time. There was going to be a lot of work that needed to be done. There were other people living in the nation and stuff. And part of the language that's used is you're going to have to go in and drive out the evil that is in these lands. Get rid of it. Don't allow any of it to be here. Right. And when I think of Bitcoin, not that like I do see some connections and that sort of stuff.
And I don't want to make it seem like Bitcoin is a god or anything like that.
It's not to be worshipped.
But when there is evil, when there is a disease, you don't want that disease to get into the thing that is good.
So I personally, and I think you would agree, that fiat and that mindset and that way of life is a disease.
It's evil and something that's not good.
And that's what we're trying to opt out of.
So don't be bringing that into Bitcoin. We need Bitcoin to be Bitcoin and Bitcoin only that way and not be looking at it through and bringing in those the things that we liked. Right. Because, I mean, if I if I read, you know, the first few books of the Bible, it's you know, you have the Israelites that have been in Egypt who have been slaves.
they all want to leave and then they leave and then they're out in the desert and they're
wandering and they're saying to Moses they're like why did you why did you take us out of Egypt
like let's go back to Egypt and be slaves right there is a you know part of our human nature I
guess is just to go back to mindset still because in in many ways it was easy right they had somebody
telling them what to do they didn't have to think for themselves even though they were getting whipped
Even though they were getting thrown down, they weren't, you know, doing anything that they wanted to do.
You know, in many ways, they felt like it was easier.
Like, at least we had food to eat.
At least there was water.
Where's the water?
Right.
And spoiler alert, like Moses just hit a rock and water came out because God is great.
But yeah, it's it's just something that, you know, again, I think there's a lot of sense to ETFs.
I think there is a lot of, you know, you can make good propositions to ETFs and, you know,
loaning against your Bitcoin.
I just think that it's just going back down the fiat garbage hole of what the dollar is
today.
And if we wrap Bitcoin in that, that's where I think, you know, we don't hit Bitcoin's
potential.
And I think one of the things with fiat is that you're, you're taking, you're trying
to bring the future to today, right? And under a Bitcoin standard, like if you don't have the means
to buy a car, you're not going to buy the car. And I think that that's okay. I think think when
you can, and, um, you know, it's, it's not to covet the thing that you don't have. Uh, so
it's just a difference in shift. And that doesn't mean that life is necessarily easier in that way,
but you're going to have what you need. You're going to have what you can. And I think that
that's just a better, better way of life. So just get rid of ETFs and, you know,
loaning against Bitcoin and all that sort of stuff. I think they're going to end up being
a net negative. And if we keep going down those, those avenues is where Bitcoin's not going to hit
its potential. Well, that's an unpopular opinion, but you have no disagreement here, my friend.
I couldn't agree more.
So Joel, thanks so much for the time, man.
Why don't you tell people where they can find you, follow you,
anything else you want to share before we hop off?
Yeah, you reach out.
I'm on X, Joel Holtelman.
I think it'll be up here on the screen.
Yeah, shoot me a DM, reach out, interact with me.
I love to talk Bitcoin.
If you agree with something that I said, let's talk about that.
If you don't agree with something that I said, I'm all ears.
I'm open to criticism.
uh i know that i'm a retired i'm an idiot in in many ways so um i i'm not right so um and i i've
been proving that every day of my life so um yeah awesome man well hey i think you got some good
takes so really appreciate you being here let's stay in touch are you gonna be in vegas um i had
thought of it we're gonna have our baby in june so before we knew that we were pregnant we kind of
we're thinking about maybe doing Vegas this year, but no,
I don't think those are in the cards just being so,
so close to when babies do. So I hear you, man. All right, brother.
We'll take care. We'll talk soon. All right. Thanks for having me.
Cheers. And that's a wrap again.
Hope you enjoyed my conversation with Joel. Go give him a follow online.
Just an awesome guy. And of course,
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