If you see the biggest players in the world taking huge positions, and not only just that,
like JP Morgan is trying to sell you picks and shovels, at some point in time, not only are they
going to let it rip if they're trying to suppress it, they're going to leverage it to the hilt to
make themselves wealthy in the process as well too. If you have an asset 10 times the size of
Bitcoin, that can just absolutely rip from $2,000 to $4,000. What, you don't think Bitcoin could
easily go from 100 to 200, 100 to 400.
You don't think that Bitcoin could go from 100 to a million?
You know exactly what they're going to do is just turn on the taps and just flood the system.
And where do you think that's going to go?
It would not shock me to see that we go from like 80k to 800.
Like a 10x is not out of the realm for Bitcoin.
It's totally within the norm.
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Bing bong. I am back with another edition of the State of Bitcoin podcast where I've got the man,
the myth, the legend, Nathan of the BTC Mentor. But Nate, last time we talked,
We were going deep into the coordinated attack from Wall Street against MSTR.
Michael Saylor is over in MENA as we speak, talking to potentially some of these sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi and others who have been linked to Bitcoin.
There's been rumblings of a secret whale that is now FOMOing into Bitcoin.
So what do you think with all of this noise coming in on these big giant players now figuring Bitcoin out?
man i think that this is always going to happen it probably already has been happening in the
shadows like there's no way that this has been like we're what we're on like year 16 right now
2009 we do the quick math it's there's no way that the people haven't been strategically taking
positions even they don't want to get out there like sailor and do it publicly so i'm not surprised
to see energy rich countries i think they're going to be first and foremost the biggest players in
that space so it makes sense for like saudi arabia uae all these guys to start stacking in their
sovereign wealth fund particularly when there's growing concerns surrounding treasuries we see
that a lot of foreign countries are divesting from treasuries. China's going all in on gold.
And it doesn't mean that they're completely getting rid of them, not buying any at all,
but they're looking for other alternatives. So why wouldn't you necessarily hedge your best?
But I got to tell you, man, the one thing that's just jumping out me lately is that
we're coming up in the end of the year. We're coming up in the end of 2025, which is coming
up on basically the end of what should have been another cycle here. And it really didn't feel like
one at this point in time. But the thing that struck me this morning when I was looking at,
I believe, a sailor bought like almost another billion dollars of Bitcoin is that, Brandon,
and I want to get your take on this too. Nobody blew up this year. There hasn't been an FTX or
a Mt. Gox. There hasn't been a major exchange or a major hack. There hasn't been that catastrophic
moment where we're reminded of the lesson of not your keys, not your coins. And I wonder what
that's ultimately done to sentiment as well as I worry that that lesson is getting lost here.
So I love seeing the hype that's going on over there right now, but I worry that everyone is
getting way too comfortable in trad fi now i'm not saying that any of these guys are necessarily
a bad actor but like if there's not one in the space right now there will be someone's going to
make that mistake i don't think we're past the point that we never see another hack or blow up
or somebody was rehypothecating like it's not that like all those times are done there will never be
another another ftx and i worry with all the excitement because i think you're right i think
the bigger players are getting in they're going to stack in their sovereign wealth fund and i think
for most normies most people that are just maybe tiptoeing into bitcoin they're stacking in like
a Roth IRA, right? They're stacking it in their brokerage account. And I almost worry that we're
getting way too comfortable with large centralized entities holding on to vast amounts of Bitcoin
and everybody just buying their share or their stock instead of actually holding it themselves.
I don't know. What do you think about that, man? Yeah. I mean, I definitely think it's an
interesting point there. And I think that the treasury company is kind of coming all in.
It has been a worry of mine for quite some time. I mean, there were 64 when Trump got elected last
year and now there's like just under 210. So, I mean, we've seen over a 3x here in a short order.
And I mean, I think that all these players, I mean, me and you, Nate, could come together and
form a company and then get, you know, probably 2, 3, maybe even 5x the amount that normally we
could get just from walking into a bank. And we would use that to buy Bitcoin. Granted, hopefully
we could afford to, you know, pay that debt obligation off. But I mean, with Bitcoin crashing
now too. I think a lot of these Bitcoin treasury companies that have come on are underwater right
now. You see a lot of these that came in, just did one smash buy, kind of tried to do it for
their stocks. And their stocks went up immediately. And then now they're all kind of almost looking
like meme coins, except for MSTR maybe. But they're trying to play the game and essentially
do the same things that MicroStrategy is doing. But the difference is MicroStrategy has over
650,000 Bitcoin and the next closest has 50,000. So it's literally a difference of 600,000 Bitcoin.
So, you know, I think that's potentially going to be maybe not as colossal as the FTX collapse,
but I could definitely see a few of those companies starting to go belly up. And,
you know, I think over time, it is something that is worrisome to me because I think last time we
spoke, I was telling you, the dip, you see a lot of the wallets with 10 million sats, honestly,
sell off Bitcoin during a dip when you would hope the retail would start to come in and buy.
And then you see the number of institutions with 1,000 just go parabolic. So what are you seeing
out there? Do you think that a lot of these plebs or these big players that are just starting to
come in are the ones that are selling off? Or do you think, you know, maybe it's the OGs that are
that are selling that's kind of been that narrative for this entire cycle?
I think there's got two things at play here. And one is like pretty speculative. So we know that
some of the large, like the OGs were selling, we can see on chain that like really old wallets were
moving large amounts of old coins, which makes perfect sense, right? I mean, you've been the
space for a long time, you've held on for this long, of course, you're going to have that moment
of like maybe you want the lifestyle change it's also you might want to even de-risk to some extent
which again i'm not saying that bitcoin is in any way a risk asset it is the trustless the least
risk ask it that you can hold however if you're holding on to like tens of billions of dollars
of bitcoin and that is in any way public knowledge you might have a bit of a target on your back so
i could see like you'd be like you know what i got 10 billion or i got 100 billion of bitcoin
maybe i can just live off eight or seven and i'll pay for some additional security i could see that
that being a motivation to, again, purely from the lifestyle standpoint, because I mean, we touched
on it last time, but Bitcoin, you don't want for itself. You want it for the things that it can
provide for you and your family. So maybe those guys want to provide something for their family
other than actually holding onto the Bitcoin. And I'm sure they did not peel off all of their
stacks. So I think that a lot of the selling is coming from OGs. And the other one that I worry
about, particularly as we're seeing like price corrections, these treasury companies underwater
is centralization within the traditional finance system. And what I mean by that is we all know
that like we've seen like I know HSBC has had to pay out tons of fines and JP Morgan has had to pay
out tons of fines like these traditional financial players they do some sneaky shady shit they always
have and when they get caught they just pay for it's a pay-to-play system right it's not that
no one at JP Morgan is ever going to jail they might just have to have a fine that was 10% of
the profits they made doing that shady stuff so with that one of the things that I do worry about
kind of going back to that self-custody aspect because really that's how we keep everybody in
check that's how you actually protect yourself at the end of the day is that something along the
lines of Bitcoin's hurting. Now, if you've got a large centralized pool of Bitcoin, you can be
damn sure that they're manipulating the price. I don't know how effective they're going to be at it,
but they've got way more information than you do. They've got way more capital to deploy behind it.
You've got all the derivatives now built on top of it. I can guarantee that if they're trying to
take a position or trying to help somebody, one of their clients or somebody take a position,
why not take a stab at pushing it down? Go for those liquidations. That just gives more Bitcoin
to them. And I worry that with the treasury companies, the ones outside of strategy that
are starting to hurt, they're going to see all those basically just get gobbled up by the big
entities, by like the Cantor Fitzgeralds, by the JP Morgans, by the Black Rocks, right?
That they're going to basically scoop in and buy them at the distressed, which is going to
concentrate more of that Bitcoin purchasing power within those traditional financial units,
giving them even more ammunition to try and manipulate the price. Because I don't know about
you, but I'm still incredibly bullish, even in the medium term, give me three to six months,
I think we are absolutely off to the races. I don't think the current price action is really
reflective of sentiment or anything fundamental to Bitcoin. I do think that there was maybe some
stop loss hunting that was going on there that we had people getting taken out for taking on too
much leverage, which is again, that's the old, old lesson. Guys, do not take leverage with your
Bitcoin. Just don't do it. I've seen too many people get absolutely wiped out over the years.
And even during the last correction, I had people that I was getting calls from that were getting
margin called that thought they were way in the clear when we were at a buck 20 80 was like it's
not gonna happen there's no way that's going to be an issue and sure enough it absolutely was don't
make it easy for the old players that we're trying to take out here to take your bitcoin that's what
i'm trying to essentially get is that well it's so exciting to see these news they are taking
positions they're going to fuck with things and they can do it in the short term they absolutely
can't not in the long term not even necessarily in the medium term and also at some point in time
they're just going to want to pump their own bags. But ultimately, as much as for the past year,
I've been so stoked on the sovereign adoption, I'm a little more hesitant. And it's only because I
feel that we haven't had that pain point to remember those important lessons. We may have
strayed off the beaten path a little bit away from South Kosti. Look, if Saudi Arabia wants to
pump my bags, absolutely go for it. It's money for enemies. But I want everybody else to be in
the same position where they actually have their money, they control their money, and then they can
benefit from the battle between the different sovereigns and giant transnationalist financial
companies trying to get in on something years later. Yeah. And the crazy thing is, these guys
have just endless bags. It's not just billions, it's trillions at this point. So I think it's
going to be very interesting to how it's playing out. But I've got a little bit of theory here,
Nathan. I'm curious. I haven't really talked to too many people about it now, but I was just doing
some reflecting here the other day. And I honestly don't think we've really had a bull market, so to
speak, here in maybe since 2017. Because in 2020 and 21, obviously, we saw the crash with their
Cervasus sickness or COVID. Everybody knows what happened there. But we also had FTX, which you
mentioned the big blow up. And, you know, it was pretty obvious that they were selling, you know,
paper Bitcoin to their clients. So one, like, you know, the demand that we were seeing wasn't even
as much as really the buying pressure that was going. And then two, we saw that blow up happen.
And that probably more than likely cut it pretty short because it started that effect of not only
the Celsius, but the block fives, the, or not only the FTX, but the Celsius block fives and all these
others kind of starting that domino effect of all of them starting to fall. And then, you know,
of course, we had a lot of FUD around Bitcoin at that time too. So it just kind of delayed
that overall bull run. So I think last cycle, we probably could have gotten different dynamics.
And then this cycle, we also have now these big players that you're lining out, right? BlackRock,
JP Morgan, all of these bankers now coming in. And JP Morgan has been known to manipulate markets.
And now all of a sudden, they're flipping it on its head.
We went over how they potentially are manipulating MSTR and all the crazy things going on with the Treasury companies.
But I wouldn't be surprised at this point if now that all of a sudden they're releasing these Bitcoin bonds right as Bitcoin falls like 30%, 40%.
I mean, it seems a little coincidental timing.
So do you think that the four-year cycle is, I guess, kind of a moot point at this point?
And do you think that we've actually seen a bull run here in the past, what, like seven years or so?
No, there hasn't necessarily been a bull run.
There's been a little bit more.
There's a little more excitement in 2021, but I don't think we've actually seen a bull run.
I would agree with that sentiment.
It hasn't felt like one.
And we were kind of making excuses for it along the way.
We kind of justified the China mining ban in terms of why we got this double top
and it got legs cut out from underneath because everyone was expecting, myself included,
to hit six figures the last cycle.
And then this one, we barely did.
so even if i take that if i let's say i grant the china mining and the ftx took the legs out from
under the previous cycle that we would have otherwise maybe hit around 100k well then to
say like 120 was a bull run the next way around like what 20 up from that position that just
doesn't intuitively make sense to me so i'm i'm with you there i think that 2017 absolutely was
a bull run 2021 was probably more a reflection of what was going on in terms of covid like
everything online was getting pumped at that point in time. It wasn't really a, it wasn't,
how do you find a way to phrase this? I don't think it was just related to Bitcoin in terms
of the price action that we saw there. So for example, right around the COVID era, YouTube,
that was absolutely in its heyday. And of course it was because everyone was stuck at home glued
to their phones. And so you've got to like wonder, like take, try it. You can't take the negative and
actually know, but like, if we never got locked down, if people weren't glued to their phones the
whole time, would retail have even had any idea about Bitcoin? I think it would look a lot more
like what we see today where I'm not getting questions from like cab drivers and cousins and
random people on the street that I'm not seeing that euphoria in the no-coiner space, the pre-coiner
space. I think the only reason that we had this excitement, it had all this attention on it at
the moment, is because one, everyone was just bored out of their minds, stuck on their screen,
living digitally, and it gave us this artificial pump. But I don't think, I very much could agree
with the sentiment that it wasn't a bull run. Like even this past run, we would expect usually
in bull runs, we get like 30% corrections along the way, but we barely got like 3% up at times.
So it definitely feels like it feels a little bit more reminiscent of like post gold ETF in terms of
like both were kind of just a slow grind upward. Like we ultimately all know where this is going,
but I think that the, the narrative that it's like a diminishing returns,
we're going to continue to have diminishing returns. I think that's complete bullshit.
Like don't think for one second that this thing can't just absolutely rip your face off. I'm
saying that's going to happen in the next month or six months. I don't know when that's going
to happen but one if you see the biggest players in the world going back to Mina right now if you
see the biggest players in the world taking huge positions and not only just that like JP Morgan is
trying to sell you picks and shovels like they're trying to get in on every other way they could
possibly profit around it at some point in time not only are they going to let it rip if they're
trying to suppress it right not saying they were but maybe they were probably were not saying they're
going to just even just let it rip they're going to leverage it to the hilt to get make themselves
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Suppress it right Not saying they were but maybe they were probably were Not saying they going to just even just let it rip they going to leverage it to the hilt to get make themselves wealthy in the process as well too they want that stronger position on their balance sheet they
go to their friends in the media and you know they have friends and people bought in the media they're
going to put out their own research papers they're going to talk about it publicly they're going to
basically just scoop up as much as they can they'll probably go long they'll they can issue
themselves i'm sure dead at some point as well too and take on larger positions when they're ready
they're going to let it absolutely take off and i think everyone's just kind of getting into their
positions the best example i can think of is that you know go back to 2021 and tell me that gold was
going to like just rip to four thousand dollars i would have thought you were just absolutely crazy
like there's no way we're talking about at that point in time like what like a 10 trillion dollar
asset that this thing is going to look like a 2017 kind of bitcoin run it's gonna have a parabolic
move up we had the gold bugs guys like larry lepar talking about you know the big printer that these
moves were coming but even for me like historically looking gold would be you know it would do a bit
of a leg up and they would just chop forever right it had been so boring for so long despite the
growth in the money supply despite the debasement that i never would have believed it but if you can
see an asset that is more than well currently is coming up on 10 times the size of bitcoin if you
have an asset 10 times the size of bitcoin that can just absolutely rip from two to four thousand
what you don't think bitcoin could easily go from 100 to 200 100 to 400 you don't think that bitcoin
could go from 100 to a million make no mistake and the other one too that i think is really
interesting is that at some point in time if we do see that retail that fomo if the if the big
institutions do try to gin it up as well we're going to start to see more psychological hurdles
come into high psychological hurdles come into play right the biggest obvious one was the 100k
which is why i'm not surprised that we spent so much time there and i wouldn't be surprised to
to spend a lot of time here because that was such a dream fascination just a euphoric number right
and humans despite it like unit bias is absolutely a thing which even going to like you know bitcoin
versus sats we got squared launching bitcoin at all terminals and they're doing it with the bitcoin
beat it's like 4 000 bitcoin for your coffee right now it's 4 000 sats in my opinion but to each their
own but that unit bias i still i still hear people that say i can't afford a bitcoin they have no
idea about that you can buy a hundred millionth of this thing that you can buy just a tiny piece
of it they still think of it in the hole and the only reason i bring that up is because again i just
try to imagine if people are coming back into the space if we're seeing another run let's say we're
breaking past like 180 we're on our way to 200 where is the next psychological hurdle i don't
think it's 200 000 i don't think it's 300 000 you could maybe make a case for quarter mil or half mil
but realistically the next time the next place where we're going to spend a lot of time and
probably fight to get through it is at that million dollar mark i think there's a decent
amount of air between here and there when things eventually rip and again make no mistake i could
just list a ton of stuff off we got 38 trillion dollars in debt we got 50 year mortgages coming
to the u.s they're giving every child born in the u.s 2 000 bucks to go spend an account which if
they're younger millennial parents there's a good chance that's just going in ibid but i rather
their self-custody yeah but it's probably going to ibit and fidelity we're talking about stimmy
checks like all around the world we can see we're talking about qe now back on the books for the
federal reserve like we're having liquidity problems and monetary problems all around the
existing system because of course it's going to continue to get worse it's going to fracture it's
going to fall apart you know exactly what they're going to do is just turn on the taps and just flood
the system and where do you think that's going to go we ripped from like the covet crashers like
3 000 to 20 000 no problem there's no reason we can't go realistically and i know this is like
I really am this bullish. I just don't, I can tell you exactly where it's going. I just don't
know the timeline. It would not shock me to see that we go from like 80K to 800. Like a 10X is
not out of the realm for Bitcoin. It's totally within the norm. And if we did it kind of even
stair-step over the next, say, two years, 2026, 2027, you might not even necessarily, it might not
feel ridiculous. It could just be like, yeah, we're just going up at a decent, it's almost like
we could just return to that 30% compounded annual growth rate. And we'll get there pretty
quick. Things will move pretty quick. It might bore you all the way to a million, I think is what
I heard Chex say, which is just absolutely fantastic. But a ton of stuff there, Brandon.
What are your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, it doesn't surprise me that we're kind of seeing a little
bit of some manipulation here now that Wall Street's in, right? I mean, everybody thinks
at the end of the day, all right, we had Uptober, Moonvember, like these things. Normally, Q4 is not
only bullish for Bitcoin, but it's bullish for the stock market, equities, all of these things.
And we saw during the COVID craze, you could essentially put out a dartboard with letters on it, just throw darts and then pick that stock and that ticker was going up at that point in time.
So I think we have different market conditions now, but I think the fundamentals are as good as they've ever been.
I mean, with this dip, we saw 30,000 Bitcoin come off exchanges.
I think right now the sitting amount is the first time I've seen it under 2.1 million Bitcoin on exchanges.
We're seeing OTC desks get wiped as well, which is where these big players are going to buy.
And so, you know, even though retail is the one that is selling and maybe some OG whales,
you know, it looks like the people that are buying are actually taking it off exchanges
or they're giving it to BlackRock and JP Morgan and these guys by buying in those ETF products.
So I think eventually it's going to play out like gold where, you know, if you look at the gold ETFs,
It was on a generational run when it first was launched and everybody was going into the gold ETFs.
But now what do you see?
You see central banks and all of these giant countries starting to load up on gold, the physical asset.
Like they want gold bars.
They don't want to hold these ETF products just so they could have, I don't know, JP Morgan or BlackRock or one of these other custodians hold the gold for them.
I think the same thing is going to play out with Bitcoin.
I think, you know, we've seen a lot of these sovereign wealth funds like Norway famously bought a bunch of MSTR, you know, years ago.
We've seen the Abu Dhabi and the UAE sovereign wealth funds buying the Ibit Bitcoin ETF.
And, you know, we're seeing, you know, some smaller countries start to play around with actually buying and holding Bitcoin like El Salvador and the Kingdom of Bhutan.
But I think we're going to start to see big players really start to dip their toe in and actually start to self custody and hold their own Bitcoin, whether that's through mining or that's, you know, through actually trying to buy it from some of these custodians.
And these guys aren't the players that are selling.
So Jordy Visser, he wrote this great article about Bitcoin's silent IPO moment.
And I honestly, like the more I dive into it, the more I just see this playing out where it's all these OGs that came in early, you know, took on a lot of the risks of early Bitcoin.
And now, of course, it doesn't seem risky. But hey, like, during like 2008, 2009, 2010, like those early, early days when Bitcoin was first getting rolled out. I mean, let's be honest here. It was just like a few people kind of going in to Bitcoin and Bitcoin was less than a dollar. And, you know, all of these different guys going in and it didn't seem like a full fledged bet now.
And now it's, you know, two and a half trillion dollar asset.
And everybody's like, all right, well, of course, Bitcoin is going to fail.
Well, I mean, it's taken 16 years to get to this point.
But even though it's the biggest and the fastest growing asset, I still think there's going to be some little bumps and like learning curves here along the way.
So, you know, I definitely think that we're starting to see the development of this market.
And with all of these different products, I guess, being formed on it.
But, you know, I want to bring up the financialization of Bitcoin or the Bitcoinization of finance, kind of like mixing that back and forth, because we've seen a lot of that with housing.
You know, I think a lot of the American dream right now to own a house and have two and a half kids and a golden retriever, that's kind of dying to the ability to buy that house.
But you talked a little bit about whole number bias.
I always like to allude to the number of wallets with like 10 million or 1 million sats, just how low that number is.
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All right, enough from me.
Let's get back to the show.
to buy that house. But you talked a little bit about whole number bias. I always like to allude
to the number of wallets with like 10 million or 1 million sats, just how low that number is.
What is it going to take for us to kind of get that adoption going? Do you think
this TradFi coming in is helping or hurting that adoption?
It's a tough call. And the reason it's a tough call is because Bitcoin is money for enemies,
right? And I think that TradFi really is coming in right now that this is the part of the cycle
where the institutions are the big players.
And I was reminded of,
there's a few things that were getting self-custody
and even just not trusting different counterparts,
which again, you should not, right?
You should absolutely not trust the different counterparties.
But I was thinking about back last week,
we had Larry Fink.
And there's two things that came out from Larry Fink.
Now, the one that kind of got most of attention
was the idea that he said
that sovereigns were coming into the space.
He said that sovereigns were taking their position.
They were being smart about it.
They were buying on the way down.
They were getting their Bitcoin position.
But the other thing that really stood out to me
was he talked about how he was wrong.
uh was it andrew sorkin was reading him a quote about how like things he had previously said about
bitcoin was basically admitting that he was wrong the second thing i want to add to that was of course
vanguard vanguard under new leadership came in and is now finally he i forget the quote but basically
the original ceo of vanguard tim something or other was saying that like no way while he's here are
they going to offer bitcoin products to their customers well he's gone and they immediately
started offering basically bitcoin products to their customers now the signal there the really
big signals. I think the biggest asset holders in the world is BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street,
if I'm not mistaken. I'm not sure that State Street has said anything favorable, but they
probably has. But having the head, Larry Fink, of the largest asset manager in the world come out
and say that he was wrong about Bitcoin, that's your signal. And the reason it's your signal is
not because he's, you know, stay humble, stack, sats, which is always a great thing to do.
He was basically giving complete cover for everyone else to do a 180. He was giving every
other institution in the world, basically CYA, cover your ass, that you can come out and say
that you were wrong about Bitcoin and you're changing your position and getting on board
now as well too, because Larry Fink did, because Vanguard did. And so I think that was like,
this already feels like the big institutional players, but I think those shifts making it,
we'd say, de-risking the career aspects of being on board with Bitcoin from an institution,
from a financial advisor standpoint, from like a small, maybe mom and pop kind of,
let's say money managers.
He's made that possible for them.
I think that was actually really key.
That was the thing that wasn't necessarily heard by everybody.
Well, they're so focused on these sovereigns coming in is that you have full permission,
right?
You can now join BlackRock and Larry Fink.
Additionally, the other thing I want to hit on, so that was really interesting talking
about, is it a good thing in trust?
So I agree that you're going to have sovereigns and major, major institutional players.
They're going to hold their own keys because they are different geographical regions and
they don't trust each other. And it's interesting that you brought up mining as well, too,
because I think that part of one of the benefits of the global institutional players getting into
Bitcoin is going to be further decentralization of mining. And what do I mean by that? So
specifically, just taking it from game theory playing out, I could have this wrong, but I'll
tell you what I'm thinking here. We have big players like you could have Venezuela. They've
got a ton of energy. They want to get in. You've got Saudi Arabia, right? And you've got the UAE.
They have a lot of energy. They want to get in. As you see, large, if you have Norway,
If you have large sovereigns that have big energy resources that they can direct towards Bitcoin mining that they hold in self-custody, they will.
The other thing, though, is that for those guys, a lot of times they're going to have wasted or stranded energy, right?
So it's basically like no risk.
It's a way of reaccumulating some of the costs of the resources that you already have.
They don't need, unlike a publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, they don't need to sell their Bitcoin in order to meet costs, right?
Infrastructure, pay people.
they can take that from other resources is basically excess stuff that they already had
kind of in play so one of two things i think you're going to see sovereigns with excess energy
getting into the mining space and just mining and holding that's that's all they're doing it's just
just another way of accumulation it's another way to kind of usually lower the cost of some of the
resources to get back some of the existing costs the other thing too is that i do not think that
they will be using centralized pools i think that they will be spinning up their own pools because
why would you want to have your bitcoin technically custody with somebody else going to a pool in a
different geographical region that could be adversarial. If you can just deal with the time
in between, like you don't need to get paid on an average on like with a full pay per share.
You don't need to get paid out from every block that comes. You can just mine until you find one
and keep that in self custody. So I think you're going to see energy rich nations getting into the
mining space, holding onto that Bitcoin, and then also not relying on pools and basically setting
up their own geographical local pool, running their own for themselves. Yeah, a hundred percent.
And I think, you know, something that you said a little bit earlier was something that was interesting to me, where we're basically looking at the Saudi Arabia and these energy dense countries coming in.
And I think, you know, with Samson Mao, what he's been doing and with Jan 3 kind of going around.
I mean, I know just offhand speaking to him a few times, Prince Philip and all of these guys doing great work is the energy aspect is something that is, I guess, more appealing to them.
And the crazy thing about all of that is that, you know, that's KYC free Bitcoin.
So we don't really know who could be potentially mining at the end of the day.
And I mean, you know, we saw that we talked about it earlier, the China ban.
And then now we've basically got Kazakhstan, you know, being one of the bigger players because everybody moved from China to Kazakhstan, at least allegedly.
And now even if you look at some of the hash power, I mean, China is still the number two country of all the hash rate, at least allegedly from what we can tell, compared to the rest of the world.
So I think, you know, at the end of the day, this is going to be something that's going to help distribute the Bitcoin network even better and kind of do this, keep the decentralization aspect.
But you said something that I want to kind of go back to a little bit about these entities kind of having that centralization around Bitcoin.
So obviously we've got, you know, Michael Saylor and MSTR now buying a bunch of Bitcoin.
They have over 650,000.
They have more than any country.
I think actually they might even have more than all the countries combined now at this point.
And then if you combine all the other publicly traded companies, they also have more Bitcoin than all the other publicly traded companies combined.
So is that a worry of yours? Is this centralization that we could see here going forward, at least with like one giant entity like a BlackRock having, you know, maybe a million Bitcoin or the ETFs having like one and a half million?
And I think if you break it down with Coinbase and all of their custody,
they have like well over 12% of the network, which is something that worries me.
So are you worried about any of these potential centralization risks as
you know this market is developing and as TradFi is coming in Oh yeah 100 with Avail Centralization is always going to be a risk And we were in a we are in a state of like decentralization even globally right i think covid was the peak of basically like just manufacturing complete centralization and we now realized that that
that leaves you extremely vulnerable and the same thing applies here to bitcoin in the sense that
you know for anyone that's into in microstrategy and done very well um i i'm kind of putting it in
the category of like trading shit coins to try and get more bitcoin like yes okay you've done
great, maybe it's been a great performer for you. If you don't necessarily have it locked up in some
sort of like tax advantaged account, because that's always the risk, right? There will always be
a million reasons why it's better to leave it somewhere else. You don't have to worry about it.
Maybe there's some sort of tax advantage. But realistically, until you take that micro strategy
share and sell it and buy Bitcoin and keep it in self custody, it's like you haven't realized
profits, right? Those are all just basic paper gains. If you don't actually have the Bitcoin,
it's nothing but paper gains there. So the biggest risk that I see is one,
there's always the possibility, right?
That one of those centralizing custodians
are going to be compromised.
The big reason too is because it's just people.
Like even think about it from,
we see scams in the space all the time.
And I've seen some crazy ones as of late.
I've seen like paper letters getting sent out
to try and fish for emails.
I've seen podcast requests getting sent out to people
to try and get malicious software.
The biggest weak point that we ever have with Bitcoin
is going to be the human aspect of it.
These companies are run by people
who could be pressured.
They could be put under strain.
They can be bribed.
They could be bad actors.
I don't think that Coinbase custody
is going to blow up tomorrow.
And I'm sure they have a lot of procedures
and things in place,
but they're still not,
they're still fallible, right?
They're still fallible.
There still is that risk there.
So I hate to see the centralization risk.
I also do worry that again,
going back to,
we haven't had to blow up the cycle.
We haven't relearned this lesson.
I worry that like,
even if it's not coming from a malicious standpoint,
that as much as I like Sailor,
especially in the early days,
pumping her bags
and get out there really being a,
we say someone that could talk to TradFi
that they would at least respect, right?
Because he was a billionaire tech mogul, right?
He was right about the mobile wave.
He was able to command authority
from that kind of audience
that needed that sort of thing.
But I really worry that like right now, right?
And it's a shot,
but I don't mean it for it to be a shot.
Or maybe I do.
I don't know how to think about it a little bit more.
But I feel like he's leading everyone astray.
Like it feels like the Pied Piper.
We're offering like, you know, yield and return and different products.
And the dude just got $1.44 billion of cash on hand.
Like, it's like, I can understand.
I think, by the way, that I think he's doing that from a credit standpoint.
I don't think he's doing it necessarily just to pay out, like to have some cash on hand to pay out the dividends.
Like, yes, but you could just as easily roll that into Bitcoin and have like your Bitcoin spending in your Bitcoin savings account.
And you can just sell whatever Bitcoin you need in order to meet the dividends.
Like, there's no reason you can't use Bitcoin as your currency for both portions, which would be much more Bitcoin-er of you.
I think that was a way to try to appeal to the places he's trying to get capital from,
to try, especially with Tether getting kind of the downgrade,
despite having more than full reserves for gold and Bitcoin.
They got more than, they have reserves beyond their obligations,
but they're higher risk because it's gold and Bitcoin.
Get the fuck out of here, right?
That's just complete bullshit.
And so I think he's putting cash on the balance sheet to try and deal with that.
But the over-financialization, the over-centralization, this engineering,
they're normalizing yield in Bitcoin again.
Go back to BlockFi, go back to Celsius.
if you're getting a yield on Bitcoin where the fuck is the yield coming from it's not a good
idea it means you're taking on third-party risk there's something going on here in order to achieve
that now I'm not saying he's doing anything illegal or anything necessarily like immoral
from the historical lens as well too but these normalizing behaviors in Bitcoin two newcomers
coming in he is one of the biggest evangelists and there's there's always been the two things
that kind of struck me is that one he does say like just buy the Bitcoin but then he's selling
these products. It's like, I get it. Right. But still it's a little bit. But the other one that
really always bothered me was that despite even speaking at like the RAND events and things to
Ayn Rand society, he never puts it in the position of competing with the dollar.
He never says that it competes with the dollar. He talks about it as a asset in a store of value.
Now I understand, I believe I understand why he does that. I got a mind reading a little bit here.
I was like, okay, you have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders for a publicly traded company
that resides within the US government.
I don't think you're going to make too many friends
or you might have some issues with your S&P listing
if you're coming out there and saying like,
oh no, Bitcoin ends the dollar.
But I think that's the centralization risk
and that's the narrative right now
that is really, really concerning
because ultimately,
and I know this will sound a little bit,
let me say hyperbolic.
Let's say Bitcoin matches gold parity.
We're sitting at 20 trillion.
We're sitting around a million bucks from here,
but it's just a store of value
that people keep at Schwab
or they have an ETF or they have a little bit of a micro strategy treasury company, right?
It's just another financialized USD asset for you to hold on to,
to try and protect yourself from the debasement of the currency.
In my opinion, it's failed.
Bitcoin is money.
Money is meant to be spent.
It's meant to be held.
It is not an asset.
It is the most saleable liquid good that you can transact with anyone around the world 24-7,
held in self-custody.
Nobody can take it away from you.
One, of course, to be a store of value, and Parker Lewis is great on this point,
To be a store of value, it must also be a medium of exchange because you must have that intention of exchanging it in the future.
It's just a medium of exchange at a different point in time.
But for Bitcoin to actually not only like it helps us, it helps our mindset, but that Bitcoin to actually like fix the money, fix the world in order to keep these financial demons in check.
You have to be able to call their bluff, call when they're rehypothecating, call when they're shorting it without any coverage.
And you need to take it into self-custody.
and for Bitcoin to work, for Bitcoin to succeed,
that means that it's not just a store of value.
It's not something that you look at
in your trading account, right?
It's something that you hold dear
and that you keep yourself
and that you can spend when you need to
to protect yourself from the uncertainty of the future.
So with all that, yes, what I'm most,
this is a centralization risk.
There's always that hacking compromise.
It's probably not major at this point in time,
but I still think someone's getting blown up.
Someone's gonna get caught.
It's the good old, what's it called?
Charlie Munger. And why am I not pulling up his name right now? My God, the Oracle from Omaha.
It'll come to me in a second. Oh, Warren Buffett. Thank you. I don't know why my brain was like,
you can think of his nickname, but not his actual name. The tide is going to go out in some point
in time and you're going to see who's swimming naked. And don't get me wrong. I don't think
that these moments aren't going to happen. I think that they'll happen much faster in Bitcoin
because we can self-custody, right? So things like in-kind redemption, in-kind creation for
the ETFs. I think it'd be really important to keep everybody in check. So the biggest risks I think
is, is that you just normalize Bitcoin as, as not money, as you just normalize it. Is it something
that you leave with your brokerage account? It's just another asset that you have. If you never
use it, you never try it. You never play with the tools. You never take self-cust. You never go down
the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Like how many people, and this would explain also why I had that big
price correction to 80,000. How many people got into Bitcoin in one of these vehicles,
but never even checked out a Bitcoin podcast? They're not even here, right? They might listen
to like one or two things about where the price is going, but they never explored the idea of
like stateless money, right? Why trusted money is a bad idea, right? They've never gone down any of
the Bitcoin rabbit holes, the truth about government, the truth about money, the truth
about your health, the truth about family and education. So they never even on an individual
level. They never bettered themselves. They were still just the same trapped on the hamster wheel,
fiat mindset, short time preference person that's happy to vote for another government because
that's going to fix it. Of course it is this time. We'll just switch out the guy. We'll switch out
one puppet in power controlled by BlackRock and all the guys for another puppet in power controlled
by BlackRock and Vanguard and JP Morgan and all them as well too. That's the biggest risk is that
Bitcoin fails in the mission of actually fixing the world. And it fails in the mission if we don't
take self-custody. And that's just becoming way too normalized and people are way too comfortable
with at that point, this point in time. One of my absolute favorite things about Bitcoin is
meeting all of you in person. So mark your calendars for February 28th and come down to
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All right, on that for me, let's get back to the show.
Is that Bitcoin fails in the mission of actually fixing the world. And it fails in the mission if
we don't take self-custody. And that's just becoming way too normalized and people are
way too comfortable with it at that point, this point in time.
Yeah, I think, you know, what Square is doing, I want to get into that here in a little bit about, you know, adding in all these terminals. I think that's going to be a step. But, you know, I'll get into some of my thoughts about that a little bit later. I do want to hit on the point that you brought up about about Saylor, because I think that that is interesting. You know, he's bringing up all these different markets, right? You know, he brought up the 300 or $200 trillion credit market here today, which I haven't heard him talk about it before. But, you know, there's a $300 trillion bond market, the $145 trillion.
dollar fixed income market now the 200 trillion dollar credit market that he's going after
i mean all of these markets are just absolutely ginormous and he's building all these financial
products to kind of i guess i i call it like utilize the old system to kind of get as much
exposure to the new system as you possibly can um but i think the the store of value just just
fits right now just because of of the development of of where we're at and i i do think we're going
to get to that, you know, peer to peer exchange here. Eventually, I think it's just, you know,
it's kind of, you know, I guess part of the development right now. I mean, the Lightning
Network, it's still I mean, it's great to, you know, do some small transactions, but every now
and then there is some some mess ups there. So there are some things that I think we need to
develop just as an ecosystem to kind of go around. But something that Checkmatey also said at one
point that really stood out to me is, you know, we saw 60% of the wallets at one point in time had
a cost basis above that 95k. So, you know, once we got under that, well, you know, majority of
wallets were were underwater at that point. So we did have a lot of new players coming in. And,
you know, to your point, they probably aren't sitting here, you know, listening to their 40
hours a week of Bitcoin podcasts like the rest of us, right? So what do you think, I guess,
in the short term? Is this just kind of, I guess, let's call it like a traditional
asset in a sense where we're seeing the big players understand what they're buying, right?
I mean, after 2008, they all came in and bought real estate after it crashed because they were
licking their chops and seeing it all priced so low. And I feel like that's kind of the same
thing going on right now. And instead of seeing this potential wealth transfer where we're getting,
you know, a lot of new players buying Bitcoin, instead, it's just essentially playing out just
like, you know, every other asset. Is that something that I guess worries you too, in a
sense? Because that's something that is keeping me up at night where Bitcoin is supposed to be for
the plebs. But the more I look on chain, the more it worries me that it's playing out just exactly
like every other asset. That is the big worry right now. And I completely agree. And it comes
down to even like, it's surprising to me because I never would have thought that this would happen,
but it's, again, you got to fear and greed, right? Fear and greed are the biggest motivators for
people by far, without a doubt. And so when we had this Bitcoin Trojan horse that was going into the
traditional finance system. It was going in there. The big players, at this point in time,
they're well aware of the threat that Bitcoin is to them. They're well aware of the threat that
Bitcoin is to them, their existing power structure. And so they have to pivot, they have to change,
they have to say that they're wrong, like Larry Fink, and try to basically get on the right side
of it, to position themselves to benefit from it to the best of their abilities. So knowing
that it is a threat to them, my biggest worry is that the Bitcoin Trojan horses that we kind of
sent into this this disgusting corrupt fiat traditional finance system is that they've been
offered a really nice seat at the table that they got in there they got into the palace and the food
was great and now they're one of the big players now they're one of the big dogs now they have the
say now they have the influence now they have the luxury that goes beyond they have the prestige of
the existing system that goes with it so in the short term like i again like all right whatever
i'm just gonna throw i'm throwing shade but you're still wonderful human beings like jack mallard's
teaming up with Cantor Fitzgerald to do basically, you know, Bitcoin back loans. Like,
I'm going to hand over your Bitcoin for fiat and risk that. It doesn't seem like it's necessarily
a great idea. It's not, it's not nearly the same sort of ethos that we had when he was doing like
the Bitcoin beach in the El Salvador push, right? Adam back in Blockstream, definitely getting it
on the treasury side, right? And playing in the background there as well too. We got Sailor with
all these different products as well. It is, I think the existing system where I thought that
for us, it'll probably be from a position of fear,
that if there is a crackdown,
if the Bitcoin threat to the existing system
gets a little bit, we'll say, turned up,
that he gets turned up there,
we can expect that they could try to,
in some geographical regions,
to try and crack down.
I'd like to do the samurai devs, right?
Which, guys, by the way,
if you haven't checked it out,
go and sign a petition,
try and circulate that story.
We need to get those guys out of prison.
That we may see self-custody be illegal,
or I think I saw images going around of the IRS
asking you to report the addresses
that you now have as well too on one of their forms
that they're going to want to find out where your Bitcoin is.
They're going to maybe try to outlaw self-custody at some point in time,
which makes sense.
A dying system would basically kick and scream on the way out.
So I always expected the traditional finance side
to come at it from that same sort of perspective.
Same like the war on drugs.
We're going to use extreme punishment and crackdown and fear
to get you to comply with what we want.
But what I'm worried right now with everything that we're seeing here
is they're going to complete other direction.
They're taking the biggest companies, the biggest players in Bitcoin,
and rather than try and scare them into compliance,
it was greed.
It was, hey, why don't you give us your Bitcoin?
We'll put it on the balance sheet, right?
We'll give you a whole bunch of equity.
We can lever it up.
We'll get you some more.
You can be even wealthier than you currently are.
That rather than trying to pressure them into comply,
they basically just offered them that golden throne
that they could then sit on.
So short-term, yes.
I worry that we've lost our Bitcoin maxi spirit.
I think we should have in Bitcoin a position of,
neutral skepticism towards everything that we see. In the same way that when I'm teaching
somebody about self-custody, I'm going to go with the base assumption that the computer or your phone
is or will be compromised. So we're never going to trust it. We don't have to trust that device.
We're not going to. That we shouldn't be necessarily as trusting of the players that are currently here.
It is possible for people to get greedy, get corrupted, or to even just be wrong.
They may not in any way be lying. They could just be making a mistake and be wrong. And I think that is
a centralization risk. But, and here's the fun but, at the end of the day, so long
as people are taking self custody. And again, if you want to make sure that all these big players
can't manipulate the price, then you have to take the keys. If you want to make sure that it's not
just going to be completely centralized, then you have to take the keys. The adversarial nature
of Bitcoin between different geographical regions and powers, I think will ultimately prevent that
from necessarily being the case, right? At least in almost like a regional side, but you may have
like, you know, major ETF or bank holder within the US, but there's going to be another one in a,
in Turkey, in Russia.
In Russia, we had, I think it was VTP Bank,
the state-owned bank,
was pushing for a 7% allocation for Bitcoin.
So the adversarial nature between countries
throughout the world,
well, I think help kind of keep that in check
and make sure that Bitcoin's not just centralizing
in one location and getting completely controlled.
That again, you have every incentive.
If you're not a friend of like BlackRock in the US,
then you don't have a benefit of being like,
oh yeah, citizens, go and buy that.
That's the perfect option.
No no you gonna tell them to take self You as a nation are going to take self So short term I think it a risk I think people will end up getting hurt I think it also allows the worst people to have manipulation or influence in the network Medium term I don think it particularly matters I think the game
theory plays out and we still win because it's money for enemies. And this is going to be, again,
it's going to be global. It's not like it's just going to be US or Western nations. It's going to
be global phenomenal. And long-term, Bitcoin wins and we're all filthy rich and we have girlfriends.
That's just how this plays out. I'm still waiting for the girlfriend. So ladies in the chat,
I mean, hit me up. The comments are wide open. But, you know, I kid, I kid. Either way, though, I mean, I do think that there's a lot of interesting developments, right? I mean, you know, we touched on Cash App and Square here. And I want to dive into your thought about it, because, you know, I think this potentially could be one of the biggest moves that that's ever made in Bitcoin.
Of course, we've got, you know, Strike and some of these other players, you know, Jack, friend of the program.
You know, I know that they've been doing these things, but Cash App is a different beast.
You know, I mean, like you can buy stocks on Cash App.
It's like essentially, you know, your I can't think of the term, but like financial tech bank or whatever they're calling it these days.
But you essentially some people I know use Cash App instead of owning a bank account because you can send money easily.
you can buy stocks, you can buy Bitcoin if you'd like, and then now you can pay.
Granted, there's a lot of people that don't utilize all this.
And we've seen the development of Apple Pay kind of take off as well,
where I think it took like 10 to 15 years or something to get like Apple Pay
to get even like 10% of the total payment market share just in the United States alone.
So I think we're still a ways away from Bitcoin becoming a medium of exchange.
And I think Bitcoiners are going to want this all to happen all at once because of how big of a move Square has made.
But what are your kind of expectations around there?
I know I gave a little bit of my two sats there, but what's your expectations for the development of the peer-to-peer exchange here, Nathan?
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All right, enough from me.
Back to the show.
But what are your kind of expectations around there?
I know I gave a little bit of my two sats there,
but what's your expectations for the development of the peer-to-peer exchange here, Nathan?
Well, I think more than anything, and I really appreciate what Jack and the team over at Square and Block have done here, is I think it normalizes it. And again, it also helps normalize that medium of exchange amount. Because even if someone's not transacting in Bitcoin, you start to see people doing that. It's going to add little touch points, little curiosities along the way. Because think about how many times you had to hear about Bitcoin before you bought some, right? Almost no one is like the first time they heard about it, they go out and get some. I'm sure there are a few psychopaths out there and God bless you. But usually we have to have a couple touch points before we get into it.
So it's another wonderful touch point that puts it again in that money category.
Because when you see it at a square terminal, they're not using it as a savings account.
They're literally spending it.
It's the checking account.
They're going ahead and using it.
And I just got to say, like, I could be sucker.
I could totally be wrong here.
You know, as Bitcoiners, we're pretty resistant to propaganda and emotional manipulation.
I think that comes from a healthy skepticism and a true understanding of how the system actually operates and what the evil is behind it.
but I'll tell you like with Ross Albrecht,
like Trump totally had me dead to rights with releasing Ross Albrecht.
Like if I had been stateside,
I would have found a way to vote and I'm sure I could have in a few states.
I like that was an emotional tug that absolutely he happy.
He had me.
And I see the same sort of thing here with Jack where the Jack Dorsey
redemption arc is one of my favorite stories right now.
And I absolutely love to see it. Now, again, it's me putting my own,
like, you know, my own thoughts. I'm reading his mind.
and then pushing their things there.
And maybe he's not this wonderful person,
but I'll tell you what,
I fucking love the story
and I'm going to stick with it
at least for the time being
until I know otherwise.
Because to go from the guy behind Twitter
and all the censorship
and deplatforming
and just how god-awful it was,
you can think of the 2016 election
and the run-up there,
just like before Elon bought it,
just how terrible that public square was.
That anytime there was anyone
who had just the smallest threat
to I'd say that kind of,
we say that kind of modern leftist,
postmodernist kind of order.
They were getting just smack down,
removed, silence, gone.
And it works.
Like, deplatforming absolutely works.
I'll never forget the episode of him
on Joe Rogan with Tim Pool.
That just seemed like an absolute struggle session.
So for him to then, you know,
I had a very bad taste in my mouth about Jack then.
Absolutely did.
And then for him to sell Twitter,
and basically he's like,
working with the Human Rights Foundation,
building out tools for political dissidents.
He's all in on Bitcoin
in terms of now meeting the exchange
at four million merchants.
And he doesn't have to do that.
And there probably is a little bit of, let's say,
risk to the company in doing so.
Either perceived risk or just the way people are going to interpret it
or the resources that are going to it.
We've got BitKey.
You've got Cash App doing Bitcoin.
I know that they finally raised the limit of what you could withdraw per day,
which is fantastic.
I didn't even mention BitChat.
With him and Callie and BitChat,
we have these decentralized communication networks.
So I hope it's true.
I love the story.
I love what Jack is doing.
I have some disagreements with the tech, but I still think it's a wonderful product and definitely has its niche market.
And I want to see more of it.
It's nice to actually have someone, because at least for now, I don't look at him necessarily with skepticism.
It's like, I think you're actually a Bitcoiner.
I think you're here for freedom and those fundamental purposes.
What are we trying to do?
We're trying to lift humanity beyond the point.
The separation of state and church was massive in terms of improving our living standards.
Getting away from forced labor
into instead having the Industrial Revolution
and engines, combustion engines,
was massive for our human advancement.
And I really do think that the next leap forward
in human advancement comes from that separation
of state and money.
I think Jack does too.
I think he's doing a really good job
of at least setting up the foundation,
not necessarily to make it happen,
but to make it easier for it to happen,
to carve out that path.
To be the first one to go down it.
So I love what Square's doing.
I love what the team over there is doing.
I love the Freedom,
the Human Rights Foundation work they're doing,
the tools for freedom fighters that they have.
BitChat, which by the way, guys, if you haven't already,
there's already been a few cases.
Like we heard, like Ben heard directly from people in Jamaica
that were using BitChat.
We talk about like being prepared, right?
You should learn these tools, especially so that even if you're not,
let's just say you're not even going to necessarily take all your Bitcoin
and self-custody right now.
Learn how to self-custody now.
So if something goes a little bit wonky, you start seeing some smoke,
you're concerned there's fire, you can take self-custody
and you're not panicking to do so.
You already know how to use it.
And on that same note, one app from Jack Dorsey and Callie BitChat, which is basically a Bluetooth mesh network communications app, which is so cool.
It means that you can talk with people without the Internet as long as you're within a certain kind of geographical region.
We can find a way to you.
It's one of those things, too, that you should also do right now.
You should have that on your phone, have it ready like you have a fire extinguisher under the sink in case there is a outage.
There is a emergency.
There is some sort of a natural disaster that you're already familiar with another tool that can help you in that sort of event.
It's the same way that you want to make sure that you're familiar with Bitcoin self-custody before you feel that you absolutely need to.
And trust me, you actually need to right now.
So that's my thoughts on Jack and Square.
I love what they're doing.
And I hope, because I'd love to see the numbers, I suspect the amount of people using Bitcoin for transactions at the terminals is quite low, particularly compared to the entirety of all the transactions.
What I really hope is going back to that kind of 2017 era where we thought we're going to get a lot more of this medium of exchange kind of kicking off.
I hope we can just set it and forget it
because these things will take time.
I hope that at no point in time,
I hope this isn't too costly for them on the back end.
This never has to be repealed
because it's one of those things that like,
if it's just there,
people will eventually find their way to it, right?
Bitcoin, you're a merchant.
You got a, say you got a one,
you got, you know, Keys Pub, right?
Down in Florida, right?
We have Keys Pub down in Florida as accepting Bitcoin.
No one's really using it, right?
But then we have that,
but we never got the retail FOMO.
We never got the euphoria.
As soon as you do,
if you're already ready to accept it,
you know people are going to want to experiment with it.
You know they're going to want to try it.
We just don't know when that wave is coming.
Yeah, and I think it's funny you talked about Ross Ulbrich
and potentially coming stateside.
I mean, I honestly didn't realize this
until I started doing some digging here lately.
But I mean, if you listen to some of the United States founding fathers,
I know you're up in the Great White North,
but what they said about banks historically,
it is very interesting and kind of eye-opening.
I'll read a couple of quotes here.
Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to John Taylor in 1816 that said, I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
And Benjamin Franklin said the inability of colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the Revolutionary War.
And now we're all all of a sudden supposed to just be like, oh, you know, BlackRock, Larry Fink and all of these guys.
It's, you know, good that they're getting into Bitcoin.
But I think, you know, getting back to the point of what you're saying, kind of the freedom money in that self custody, I think is extremely important just because I mean, these are American values.
These are the reasons why America was, you know, built up and become the most powerful country in the world.
And we've kind of lost our eye, got our eye off the ball just a tad bit.
And, you know, this degradation takes years at a time.
So I think the only way back to, you know, true self-sovereignty is having, you know, self-custody and utilizing all of these tools that you're describing.
And you guys do great work over at Bitcoin Mentor.
So why don't you tell us a little bit about that and some of the developments that you're seeing over at Bitcoin Mentor just in your time and in this past, what, like a little over a year, I think, is how long you guys have been doing it?
or am I wrong?
It's a little longer than that.
A little longer than that.
So we launched on the last halving,
and then I've been full-time with the company
and BTC Sessions since like February of this year.
But even to that point,
I'm pretty sure the US had two attempts
at a central bank before the Federal Reserve as well too.
The base gentlemen that were the founding fathers
were well aware of the threat that bankers were
to society, to the nation as a whole,
and they still are guys.
And that's why we want to make sure that we like,
make the mistake.
Like I always assume that the computer
is not a trusted environment.
just assume the bankers want your bitcoin and that's what they're trying to do they're gonna
do everything they can to try and get your bitcoin and the best thing you can do is keep it so over
at bitcoin mentor what we do is basically education and consulting usually for self-custody but
realistically it's anything in bitcoin it's not large commercial mining and it's just the one-on-one
education kind of thing you can think about basically for anyone that usually it's kind of
one of two avenues either they don't have anyone in their life that's also involved in bitcoin they
just want someone to maybe consult on the best setup for them kind of just double check the
homework look over everything make sure they're okay um or a lot of the times they're um professionals
entrepreneurs they just don't have the bandwidth right the resources are free and available that's
exactly what we do at btc sessions i will happily send you the best videos my recommendations here's
some articles here's my favorite books i will give you everything because we're here for adoption
but you do have people some people are figuring this out that are going from zero to a large
position very quickly they don't have the bandwidth to do their 40 hours per week let alone like 100
hours to prepare and figure out what the best self-custody setup is. And so they're more than
happy to pay somebody like they do for an accountant or a lawyer to come on board, advise and help them
make sure they're good, they're set up. And ideally at the end of our time together, you don't need us
anymore. You can go out and show somebody else. But in terms of insight, I'll give you like three
insights that I've had from this last year that are really strong, particularly in Canada, but
also in the US as well. So one, the boomers are coming. And so I am seeing a lot of older
generation and the most the best thing about it is that they're coming from a place of kind of like
it's all about their grandkids it really is it's that it's the it's the antithesis to the boomer
meme in the sense that they're coming in and they're like i just like even times like my family
thinks i'm crazy but i just want to set them up and i really believe that this is the way that
it's going to happen and i agree with that sentiment and so it's not even for them it's for
the next generation and their grandkids and i love to see that legacy building the other one is that
a lot of the players that are coming in that again, you can think of that, that these are
older people that have substantial wealth and that they're taking a large position in Bitcoin.
And so what are they selling? Real estate. I've seen a ton of people. They're not liquidating
necessarily their S&P 500. It's not their equity. I'm seeing a lot of real estate investors selling
off parts of their portfolio or sometimes the thing in its entirety and moving into Bitcoin.
I've also heard, I also have, let's say inside information. I also know of gold bullion dealers
that were selling gold and buying Bitcoin.
It's the sound money camp.
So our allies, our friends, our like-minded friends
and the other sort of sound money hard assets camp
are figuring this out and taking a Bitcoin position,
which is wonderful to see.
The other one, because this question is the one that,
these are the two questions I get all the time,
which again, goes back to,
you should have this adversarial mindset
and you should be prepared.
A lot of times I used to get,
say like last year, a lot of the questions were on
like kind of best self-custody practices.
is people would run in and be like, Oh, I need a multi-ventor multi-sig, like right off the hop.
It's like, just slow down. Let's just make sure that you can understand using a cold card,
self-custody air gap transaction. We can build up to that, right? Maybe that's not the most
appropriate setup for you. Everyone's going to be a little bit different and security is a moving
target. I'm always trying to balance out the risk of loss versus risk of theft of overcomplicating
things. But this year it's all non-KYC and privacy. No one trusts their government right
now that is coming to talk to me. And they are already at the position where like, this is
going to happen. I just don't know when it's going to happen. And I want to make sure that I'm
prepared. So real estate investors getting into Bitcoin, older real estate investors getting into
Bitcoin this year has been a lot of what I've seen. And it's like, it's almost every, it's
probably more than every second conversation, probably 70% of the conversation that I'm having
right now have a privacy element right baked into it. Damn, that's interesting. I definitely think
like that's, I mean, from like real estate perspective, I mean, I know you're up in Canada,
So you got to stay pretty warm.
But I think the use of Bitcoin miners for heat is something that I've always been, it's always piqued my curiosity, especially in homes.
Like I think that's going to, I guess, maybe revolutionize the home industry here.
But that's a completely different topic for another time.
And maybe that'll help avoid the collapse of another great real estate market here.
But either way, Nathan, you guys are doing amazing work.
So why don't you tell people where they can find out more about Bitcoin Mentor and where they can find out more about you, brother?
100%. So you can find me on Twitter as TheBTCMentor.
You can check out Bitcoin Mentor by going to BitcoinMentor.io.
But if you're going to do just one thing, one thing today, I want you to head to btcsessions.ca slash learn.
Pick a topic you don't know. Pick a skill you don't have in Bitcoin.
Do me a favor. Learn one new skill in Bitcoin this week.
Not even that. Do it today or tomorrow. You got 48 hours tops.
There's always an excuse. There's always something else that you have to do.
Stop making excuses. You don't know everything yet. Learn something new.
That's the best thing you can do for yourself, your family, and your security.
These guys are doing amazing work over at BTC Sessions, Bitcoin Mentor.
I highly recommend it. I mean, you guys have orange-pilled probably, I don't know,
at least millions maybe at this point in time.
Help them get custody, so keep up the great work.
And Nathan, thanks so much, brother.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you guys all for tuning in to another great episode of the State of Bitcoin podcast.
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