Robert Netsley, welcome to the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast.
Hey, thanks for having me. Pleasure.
All right. So, Mr. Netsley, I found you via the Man Rampant interview series with Pastor Doug
Wilson. It was a thoroughly enjoyable interview. If you have not listened to this or watched it,
I cannot recommend enough. Go subscribe and watch that video. Just so many points of agreement and
points of appreciation. And we're going to get into some of this and kind of rehash some of that
stuff just for the sake of our audience who might not be familiar with the work. So love for you to
introduce yourself and who you are and what you do. Sure. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. It was a
wonderful interview. I highly recommend anything Canon puts out. So yeah, if anyone out there is
not familiar check that out but uh yeah robert netsley ceo founder of inspire investing and the
inspire sort of family of companies uh we're a faith-based investment firm um managing about
three and a half billion dollars uh currently and growing really quickly as the lord really works
uh through his people opening their eyes to this huge problem that we've been taking his money and
putting into things like abortion drug manufacturing companies and pornography distribution and all
these other things, um, and really being sort of unaware. And so our, our whole mission is to help
every Christian invest for the glory of God, uh, in a variety of ways. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's
just been, uh, wonderful to, to see him work over these past, uh, 10 years. We've been doing that
with Inspire and a little longer than I've been in that, uh, that space. And, uh, it's a pleasure
to kind of intersect here with you today, Jordan, and, uh, somewhat familiar with your work. I've,
I've read your book some time ago and an advisor kind of given it to me.
I forget when, maybe a couple of years ago.
So I remember who it was.
I think he wrote his name on in here.
Evan Frazier, you know, Evan Frazier.
I don't know the name.
So anyway, yeah, pleasure to be here.
Love it.
Okay.
So just for, again, for those of the audience who might not know you kind of tell your story,
how did you get into investing?
Were you kind of dyed in the wool?
you went to went to the business school you're thinking to yourself this is what i want to do
with my life you know is that kind of your story here yeah i mean people if you only knew me back
then you'd be really scratching your head about what's going on today who gave this guy three and
a half billion dollars uh to manage um and of course i don't do it by myself we've got a wonderful
team we've got about 70 people 80 people or so uh running around here with paychecks from from
our business. But no, it was not like a normal path to the financial industry. I went to school
to be a fourth grade teacher. And then I dropped out of college because I made about $96,000
one year working part time selling alarm systems door to door, just like on the weekends to put
myself through college. And like, well, you know, back then I looked at the pay scale of California
teachers and I needed to have like a PhD in like 20 years before I would make anything near that.
I'm like, what am I doing? Maybe I'm on the wrong track. So anyway, I kind of got into sales and
business and some different things. Ended up getting into ministry as a youth pastor, a little
tiny church and on staff at our local pro-life pregnancy center and doing this and that. Got
married, started having kids and realized 850 bucks a month wasn't going to cut it. So that's
when I got back into sales, got a job at a Volkswagen dealership. That dealership went
out of business in 2008. And then that's when I kind of like, well, what am I going to do?
I don't really like this whole, you know, car business thing. I'm just doing that to
pay the bills. And so I figured I need to look for a job with a family friendly schedule.
Banks, you know, nine to five bankers hours came to my mind. So I just applied to a bunch
of bank jobs, not because I had any particular skill with finance or banks or money or math
in general. But they had good schedules. So long story short, I got hired as an assistant,
sales assistant at Wells Fargo Private Client Group Investment Department down in
beautiful Carmel, California. And, you know, it was 2008. So it was an exciting time to
be in the investment industry. April is when I started.
And lots of biblical, biblically responsible investing going on in 2000.
Oh, yeah. There's a whole lot of things going on there. So that was like my foray into the investment world, right? And coming to work every day and like, oh, I wonder which major bank went out of business today, you know? Who got taken into receivership last night? And anyway, I got licensed and became an advisor and started building a career there.
And that's how I got into this, which was, again, pretty roundabout. And then I had this whole conviction experience, which you can read about in my book. It's being republished and updated by Canon Press right now and available for sale if anyone wants to check that out.
but you know i was there at uh wills fargo and i i kind of stumbled across this article online one
day that describes this concept of biblically responsible investing uh where you're looking
at not just the the financial aspect of what uh you're invested in but the moral aspect like
the companies you're invested in what are they actually doing to turn a profit
and i was curious because i'd never thought about that before and so i looked inside my own portfolio
on my client's portfolios
and the Holy Spirit
described my heart on this issue
because here I was
president of our local
pro-life pregnancy center
at the time
and I also own
three stocks of company
companies manufacturing
abortion drugs
and this very unsettling truth
hits me upside the head
that every time I
you know
a young lady goes into
a Planned Parenthood
or has an abortion
like I just made money
on that transaction
I literally profited
from that transaction
and I'm recommending
all my clients
do the same thing
and I'm totally oblivious
right? So I just couldn't do my job with a clean conscience anymore. I thought I had to get out of
business. And so we'll kind of pause there, but that's generally how I got in here. I can tell
the rest of the story, but yeah. Well, I'm glad you'd say something. I think again, the thing that
just, I was kind of just amazed by was just the symmetry between our, both our paths to
financial discussion and like working in this field. I was a pastor and missionary living in
Uruguay when I got into Bitcoin, never foresaw, never would have imagined, would have done this
professionally. And so, yeah, very, very similarly winding paths there. The other side of things was
when I first started getting into investing, I had a family member who, and I didn't know anything
about investing. And so I had a family member who just recommended getting stocks that issued
dividends and that were just basic, super vanilla. This family member said, hey, invest in Coca-Cola,
invest in some of these things. And so as I was considering that, again, I was a philosophy major
in college. And so I just started thinking about, you know, going to its end, you know, where the,
where David says, uh, you know, I was, I was discouraged by the success of the wicked until
I remembered their end. So I just like immediately went to the end and just said to myself, am I
going to want to be able to retire because I sold sugar water to poor people? And I effectively said
to myself, no, I don't really want to do that. And so I just started looking for other, started
looking for other things to invest in. And then Bitcoin happened to be one of the ones that,
you know, I was at least cursorily interested in. And then the more that I, you know, deep dove into
it, the more interested I got. So very similar, very similar paths, Dale, in terms of excluding
certain things and then getting, you know, shepherded into other things. Again, this is the
Thank God for Bitcoin podcast. I know you might not feel that same way yet, but we, I'm very
confident by the end of this, you will be a raging orange-pilled lunatic like the rest of us.
So we'll see. But we'll wait for that. I do want to get into one of the things that you discussed on this podcast with Pastor Wilson was the issue of casuistry. This might be a term that is not familiar to a lot of our audience. So was this something that you were aware of prior to getting into doing what you're doing or not?
Pastor Doug has a much better vocabulary than I do. And so I learned that word as I watched the interview. Because that was in like his prologue or whatever. And like, oh, that's a fancy word to describe. But yeah, putting, how does he describe it? I guess like working through very complicated theological issues in a practical daily life, right? Taking a theological issue that's very complex and trying to live that out, I think is my understanding at this point.
Absolutely well done. I have exactly what he wrote down. It says, applying biblical principles to difficult cases.
There you go.
And so, again, trying to figure out how to think about investment is one of these difficult cases, right?
Because there's certain things that are obvious to everyone that if we're investing in abortion drugs or if I'm investing in a strip club, to use one of the other examples that you use, that there's a publicly traded strip club that's in some of these S&P 500 funds.
And so it's like some of those things are obvious, like making money as a Christian, making money off some of those things.
You don't want to do that. There's other things that are that are trickier. Right.
And so you use the the the topic of Target as one of these, you know, they did.
They made some awful decisions and are still paying the consequences of them.
So kind of kind of talk to, you know, some of some of the difficulty that you've found as you tried to be consistent in thinking about investing as a Christian.
And as maybe as part of that, if you want to differentiate the difference between ownership and what was the other thing?
Basically making money from the ownership of a stock versus being a customer.
That's ownership versus customership.
If you want to kind of unpack that.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I'll kind of fill out the story there too, which is just illustrative of how I was working through this myself.
Because here I was sitting at my desk and I had this, you know, Holy Spirit revelation sort of thing and just convicted.
I can't do this job. Right. If somebody comes up and asks me again, you know, now to invest some money into this whatever mutual fund that owns this abortion drug company or whatever.
Like, I just can't do that. I can't be a part of that. I can't be a cog in that machine.
And so, you know, went home to my wife, hey, honey, I think God's called us somewhere else.
Here's what I found. And she's like, well, we got two babies in the mortgage. So what's the plan?
and so we just started praying right um again i thought i had to get out of the industry i'd never
had anybody doing what we do now didn't you know thinking about this it's like all these companies
doing all these terrible things how would it be even possible to to know and and to invest
differently and um so is it this close to going to seminary being some sort of vocational pastor
but as we prayed through it the lord just put this just unmistakable compulsion on my heart
that to stay in the business
and to just start an independent firm
that, you know, did biblical,
whatever it was, investing, right?
And didn't have words for it back then.
Which was incredibly frightening.
But I mean, that was, it was what it was.
And so two months later,
made the incredibly frightening decision
to walk away from my clients
and my income and everything else,
left them with the team I'd been with
and started from scratch,
me and a laptop, you know, fully prepared,
never to pay my mortgage,
every day of my life,
less than two months of savings in the bank.
Like, honestly, this was, you know, I don't know.
I do not know how this was going to work out.
Everybody told me this was a mistake and you need at least two years of runway.
I've never run a business before.
You know, I'm still pretty young back then and don't have the network or whatever else
they're supposed to have.
But I just knew that I knew this was God's calling me to do.
And for anybody who's ever, you know, really tried to follow God by faith, oftentimes you
find out that, you know, he doesn't give you the whole roadmap up front, right?
And it, uh, he tells the disciples to drop their nets and follow him. He didn't explain what that was going to be like right there at that moment. But that's why it's called faith. And so by God's grace, he's, we, you know, start this little business and I start trying to work out, okay, well, what do we invest in? What do we not invest in? How do you even think about this? You know, all the, all those different questions, um, which is what I ended up becoming my book, Biblically Responsible Investing is having all these different questions, you know, everyone wrestles with.
Like the owner versus consumer.
You know, you think about, you know, here I have a, you know, an iPhone and we don't invest in Apple.
Well, is that a hypocrisy?
You know, it can seem like that.
But here's the thing is that the crux comes down to this realization of the truth that as an investor in a stock, you are an owner of a company.
And if I'm an owner of a company, I make, I'm profiting from all the things that that company does.
If I own a video store on the corner, if those existed anymore, like obviously I'm making money every time somebody rents something from me. If I have pornography on the shelves, I'm making money by renting pornography, right? Maybe I don't watch it myself, but I'm still making money and I'm luring other, worse, I'm luring other people into sin.
and so there's this different
stewardship responsibility
if you own a business
versus a consumer
so like Netflix is a good example
we don't have those video stores anymore
but we can stream things
so if I own Netflix
I'm making money
for all the assorted content
that they have on that platform
if I'm a Netflix subscriber
I can choose what I watch
and what I don't
I can set up filters
I can protect my family
all those sorts of things
so I'm responsible
for what I consume as a consumer
I can watch good stuff on there or I can watch bad stuff on there and I'm responsible for what I watch.
As an owner, I can't tell Netflix, hey, just send me the dividend or whatever from all the good stuff and not the bad stuff.
It doesn't work.
And so it kind of the beginning little seed is realizing that if I've got a mutual fund in my 401k at work, it's not just dollars and cents and ticker symbols.
There's real businesses selling real things
that I'm really profiting from.
And I, you know, what are those things?
Are they aligned with God's will?
Because in the Bible, there's plenty of scriptures.
You know, Proverbs 16, 8, for instance,
says better is a little with righteousness
than great gains with injustice.
So in scripture, there is a category for unjust gains, right?
There is such a thing.
And that's not just Old Testament.
It's like continually on today, right?
So I need to be thinking about that.
Um, so as we, you know, I set this business up and it started booming and growing and bringing advisors in and it realized like there was no product in the industry to like index funds and whatnot to really do this really well.
Um, that's, that's the business we've grown here now is really making the picks and shovels, you know, the funds and the technologies and everything else for investors to screen what they've got to, to find out for free, like what's inside of their funds, um, through our website, inspireinsight.com.
and you can see good, bad, and the ugly,
what's in there and make informed decisions
about what you wanna invest in.
But so that's kind of the nutshell of how we got going.
Love it.
Yeah, and again, very similar path.
So when I was in college, my cousin and I were roommates
and we started, my cousin had already been selling books
on Amazon for a number of years.
And one of the things that quickly came to my attention
and I realized that I had to think about the ethics
of selling certain things because I would come across, you know, books by guys like Joel Osteen
or books by Creflo Dollar. And I had to think about the fact, like, am I going to profit
from peddling this garbage? And there were numerous occasions in which I just came to
the realization of, no, like, I don't want to sell this, you know, drivel and potentially,
you know, just further the ministry of the quote unquote ministry of these heretics and awful men.
So yeah, really appreciate that. I think for a lot of people, again, this sounds great. I'm going to share my screen here. So I've got your website pulled up. I would recommend go check out the tool that you just described. You mentioned a little bit, it allows you to evaluate your own portfolio or is it just certain stocks? You have to go one by one with the different things you hold?
Yeah, so you can go to our website. There's a different ways you can get to the site, but you can go straight to inspireinsight.com, which is the tech app where you can go to inspireinvesting.com and then find it from there. But you can type in a ticker symbol of any stock, mutual fund or ETF. So basically anything that trades, you know, on an exchange, including international stocks, if you're listening in some other country. And you can see what's in there. There's no login required for free. One of the things we believe in is transparency.
before we launched this website,
there really was no way for you to find out,
you know, the average person to find out
like what's going on under the hood of their investments.
And so that's a big roadblock, right?
For every Christian investing for God's glory.
So if you type in Apple, there it is.
You can see there's the categories.
You can click on like, you know,
the abortion activism one, for instance,
and expand that down.
And it gives you all the details, right?
So it's all transparent,
including the source link down there.
If you don't trust us,
just click it and look for yourself, right?
So we're not trying to be the moral police here, right?
We've got our convictions and we're happy to talk about what those are, but we do think that you should be educated, right?
So here's the data.
Now do with it what you want.
And hopefully you're seeking scripture and guidance of the Holy Spirit to make those wise decisions.
But we've got a lot of non-Christians who also invest with us and use our tools because, you know, a lot of people don't like human trafficking in their supply chains.
Go figure, right?
and uh so that's just transparency helps and um so you can see what's going on and then you can
make a wise decision about you know how how then do you how do i then live right so do i keep owning
this stock do i keep owning coca-cola like you said or do i not like what's the issue um and
that's where the complicated part comes in right because there isn't just a buy list and do not buy
list in the Bible. Like here's the tickers. Good, bad. It's not that clean. Exactly. Yeah. And this
is, this is one of these things where I think one of the, one of the revelations from the last six
years of thinking about money pretty much nonstop and from a Christian perspective and trying to
think about like frameworks for thinking about it is just thinking about money as breathing. Like
when you give money to something you breathing life into it Like you effectively saying I aligning with you and I want you to continue to exist And so the question is just like you want to evaluate
do I actually want this thing to exist?
Do I actually want?
And so again, I think you would agree with this.
It's not just as like you wouldn't just say, hey, it's okay.
Just the fact that places like Target,
they sell defensible things and non-defensible things.
And so I'm going to patronize them.
doesn't mean you're saying,
hey, you should only shop at Target.
Like, you know, you shouldn't care at all,
you know, the life that you're breathing into Target.
But you also, you're basically,
the example that you used on the interview
with Pastor Wilson was like,
if it's midnight and, you know,
they're the closest one
or something like along these lines.
It seems to be a very healthy thing to be,
you know, a very healthy way to think about it.
Yeah.
You know, all things are permissible,
but not all things are beneficial.
Exactly.
It's a really helpful scripture, right?
It's not a sin to shop at Target.
Yeah.
But is it beneficial? Like, are there other businesses that are more worthy, you know, public square? I mean, whatever, whatever the other options are. And so there's there are simple things, abortion, abortion, drugs, pornography, like there are no good ways to interact or buy or whatever, you know, sell any of those things. Those are inherently immoral.
Then there's this very broad category of things that not inherently immoral, but, you know, would wisdom say it's beneficial? Maybe better options. You know, like the alcohol industry is a good example. Alcohol is not inherently sinful.
You know, in that interview, I'm enjoying a good scotch here with Pastor Doug on the stage of Man Rampant, right? I'm not drinking a whole bottle of Jack Daniels, you know, and there are very problematic things about the alcohol industry. So here's a stat for you. 60% of all alcohol sold is consumed by 10% of alcohol customers.
Yeah. Wow.
think about that 60 of all alcohol sold is consumed by just 10 of the people so this is an
industry that 60 i mean they're feeding off of they exist because of alcoholism yeah and destroying
people's lives yeah now you can be a responsible consumer of alcohol and that other 90 but as an
industry do i want and if i sat in that boardroom i i would be sick to my stomach yeah right this
the reality of this industry. So, so that's, that's one example, isn't it? You know, the product is not
inherently immoral, but the industry's got a lot of problems. And so do I really want to, you know,
profit from that? I, you know, probably not. The other thing that you mentioned in this other
interview and, and that I think is just so, so great. I just think it's something that there'd
be a class of people who I'm familiar with who would, they would kind of want to wash their
hands altogether or something like target. They just basically like, Hey, we just want to get rid
it all together. And there are people who have fully boycotted and more power to them. We,
we like are principally, especially when they did the gender affirming clothing thing. I just was
like to hell with you all, like to hell with your business. Like I, I will never. And so like they,
you know, I just was, we just couldn't do it. And so like, there have been again, targeted
emergency things where, you know, we have gone there, but Brian large, I'm just like,
I will never. Um, so with that being said, one of the things you're still in the fact that there
are things that there's more, I wouldn't say gray area, but there's Christians of different
consciences with different consciences can disagree. And so there's businesses where
you guys do hold shares in them, but you are then trying to be good stewards of the voting rights
that come with those shares and the influence that come with those shares. So can you kind of speak
to what that's looked like over the last few years? Sure. Yeah. So shareable engagement has
has been a part of our business that we've kind of stumbled into.
Again, as we, you know, we're just kind of taking this one step at a time.
So we, you know, exclude companies that are problematic.
We look for companies that are really a blessing to people to proactively invest in.
And then there's this part of engagement.
So the first time we did this was a number of years ago with Costco.
So Costco had been in our portfolio.
And then we noticed that they had started sponsoring gay pride parades,
just like three of them around the country,
which is a problem for us, right?
They're taking our shareholder dollars
and giving them to these gate pride parades.
That's not great.
So, you know, we're going to divest of our shares,
but I'm like, you know,
maybe I should just call them, you know,
let them know why we're selling just so they know, right?
Not expecting anything really.
So I called their 800 number,
left a voicemail, shot an email
to their general, you know, investor relations box.
And we had, you know, far less than a billion,
probably less than a half a billion at that time,
very small.
but within two hours, I got a call back
from the chief financial officer of Costco.
And he was in the airport getting ready to get on a plane.
He's like, hey, I got this message from our team,
like something about gay pride praise and Christians
and like what's going on.
Just sort of confused.
And so I got to introduce myself,
you know, like who we represent, these Christian investors
and you're giving money to these things
and that's our money.
And I'd rather you just not use our money
to support these things.
And he's like, well, okay, I'm getting on a plane.
I'll look into it.
We have this back and forth conversation
over several weeks.
where he finds the issue,
confirmed that, yes, these donations were given.
And he comes down with this decision.
He's like, look, we don't want to be involved
in contentious social issues.
So I just issued a memo across the whole company,
like no more donations to contentious social issues,
including gay pride parades,
and just give it to the Red Cross or something.
And I hang up the phone.
I'm like, wow, we should do this more often, right?
And so this is like opportunity to speak biblical truth
to corporate power, especially as a shareholder.
and uh you know we've gotten much more serious about that over the years most recently again
with costco uh you may have seen in the news uh they have recently made the decision not to sell
the abortion drug myth of pristone i didn't see that yeah and that's a result of we started that
engagement with them over a year and a half ago and uh and by god's grace through that time we've
got a coalition together and put a lot of pressure in various ways um finally they made the the right
decision to just stay out of it, right? There's no good business sense. There's no business reason
to kill their future customers and miss out on all the diapers and whatever, all the revenue and
everything else they're going to have. Appealing to their absolute greed, yeah.
Hello, you know, this is how you make money. You know, have big families come buy lots of stuff
from you. So don't, you know, kill the babies before they get here. And anyway, so that we can
have huge impact. There's $22.4 trillion walking around in the pockets of church members, not just
professing Christians, but people who are members of Christian churches in America, that is about,
it's like 49.7%, like 50% of all investment assets in this country are owned by church members.
BlackRock, I think at this point is about $5 trillion. They're one of the world's largest
asset managers. $22.4 trillion, $5 trillion, right? You can see that if we got a little bit
reorganized, a little bit together, we could make, man, immense change. I mean, this is the salt and
light we're called to be as God's people. And we can't just, you know, outsource our influence to
secular firms like BlackRock or Vanguard or whoever else, because they are voting your dollars.
They're just voting it with their own agenda. And that's how we got in this mess, you know,
corporate America. Yeah. All right. We've been very pleasant so far. All right. So we're not
going to not be pleasant, but I do, I want to ask you some, some maybe tougher questions. Okay.
Some of them, some of them will be just normal stock related. Then some of them will be more
Bitcoin related as we get into that. So here's, here's another question. I reached out to a group
of Christian investor guys that I know. And one question that I got twice in the span of three
minutes, uh, what related to actually, let me pull this up here related to, uh, what I believe
according to your, your website is your, your second largest holding. And that would be
Palantir. So again, there's a lot of people, obviously, like abortion drugs, that sounds
pretty straightforward. Pornography, great, straightforward. Palantir,
it seems pretty controversial to me. I would love to know how you think about Palantir and why
it is that you guys are comfortable holding it, proud to hold maybe? I don't know. How do you
think about Palantir? Well, to help me answer that question, what were the concerns, I guess,
would be helpful to know? Because every company's got issues, right? We're not looking for holy
companies. My company is sinful because I'm in it, right? So it would be helpful to have a little
context there. Gotcha. Yeah. So, I mean, Palantir is involved with helping Yemen, like, you know,
the war that's going on in Yemen. Like, there's, I mean, horrible things going on there. They're
helping the Israeli government doing some of the things that they're doing in Palestine in terms of
tracking down people in terms of doing this. I mean, just building the large, like just the
surveillance state that they're enabling and profiting from and building out all over the world
in ways that it doesn't take a bunch of imagination to foresee being used in draconian ways. Again,
this is an issue that has become more important to me the more that I think about it for reasons
that are very closely related to some of the reasons why I'm interested in Bitcoin, which is
One of the temptations from the beginning of time in the scriptures has been for governments to try to award themselves, governments in the very first government was Adam and Eve, is to give themselves God-like power and to turn down the God-designed limits and to reject those in favor of taking for themselves abilities that God has designed him alone to possess.
And one of these things is omnipotence. And so effectively, Palantir is trying to award omnipotence to governments and to other owners of their company and other places. And that omnipotence in the hands of wicked men can be manipulated for all kinds of awful purposes. And so that would be, I mean, that would be, those are a few of the things that would initially immediately need to mind.
Technology enablement and military uses of things. So in military, that category of military use is, you know, is one of those tricky issues. And there's a lot of investors that don't invest in anything that has a connection to military supply chains, like components of maybe they don't make the bombs, but they make components of the guidance systems and things of that nature.
and uh and and so this is how we think about palantir first of all we don't think about
palantir in particular we're an index fund so it's a company so palantir is the second
holding in an index fund so you know we're not singling out palantir necessarily like hey great
investment pound the table uh or nor are we any of our funds in the or stocks in the index fund
uh we have an investment in palantir because they don't have any violations on the exclusionary
categories in our Inspire Impact Score methodology.
So they're not involved in any of the LGBT activism situations.
They don't have, they have a below average score from the human rights campaign on LGBT
activism stuff.
So they're not going off the woke deep end, right?
So they avoid those issues.
They're not involved in abortion or any other things.
So that's how they end up in our fund is because they're not stepping on the landmines of all
these excluded issues, inherently sinful issues.
uh now why are there concerns with how uh maybe some of their clients and states can use their
technology absolutely right same thing would go for like lockheed martin or you know any other sort
of um uh there's a satellite telecommunications company in uh southern california that uh you
know works with this printing satellite communications you know it's a military
contractor um now those those things can be used for good or for ill right and so as investors
uh we have to ask ourselves um you know where do i draw that that line and so again i'm not the
moral police we have many uh friends in the industry who may be mennonite or some other sort
of uh faith tradition where they just stay out of those things altogether uh we do invest in
weapons so we invest in i'm a hunter i've got you know i live in idaho fill the blank right you know
what that means and so like we have firearms i think there's a good use of firearms a lot of
there are a lot of investors including the you know the catholic church in general their investment
guidelines is to avoid the firearms industry because of that that nature right um people use
guns to kill people murder people that's terrible that shouldn't happen yeah um but is the technology
itself is the company is self-responsible for that uh not necessarily right and so with a company
like palantar and this is where i think it's important for us to to see our role as christians
in the in the world but not of the world if we were to uh you know just kind of as a whole exit
companies that had you know issues potential issues you know dark side to their business
That's a lot of businesses. What are we doing? We're surrendering them to those who don't have a redeemed spirit and like a God-honoring intention. And so when we call them and they say, and we're like, hey, we're not shareholders, but we want you to listen to us, that doesn't carry as much weight.
All right. So there is there is a stewardship responsibility where there's this middle ground of gray area that there can be extreme blessing coming from a company like Palantir and the technologies to protect and save lives and do good and justice and punish evil.
There's also the flip side where it can be used for sordid gains.
So let's we want to be stewards of that and for the influence we have, you know, do what we can.
there are times when a company goes off the rails and we just and we try and we try and we try and
but we realize they're not listening to us it's sort of like a just war theory like one of the
things of just war is do i have a chance of winning this war if not i shouldn't start fighting it and
if we get to the point like that with a company then then we will you know exclude them um that's
not the case with palantir right and and i you know and you as you know i would make the same
case about Bitcoin. And that is how, you know, a lot of my, you know, thoughts that I've written
about and whatnot about Bitcoin is really trying to underline that fact that there is, there's a
lot of great things that can happen with Bitcoin. There's a lot of problematic things that kind of
go along with Bitcoin at the same time that we should be aware of both of those and make those
decisions about, you know, how we want to interact with something like Bitcoin or crypto in general
and all of that sort of thing.
Yeah. So, I mean, I guess the,
as it relates specifically to Palantir,
we'll get to Bitcoin in a minute.
As it relates specifically to Palantir,
like, is there, again, as I look at,
and again, this is,
there's conscience-borne differences here,
but like, as I just look at their trajectory
of the company,
I look at the type of things that they're doing
and the type of world that they're creating.
Like, I look at this thing
and it's not a pleasant world whatsoever.
Because like, you're talking about
where they already are at a point
Where they can, I mean, they're unifying and tracking everything you're doing, like in giving all this information to the people who have the greatest potential to abuse in the incentive to abuse, to suppress dissent, to do any one of a number of awful things that are entirely predictable.
Like all of these things have happened throughout human history, even without this technology.
And so a lot of the things – a similarly or a tangential thing to Bitcoin is kind of the antichrist alternative would be central bank digital currencies, which is basically programmatic money, programmable money that would allow effectively governments to turn money into coupons that have shot clocks on them.
And so basically the combination of a Palantir with, you know, thinking about the effects of Palantir and how they could using their, like if they, you know, if Palantir signs a contract with China, right?
Thinking about how it doesn't take, it's not very difficult to imagine how governments might use that to, for example, in that particular illustration, like oppress Christians.
We don't want Christians here.
We're going to use every tool at our disposal to track them down.
And hey, if we can get even better tools from Palantir, look, we can we can cloak this in the name of, oh, look, we're we're holding hands with this is enabling international peace because we've we've formed an agreement.
This strikes me as an agreement that's very similar to the one pilot made with with Herod.
Right. This is a marriage of convenience that oppresses the poor and the innocent.
And so I don't know.
I would love to encourage you to kind of reconsider that one just because I don't –
and so I guess my question, the question that I have, and we're going to get to –
so hopefully our friends at Canon Plus will overlook the potential patent violation that I did.
I couldn't figure out a way to screen record so that I could show the three-minute clip that you did where you talked about Bitcoin.
And Pastor Wilson asking fantastic questions that were very curiously or like very, um,
they were phrased in a way that makes me think they had, uh, well, because I've done work with
them before that he was asking questions that seemed to be, you know, very familiar. Uh, and so
one of the, one of the things that, uh, that you, one of the points that you raised, uh, actually
let's just watch it. We'll watch it. I've got it right here. Uh, we'll watch this and then I'll get
your reaction to it. While you're pulling that up too, just a quick little point on panel just to
wrap that up to me yeah the technology like that is part of the sword that is given to a magistrate
right so the magistrate wields the sword to promote good and punish evil sure they can also use that
for injustice right and so there is uh and that's not for us to decide i mean god is sovereign over
who he gives the sword to and so just to to put it in those contexts should the magistrate have
the sword taken away from him because some of them use it improperly, you know, or should just
justice reign, right? That's why we need the gospel. And that's why we need to, you know,
change China you know and all that sort of thing But inherently the sword is not evil And in our in our version of 100 it not just a sword right it is surveillance technology that used to take down the bad guys could also be misused
um so that's again just a little yeah and again i do want to clarify like again i have no problem
with the the emperor bearing the sword i i don't think he bears it in vain i don't what the but i
think there is a difference and i don't think it would be difficult to to illustrate why between
again, giving governments omnipotence. Like that's something different. Like that's something
different than, Hey, God has given me this thing. God has given me the, the responsibility to protect
the innocent and to punish those who punish those who do evil. Like that is a far different thing
than saying, than, than giving governments the ability to be rival gods. You know, it like that,
that's a very different thing. And I, I, that, so that'd be one thing. Okay. So here we'll, we'll,
We'll leave that there.
Okay, so this is, sorry, I stopped this a little bit.
So you're talking about Bitcoin.
And one of the things that you mentioned is that,
you know, Bitcoin frequently, when people come to you,
it's because they want to make money quickly or make money.
The question that I have initially was this question of
why do you want to buy it?
Is this also a question that you pose to every other stock
that somebody wants to invest in,
they walk through the door with,
Or is this a special case that you apply to Bitcoin?
Because one of the things that the scriptures talk about is the importance of just weights and measures.
And so this is having one standard for everything.
So that would be one question that I'd have for you.
Yeah, and it's a great question.
And in our industry, we call that investment objective.
And we're actually required by law to know why our investors, what they want to accomplish with their investments.
Because otherwise, how are we supposed to advise them to get there?
Sure.
and risk tolerance and everything else.
And so as in our position as advisors,
investment advisors,
it's inherent in our role as a fiduciary
to be able to act in the best interest of our clients
to truly know why they want to invest in that.
So yes, absolutely.
When people come to us with a specific stock,
like, hey, I want to buy, you know, Netflix, whatever.
Sure.
Why?
That's the first question.
Buy Netflix, do tell.
and we give them advice.
Is that appropriate?
Is it not appropriate
with your particular financial situation?
And that's what I'm talking about here in this clip
is that when people come in to us
and they're like,
hey, I want to buy some Bitcoin.
Okay, well, why?
And honestly, in every case I can think of,
this is retail investment sort of universe.
We're not talking to big institutions
and that sort of thing about this question.
is, well, I hear it's going up in price
and I want to get some of that, right?
I mean, that is the answer we hear over and over again.
And that's a warning sign.
And that's applied to stocks.
It applies to gold.
It applies to Bitcoin.
It applies to real estate investment,
like whatever kind of investments.
If your motivation is just,
well, I see that going up really fast
and I want to get some,
then we've got to ask ourselves, is that greed?
Are we allowing ourselves to take on more risk
and is prudent for us and our family.
Sure.
There's a lot of questions to delve into there.
So that's, I mean, so that would be my question
is like when people come to you
and they tell you that they want to buy Palantir,
what is their motivation?
Because like, again,
and I totally believe this, by the way,
like the average person for 99.9% of people
who get into Bitcoin,
the initial thing that their initial framework
for thinking about Bitcoin is it's a way to make money.
They see the price moving
and they don't want to miss out.
so again whether or not they want to get super wealthy i've had plenty of conversations with
people who there it wasn't motivated by you know i want to become a billionaire or something they're
a millionaire but it's a i don't want to miss out on this thing i don't want to i don't want this
thing to run away from me so what are the reasons some of the reasons that people have given you for
why they want to buy palantir uh nobody's ever asked me if they want to buy a palantir frankly
i mean yeah so again we're not we're not stock pickers uh they're what those conversations look
like is they have their, like, they've already purchased it. They, they've, or they bought other
things and we're educating them on what they're in and they have certain goals in their life.
They want to retire by a certain time or they have, you know, this college education you need
to fund. And we put, build a portfolio of diversified, you know, low cost index funds that
align with biblical values. Palantir happens to be in there today. If they, you know,
they do step on one of those landmines that we talked about, like Nvidia did a couple of years
ago then then they'll be out you know and uh so yeah we're not really getting into the weeds of
individual stock picking uh with our clients when they do you know palantir is not really
one that we've had questions about particularly but uh when they do come in like you know tesla
or something that you see in the news a lot uh kind of the meme stock sort of stuff um that people
ask about if they watch jim kramer you know and like well well if jim told you to buy all
I don't know. There's a lot of questions there, right?
If Jim told you to buy it, you should probably sell it.
That's right. It's a good contrarian indicator.
We're trying to help people be good investors, right?
And make wise decisions in line with their ability to take on risk.
Sometimes people feel like their personality is okay with risk.
They're comfortable with risk.
But their financial situation tells them, you should not be taking risk right now. And so we're here to help that behavior, connect that behavior with the investor, which sometimes could include Bitcoin. Yeah, sure. If you want to take some Bitcoin, then here's an appropriate amount. Go ahead, know the risks, be educated on what actually you're buying and what you're not buying, or maybe not.
Right. And so that's that's how we approach every investment discussion.
Obviously, with Bitcoin's meteoric rise and price, that's a very common question.
And so that's why we have a special discussion about it.
Yeah. And I think that one of the things that I and one of the things that I was I don't know,
one of the things that I took away from the rest of this clip, which we can watch here is
well, actually, we'll just pause on that. I'm going to I'm going to continue playing the next
little part of the clip and then we can kind of talk about it from there. So here we go.
Yeah. So I think that's a great point. I would agree. I agree with you there. Like again, if,
if that, if that is the only thing that's motivating you, then yeah, you should be,
you should be aware. The scriptures talk about the danger and the folly of trying to make money
quickly. So I think that, that, that's great advice. At the same time, what, what is missing
in this discussion is what is Bitcoin and what is it designed, what is it designed to do? And this
is like, I think, and I see this a lot where Dave Ramsey is another popular voice who, you know,
is very, is not very appreciative of Bitcoin, not a big fan. And a lot of his critiques are what I
would argue are like above ground critiques. It's like, it's very circumstantial of what people are
doing with it. There's very little discussion, basically no discussion about like, okay, yes,
Bitcoin is, we're watching like Bitcoin, it's doing certain things. But the bigger question,
and the question I would, that I just always go to is, what is this? What, to try to figure out
what my expectations should be and to figure out how to think about, how to have a thesis about
Bitcoin would be, what is Bitcoin trying to do? And so, I mean, I guess that would be a question
I would have to use. What is your understanding of what Bitcoin exists to do? Like what is Bitcoin?
Why does it exist? Very good question. Yeah. So Bitcoin, you know, and the whole decentralized,
you know, non-inflatable, you know, currency sort of thesis is very honorable, right? So I have no
problems with the thesis of, hey, wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a currency that we could
use that would take power to steal money basically from governments who are over indebted and
everything else and just said hey i'm just gonna steal from my people by inflating the currency
but it being problem problem solved right that's a problem that is immoral it's unethical
uh i i agree with that bitcoin is uh and you know other sorts of approaches with cryptocurrency and
and you know even gold bars and things of that nature a lot of different ways people try to
address those issues. So that's noble. And, and I appreciate that. So there's perhaps other areas
that Bitcoin tries to, you know, kind of niche, you know, solutions for businesses and whatever
else that, you know, institutional wire transfers and, and whatever you that people try to address
with Bitcoin cryptocurrencies. What I in my seat, however, I think I want what I want to draw a
distinction between is bitcoin as really what is bitcoin like what you're asking which by itself
again is not um really problematic in just why it's why it exists in the noble uses that it has
but it can be true and i think it's very true that i can uh really appreciate and be a fan of like
what you know all the benefits of bitcoin and it can still be a terrible investment
right so those are two different things i get a company in a in the world of stocks that man i'd
love this name it's a biotech company that's got is going to cure cancer right and and it's days
from coming public or whatever else and or being released to the public uh with their treatments
but doesn't mean it's a good investment i can be rooting them on but maybe i missed the boat
right or whatever the case is but the price that i'd have to pay for the stock would be a terrible
financial decision for my family. And so those, just because I think something is necessarily not
a good investment doesn't mean I think the company or the, or the item in this case, Bitcoin is, uh,
just bad. Right. So I would caution against that. So you're a Bitcoin expert, right? I'm not a
Bitcoin expert. You know a lot more about Bitcoin than I do. Um, I'm an investing expert. And so
that's what I think about investing. And that correlates to a lot of different sort of, uh,
you know, types of investments. And so we need to know a lot about a, or a little about a lot of
things. But really in the context of, is this a good investment, a wise investment? And not just
that, but is this a wise investment for Aunt Sally and my brother Jim and this guy and that lady?
Because the answer is different for all those people. The common thing that all of these
investors need is good education. Before you put money into something, you really should understand
what it is so that's exactly what you're saying right so like what is bitcoin what are the pros
what are the cons a lot of the questions you're asking about palantir right what are the pros
what are the cons do i personally feel like i want to put my money into that and so like if
your conscious conscience is uh you know pricked on that like with a palantir then i would encourage
you not to buy that stock right um just like it would be like target or anything else and we don't
want to bind each other's consciences over over issues that are again not inherently sinful at
the Holy Spirit does not bind conscience on.
Sure.
Just unilaterally, like abortion drugs
or something of that nature.
And that goes for avoidance and also participation.
So it's a potential pitfall in my line of work
to bind someone's conscience
about the alcohol industry, for instance,
and to say like, look, if you invest in alcohol,
you're a sinner and you need to ask repentance.
Like, that is not true.
If you invest in the alcohol industry,
you that is not inherently sinful that's not a problem i might not invest in the alcohol industry
for things i stated earlier but if you think it's okay then you know the bible doesn't just rule
that out right so i don't want to bind their conscience to the negative sure similarly the
problem with the scripture points out uh more often i think is binding people's consciences to
the well i guess maybe it's equal you know but to do something that their conscience prohibited them
from doing right yeah and i think of like meat sacrifice to idols right so my conscience doesn't
bind me uh so i'm gonna just eat the meat in front of my brother who's gonna and it's leading him
into stumbling so um i could also say you know by my promotion of the alcohol industry is to use an
example bringing somebody into that who when their conscience really is preventing them and causing
the sin against the conscience that god's given them i think there's a danger there with bitcoin
where people perhaps are, you know, brought into an investment with Bitcoin
when their conscience, when their heart's not ready for it.
Like maybe they are being lured by greed.
Maybe they've been wrestling with this, right?
There's this really is a greed component.
And they're kind of encouraged to follow that,
that into the investment when their heart wasn't right.
So that's the point that I, and it's a very nuanced point, but that's what I really try to underscore because there's so much positivity around crypto.
Like no one's writing articles about the millions of dollars I lost in the crypto market, right?
It's always the other part.
I see, well, again, as somebody who works in the industry, I see tons of those articles, but again, I can understand.
They're not necessarily the ones, I mean, FTX, when FTX blew up, that was everywhere for years, right?
And again, that had a catastrophic impact.
Again, that had nothing to do with Bitcoin.
That was actually, they actually were lying
about having purchased Bitcoin.
They actually only had like a couple Bitcoin
on their balance sheet,
despite telling their customers
that they had bought, you know,
tons of Bitcoin for them.
Right, because greed leads you into all sorts of pitfalls
and snares that lead to, right?
They did have Bitcoin at one point.
And it led them, you know, that whole sordid tale
that we didn't need to rehash, but there you go.
And again, and this is where we would be in agreement
because like I look at, I mean, you look at the company, like the mags, the mag eight, mag seven,
whatever they are, like that, the vast majority, again, if, if we're talking about Christians
having 22.2 trillion, Christians have trillions in those companies and they're not in it because
they're thinking, Oh, I think that Facebook and Apple and Tesla are making the world a better
place. And I want to, they're, they're very much thinking because of the debasement of the United
States currency, they're very much thinking I have to make money in order to retire.
And so this is where, again, where we would both agree, like the problem with, and I would attribute this latest that far more at the feet of the debasement of the currency is because of the unilateral government action that is outside of people's ability to do anything about it.
You are now tempting people to basically to overlook some of the things that these companies are doing in the name of trying to be able to retire and trying to be able to continue to provide for their families.
again, you are with your company, you are in the ETF, the product, you're attempting to provide,
to basically help people see you don't have to make this Faustian bargain in order to be able
to retire. And so praise the Lord for you and for what you're doing. Some of the other questions
are just things that I would really just want to point out as it relates to Bitcoin would be one
of the things that I'm most excited about and most grateful for about Bitcoin is I'm grateful
for it because of the ministry that we did while we were in Uruguay. So half of our church members
in Uruguay were Venezuelan immigrants. And so they had had, these were people who were doctors,
economists. These were people who were in some cases making six figures in Venezuela, which is,
you know, in many cases, one of the most comfortable and resource rich countries in
all of Latin America. Even years into their hyperinflation, gas was two cents a gallon,
to give you an idea. I mean, just staggering wealth. But over the course of years through
the governments, each new politician would promise free stuff to the citizens. The way that they would
fund that free stuff is just printing money. And so the end result was just utter chaos. So you saw
the currency became worthless. You have dumpsters full of these currencies. And so this destroyed
families. We had people in our church who were husbands who had to move away to get a job to try
to provide for their families. That resulted in children growing up without their dads. This
resulted in infidelity on the parts of husbands and wives. You're separated from your wife for
years. This is just a recipe for disaster. And so I just started to see the ways in which currency
debasement destroyed lives in Venezuela and then was stunned to find this was not an isolated
incident. This has happened multiple times over and over again throughout. This is a constant
refrain throughout history is that this cycle happens. And so one of the amazing things that
I found about Bitcoin was that by investing, by buying a currency that is a effectively universal
currency, global currency can be used anywhere where the internet is. Like I am bolstering a
system that is in, it's a, it's basically a parallel system that can provide a viable alternative
for some of the most vulnerable, vulnerable people all over the world. Just by my, again,
my little, my little stone, like my, my little thing, I can throw this and I can add legitimacy
to something that provides an opt-out
for people who are in
awful situations all over the world.
And so, no, I contrast
that with something like the dollar.
Because with the dollar, the dollar
is something, like, it is an investment.
I'm holding this thing. Now, again, we can
quibble about the word investment, but it's something
that by virtue of me buying
it, I'm lending credibility
and I'm giving life
to the institution that is
creating the dollar.
And so all of these, you know, why is the United States able to fund abortions in Africa?
Because they can print the money out of thin air.
Why are they able to fund endless wars for the last 50 years?
Because they print the money out of thin air, and they're the only ones who can legally do that.
And so the question that I would have for you is, again, I'm not saying this is an easy question,
but at what point, I mean, should Christians be considering, again, there's a limit to what we can do with this.
again, we have to pay taxes and dollars. Like I'm not trying to create this. I'm really not trying
to put Christians in this impossible situation But one of the things I think about is like with Bitcoin is it is a nationless thing There no wars that can be fought with Bitcoin Bitcoin actually takes away
the ability of governments to create more of this currency unit. So it effectively restrains
government. And what I would argue is a way that God intends governments to be restrained.
And so, you know, it's easy to look at some of these other companies and I applaud you for doing
so. The one step further that I think a lot of the people who are principally, I would call them
Christian Bitcoiners, we've kind of come to see that the dollar is just another one of these
products that there are tremendous downsides to holding and lending legitimacy to. So I would love
to kind of get your thoughts on that. Yeah. No, and amen to all the, again, the good that Bitcoin
and similar crypto coins can do,
giving people a legitimate, helpful alternative
to places like Venezuela.
So no disagreement there.
I would push back on the,
just sort of the inherent problems of the dollar.
Does it have problems?
Yes.
Can governments have issues?
Yes.
God institutes governments.
So I think one of the ditches
we can fall into is that governments are evil.
Governments are bad.
Look what they do.
Leviathan's terrible.
It's a monster.
And certainly governments have been monsters
throughout history and, you know,
currently, right now today.
And there's aspects of our own government
that are terrible.
But if we throw them out,
it doesn't mean that we're not left with a monster
of untethered democracy, you know,
like in the sense of like just rule by people.
people without any you know governing authority so uh that's why we need godly rulers to wield the
tools of the state of you know of the emperor so to speak in a godly way because when it's
when the u.s dollar or any other currency similar to military weapons or technology
is wielded for righteous purposes by righteous men uh righteousness results when the righteous
rule the city rejoices right when the wicked then yep the opposite and uh so you know i i don't
think bitcoin is the solution to immoral governments so and so when i hear those arguments
that hey you know governments are evil look what they've done uh they own the currencies
they control those currencies therefore we need to use bitcoin to solve that problem i don't think
there's actually a connection there if we if we took away the currencies of the governments do we
really think that an evil government would not find a way to to still you know push its problems
on the world i don't think that solves the issue i do agree that let's you know let's let's throw a
little pebble in what we whatever we have to help again i'm not saying bitcoin's bad or we shouldn't
do bitcoin or whatever else i think we need to have a um i'd say a level-minded uh view of what
it is what it isn't what it's capable what it isn't capable of um and and be cautious about
ascribing perhaps omnipotence to bitcoin you know yeah to be able to solve all of our economic
problems because i don't think that's true and i'm not saying that's what you're saying but exactly
But it can come across that way from folks who, particularly with a faith-based bent, who are very bullish on Bitcoin, again, can kind of leave some gaps there.
And so that's where I just, I want to have the, let's consider the other side of that coin and just have a little more even keel.
Yeah, no, my point would simply be all you have to do is look at history to see that the current path we're on fails.
every single time fiat currencies like they start out every civilization you would ever want to be a
part of starts with a scarce currency and then as that that enables them to build their empire
and then the path to destruction is we start to debase the currency so i'm not trying to i'm not
trying to say bitcoin is somehow this novel thing that we're hoping and praying is going to you know
just be something novel like this is basically saying no no all we have to do is just look at
history and see the path that we're on that leads to destruction. And Bitcoin, again, Bitcoin and
gold, scarce, like scarce, scarce currencies are, are what we're going to return to over a long
enough time horizon. This is what, because people wake once they, once it's just like the, um,
it's Jesus's words where he says, those who are well have no need of a physician, right? It's easy
to not see the importance of something when you're, when you're not sick and when, when you have the
comfort and ease. But the reality is that the consistent historic witness is that you can't
deny, and this is the scriptural principle that I would argue, it's denying sowing and reaping.
Naked fiat currencies that are backed by nothing are governments denying God's principle of sowing
and reaping by basically giving them God-like power. And so again, I'm not saying that Bitcoin
is this panacea that's going to fix everything. It won't. But what I am saying is there's a reason
why the founding fathers talked about the danger of fiat currency, the danger of paper money and
the destruction that would reap on, you know, it would reap on mankind and that it had wrought on
mankind. And so that's, that's all I'm literally just, it's, it's, we're just pointing, Hey,
we're again, ironically, the, the novel, the Bitcoin, the digital currency guys are pointing
back and going, Hey, let's learn from the past. Um, this, this is unsustainable. The path that
we're on is unsustainable. At the same time, the, the, I don't think government is evil at all.
I think government is a gift from God. The problem is it's basically be like the analogy that I've used multiple times and I think is far more accurate is right now the United States is a morbidly obese man. And so to a morbidly obese man, the conception of fasting for a day sounds unthinkable. It sounds unthinkable because like, well, how would I, you know, how would I survive this?
And so again, the thing that it's mystifying to me and really discouraging, and I think Pastor Wilson is somebody who does a far better job than the vast majority of people, is when we look at Scripture, the repeated testimony of Scripture is that God has a problem with governments who want to be all-powerful.
And to the point that we see the Hebrew midwives lie to a totalitarian pharaoh.
We see him lie, and we see the repeated testimony.
We see the wise men refuse to honor the leader of, I can't remember what it is, Herod, in the way that he requires.
So again, my point is simply that government is not, they are not able to create their own job description.
They have a job description that God has given to them.
And that frequently in the end stage of empire, they want to get rid of, they want to cast off the restraints that God has put on them.
This is Psalm 2.
This is basic Psalm 2, where basically the governments of the nations basically say, hey, let's throw off the restraints that God has put on us.
And so how does God respond?
He laughs.
He laughs at them and says, hey, I've got reality that you're not going to be able to cast off.
And so one of the things that you talked about in this fantastic interview that I repeat, you should go watch, that all the audience should go watch is that God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are.
And so it is just so appropriate and so humorous in my mind.
I laugh about it regularly.
The fact that the most powerful tool that nations have is their people.
But as they drink their own Kool-Aid, the most powerful instruments that nations have is their currencies.
And so as they continue to debase their currencies and those currencies become weaker and weaker and weaker in that vacuum, God has in his humor chosen to like chosen to like we've seen the advent of this thing of Bitcoin, this foolish, you know, basically decentralized open source Internet project.
Like now it is as of right now, I believe the fifth largest currency on Earth. That is hilarious to me.
And it's just an illustration of what happens, you know, of the fact that like, again, you can't deny reality forever. And so what I see is not getting rid of governments. What I see is it's like a restraining, it's like a discipling, if we could borrow that, like it's a restraining government.
It's reteaching governments and it's reteaching people about this question of like these foundational questions that have just been easy to throw off in the name of expediency of like, well, what is money?
You know, what is the point of this?
Why does this exist?
Why have certain things worked and been valued?
and why have people all throughout the history of the church and human history,
going back to John Calvin,
there's a 15th century Catholic bishop named Nicholas Eresme
who talked about the ethics of money production.
And so why have there been Christians who've recognized this?
Why have we drifted so far from this?
And so a lot of these conversations have been brought back into the public sphere
by, of all insane things, Bitcoin.
uh i i just think that's an incredible an incredible development to have happen um yeah
yeah and that whole you know it's basically giving competition putting competition into the
currency market right correct what it is doing and it breaks the monopoly and it allows competition
so that's that's a again a good thing that's a different thing than is it a good investment
though right so again just kind of bringing that back to uh that question so if if we're
investing in Bitcoin or buying Bitcoin to, you know, sort of help this system come on,
you know, come along and, you know, usher something, you know, redemptive into the world.
It's a wonderful motivation, but I would also differentiate that from an investment thesis.
So there's a motivation, but what is a fair value for Bitcoin? Is $115,000, or I think it's
something like that today. Is that a fair value? That's the question that I think a lot of
investors struggle with. And frankly, I do think Bitcoin, at least today, is primarily a speculation
market. Trying to put a valuation on something like Bitcoin, you can put a valuation on a company
that has revenues and products and inventories and all those things and know what, you know,
maybe what a book value is worth or what have you, or apply multiple to the earnings or lots
of different ways to go about valuing an asset of a but you can't do the same thing on bitcoin
and you have people like michael saylor and you know his strategy uh company uh buying
you know thousands and tens of thousands of bitcoin you know certain a month and what happens
if they stop uh-huh or when they stop right what happens to the price what is it you know in a in a
In a stock, new money can stop coming into the company stock.
New money doesn't have to continue coming for that stock to maintain a value because the underlying asset has a value.
If new money stops coming into the Bitcoin market, I think you have a ridiculously precipitous drop in the price of Bitcoin that will spin the heads of any – it would be faster and larger than anybody could ever think could happen.
but because there is so much new money coming in right i mean so we don't have that established
secondary market um to support current prices it seems uh the underlying value of bitcoin is is
really a speculation like is it worth this or is it worth that i don't know are you familiar with
the difficulty adjustment and the having the having cycle i guess the having cycle is more
relevant yes the having cycle the difficulty adjustment uh you're talking about the mining
and it makes, you know,
it make it harder to mine.
Certainly I know all those things
and there's, you can,
but still like you,
you can look at the scarcity
and say, here's how many are available,
but how do you get that to a dollar price?
So the question is,
why does it have to have a dollar price?
Like that, like the idea that,
because this is, this is the other thing is,
so people act like Bitcoin's volatility
is Bitcoin's fault somehow.
When it's like there,
the dollar has lost 99% of its value
over the last hundred years.
You know, like when COVID, when the COVID crash happened, you had somewhere like some, again, the numbers range, but it was like anywhere from like 40 to 80% of all the dollars that have ever existed were created when they dropped stimulus checks.
Sure.
So, I mean, so this is, some of this has nothing to do with Bitcoin.
In fact, I would say none of it does.
These are standard financial market principles of investment, right?
So the fact that Bitcoin is volatile is not a black mark on something that's unique to Bitcoin, right?
Yes. And I know when I talk to folks like yourself, you're very bullish on it, very experts. I mean, it's like somebody calling your baby ugly or whatever. Like babies puke. Okay. But that's, I mean, all babies do. All right. That's just a baby thing and it could be cute. And maybe that's why some people like to have babies. I don't know. But so volatility is not this inherent flaw in Bitcoin, but it is a real fact for an investor to consider.
Sure. And my point is have a dollar price because everyone I'm talking to, that's what they have to buy is spend. Right. They have dollars. They don't have something else they can trade for Bitcoin. And so when they're looking at I've got one hundred thousand dollars in my IRA and I need to know, is it one appropriate for me to buy any Bitcoin based on my goals and my risk tolerance and whatnot?
And if so, how much? And if so, let's say I can afford $10,000 of something of that sort along with my portfolio, what price would be smart to buy it at? Because those are all decisions I need to know. So you typically have a price target. I think it's worth this much. Hopefully we can buy it for less than that. Maybe we're going to dollar cost that average in.
And those questions are very difficult, if not impossible, to explain with any speculative asset, which I put Bitcoin into that at this present point in time.
You can speculate like now. I'm not saying nobody should ever speculate. That's how new things come to come to life.
But you do need to realize it is speculation. And so for an investor, how much of your portfolio are you comfortable and would prudence tell you can put into a speculative asset?
and the motivation to support something wonderful and as redemptive as bitcoin can be is a good
motivation now let's make a wise financial decision about how much to put in at what price you might
want to put it in at uh all those sorts of things which uh are just really difficult with something
like bitcoin that that has really a um sort of a yeah unknowable value in its current form yeah
I think, again, the problem that I have, though, is the volatility.
Like, people, again, people have the special pleading.
They apply one standard to Bitcoin, the volatility of Bitcoin.
Like, I'm sorry, it's impossible for the operating supply of Bitcoin to double.
Like, there's nothing preventing the supply of dollars from doubling in the next five minutes.
Sure.
Like, there could be some emergency that would come along that would, which the government could justify, even over the short term, like, create, like, doubling, tripling, 100xing the number of dollars.
in circulation. And so that, that seems again, if we're trying to apply this equal, this equal
standard, like that seems to me incredibly risky. That seems to me. So Bitcoin beach, you know,
I would compare that to like the whole Bitcoin beach story, which I assume people are familiar
with watching this podcast. You know, Bitcoin's volatile, but because they have a closed system,
it doesn't really matter if it goes up, goes down, whatever, because they're just trading
Bitcoins with each other, right? You have the same denominator for, you know, buy a bottle of
from somebody and it's in bitcoins it's fine um so similarly here in america we've got dollars
for the better or worse like we here we are we have dollars so we can go up low down we can trade
with each other um and so there is a there is an aspect of similarity there uh and because of the
u.s dollar is you know a denominator for a lot of business transactions and you know economic power
on the world you know not that it doesn't have problems but uh there you know you got to consider
that bitcoin doesn't have that same it's that that same uh benefit currently but in either of
those cases the volatility aside uh really just the value even if it was just a stable value for
right now like it doesn't have to go up and down all all wacky but just seeing how what is it worth
right so if i were to ask you i'm really kind of curious the answer you'd have is yeah what is what
is one Bitcoin worth? Yeah. And so my answer to that would be, so again, there's a few different
layers on which I would answer that question. So again, there's immediate term answers. So here,
and this is a question I pose. This is an issue that I raised to Pastor Wilson when I interviewed
him on our podcast. I asked him, I said, I've been thinking about you guys in Moscow in relation to
Bitcoin for years, because again, you guys don't shrink from preaching the whole counsel of God.
And in the world that we lived in, this is 2020 to 2024, in the world we live in, we live in a world where it's totally conceivable that a government could listen to one of your sermons.
A state government or a national government could hear one of your sermons and declare you an enemy of the state, debank you.
Now, again, over the long term, you're probably going to win.
The courts have been largely a bastion of sanity.
But in the short term, they could debank you.
This is what happened with the Canadian truckers.
and so what is the value of being able to access your money like what is that worth to you what is
it worth to be able to pay yourself even if you can say bitcoin is volatile well what's it it's
you know i'd rather have something that can be volatile 20 to 30 percent and and still be have
access to it than not have access to something that is even like artificially only going up at
three percent or four percent whatever the cpi says that the inflation rate is um so again i think
that these are the more relevant questions. We're not in just some sort of normal, stable
ploid of history. We're at a point where there are actual threats that you have to take into
consideration, especially given if you're operating a business or if you're operating,
again, missions organizations. I have talked to dozens of missions organizations who are already
or are investigating using Bitcoin.
to move money across the world to places that don't have the SWIFT system because of the United
States has warred in these places. They don't want to risk dollars going to terrorism. And so
they don't allow that. Bitcoin can go anywhere. You can't stop Bitcoin. And so again, I think
there's a hundred different things to take into account. I think another, if kind of getting at
what I think you're actually getting at is, so what is the total addressable market of Bitcoin?
Well, it's literally – and who is the audience?
Well, it's anybody who has their currency being devalued by their government who has access to the internet.
And so that's about 5 billion people right now.
Now, again, what is it worth to Russia to not have to buy the treasuries, the U.S. treasury bonds, from a country that is, you could argue, unfairly targeting them in a whole host of ways for partisan reasons?
Or vice versa.
Why would the United States –
There's a whole bunch of reasons why there should be, why it would make sense for there to be a desire for a neutral reserve asset.
These are not novel reasons.
This is all throughout history.
This is why gold has been desired is because it is a neutral asset that doesn't require subscribing to somebody else's arbitrary valuation.
This is why.
And I think that we're rediscovering all of these things right now.
The world is going through a process of rediscovery.
This is why last week we saw that for the first time in 30 years, foreign nations, foreign governments are holding more gold than they are treasuries.
Again, I think we are in a dramatic repricing and a reawakening of the reality and the need to have the need for scarcity to be one component of money.
So would it matter what price?
I hear the.
to hear the question like,
well, what is it worth for somebody in those situations?
Sure.
But really, what is it worth?
I mean, are you saying that you should just buy Bitcoin
at any price?
It doesn't really matter because the market is so large?
And so again, I think that you have to ask
the further question is, who are you talking to?
If I'm one of my Venezuelan brothers and sisters
whose currency is being devalued at 100% daily,
then for them, they are price neutral Bitcoin buyers.
Like they are, because Bitcoin for them
is less volatile than their situation.
So let's assume we're talking to everyday Americans
with retirement accounts.
Yes, yes.
And so again,
then it depends on what time horizon we talking about because I mean at this point the case against Bitcoin I just don understand it It like you have the largest companies on earth BlackRock who has their ETF which is more value
They made more money from their Bitcoin ETF than they did their S&P 500 ETF in the last few months.
So you have the president of the United States.
You have the United States holds Bitcoin.
Like all of the largest, many of the largest, Tesla owns Bitcoin.
A lot of the largest companies, even if you're just looking at, you're only thinking in dollar-denominated returns.
The case against Bitcoin at this point, I just don't see it.
My case against it is that when new money stops flowing in, as far as it's gone up, it can go just as far down.
We're going to find any developed market, you see that interplay, right?
And there will be an equilibrium that Bitcoin will eventually mature and relatively stabilize around some sort of number. I don't know if that's $115,000 or $25,000 or $5,000 or $500,000. And so that's the question I can't answer. And I haven't heard anybody being able to answer that question. I hear your point. The market's huge, all those things.
But just like gold's not $115,000 an ounce and the market is, you know, ostensibly the same, right? I mean, so there still is a true value that has not been identified. And I am incredibly skeptical just knowing that the reason why Bitcoin's up, what is it, 90% over the past year is because new money's coming in.
But when that stops, what happens and where do we find equilibrium? That's what I don't know.
And here's the question that I would ask, though, is honestly, I mean, because you have with BlackRock, for example, why are they buying Bitcoin?
Because they have a wall of money that's flowing into them every month that they have to do something with.
And so if it stopped going up, they would sell their Bitcoin.
So that's the other thing. When it stopped, when entities like that and strategy and all those guys, when they stop making money, as much money could still be going.
and they start saying, well, I'm going to cut some of my gains and, you know, take some at the table.
I mean, that's how a top forms in a market.
And so, so currently my view is it's in a speculation phase.
There's risk there for various reasons.
I you know I don disagree with all of the redemptive benefits that Bitcoin could bring to the world And I pray that it you know that those things do materialize in a greater fashion Uh when I giving advice to people should I well then should I buy it
Depends, right? And so right now, speculation, maybe a little bit, something you're comfortable
losing, you know, 50% or more of your money over the next year, if it, if it just, you know,
corrects or whatnot. Um, and, uh, you know, and ideally we're able to really have a stronger
valuation component, see that equilibrium.
And then I think that point, when that market matures and you can actually ascribe reasonable
figure to, you know, the price of a Bitcoin should cost about this much money for these
reasons.
And you can draw a really clear connection like you do in other mature markets.
Then I think Bitcoin can really blossom into all the things you're saying.
And because not speculation goes into a more mature market.
I don't think we're there yet.
And so that's where my caution comes from.
But yeah, so.
I understand caution.
And this will be your last question
because you've got to,
I want to honor your time.
You've been super generous with us so far.
I mean, do you, I mean, is there,
I guess, how would you weigh,
this will be our final question.
How would, like,
at what price would you be a buyer of Bitcoin?
Or what would you need in order to feel comfortable?
Personally, or, you know,
recommending people,
there's no single price I would recommend
any particular person to buy Bitcoin.
It depends on their situation.
Personally.
So I think $115,000 is too high unless I'm trading Bitcoin.
Like I'll trade Bitcoin at any price, right?
You know, in and out, what have you, stop losses, just like I would with any asset.
I think as a long-term hold, I would expect prices to come down at least half.
So you think we're going to see $75,000?
I think that would be the point.
if I was considering a long-term buy,
that's when I would start thinking about it,
and I might even look lower.
I think, again, the strategy,
their cost basis is about $75,000 right now.
They're slowing down their buying.
I mean, so those, and it tells me
I might be right about that,
but they know a lot about what they're doing.
But it wouldn't surprise me
if you got things that did below that.
So I would expect things that,
you know, just, this is, again, speculation.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Half the price that we are now,
75-ish, could be a reasonable price.
I would look for buying opportunities,
maybe around 50 or hopefully lower to really make sure as they right Here a question for you So Leslie I lied So last question But like so when Bitcoin went from 69
to about 16,000,
is this thesis, what you just articulated,
is that a relatively new thing
as a result of BlackRock and some of these other things?
Like that's new information.
Because like, I mean, Bitcoin dropped down,
you know, whatever, it went,
you know, dropped 75% or whatever it was.
and I'm thinking you're saying
you didn't buy any at that point.
So is this a new development
or what was different?
Why didn't you buy it
when it dropped precipitously?
Why didn't you see that
as a good buying opportunity for Bitcoin?
Well, whether I did or didn't buy things
at a different price,
I'll leave that unanswered.
Oh, I like it.
I like it.
But in a speculative market,
you have, I mean, things change, right?
And so if in six months
we get to $75,000,
I reserve the right to reassess and say, well, why did we get there?
Like maybe we do good.
So like right now today with all that I can see, that's probably when I would start considering
building a longer term position, assuming all the factors were relatively unchanged.
And I think if you go back several years, you don't have, I guess, a speculative market,
even more speculative back then.
and um you know so it's that's the nature of things that that you can't really uh mathematically
attribute a price to a value to um you just kind of it's a finger in the air kind of thing and you
really do have to be a trader at some level you do have to not be an investor but a trader and
there's that means that there's an exit price and a buying price and there's you know that's how i
would approach it myself if I was going about this, unless I had a whole crap ton of money,
like a Michael Saylor or somebody like that. Like, you know what? His money that he's willing
to put at risk is a whole lot more than the money I'm willing to put my money at risk.
So this has been a great conversation, Jordan. I really appreciate you. Again, go listen to the
interview. Go grab the book. There's a lot of good stuff to glean. So Mr. Netsley, grateful for you
and would love to have you back at some point in the future. Hopefully we'll wait until you buy
Bitcoin and then we can talk about what made your decision.
All right. God bless.
All right. Lord bless.