And we are live episode 24 of to the unknown pod.
Welcome.
Welcome again.
My name is Jordan Bush.
I am the executive director of TGFB media, which exists to help Christians understand
and use Bitcoin for the glory of God and the good of people everywhere.
Today I am joined by the full cast and crew of the mountain presby's guys.
Go ahead and introduce yourself.
I'm Tim Fox. I am executive director of Magnolia Foundation, working to Orange Bell the Church, teaching them about Bitcoin, helping them use it and accept it as donations.
My name is Jim McAndrew. I'm working with Tim at Magnolia. I'm tech support. And I also run a software company called DroneLink. So if you need to fly a drone, you need to buy my software.
and i'm ashiel hawthorne executive director and founder of brilliance labs
we help kingdom entrepreneurs start things and we're working on some global bitcoin projects
uh i'm stoked to announce we just won a grant from uh the paystand foundation let's go shout
out to those guys awesome uh ogs in the space and so we're going to be building a a network
of missions funding,
like a missions funding platform and network
for using Lightning payments
to get funds into creative access context.
So stoked on that.
Woot.
I love that Ash was so excited about that development
that he didn't even renounce his Presbyterianism
that I gave him.
So this is pretty great.
I'm going to make him do this every episode,
renounce.
He's the only non-Presbyterian on the call.
super exciting
now we don't need to talk about it
what if my Baptist pastor is listening
Thomas
don't worry
you know better
everybody's really a Presbyterian
they just don't realize it
everyone's a Bitcoin maximist
they're just not there yet
alright so guys we are here today
for a very fun conversation
which will
anyhow this is a conversation about
you may see this in the title,
meme coins for the glory of God, question mark.
It's very important we put the question mark on there.
There's been, man, there's been a lot of conversation
over the last seemingly every few years,
there comes a new set of projects
or whatever you want to call them in the crypto space.
We had basically back in 2017,
you had the ICO craze
where just everyone and their mom had a token coming out.
Then you had the altcoin fervor from a few years back.
Then we had NFTs.
Now it's meme coins.
I guess you could say that stuff like Doge was an early meme coin,
OG meme coin, but they have really emerged in recent years.
And so, again, we talk with people all the time
who just have questions about these things.
They want to know, they want to understand,
Are those the same as Bitcoin? What is the point of these things? What is the future
prognosis of these things? And so we just kind of want to take at least one episode and get into
talking about them. The other thing that makes them, I mean, just basically on our radar,
is a debate that I did on the Dead Men Walking podcast
where I debated the founder of another crypto project,
it was called, or of a meme coin project called 1689 coin.
For those not in the loop, 1689 coin is a reference
to the London Baptist Confession,
which is a Reformed Baptist,
historic Reformed Baptist confession
that a lot of Reformed Baptist churches subscribe to.
And so this coin is, I don't know,
aimed at the 1689 proponents.
And the guy who founded it, his name is Chance.
He has a whole bunch of other businesses,
totally legitimate businesses, selling cigars,
all these kinds of things
that kind of play on the 1689 theme.
So we went on there and just basically had a debate
about the legitimacy of meme coins,
about whether or not Christians should basically be involved in meme coins at all,
and especially whether or not Christians should be founders of meme coins,
given some of the dynamics of how they work and a whole host of other things.
So we had this debate.
The debate went fine.
And then when the debate ended, and I, again, just did my best.
You can go find that debate on our Twitter.
You can find the debate on the Dead Men Walking, Twitter as well, Facebook, all these different places.
You can find and watch the debate.
I think that what you're going to find is that I was, I mean, as gracious as I could be, not tried to make crazy outlandish accusations against people.
And so, you know, just kind of had this conversation.
And then we got off the conversation, thought that everything was as good as it could be.
and then the next day proceeded to uh to see that basically the the guy chance uh who i don't know
i mean i i don't i wouldn't say we're friends but like i wouldn't say we're enemies either we've met
a few times and you know they're that's kind of the extent of it but he proceeded to post on uh
on facebook i believe that uh i had made nothing but emotional arguments throughout the the course
of the podcast or the debate and so i just thought you know i didn't i didn't say anything
in the moment, just thought, you know what? It's going to be better to let it breathe for,
let it breathe for a day or two. And then we can just come on and just kind of lay out
both the things, some of the things we talked about on the debate, as well as just some other
things that we didn't even get to on the debate. So Jim, I will just let you kind of hit, you know,
hit things first. I want you kind of, you did watch the debate. You are, we've been talking
about this conversation, again, far beyond just the 1689 coin, but what were your thoughts as you
kind of were introduced to meme coins more broadly and then this project in particular.
Hit the beehive, Jim. Hit the beehive. Whack the hornet nest. I'll come out buzzing.
No, I mean, I've got several questions for sure. Obviously, he's not on here to defend himself,
but I am curious to see what you guys, what your reactions are to these questions. But before I get
into those, I did just want to address one thing that he said. I think he made a comment to the
extent of 10 companies own 92% of Bitcoin, which you kind of obliquely answered by saying that,
well, a lot of those big companies are actually just exchanges. And so they don't really own that
Bitcoin. In fairness, a critique back against your answer would be, well, that still leads to
centralization sure which is a problem and we'll touch on centralization in my second question
coming up here in a second but if you can just go ahead and pull up do you have the river i do ink
i will share it now and i did share this when i when i shared the the link to the debate itself
uh jim had shared that uh this particular link and basically said hey that's actually not true so
uh here we are do we want to watch the video uh how long is it oh let me see here who owns
Six minutes and 54 seconds?
I say we do it.
Yeah, roll it.
Let's do it.
All right, can you guys hear that?
Do you guys hear that one?
Yeah.
The most Bitcoin.
Since there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin,
a lot of people, companies, funds,
and even governments have been accumulating it.
Today, the vast majority of Bitcoin
is held by individuals,
though much has been lost in the early years.
Do we want to freeze this here?
Is this helpful just to kind of initially maybe?
initially demonstrate.
You can see right here that
according to River,
57% of Bitcoin
is owned by individuals still,
which is absolutely astounding,
especially when you compare it to
other projects like Ethereum.
Correct.
Yeah, or a whole bunch of other ones
that we could mention.
So yeah, this is kind of the
most up-to-date.
This is February 24.
I believe there's also more up-to-date
information in the article itself
if you want to check it out.
But we'll keep watching here.
Before Bitcoin had much value,
Bitcoin is increasingly being accumulated by companies and funds too.
So who owns the most Bitcoin in each of these categories?
Learn more in this video.
We start with people.
Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's anonymous creator,
is estimated to own 1.1 million Bitcoin.
Satoshi was an early Bitcoin miner who kept the system going before people paid much attention.
This 1.1 million Bitcoin worth over $77 billion is still sitting untouched across 22,000 addresses over 15 years later and may never move.
The Winklevoss twins are rumored to hold approximately 70,000 Bitcoin.
Venture capitalist Tim Draper is estimated to hold at least 30,000 Bitcoin.
Michael Saylor, the executive chairman and co-founder of MicroStrategy,
shared he personally owns 17,732 Bitcoin alongside the company's holdings.
There are several other tech billionaires who own Bitcoin, such as Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey,
Tim Cook, and Mark Zuckerberg. Next up are companies. Tech company MicroStrategy owns
214,246 Bitcoin, or 1% of the total supply, and has been buying more at a rapid pace.
Block One, the company behind a failed cryptocurrency, is still rumored to hold the
164,000 Bitcoin it raised for launching its project. Stablecoin company Tether has accumulated
66,465 Bitcoin. There are dozens of other companies that hold thousands of Bitcoin on
their balance sheet, and many exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Bitfinex, and Robinhood
that hold large amounts of Bitcoin for clients. Since the ETF approval in January 2024, funds have
been rapidly accumulating Bitcoin on behalf of their clients. A year after approval, they are
expected to hold around 10% of the total supply. The biggest funds are Grayscale, BlackRock's iShares,
and Fidelity, each holding hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin.
Finally, we have governments.
Only El Salvador and Bhutan have accumulated Bitcoin on the open market.
Other countries, such as the United States, China, the UK, and Germany,
have confiscated Bitcoin from companies that broke laws
and will typically auction these holdings off.
There we go.
So a lot of this, yeah, a lot of these, let me cancel this here.
A lot of these, basically, this data is changing.
As they mentioned, you have more and more companies, especially even in the last six months, you have more and more companies that are buying up thousands and thousands and thousands of Bitcoin.
This is countries all over the world.
This is companies on every continent.
There's nations who are continuing to buy.
And so the idea that there's 10 companies, only 10 companies that hold 90% of the Bitcoin just could not be less true.
Yeah, I mean, that video was from February 2024.
Since then, MicroStrategy or just Strategy has a bunch more.
I think they're almost up to 3%.
They're the largest.
So if you just add all the other ones together, we're still talking about a single-digit percentage in terms of those companies.
And then, yes, the ETFs are companies and they own a double digit percentage, probably in the teens. But again, they're just custodying the Bitcoin on behalf of individuals or other companies. So it's not even close.
having said that the video did bring up a good point which was satoshi the creator does have
theoretically over a million coins and so maybe you would be tempted to think that similar to
meme coins that are built on a proof of work or sorry a proof of stake protocol like solana
that have pre-mines satoshi pre-mined but of course he didn't pre-mine he mined all of those
after he launched the network
when everybody else could also be mining.
Correct.
At the same time.
And there were people like Hal Finney that were mining.
Yep.
And so, you know, everybody had a fair shot at that point.
And this is sort of getting into my first question
slash critique, which is...
Can I mention one thing real quick before we get there?
Yeah.
Just, I want to clarify.
So Satoshi launched the Bitcoin project,
talked about the Bitcoin project in October 31st of 2008.
So there was a two, you know, a little bit over a two month period
where there were plenty of people who were interacting,
who knew about this project before Satoshi ever initiated
and was ever mining any Bitcoin.
So there were dozens of people, if not hundreds,
who were on this mailing list and who were aware of this project
and who could have, if they desired to,
could have spent real-world resources to mine Bitcoin.
Nobody was given a leg up in the same sense
as happens with many meme coins, including 1689 coin.
Right.
So he launched 1689 on Solana with Moonshot,
had a billion coin pre-mine,
which he has 238 million of those coins or something.
Yep.
So as the founder and promoter of this project, he got to pre-mine, give himself all those coins.
Yep.
At no cost.
Correct.
Before everybody else knew about it and then launched it.
And now everybody else that comes along in order to get the tokens has to pay real money to get them.
Correct.
So he got them for free.
Everybody else has to pay money.
and to exacerbate the situation further,
because he owns a plurality of the coins,
the way that proof of stake works,
he has control over the coin and the protocol.
And so if he wants to throw his weight around
and issue more tokens or whatever he wants to do,
that's up to his discretion.
And essentially from what I could tell on the podcast,
his answer was, trust me, bro.
So the question is, that's great.
and you're a Christian and maybe we should trust you and whatever.
But the question is, you know, why should we have to trust somebody
when there are other alternatives out there where we don't have to trust anybody?
So, Oshawa or Tim, you want to jump in on that one?
Give any thoughts?
I could go quick.
So, Jordan, we had a long time to talk about this while you were out in Portland.
And then I was driving.
I actually dropped in for a small portion of the live interview, debate, dropped a little comment in the, I think the YouTube chat or whatever it was on, and then ran away because I had to get back to driving the family.
um but i'll just i'll verbalize what i had said in the in the chat uh because the section i heard
um our uh our baptist brother he he compared bitcoins right the issue of control and being
able to manipulate the market uh because you have he made this claim about hey it's constant has
concentrated holders and that's no different than his meme coin or perhaps other meme coins
where you have a concentrated holder and essentially say hey yes bitcoin can be manipulated
my meme coin can be manipulated same thing it's apples to apples so so trust me i'm not going to
be doing that and essentially you don't have anything better going for you when you're in
bitcoin and i responded in the chat and i i would respond here i mean first it's so clear bitcoin
is far more distributed when you actually look at the the facts but then also the reality of market
size so it it was reported there's been several whales early satoshi era wallets that sold upwards
of of 80 000 bitcoin at a time and and you saw the market drop maybe three percent uh in a 24
hour period when we knew these these that many bitcoin were being sold and so compare that with
a micro capped uh small little meme coin where what is your mark like what is it a hundred thousand
dollars i mean something so small and then even the liquidity pool like what's actually the value
in the liquidity pool which is different than the full market cap of all the tokens so you could
you could probably throw around $10,000, maybe $20,000,
and meaningfully move that price, either to dump it or to pump it.
Like, someone do the math.
What's the value of 80,000 Bitcoin right now?
Yeah.
I mean, whatever it is, it's a few billion dollars, something like that.
Was it two, three, four billion?
No, it was nine.
Something like that?
I think it was eight.
Nine billion.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So you need $9 billion to drop the price 3%.
Yeah.
Is that an easy to manipulate market?
No, it's not.
Yeah.
Also, I would just say this is a false equivalency too
because what we were actually talking about
is proof of work versus proof of stake.
So in a proof of stake system,
the fact that he has that many coins,
not only does it enable him to sort of rug people
and move the price around and pump and dump,
But the real problem is that it enables him to just change the rules of a coin whenever he wants to.
Yeah.
So yeah I mean I guess you could say that Bitcoin also has the same problem on the pump and dump side but the scale of the market prevents that But on the proof of stake side of things Bitcoin ossified at this point Let just accept it Like the
rules aren't changing. There's 21 million coins. Well, and I, but I would say, I think I can hear,
I think I might be able to hear Chance from here. And so again, what I want, I want to be fair
because again, this is a meaningful pushback. So what if Chance says, hey, but listen, when Bitcoin
first started in 2009, it was nowhere near as well distributed as Bitcoin. There were far fewer
people who held, if you were to factor out the percentages of who owned what at that time,
it was far more centralized. Who is to say, who are you guys, you Bitcoin, you evil Bitcoin
maximalists, who are you guys to say that the future of 1689 coin is not going to be likened
to the, you know, fantastic success that Bitcoin enjoyed.
So again, that would be the pushback
and that would be the greater comparison to be fair.
So sorry, I got to jump in again
then on answering that one.
So yes, it is true.
I mean, again, setting aside proof of stake
and the ability to just change the rules
whenever you want to.
Yes, Bitcoin started off having no value.
And then the first people that valued it were collectors.
It's a collectible, right?
It's like before they were using shells as currency,
they were collecting the shells.
And so all meme coins,
if they ever end up having any value,
it starts in the collectible phase, okay?
And who are these people that are collecting it
and why are they collecting it?
Well, the people that are using it as a collectible
are speculators.
And they're just in it to see if they can ride the pump phase
and get out before the dump phase.
That's literally the game plan for a meme coin.
There is no other reason.
Literally in the name of meme coin,
it's like it's being honest about itself
as just being a collectible, right?
So then the question becomes,
when, if ever, does the collectible
start to become something
that is more than the collectible?
Like when does it actually attain
an actual market value
and start being used as a monetary,
you know, instrument,
like a medium of exchange or something like that.
And the question I would have is,
what is the rational explanation for why 1689
or any other proof of stake coin
would ever eclipse Bitcoin as that thing
when Bitcoin's properties make it better at that use case?
The fact that nobody can rewrite the rules
and issue more of them
makes it better at that use case than anything else,
especially something like a mean coin
where anybody can just change the rules.
So there's no rational path or explanation
or anything that they could say to me.
There's no amount of people that want to buy cigars
and whiskey or whatever,
and no amount of transactions that occur
because of all that desire
that somehow allows 1689 to eclipse Bitcoin as money.
It's never going to happen.
And money is winner take all.
So if you know it's going to fail and you know it's always going to stay in the collectible phase and it's always going to be getting used by speculators for pumping and dumping, what's the moral imperative here for Christians?
Here's the question, Jim. Why does money trend to one? Because I think that's something that, again, we understand and that when you think about it, this is something that differentiates stocks from money. Can you just kind of unpack that again? Because there's people who just genuinely don't understand that. If you or Tim or somebody wants to unpack it.
Well, I can take it or Tim, if you haven't talked, you can take it if you want to. Okay. He wants me to take it. All right. So basically what money is like a emergent phenomenon essentially. Right. And so we're all, all these human beings are out here doing trades and making transactions and we're constantly making decisions at the margin. Like, do we want to sell our time or our goods or whatever? And what do we want to sell it for?
And so do I want to sell it for dollars?
Do I want to sell it for gold?
Do I want to sell it for silver?
Do I want to sell it for Argentinian pesos?
And there's totally valid reasons to sell it for all those things,
depending on where you are and what's going on.
Like if you go on a trip to Argentina,
you need some Argentinian pesos to like pay for dinner.
And so, yeah, you might choose to sell some of your U.S. dollars
for Argentinian pesos,
but you're not going to do that over the long run
because they're debasing the Argentinian pesos.
They're printing way more of them.
I mean, yes, they're printing lots of dollars,
but they're printing way more Argentinian pesos
relative to dollars and everybody knows that.
And you can see that in the exchange rate.
And so you can sit there all you want to and say,
you know what, I just love Argentina
and I wanna support Argentina.
And so I'm just gonna sell all my dollars
for Argentinian pesos.
But anybody that does that idealistically
or even just because they're not thinking about it
and they're not aware of the charts,
they lose all their money.
They get wrecked.
And so the question is, who's left standing and what money are they holding?
So the people that make the wrong decisions about where they want to put their money and the inferior forms of money end up not having any money.
And the people that make the right decisions have money because it actually retains value.
And so it trends to, it's essentially like a survival of the fittest playing out, right?
And every single monetary transaction.
And so whether you're cognizant of it or not, it's brutal.
The market will absolutely destroy you if you make the wrong decisions.
Tim, you want to add anything?
Yeah, I didn't listen to the podcast.
I'm poking around on the couple of public-facing websites that we have here.
The 1689, reformcoins.com, 1689cigars, talking about what's the meme coin.
I, you know, he's Mr. Reform, 1689, London Baptist Confession.
I'm a PCA minister.
We subscribe to the Westminster Confession, which the 1689 Confession came from.
Reportedly, the Westminster Confession coin is en route.
This has been discussed.
Okay, never mind.
You just papered over that little flex.
What did you just say at the end there before Jordan said that?
Oh, no.
What did he say?
I just made an objective.
It came from our confession.
That's, I mean, they wouldn't disagree with that.
An upgrade, right?
Isn't that what you're going to say, Tim, an upgrade?
Yeah, it's like 90% the same.
But, so, I'm not looking at the Lennon Baptist Confession,
but I'm almost certain their catechism will say the same thing
as Westminster Larger Catechism on the Third Commandment
about don't use the Lord's name in vain.
I don't think it's always wrong for Christians to,
in business or whatever, to say, hey, I'm a Christian.
Or, hey, Christians, you know, let's stick together.
But you have to be extraordinarily careful.
And the Catechism says that the Third Commandment forbids using God's name.
And it's not just God's name.
It's all the ways that God reveals himself and all the things that he reveals himself in.
And especially things like the ordinances of Scripture and the sacraments and the church.
you got to be really careful according to the catechism to not use those kinds of things in
ways that are sinful or selfish and again i don't it doesn't seem to me that these guys are malicious
that they're out here trying not to deceive people but you know one of the things that the catechism
says is that you cannot use god's name or all the other ways that he reveals himself
in ways that are unwise or foolish.
And, you know, it looks like the entire brand is,
look how reformed we are.
Isn't this so great?
We love Charles Spurgeon.
We love reformed theology.
Isn't this great?
Theology, theology, theology, Bible, Bible, Bible,
Reformation, Reformation, Reformation,
which is like, I love the Reformation.
But it makes me really uneasy
that all of this stuff is getting tied up
into a financial product.
and it's you know i get the sense that we're kind of talking about both sides of our mouth here if
you look on these websites you know there's a lot of cya they're over and over and over again saying
there's no utility there's no use this is just a joke this is just for fun uh don't put any money
into it that you can't lose it could go to nothing uh there's no real value to it you know that raises
one big question of like well what are we doing you know isn't there enough joking around in our
world like why do we need more ridiculous joking around about why does everything have to be a joke
and it's like, okay, a lot of people are way too serious on their school marms, but like, really?
I don't know. I mean, biblically speaking, money seems to be deadly serious and you're kind of
wink, wink, nod, nod, encouraging Christians to put their money into this and saying, well,
it's just a big giant joke. And it's like, well, why? Why should Christians be putting their money
into a joke that you're saying has no use and no value? But then out of the other side of the mouth,
there's occasionally some little nods to like, well, this could be a much bigger thing.
you know this could uh this is a speculation this could really uh so there's a lot of value that
could go into this and so there's kind of this implied uh you know this could uh become very
valuable and you know there's a little bit of a like well maybe it'll be useful because within our
brands you can use this token and christian brands can use it to sell buy and sell with each other
and it's like well okay that's fine but why why do we need that you know it's like yeah if you go
to some random little country that has some completely random little currency that nobody
else cares about and nobody else uses. That's not a good thing that I have to use some stupid
random little currency when I go to some random little country. It's like, this would be a lot
better if I could just use dollars. And a lot of countries just do that because that's what people
want and that makes more sense. It's better for them and it's better for their economy.
So I don't know, why does your little family of brands need its own coin? I don't really get that.
But mostly just very uncomfortable with kind of tying scripture and theology and the reformers
and the truths of the gospel,
solo fide and solidea gloria,
all these things.
It's like, why do we need to tie these things to,
at best, something that's a complete joke
and at worst is a speculative,
get rich, not so quick, maybe soon type thing.
So I don't know.
It just gives me the heebie-jeebies,
even if it's being done in good faith
and not maliciously,
but still it's like the flip side of this
is you're asking people to put a lot of money into this
that could be spent elsewhere or saved elsewhere.
Yeah, I wanna really just,
I wanna press into that point.
Okay, so let's just say we accepted
and we just took it face value
that they are going to use this token
instead of the other available mediums of exchange
in order to purchase products.
Okay, what would be the benefit of doing that?
Well, the benefit would be to create demand for the token
and then conceivably it would be,
hey, we're gonna give you a discount
if you pay in 60.99 coin or we're going to, you know, something along the lines.
So then what you're saying is we are going to take less money for our goods and services
than we would for another currency.
So you're making less money.
So for what purpose?
So then that creates more value and more demand for the token, which exists.
It's just kind of like circulate.
It doesn't make sense.
Jim, you're muted.
Yeah, sorry.
I was just going to say, it's no different than credit card companies saying, we're going to charge the vendors 3% and then we'll give you 1.5% back.
You know, it's like you're going to buy 1689 coin and lose 3% of your purchasing power, but then we'll give you a 1.5% discount or something.
Right.
Because there's going to be fees.
There's going to be all these kinds of different things.
Like this is just if you're going to have to move in and out of these, you know, inferior other tokens and all this kind of stuff.
I think their whole point was that in order to sort of kickstart this community, the community needs to rally around a token for some reason, right?
Which, again, it's a little bit, it's kind of what Tim said, but it's a little bit different because I think at this point they wouldn't claim that their token is money, you know?
And so I guess that is a question that I have is it's like, is this really the only way to kickstart such a community?
Like if there's just people out there that just love the 1689 confession, is the only way to rally them around the 1689 confession is to create a meme coin on Solana?
Is there no other way to accomplish that?
Is this really the best way?
Or if we're going to rally, even if they would say it's nothing to do with the confession, it's just our brands.
All of our brands have 1689.
So he's had 1689 cigars, whiskey, whatever it is.
So is there not another way that you can create brand awareness and affinity and these kind of things other than creating a token when literally, again, the thinking, like the established record, and we should have brought up all these charts.
The established record is that all of these things are rugfuls, all of them.
They go to zero.
This is what they do.
And so what is the thing that leads you to believe that your project will end up any differently for you and especially for your customers?
Because conceivably, again, these guys care about their customers.
They have other legitimate businesses that provide legitimate services, including body armor, including cigars and all this kind of stuff.
Now, again, in all of those, I mean, you're not going to create body armor if you don't care about people.
If you create inferior body armor, you're going to find yourself getting sued and all these kind of things.
So they are carrying out their customers. They want to provide a superior product in all of these other areas. And yet the question remains to be seen, in what universe is this meme coin a superior product in the way that you're trying to provide in all these other ways?
And the answer I would say is it's just not.
And so this is why I kept the very first thing I said on this debate.
And the very first thing I said from the beginning is, you know, Chance, why did you create this thing?
Like, why did this why does this exist?
Because with Bitcoin, we clearly know why Bitcoin was created.
And we can learn about the purpose for which it was created by looking at the decisions that the creators made in the either or decisions that they made.
So the fact that Satoshi does not have the ability to unilaterally change the code by himself, the fact that he didn't issue him a pre-mine, the fact that he says the problem with the existing financial system on the Bitcoin Talk Forum sometime in February of 2009, the problem with the existing financial system is all the trust that's required to make it work.
So we know, and there's a hundred other things we could point at,
proof of work, all these kinds of things.
We know what motivated the creators of Bitcoin
because we can demonstrate, we can demonstrably see,
you know, we see the consequences of those decisions.
Now, Chance is now saying, hey, this was for our community.
This is all these things.
And yet the thing that really kind of set me off
as somebody who cares about the name of price
and who cares about, again, the people of God
being potentially fleeced for money
was this post that I can't share because the browser I'm using won't let me share it,
but I'll just describe it to you. So it's a picture of John Calvin riding on a bull,
staring at a fictionalized representation of an actual coin that has 1689 on it.
And this is on July 13th, one of the earliest things that was said about this project.
Chance says, I think we're all bullish on 1689 coin. Imagine that by next month,
we have hit our million dollar market cap and you drop a fat offering in the church plate.
Okay. Now, why does that matter? Why did that give me the absolute heebie-jeebies? And why
should this set off alarm bells for everyone who cares, who's actually involved in this project?
Because we have two things. We have Chance mentioning early in the project, before there's
been a lot of other things publicized about, oh, utility this and utility that. We have Chance
talking about a price target.
Okay, so even if he's not promising
that they're going to get there,
which I don't think he made some sort of promise,
he's clearly identifying a target.
And then he's also clearly talking about an intent,
at least on his part or conceivably somebody else
to sell tokens at that point.
And then I would very, I mean,
just there's no other way to put this
other than like, we're going to launder our feelings
over the money we made.
we're going to give some of that to the church. We're going to put some of that in the offering
plate. Right. And so there's just no other, unless now, again, I will say the only charitable way,
the only, the only alternative explanation to this is if Chance is saying that he's going to,
or whoever, you know, if you get to this, whoever this fictionalized person is,
they're going to donate 1689 coins to their church. Right. That's the only way around this
that isn't actually result that doesn't require a, a, at least partial rug pull. If we, however,
we want to define that, right? And so if that's not the case, if he was not talking about donating
1689 coins to his church, then we have discussion of, you know, exchange of basically taking the
profit, taking profit off the table, removing liquidity from the ecosystem that will then
prevent other people from taking money out. Right. So let's talk about that. So it'd be one thing
if they were taking money from pagans and giving it to the kingdom, which is a whole other can of
worms, do the ends justify the means or whatever. But they are specifically affinity scamming
Reformed Christians. And so if they get more Reformed Christians to get into this thing
because of their affinity for Reformed theology and doctrine and 1689 confessions and whatever
else, the liquidity is coming from other Christians. And if they drive the price up and you rug
them and pull your coins out and donate a fat offering to your church, that money is literally
coming straight out of the pocket of another Christian that isn't putting that fat offering
into their offering plate. Now, let's clarify that as well. Let's go further. Because let's say it was
the worst pagan you know, okay? Then you have Christians taking money from somebody who,
basically somebody who bought into your project conceivably because you said you weren't going to
And then taking money and let say even if the only person people affected are non in what universe is this a normal way that within business somebody who has not directly materially stolen from you in some sort of way in what universe is this something that
Christians ought to do, right? Now, the only exception to this would be something like we saw
with the Israelites when they took, God told them to go to the Egyptians and to their neighbors and
to get gold and silver and all these things and take it when they were leaving. Now, why, what is
the mitigating circumstances. Why did God tell them to do that? Oh, because the Egyptian had
stolen their labor. It basically made them slave for over 200 years and basically stolen and not
paid them money that they should have made otherwise. So this was actually restitution.
This wasn't just, oh, we're just in this thing and we're just going to take money from you.
So again, this is a clearly different situation that is not remotely comparable to what's going
on here. All right. I want to get Ashwa and Tim's take on what I could imagine the objection or
retort would be to this about Bitcoin. So, okay. Maybe he says, okay, I give you Bitcoin is past
the collectible phase. Bitcoin is now store value. Bitcoin is now demonetizing real estate and gold
and bonds and other asset classes. And so any gains that we're making in Bitcoin is really just
wealth transfer from people that own those asset classes to people that don't own the Bitcoin
asset class. Presumably, there's Christians among the owners of those assets, maybe even more pagans
among the owners of those asset classes. But one way or another, you're just transferring wealth
from them to you and then using that for a fat donation to your church. How is that any different
or better or less or more morally objectionable? I mean, this is the great insight of Austrian
economics where it talks about saving money is actually a good thing because when you save money
that is where real investment comes from an investment by entrepreneurs and business owners
in wise careful ways again nobody knows the future no entrepreneur can perfectly predict what
is going on next week or next year that's otherwise they would be god and they wouldn't
be an entrepreneur but when people can save money and they're not being manipulated by artificially
low interest rates from central banking. They tend to save money and investment comes out of
saved money. And that's how the economy grows. That's how you get more productive things going
on and more wealth being harvested. Again, in an ultimate grand sense, yeah, you cannot add any
more atoms to the universe that God has created. You are converting energy into different forms.
only god can introduce new atoms new energy but um saving is a good thing because it encourages
people to invest and so bitcoin again to get back to the point saving your money whether it's in
bitcoin or gold or whatever it is it's not some horrible extractive parasitic thing you know this
is the big dig against savers is all these hoarders that these scrooges out there we just need to
somehow manipulate them into getting their money out into the economy. We need to tax it,
or we need to inflate the money away so that people don't want to save their money anymore.
This is the idea behind mainstream Keynesian economics is people got to run out there and
spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, because saving is a bad thing. And so, yeah, in that sense,
no, saving is not a bad thing, but you're actually, it's a good thing. It's a service to society. Of
course. Can you sinfully save money? Can you sinfully hoard money? Of course you can.
we're not saying you should be you know scrooge mcduck diving in your gold coins um you know there
there is a sinful form of holding back resources according to proverbs uh to get the prices to go
up so that you can you know make everybody suffer and make lots of money off of them and all of
their misery that's not what we're talking about we're just talking about regular saving your money
and that bitcoin is a savings technology this is the point of it is to be able to save your money
not forever of course you know bitcoiners like to talk about never sell your bitcoin
you know you just keep it forever and ever and ever if that's actually what bitcoiners did and
they never actually sold their bitcoin bitcoin would have no values if no one ever actually
sold it there'd be no point to it the point of money ultimately is to to trade it sometime into
the future and to spend it or pass it on to your children or whatever so that they can be taken
care of by it so anyways i would just say no and it's about saving and saving is a good thing saving
is good for the world it's good for society it's good for the economy versus you know mean coins
and 1689 coins saying there is no value there is no point to this there is no utility this doesn't
have any purpose and it's like okay well what are we doing why are we talking about this then
so do you feel like there's any special case though during the transition period where it's
demonetizing all the other asset classes that people use for saving and then thereby doing a
wealth transfer i mean in a in a sense i guess i mean that's that's the result but a result
is not the same thing as an aim or a purpose.
You know, you could say, you know,
the same thing about somebody who, you know,
saves in dollars.
Aren't you doing a wealth transfer?
Aren't you transferring wealth?
Couldn't you have gone and spent that on tacos
down the street and helped the taco man
with his taco shop?
And it's like, well, yeah,
but that doesn't mean I'm stealing something from him
or I'm taking something from him.
It means in the aggregate,
more and more people are realizing,
wait, I don't know the future.
The future might be pretty rocky.
We should save some money.
And there's a way to save money that will help me weather that storm.
That's actually, that's a good thing.
And again, you're saving for the sake of using it later,
for the sake of investing later in productive ways,
not just to save it.
And, you know, yeah, like, okay,
if everybody's houses are completely inflated to the max
and the prices are artificially high,
in some ways that's fun if you own a house and that's nice.
Wow, look, my house, isn't this great?
It's worth so much money.
But actually, if it's there because it's been artificially blown up, that's not really good.
And that's going to be really painful when it crashes and burns.
And so in some ways, to the extent that it comes back to earth and to reality, that's a good thing.
You know, okay, well, that makes some people sad because they have been promised for decades that real estate always goes up and this is the greatest way to save your money.
Yeah, that's a bummer.
But that's not the fault of people who are saving their money.
yeah that's i think it missed it confuses the fact that the question needs to be asked is well
why are we in a place where houses continue to increase in value and like understanding that
dynamic where you start to see this is this isn't a good thing because of the consequences like we
need how houses are to live in like this is why houses are good they allow people to live in them
and the more the more difficult especially who is this hard for when houses continue to increase
in value over time? Poor people. Okay. Christians of all, if there's one thing we're called to do is
to care for the poor. And so this is, this is something where, again, this is just a dynamic.
And so what Bitcoin is doing is actually bringing balance because it's, you know, this is when the
case you can look throughout human history, where you have scarce money, you have like over the
course of time, you have flourishing because you have this thing that is able to soak up all the,
all the monetary, uh, you know, monetary use and the monetary desire within a, within a country or
within a, whatever it is empire. Uh, and it allows those other things to not have to try to be
something that they're not, you know, like when you're, if you have, if you look as a house,
look at a house as an investment, you're asking your house to be something other than a house.
And so one of the amazing things about money, and this is like just the design of money and what it
does. It allows everything else to be what it is. And that's good news. That's great news for
individuals, families, civilizations. It's a great thing.
Oh, yeah. Jim and I, we just started recording a couple of conversations based on the one chapter
in Holzman's book about the ethics of money production, where he talks about the kind of
spiritual effects of inflation. And this is one of his big points. And it's really ironic. He says,
in an inflationary world,
the tragedy and the irony
is that it makes people
have to think about money
all the time.
You're constantly having
to worry about your money
and is it keeping up
with inflation?
Am I ahead of that?
Everything becomes financialized.
Am I investing
in the right things?
What are my stocks doing?
What are my bonds doing?
You're paying all these people
to manage your money for you
and all the fees that they take.
And so, you know,
it's this weird thing
where a world
where money is really whacked out
incentivizes almost the need
to become more obsessed with money than otherwise and it's like you know money shouldn't have a huge
role in our lives and just regular boring old money that just holds its value over time actually
you know that again you can idolize it of course sure but it like you're saying if you just let
money be money it doesn't have to dominate your time and your energy and your emotions it's just
there all right yeah so i think we answered this really well about the specific
meme coin and the ethics of of a christian dude starting his own meme coin and doing the whole
affinity scam thing i think a more even relevant question for uh christians in a broader way is
just well is it right and acceptable for me to uh speculate in a meme coin right so i can look at
i have this crypto price app and i can scroll through and there's so many cryptos right it's
just going to keep going the whole podcast would need to be scrolling through the price of cryptos
it's just going to keep going so um so i want to throw that question out for us i know we've
There's this Christian Bitcoiner chat group that a couple of you gentlemen have started and been involved in.
And there's been some heated discussions about whether or not someone can choose to invest their hard-earned money in some mean coins and some getting into doo-doo coins, as we would say politely.
And is that acceptable for a Christian?
And I'll throw out one perspective, and I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on this.
And is it also a matter of conscience?
Well, I feel just fine investing in Dogecoin and a little Solana, and I'm watching the trend line, and I'm a day trader, and I feel comfortable.
Is it a conscious issue?
Or is there, would you, like, even tell me the pastor?
Is this a different question than King Christian's Gamble?
Can you play blackjack in Las Vegas?
Is this different?
So, good question.
and I'm gonna, that's where I'm gonna,
that's actually where I'm gonna take us
because this is then, I mean,
and one of the guys on the chat was like,
hey, do I need to be church disciplined by my elders
for this activity?
Because if you're making such a strong moral claim,
like take it to my presbytery.
So, but here's where I'll throw it out there.
There was a years ago, there's this pastor,
his name's John Piper, he's the Baptist,
you guys probably never heard of him.
But he wrote an article.
Donation?
We don't call them denominations, Jeff, or associations.
But anyway, this pastor, John Piper.
You need to move your hands more if you're going to invoke John Piper.
Please move your hands more.
Okay.
So he wrote this article.
You can Google it.
Look it up on their website.
They have a ministry called Desiring God.
um and but he says don't play the powerball for me was the i think the the name of the article
and he argues essentially saying playing the lottery lottery is is utterly despicable and it's
it's taxation without representation it it takes the most advantage of the most most vulnerable
communities, right? It's mostly the poor, it's the single moms, it's this get-rich-quick scheme
that is for people that don't understand math. And it just has all the arguments for why
both governments should not have lotteries available to their citizens, it is unethical,
and why Christians should not play the lottery. And then he goes so far as to say,
if you win the powerball and you drop going back to our buddy and his fat tithe and you drop
like your million dollar tithe into my into the coffers of the church i will not accept it
go get your mammon out of here i want nothing to do with your powerball money repent you sinner
right so john piper does this um and as far as i know they he they stuck to his guns and they
their church would refuse to accept knowingly lottery revenue and funds.
Is this the same?
So churches actually say, if you made money on meme coins, we will not accept it.
Or big coins for that matter.
It's a meaningful question.
Now, I don't think John Piper ever practiced church discipline on someone
because they found out they played the Powerball?
I don't know.
I would guess they didn't.
I don't think he took it to that level.
But they did take it to a level we won't accept it as an offering.
So there you go.
Should Christians get into meme coins?
Is it ethical?
Should churches accept the profits from meme coinery?
Tim, go.
Well, I think the funky thing with the meme coin thing
is that a lot of them will say,
kind of like Mr. 1689 coin.
Oh, this isn't about spec.
This isn't about making money.
This is just for fun.
It's just a joke.
Joke.
It's just, you know,
this kind of goofy collectible thing.
And so it's like, okay, even,
you know, you can look at,
it's like on the ground,
this in general,
the meme coin phenomenon is
apparently a lot of people
who are desperate to make a lot of money
quickly and easily.
And so it's like,
even if you're sitting there saying,
no, no, no, we don't believe in that.
don't do that it's like okay well you have kind of waded into the waters of this world where that
this is kind of what this is all about this is this is the world you're in now but if we're going
to kind of rule that out it's like what if you just stick to oh it's just for fun it's just a
joke it's just kind of a way to flex and be like yeah i like reformed theology this is so cool
is it different than than somebody who let's say makes a lot of money off of pokemon cards
say someone who buys and sells pokemon cards and they oh yeah you know and it's like you might look
at him and you say you know i really don't get it but they're pieces of paper with cartoon animals
printed on them there's no real utility to this it's a game uh they're collectibles are christians
allowed to make a lot of money off of collectible playing cards like well i guess so i don't i don't
really get it and i don't know why people spend so much money on it and i'm not sure that it's
very wise for them to do so but yeah i don't know i think it's hard because you kind of especially
when you get into kind of Christian things,
it's like no Christian is going to come around
and say, I'm here trying to scam you.
I'm here promising you that you should get rich quick.
And, but you know, there's kind of this wink
and this nod thing of like, well, maybe, you know,
let's see what happens.
And I don't know, in some ways it kind of reminds you
of some of the prosperity gospel type stuff
where it's not that they're explicitly coming out
and saying, hey, we are appealing to your base instincts
of wanting to get rich really quickly.
they wouldn't say that but it is like hey uh you know don't you want god to bless you god will god
will bless you and wouldn't it be great if god blessed you wouldn't that show the world how
awesome we all are if god bless you so so put some money in the plate and god's gonna bless you
or maybe god will bless you so i don't know can i i don't know if i'd make a black and white you
could never ever touch these things but i would want to be like as your pastor like why why are
you doing this yeah and i and i think that's i think that's kind of where this comes out of that
that kind of gets at a place that I wanted to get to, which is I'm just, I'm reading Ephesians 5,
17. Uh, it says, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. And so the, the, the
attitude that, I mean, American Christians, and then a lot of Western Christians, and frankly,
a lot of just kids, like, I think it's a, it's like a genuinely immature thing. And I'm like
talking about our culture. We generally have a pretty immature culture in a lot of ways.
like we tend to ask the question, can I do this? Like, can I do this? And just asking,
basically looking for exceptions. We tend to look for exceptions to the rule. Like,
can I do this? Is there some reason? Well, this isn't clearly stated as a sin. It's like, okay,
sure. But is this wise? Like that seems to be like the proactive, like the propulsion of
scripture, the thing that God wants us to be striving to do is to be wise and take action that
is more likely to result in the good of our neighbor and the lack of harm being done to our
names and the good of our family. Like he wants us, God has created a world that's governed by
this principle of sowing and reaping where actions have consequences and they're designed to be
pretty predictable in most cases. And so like if we look out, like this is why it just doesn't
seem like a wise exercise to me whatsoever to look at an entire sea full of, you know,
meme coin projects that have wrought death and devastation on families, on marriages,
on the overwhelming majority by necessity who participate in them and then say to yourself,
but we're going to be the exception, right? Well, yeah. And even if you can do it wisely,
what kind of example are you setting for people that can't?
Yeah.
Yes.
And so, and I want to, oh, go ahead, Tim.
You're good.
Sorry, I was going to add something to finish your thought.
No, my, the other thing that I was going to say related to this was it kind of gets at
one of the other objections that he had, that Chance had, and that some of these other guys
in the, in the chat as well, they said, but guys, you don't understand, even though we've
been in this thing for forever.
Like you guys don't understand our community is better.
We not going to rug pull We wouldn do this Okay Trust me bro Yeah trust me bro Yes exactly And now and again to Chance credit and I this is genuine I genuinely give
him credit. He basically said on the podcast, now again, I didn't get this verified, but again,
I don't have reason to think that Chance is lying about this. He said that he has entrusted the vast
majority of his tokens to one of his pastors. So now, so he doesn't have control over being able
to rug. So it would require his pastor, again, to be able to rug. So again, I'm saying that's
a great decision. Like, wow. Like that is- Except that it's still just some other random person that
I have to trust, bro. Exactly. So again, everybody else is forced to trust them. But again, this is
where it got even worse, which was what we found out based on, you know, what's the moonshot. And
the way that this thing works is even if every single person who currently holds 1689 coin does
everything right is completely above board they never rug because of the nature of these things
some other bad actor could come into this project and because of the liquidity they could put in real
money drive the coin i mean it would it would i mean i watched somebody i looked at the thing that
somebody took out like 300 from 1689 coin and it meaningfully like it moved the price down so if
somebody were to march in there with 10,000, 20,000, whatever it is, they would, the price
would skyrocket and then they could exit with the amount of liquidity, with all of the liquidity
that's in there. And so then the only way for all the other token holders to be able to get any of
their actual money, like their, their money out would be to input more capital, more in this case
soul, because it's built on Solana. So there is meaningful, there's a meaningful real way that
all of them could absolutely get rugged, even if they do everything right, because of, again,
the actual way that the project is structured. And so when I look at this, I can't help but
thinking about Luke 14. I look at Luke 14, and I go to verse 28 through 31.
For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost,
whether he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, when he's laid a foundation and is not able to
finish, all who see begin to mock him saying this man began to build and was not able to finish
or what King going out to encounter another King in war will not sit down first and deliberate
whether he's able with 10,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20,000. And so I cannot
help, but thinking about this is, you know, Chance again, talked about the fact that he chose Moonshot
as the place to start this project because it was quote, the easiest place to start a project.
and so again i understand that on one level like if you're not a programmer then this is you know
and in his case actually i think he he actually has some more programming experience but he chose
this because it's the easiest place you don't necessarily want like i don't want the easiest
uh car engine the easy the the easiest created car engine or any of these kind of things there's
certain things where you don't just want ease and in you know cheapness we don't want that and so to
But for that to have been the case, it seems like a lack of foresight, especially when we come now behind it and see all of the ways in which this could go horribly wrong, completely independent of these guys doing anything untoward.
Well, there was nothing stopping him from cloning the Bitcoin source code off of GitHub and spending up 1689 coin as a Bitcoin clone.
Sure.
Other than his lack of development skills and expediency.
Eventually, if he didn't have it or not.
Yeah, we just don't know.
So I don't want to speculate.
But yeah, he didn't choose to do that.
What were you going to say, Tim?
Oh, some of this is reminding me of an article from a year or two ago by Aaron Wren, one of these handful of guys who I rip a lot off from because they're really smart and I'm not.
But he had this article called Reject Vice where he basically says the default policy should be no porn, no pot, no gambling, no video games, no tattoos, and no profanity.
And he says, you know, right here, he says,
I'm a critic of Mark Driscoll,
but one of his best lines was,
some things aren't sinful, they're just dumb.
Or as someone more respectable put it,
referring to the Apostle Paul,
all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.
We should avoid unprofitable activities.
Vice falls into that category.
And so he just kind of goes
and he just kind of talks about these things
that used to be kind of gross and shady socially
and they used to be looked down upon,
but now they're kind of widely accepted
as wonderful, great things.
And, you know, in a lot of ways,
He says these are explicitly encouraged by the government, things like the lottery, but even gambling becoming more and more common now.
And so, I don't know.
It's just, you know, a lot of people, maybe especially in the reformed world where you like to kind of say, you know, oh, we have freedom.
You know, I can smoke cigars and I can drink whiskey and I can gamble and I can dance and I can do all these things and it's fine.
It's like, okay, you know, yeah, maybe it's lawful for you to do these things.
Maybe there's nothing, you know, God has not forbid it.
And yeah, of course, there's a huge danger of pharisaism and legalism and all these things.
But it's like, a lot of these things are just kind of dumb.
I'm like, why would you do that?
And why would you want to live in a world where lots of people are doing more and more of these things?
Like, do you really, would you want your kids to have lots of friends who are super into meme coins?
Like, I wouldn't.
Like, if my son was super into this and he's spending, you know, lots of time every day when he's 25 thinking about meme coins and that's what he's doing with his money, that would be really discouraging.
I'd be like, something went wrong here.
and so it's like why as a christian would you kind of glom on to part of this and this kind of
vice adjacent kind of world of something that's not good for most people and it's bad for them
kind of like you're saying jim you know it's like okay maybe you yourself you know are fine with this
and you don't have to obsess over it but it's like there's certainly going to be a lot of people in
this world who come across it who are that way and you're if nothing else you're kind of implicitly
legitimizing the rest of it that's out there.
What's his argument against tattoos?
Shoot.
Let me see here.
I was going to ask,
do you think stonks are part of this?
Like GameStop?
They're just no different than meme coins?
Yeah, I would.
I mean, in that case, it's just impotent.
Like, we're trying to do this on Robinhood,
which is a totally captured platform.
So like just the lack of wisdom and skill involved in understanding what you're trying to do.
Like it's one thing to have, again, this is where, this is where I'm saying, like, I don't think that these guys had the worst motives.
I don't think that like their motives were like, I'm twisting my mustache, going to rug all these people.
But like, because of the lack of skill and actual understanding of the game that they're trying to play, they ended up in a bad way.
Well, I guess what I'm saying is like, in the case of GameStop, it's like the little guy is trying to stick it to the big, you know, hedge funds and stuff.
so that's like a good narrative or whatever,
but is there any real categorical difference
between stonks and meme coins?
Yeah.
A stonk is a,
it got hijacked into a meme coin.
You're saying is there is no difference?
Like stonks are meme coins?
I mean, I think, yeah,
they were treated as meme coins,
even obviously this was an actual equity
of an actual company,
but people used it that way.
so do you think Aaron Rune would probably add it to his list
what meme coins
probably stonks
probably stonks and meme coins
yeah I don't know I just think
it's kind of like his argument against tattoos
I don't know if you guys are just looking at that
this kind of
again obviously not everybody
who has a tattoo is sinning
but a lot of these
things are
closely associated with
a kind of nihilism of just kind of like
yeah you know everything's casual and kind of whatever and like just throw a bunch of your money
into these things and see what happens and it's you know kind of like what i was saying before
about like why does everything have to be a joke why does everything have to be like not serious at
all and like it's just like i don't know it's that some things are very serious and and they
last a long time and they're really important and they should be treated meaningfully you shouldn't
show up at church in your pajamas unless it's like okay you're you're so desperately poor that
you have no clothes but pajamas it's like okay fine come to church in your pajamas that's great
but it's just like i don't know yeah well i think like the idea behind stonks where it's like we're
going to use the system against you because you've rigged the system kind of smells like what tucker
was talking about jordan and i were discussing on a podcast where it's like well we don't have
debtors prison so let's all just not pay our credit cards off one month and see what they're
going to do about it. It's kind of like, I mean, is that really the right way to reform
the corrupt and unjust systems? I do think, so again, I would, in 99% of the cases, I would,
I would agree with you again. And this is the reason why I would push back against there is,
there is the 1% where you do see in the scriptures, these extreme cases where normal morality goes,
It is not practiced because of the flagrancy of the immorality on the other part.
So you see-
Yeah, they're going to steal from the Egyptians because it's a reparation.
Correct.
Or we see JL lying to Sisera.
She gives him hot milk.
He falls asleep and she kills him.
There are edge cases where you see this type of thing happening.
Again, so I'm not ruling out.
Again, I think Bitcoin in a real sense is it's providing the same effect that some of this GameStop stuff was intended to have, but it doesn't require any of the – it doesn't require the same type of debauchery in playing rigged games as those things do.
Again, taking part on the Robinhood app, which they can just stop trading if things are going against them.
So, yeah, I think broadly, yes.
I think broadly, I would agree, you know, including stocks in there, stocks in there is, you know, would make sense.
Yeah. So I think, I mean, I haven't read this whole article, but just skimming through the part about tattoos and then generally about the danger of Pharisaism and legalism.
and i i think that is a real issue and and like around tattoos i saw a certain kind of
uh kind of like uh correlation confusing correlation and causation and because uh tattoos
tends to be correlated with low economic status and and uh lawless behavior they just don't you
get one if you really need one fine if it's with the marines but you know you're gonna look like a
thug so don't look like a thug i mean so i would rather and this goes back even piper and uh so he
was a teetoler um he uh he wouldn't use tobacco products um and and it's like that that issue
I think there's a real danger there.
I remember something that I think B.A. Carson's view was really helpful.
Another godly Baptist brother that you guys maybe haven't heard of.
So he chose to be a teetoler.
But if someone's going to say it's a sin to drink alcohol,
he'll say, well, pass me the rum.
Bottoms up.
Right?
Because it's far more dangerous to create an extra biblical requirement on the people of God than to use alcohol in moderation.
I'll just get a spider tattoo on your forehead.
Stamp it on there!
Okay, here we go.
so yeah so i would rather not put requirements on christian consciences about
oh well bitcoin's acceptable but anything and and maybe ethereum depending on whether it's a
security or not i'm gonna get off his microphone what are we talking about the rest of them
no that's a sip i can squall out you over there who's not like that i'm slaying in what in the
world i may or may not be upstairs from jimmy gandrew right now floors up
i think christian freedom is the biblical view but we need to be able to to warn about foolishness
warn about the scams behind the scenes that 90 of the people don't know are going on
like what like jordan and i did that like we did the deep dive on moonshot and we're like holy cow
this is a total scam this is how like no so there's a lot of ignorance is what i'm saying and
we need to warn people of the ignorance and and yet their conscience may not be bound because
they don't have the knowledge we can give them the knowledge and maybe you're listening to this
podcast right now you're like i had no idea and maybe now you're not free to engage in this folly
because you have some more information.
Yeah, and this is where, again,
understanding how the definition
and the understanding of freedom,
quote unquote freedom,
has shifted across the generations
is really important
because it's become,
I mean, freedom is not license.
The scriptures are super clear about that.
And just like there's a difference
between freedom from and freedom to.
We should not just be like,
I have the freedom to pee my pants right now.
Okay.
But how does that help me?
And so there's nothing.
Freedom is pursuing that which actually leads to human flourishing, that which leads towards the good of others and all these different things.
Freedom is not just I do whatever I want to.
That's autonomy.
And the scriptures actually speak out against license.
It speaks out against these kind of things in no uncertain terms.
The one other thing that we did not talk about that I do want to mention.
We better end with this.
Yeah, we can end with this.
And the reason I want to mention it is just because I think it really is an important thing to talk about, especially for other projects as well.
Because, again, like we said, these guys fully would say these guys are better than most of the other people who are involved in MeanCoin projects, without a doubt.
Trump coin, baby.
What did you say?
Trump coin.
Oh, gosh.
Okay.
So the issue, I mean, at the same time, there are legal dangers.
There are legal dangers if you are involved in some of these kind of projects.
There can be legal dangers.
And one of these dangers is the danger of being involved in peddling something that is an illegal security, an unregistered security.
And so the way that the SEC decides what counts as a security is something – they use something called the Howey test.
And so you could Google this right now.
it's H-O-W-E-Y. It's four components to what, basically to the Howey test. And so I reached
out to Chance. I keep calling him Chase. I reached out to Chance before the debate.
And so the reason I'm mentioning this now is because of the insinuation that I only made
emotional arguments in this debate. So I reached out to Chance the morning of our debate because
I hadn't thought about this until the Saturday that I was with Oshawa and we were talking about
this. And it just, we just realized that I plugged in some of the screenshots from the project,
put them in there and just asked chat GPT. I was like, Hey, does this seem like it's violated the
Howey test? And it was in like no uncertain terms. So like, yes, this is dangerous. No, again,
they could go to, they had, I reached out the chance. I had this conversation with him. He said,
Hey, we have, we have a lawyer who's like looking at some of these things and he doesn't think we
violated anything. And so again, I just said, Hey, that's fine. I just wanted to let you know,
Like this is something that could result in prison time.
This could, in the worst cases, this could result in fines.
This could result in lawsuits from people who potentially lose money based on this project.
And so this is something I just basically said, hey, like I don't want to just expose this publicly.
This would be some gotcha thing on our debate.
I genuinely care about you and I care about the name of Christ and all these things.
And I just want you to be aware of these potential things.
If you weren't, I will say he wasn't aware of what the Howey test was.
He understood the danger of the need to be careful about what was being said.
But again, I just want to put that out there for maybe some of the people in Chance's orbit
who are tempted to just think I'm some, again, some coward because I'm not willing to dump
money into this project or just some person who really just wants to rain on Chance's parade
and rain on the parade of all these people.
I'll just say also, if you haven't watched the debate yet, I can save you a bunch of time.
Per Chance's own words, at the very end of the video, don't buy 1689 coin.
That's literally what he said.
So, yeah.
I don't know what to say.
If he can say that in good conscience and he's not actually joking, why are we even having this conversation?
And again, I will clarify, that is part of their marketing scheme.
It's kind of like this, you know, tongue in cheek thing of just like saying, hey, don't buy this.
Don't buy this.
As if if it's a joke, then they're not serious people.
If it's not a joke, then they're being disingenuous.
Yeah.
And so, again, that is the danger.
Again, I just want to throw that out there.
Again, you can go watch the debate.
Decide for yourself if you agree with Chance that I only made emotional arguments.
I don't think you're going to find that that's the case.
the one that I could remember
was that I just said,
hey Chance,
I care about you
and your reputation.
I care about the name of Christ
and the potential harm to you
and these other brothers
who are brothers.
I just,
I care about you.
So if that's an emotional argument,
then sure,
that's an emotional argument.
You know,
Jordan has been known
to shed a tear
during his TGFB presentations.
So I don't know
if you started crying,
you were weeping over
your lost brother.
And he's not a lost brother.
I wouldn't say he's lost.
I don't think,
God included that functionality on my model.
So anyhow, again, you can go find out more information
about all these things.
We are happy.
Again, if you have questions,
if you push back, reach out to us.
You can reach out to us via the Thank God for Bitcoin
Hang out for BTC Twitter account or just individually.
You can find us on there.
I believe all of us have our Twitter handles.
Again, Jim, Ash, Tim, appreciate you guys.
And we will see you next time on episode 25 of To The Unknown Pod.
Thank you.
We'll see you on the next episode.