And we are live. Welcome to episode 33 of To the Unknown Pod, a subset of the Thank God for
Bitcoin podcast. 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 finally joined by all of the mountain boys, no, the Iowan boys who I will allow to
introduce themselves right now. Hey, I'm Oshawa Hawthorne, father of eight, live in the great
war zone of Portland, Oregon, or so they say. And I lead a ministry called Brains Labs,
and we like helping ministries understand Bitcoin. I'm Ryan Finley, father of six,
former resident of portland i i departed about 10 years ago before it turned into a war zone
literally though uh with no regrets um but yeah it's good to be here
uh matt purvis pastor in hawaii and um ryan also escaped hawaii before the lava hit so he's he's
he's good at doing that stuff.
He likes running away.
He's just kind of,
he goes to greener pastures.
Yeah.
And,
uh,
yeah,
I run a businesses and I've,
I recently updated my Twitter profile to business as mission and activism and
politics.
You're not supposed to do that,
Ryan,
you're a pastor.
Okay.
Uh,
we're moving on today.
Today.
The title is,
is gold the new Bitcoin?
This is for those of you who aren't aware.
gold is mooning right now gold is over four thousand dollars an ounce or at least it was
as of yesterday uh four thousand dollars an ounce there was i believe a quick story in 2000
i believe 2020 somewhere around there my wife pleaded with me to buy an ounce of gold we had
you know we've we had bought bitcoin the year before that and the vast majority of our net worth
was in bitcoin she basically begged me to get at least an ounce to quote unquote diversify
and uh it's so because i love my wife i was like okay i'll buy one so we spent sixteen hundred
dollars on an ounce of gold that i held for me about what was bitcoin at then bitcoin okay so
bitcoin was at about 40 000 the problem was bitcoin went all the way down to 16 000 and so i was
begging with my wife and around that time i was like oh please let me sell this we can buy it back
we can buy we can buy the gold back you know and so then gold you know bitcoin if we would have
bought it we would have gotten around a tenth of a coin ended up holding onto it sold it last year
and uh so now we we don't own any more gold but gold is is straight mooning it's going crazy
people's gold regs peter schiff was right that's right all the gold bugs are triumphant uh and
again we are happy for the gold people we just want you to know that listen we we think gold
is great so what we want to do is we want to have talk about uh both bitcoin and gold which are both
at all-time highs we want to talk about why that is uh we want to talk about uh you know what we
can learn from that about the broader market sentiment and broader economic sentiment across
the board, both in the States and around the world. So we're going to lead off by taking a look
at a tweet from Vijay Voyapati. Let's see here. It is this one. Here we go. Vijay.
Gold hit $4,000, which is 0.3 Bitcoin thanks to the Opportunity Cost app. 0.03 Bitcoin today.
hey, this is by far the most important macro story right now.
Eventually, Bitcoin will steal gold's luster
and position as preeminent non-sovereign sort of value.
But today, poor went out for the gold bugs.
Impressive.
So again, let's just kind of talk about,
I'll let Ash kind of introduce this to us.
Why is gold mooning?
What does this mean for the broader market sentiment?
it well well historically gold represents a um like protection against an unstable economy it's
uh it's this reserve asset it's a flight to safety supposedly and i think what's most interesting now
is we're in a place where stocks are at an all-time high.
And so you're not having this big market crash
where people are running away from stocks.
You also have this issue with interest rates are high.
You have all these nation states that started buying gold
and moving away from treasuries.
And so it feels different.
And it feels like, hey, there's clearly shocks in the system because you're getting mixed messages.
And it's almost like something else is broken.
Like it's a denominator issue.
It's what are we measuring all of this growth in?
Yes, whoa, look, stock market's all-time high.
But the dollar's down 10% against other currencies just this year.
And so maybe the issue is with the dollar, not with a ragingly wonderful economy.
All right, Ash, unpack this for me.
We could have gotten that tweet up, but you're referencing there was a tweet about the fact the dollar is down 10% on the year against other national currencies.
Can you kind of unpack what does that mean?
For people who, I'm sure we have people who are just listening to this who don't understand any of these dynamics.
So kind of unpack some of that.
Yeah. So, again, I'm not a macro expert, but the most common number that we think about as Americans is CPI and inflation.
And yes, it's kind of slowly going up, but for the most part, it still seems to be manageable.
But this concept that the dollar is weakening in the global economy, that is a warning signal.
Like there's some flashing, like little dash lights going on that says, hey, not everything is going well.
Even though you might not feel it in a day-to-day, right?
Zoom out a little bit.
Or like for us, I'm going to be traveling to Switzerland next week with my wife for an anniversary trip.
And wow, are things expensive if you're using the dollar to buy things in Switzerland.
yeah define cpi for someone who doesn't know yeah that's the consumer price index those are the
the official numbers that we're given about what what's the increase in the cost of a basket of
goods uh for your average american consumer and it's usually under uh represented by about half
So when they say, you know, see if inflation's at 4%, we're usually at least seeing 8%.
Ryan, is that in comparison to the number of dollars in the system?
Is that how you're comparing it?
Yeah, it typically goes.
I think we've increased the money supply.
It's somewhere about, it's around 7% to 8% a year on average.
and that just so happens to be
how much like a lot of things
that are hard to print go up.
You know, so like for example,
ground beef is a, you know,
we've talked about that before,
but it's a better representative of inflation.
So if you see ground beef going up a lot,
this year it's going up twice as much
and that's not all because of debasement.
It's also, we're getting wild fluctuations
in the beef market.
So instead of it going up six or 8%,
I think we're already up 12%.
So everyone's going to notice the price of meat
is going to be a lot higher this year and going forward.
I don't want to start in the weeds.
I just want to understand from,
are we saying that the ideal comparison
of like truth versus CPI,
CPI being the government's provided increase,
do you guys think that cpi being this sort of semi-truth sort of lie compared to the number
of dollars inflated is the right way to do it or is that too simplistic is the number of dollars
not exactly what we're doing printed yeah the increase in the money supply seems to be more
accurate so it's closer to okay yeah it's closer to seven or eight percent and and there are
obviously, like if there's a famine, like then the money supply will also be affected. Like it's not
just like it's just the money supply. There are other dynamics that can factor in. But for most
things, the most impactful indicator is the money supply. This is where, I mean, like this is for
most things, like the money supply increase will be the primary accounting for those returns.
So this actually, what this ought to do is make you, it ought to change how you look at and how you think about investment returns.
Because you have to, like, you need to factor in when you see a return on something, you need to factor in, okay, wait a second.
If I know that most of this is just the monetary supply, this would happen even regardless of what the thing itself is doing, then it really does change the way that you think about them.
The historical stock return.
Like, over the last 20 or 30 years, like, if you had all your money in stocks, you were basically just keeping up with inflation.
So you can close your eyes and throw darts at a wall, and, you know, and you were just going to keep up with inflation.
Well, I've got a practical example.
But gold actually outdid the stock market.
So, I mean, before, I know I brought us into these weeds.
I just wanted to define our terms, but we can get back to the macro.
But example in my life, I'm trying to figure out what my commercial building that I'm managing should be rented for if I chose to go that route. And it was like six, seven thousand dollars a month. And I'm like, whoa, that's a lot. And then I was like, well, what did I used to pay on my mortgage? Look back, it was like thirty four hundred a month.
and I thought, and I had AI calculate for me inflation from 2013 till now based on CPI
and based on money supply. And it was drastically different. And I was like, nope, 7,000 bucks a
month is what I was paying in 2013 when I paid $3,400 a month, you know, especially if you count
it as, so that's just a real practical example of like, it's real guys. It's real, you know,
cause I remember it and that number sounds high to me, but it isn't high. It's the same as what I
was paying. And this is really, this is really what, I mean, the, the place that I think about
this the most is when it comes to like gas prices with your grandparents. It's like, right. When
our, when our grandparents, we used to ask your grandparents, Oh, you know, I'm showing my age.
I'll be 38, uh, very soon, uh, within the next week here, I'll be celebrating my birthday. Uh,
but we used to go to my granddad and we used to ask him, you know, what was, uh, what was gas
prices when you were young? And he would tell us it was a nickel, nickel per gallon. And so the
question is has gas gotten better or worse since then and the reality is the gas has gotten worse
like we have ethanol in our gas they just had plain gas and so jayburn yeah he's like why why
is it why but so then why is it three dollars a gallon or whatever it is versus a nickel you know
and a lot of this it just has to do with debasement it has to do with the currency can purchase so much
less now and and insane politics yeah like oregon california washington yep and there's people with
their hands out taking oh yeah they're all the governments are all going broke and so they're
just they have a fleet of people trying to figure out how to squeeze more money out of their tax
base yes and so that's all of these cases so basically historically and right now gold is
kind of this thing that basically it's like a release valve. It's basically a cry for help
where people are, it just basically demonstrates that people don't have confidence
in the stock market or in government bonds or in other things. They don't have confidence in
those things. And so they're going to look for something that doesn't depend on government,
that doesn't have a counterparty. And so again, with gold, you can custody it yourself. You don't
need to trust anybody. I would imagine you have people who are taking their, if they have gold
and safety deposit boxes or other kinds of stuff like that, they're taking them out and they want
to hold it because they want to know that they have it. And so again, this is where Bitcoin comes
in too. And this is why Bitcoin is called digital gold, because you can take the same sort of
custody with Bitcoin in a way that you don't need to rely on third parties to access it.
So this is going on.
We have another tweet here.
This is from...
Can I say one?
I want to say one more thing.
Do it, do it, do it.
Yeah, the gold bugs were the original.
Like they saw that gold represented proof of work
long before Bitcoin was around.
So I've always had a lot of respect for gold bugs.
I know a bunch of them.
And over these last several years,
like a lot of the macro people
like Luke Grohman and Lynn Alden,
they have big gold portfolios.
Lawrence Lippard.
And the reason is they understand.
Gold's going to go up for the same reason that Bitcoin is.
Because you already have governments.
They already believe in it.
They understand why it's valuable.
So anyways, it's just.
I think you can easily make the case
that despising gold is both a first and fifth commandment violation.
Like it is, it's despising the world that God made.
And it's also despising the wisdom of our fathers.
And that's, again, I posted a tweet of the Norman Rockwell guy
who's standing up at the town meeting with his hand in the air or whatever,
or standing up and just basically taking a stand.
And it says, I'm happy for the gold bugs.
Because again, the reasons why they've been mocked and derided
for decades are ridiculous reasons.
They're telling the truth.
They've done shining light on the lies
that the system is rooted in.
So to see them justified is a good thing.
It's something that we're going to continue
to get to see more of.
100%.
It's right.
And they deserve it.
They deserve the win.
Like Ron Paul, I'm super happy for Ron Paul.
He's a big gold guy.
and yeah it's it's uh it's criminal because they were the ones they were the ones that were calling
out the lies and the debasement and the wickedness that are the fiat system represents um and everyone
and basically they were made fun of because as they were calling it out they were saying we we
need to we need to go back to gold and so then they were mocked and you know yes slandered and
And again they were never wrong They were telling the truth They were absolutely right What they didn didn take into account necessarily was the willingness of the and the extent to which these governments
and stuff were willing to go to the ridiculous ends or lengths that they were willing to go to
in order to maintain their Ponzi scheme. Like that's, that's really what we're seeing. So it's
not that they were right or they were wrong. And now they're right. They've been right the whole
time. They've been right the whole time. And now they just, the system has gotten to a point where
it's beyond, you know, there's nothing that they can do to, you know, to, to try to get
themselves out of this.
So we're going to show this tweet from Tyler Durden.
For those of you guys who don't know, Tyler Durden is the character from, what's that movie?
Fight Club.
And then he's also a Twitter, Twitter person.
So I'm going to use the handle here.
So two years ago, I said, I believe Bitcoin would match a gold market cap this cycle.
I was very wrong in this idea.
So this is since the beginning of the year.
gold or whether this is the chart doesn't show this but gold is over above four thousand dollars
now it's since the beginning of the year gold has outperformed uh most things including bitcoin
uh bitcoin if we go back to if we go back 12 months bitcoin is still outperforming it but
since january 1 peter schiff uh take taking taking the w w's in the chat he's he's thrilled
um we'll we'll look at this one too so this is from site bringer this is this uh this account
called The Profit. It's a really great account. Highly recommend. Go follow it. But The Profit
says this. We're going to read this whole thing. It's a little bit long, but it's worth it.
Here we go. All right. So what you're seeing, we're going to scroll down here. What you're
really seeing here with gold and Bitcoin being at all-time highs is the first stage of a global
unit of account fracture. In nominal US dollar terms, okay, so the price that things have,
that homes have, whatever that they have right now, everything looks like it's booming. Stocks
up triple digits, homes up double digits, quote unquote wealth everywhere. That's the performance
everyone sees. In gold terms, however, the illusion cracks. Stocks and homes are flat to negative.
Real wealth is stagnating. So if you're to denominate a house in terms of the ounces of
gold it takes to buy it, that's what this is referencing, or stocks and the amount of ounces
of gold that it takes to buy them relative to other points. In Bitcoin terms, the veil is gone.
Catastrophic real losses in every traditional asset over the last two years. This is the same
signature that marked every pre-hyperinflationary or currency regime shift in history. When people
cling to the debasing unit, in this case, the dollar or the other, whatever the other national
fiat currency is around the world, they feel rich, but measured in the next credible collateral,
their system is already collapsing. And the quote-unquote risk asset meme about Bitcoin,
that's just a coping frame. As long as Wall Street treats Bitcoin as a tech stock with volatility,
they can keep it in the risk bucket. But functionally, it's already behaving like a
parallel reserve ledger. It's the only denominator that makes the post-2020 global economy look like
Argentina, which means it's not a good thing. It demonstrates how everything is doing as badly as
Argentina was. This is why the system feels, quote unquote, off. Why wages don't match prices,
why debt is ballooning, why policy feels reactive. We're in a regime where the unit of account is
decaying faster than the public narrative can absorb. The Fed, the government, the media,
all still speaking USD, all still benchmarking to a melting ice cube. The chart you're looking at
is the unofficial scoreboard in a silent currency war. So when I strip all the polite commentary
away. The honest take is, one, the U.S. is running the final phase of a classic imperial carry trade.
Draw in global capital, so draw in currency from around the world. Inflate domestic asset prices
in nominal terms. Export the currency risk abroad. Okay, that's what's going on with the dollar.
Gold shows stagnation. So when denominated in gold terms, things don't look anywhere near as
rosy. They're kind of stagnant, staying stable, but not increasing. And then Bitcoin shows collapse.
In Bitcoin terms, everything is just collapsing. The price of a home denominated in a Bitcoin now
relative to even just four years ago, it takes way less Bitcoin to buy a house now. If Bitcoin
continues to monetize, that chart is a pre-revaluation ledger of the old world being
marked down. This isn't a normal market cycle. It's the unit of account transition phase. Almost
no one is positioned for it because they're still measuring their quote unquote returns with the
wrong yardstick. That's the scar of layer, not just quote unquote debasement trade,
but a living record of a dying denominator. And so he's showing this chart from Luke Groman,
who we'd love to have on the program at some point. Luke, come on, we love you.
And so Luke is demonstrating. So here's all these charts laid over one another. So we have the S&P
500, NASDAQ, Standard & Poor's index.
So you have the stock market.
You have, let's see, what else do you have?
Let's see, Bitcoin.
There we go.
You've got gold.
You've got a bunch of other gold things.
And so you can see right here what's going on.
Everything is getting crushed or is flat.
Bitcoin's breaking out.
What's the blue one?
Is this the S&P?
Hey, Jordan.
I put two links in our studio chat
comparing S&P to gold and S&P to Bitcoin.
Could you pull up that first link in the chat
on the macrotrends.net?
Give me one second here.
So that'll let us see this image a little clearer.
Cool, there we go.
And you can...
But yeah, Ash, keep describing what's in that image.
You can choose your time horizon.
So I pulled up the 10-year time horizon of gold to the S&P.
And what you see is this total breakout.
Actually, do the 20-year.
The 20-year is the best one.
Is this gold price for a stock market or a big S&P?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
versus stock market.
And then click on the 20-year
because you're going to see the 08
and what happened.
So they're going to start at zero.
All right, here we go.
I'm going to see this.
Yeah, now click on 20 years.
There you go.
So it's starting at the beginning
at 06 or something.
Yep.
The same.
And then you see the 08 crash.
You see the stock market go down.
Gold rips up, and then gold significantly underperforms as you have growth.
From basically 2011.
Yeah, so you have the economy recovering.
You have all the money being pumped into real estate and global dynamics.
You have COVID, or again, stock market underperforms.
A little kiss in 2018 here.
What happened in 2018 that caused this?
that's when that's when the economy started uh sputtering yep that's when the cracks started
showing leading up to 2020 yeah it was a lot of that was they needed to find an excuse to print
money because there was things were breaking yeah if you get if you go back and that's when gold just
took off yep yeah so yeah so you look at here's here's december 2019 right when covid starting
down to March 2020.
This is the bottom of the stock market.
You know, the bloody, whatever it was,
Thursday or Wednesday.
And then you see right after this,
as this is all going on,
gold is just mooning.
Goes over there, starts to settle a little bit.
The stock market nominally recovers
and then boom, we just,
gold going parabolic,
going crazy.
Matt, you are making noise.
Let's see here.
Or is it Ryan?
It's Ryan for some reason.
I don't know how that happened.
But so we have that going on.
Do we want to look at another chart?
Yeah.
So, I mean, what you see, particularly this huge run-up where all is not well
and gold is so vastly outperforming.
But yes, click the second link and see stock market price in Bitcoin
over the same time period.
And yeah, zoom in a bit.
this is going back to August 11,
that red line is the stock market.
It looks flat in Bitcoin terms.
Yes.
So describe for us, what does that mean?
If somebody's looking at this, what does this mean?
Well, it means that the gains on Bitcoin were so significant
that your stock market is meaningless almost.
and maybe you could find a different time horizon
and the chart would look a little different.
But if this is all about monetary debasement
and if you change your denominator,
either Bitcoin or gold,
then yeah, things are broken.
And I think the practical takeaway for Christians and churches
is you can't just assume that you can exist within the current system
and continue staying ahead like the previous generation.
I think Ryan's story that he shared from his church was really relevant here,
where if you have a long-term expense or you have to save for something,
you will get absolutely killed if you're not saving
in something that is protecting you from debasement.
Yeah, Ryan, you're paused.
Yeah, share that story for us, Ryan,
because you told it before we hopped on
and I think it'll resonate with people.
Yeah, I mean, I won't go into all those specifics,
but any, I mean, our church was beginning
to think about building a new building back in 2020.
And so we started fundraising for it
And the price, I mean, it hasn't entirely doubled, but it's almost doubled.
And when you're in the millions of dollars, that is a catastrophic event.
Because when you're raising money, even if you raise millions, but then the price doubles just in such a short period of time.
Because there's an enormous amount of debasement.
So all the money that was raised, unless it's stored in Bitcoin, it goes up by 4% a year if it's in conservative savings, which usually that's typically what people do in those situations.
But you're getting destroyed on the cost of goods and labor and just inflation just wrecked it.
So, yeah, it's really sad and discouraging.
And my advice to any other church or, I mean, really anyone, if you have a big, a very large expense, like you need to put in the work and understand what's going on with our financial system and prepare accordingly.
I would say put it in Bitcoin.
If you can't get the conviction on that, then tried and true.
I mean, even gold is going to protect you more as it's demonstrating right now.
and for the same reasons.
But you can't leave it in dollars
and you can't leave it in a low interest savings account
because you're literally going backwards.
Like you're putting it into a boat
with too many holes in it.
And you're probably losing on a building project.
If you're saving the cash,
you're losing at least 4-5% a year.
So, I mean, which is-
This is where, again,
the temptation is to think about Bitcoin
as a way to try to get rich quickly, right?
This is the way it's primarily talked about.
This is the way, the reason why,
you know, the reason,
or the way that it's talked about on,
you know, cable news
and some of these finance channels or whatever.
It's like the stock market,
it's this game and,
oh, look how good Bitcoin's doing.
But what people just are not,
people are thinking about it,
aren't thinking about it in the way that they ought to,
which is, no, you are losing purchasing power
regardless of whether Bitcoin exists or not.
Like you have a problem,
whether or not you see Bitcoin as part of your solution.
And so that problem is something you have to reconcile.
You have to reckon with it somehow.
And if you don't, it's not just like things are going to be okay for you.
They're not going to be okay, economically speaking.
And so I just look at this.
I'm somebody who I've never owned a home.
We were missionaries for, you know, we raised support,
between we were raising support and actually on the field, it was 10 years.
And so we didn't buy a house.
We came back to the States in 2021 and we're not able to buy a house just because of the nature of things.
And so we did have Bitcoin and do have Bitcoin.
And basically, owning Bitcoin is the only path to homeownership that I have.
And again, if Bitcoin continues to do what it's been doing, then Bitcoin will be part of what enables me to get a house.
But other people, you have to have something that's outpacing inflation. It's the only way. The longer you wait to buy a house or to buy one of these big purchases, the more if you don't have something that's gaining in value faster than the currency is losing value, you're going to be perpetually behind. You're just going to get farther and farther behind.
This is why we do this podcast.
This is why we talk about this.
This is a big deal.
And it's no small problem.
This is an enormous problem for individuals, for families, for ministries, for businesses,
whatever it is.
This is a universal problem.
When you have a broken denominator, the thing that you're using for basically every single
transaction within a nation and all these other nation, whatever levels you want to
look at. If that thing is broken, then it's just going to keep getting more and more dire over time.
Yeah. I've heard a lot of... Oh, yeah. Go ahead.
It's all right. I was going to say that I think in this group, I'm the biggest neophyte in terms
of the investing world. I think I understand Bitcoin a bit and I put my so-called savings
into real estate. So I'm different than some in this group. But real estate has sort of been the
chosen golden child for the government. The 1031 exchange, in my view, there's nothing even remotely
similar to that in the tax code. And it's the idea that here's your golden child if you're wealthy
and you want to have an asset that at least keeps up with inflation so you can keep working.
Real estate has been the golden child chosen by the tax code, chosen by the government.
I don't think it's necessarily foolish, though we may be seeing a huge crash coming, especially compared to Bitcoin.
And I think that to me bringing it to a human level when you see those charts a lot of this has to do with trust issues So if I can put a little pointer between the church thing you mentioned Ryan and the government it like when you lose trust
people start going,
okay, I'm not going to invest in the system anymore.
If you gave a big chunk of your money to a church,
and I'm sure there's millions of details on your church,
so it's not even bashing your church,
but if you give a bunch of money to a church
and they say it's going to be a million dollars
and it's actually gonna be two, you lose a little bit of trust unless there's some really,
really good explanations. And it's not just a Simpsons monorail situation. So the same thing
goes for the government. And I'm 100% in this boat. I look at my business that I ran for a
decade, which was a cafe restaurant. And I suffered through the pandemic and many, many businesses
shut down. And a lot of old timers just said, I'm out, even with really good businesses.
And I went through that and I did not see the government be too encouraging. I saw them do a lot of crazy fixes where they just threw money out there, which went to massive amounts of fraud. A lot of that fraud went overseas, even with like PPP money and EIDL money, and I could list them off.
and so my trust is it never was high because I was reading and learning about these things through
theology through the bible and also through history it was never high but I my trust is
super low right now so when you want trust in the system you want people to say I'm going to start
a business you want people to say I'm going to buy real estate and develop it you want people to say
I'm going to participate and at some level and I don't think this is negative but at some level
buying gold, the principles behind gold and Bitcoin are the same. That's what you were
getting at, Jordan. The principles are the same. It's just that we have something that's a new tech
that's never been here before that applies these principles into the cryptographic technological
world. And so that's the thing where gold bugs should love Bitcoin too, because the principles
behind it are the same. So if you're a person who's not in desperate, dire need to have an
hourly wage at an at like McDonald's you know it's keeping keeping that type of situation out
if you have something to stand on you don't have to be super wealthy you could be middle class
you're going to have a tendency to say I'm not trusting therefore I'm not going to start a
business I'm not going to develop real estate I'm not going to do these things which build
the wealth of a nation which build the GDP etc you're going to say I'm going to sit back and let
the clown show sort of destroy itself. And I'm going to hold on to gold. I'm going to hold on
to Bitcoin. I'm going to sort of wait it out. I'm going to hold on to real estate even, even though
that's probably not a great idea now. And so it's a sorry thing to see trust just be smashed in our
nation. And what am I going to tell my children? I'm going to tell them the same thing. I'm not
going to be bitter about it. I'm a Christian. I believe we should be hopeful for the future
and we should be building things whether it makes us, you know, legacy money or not.
But I'm still going to say this is not something you can trust.
And I think that that's across the board.
I think Gen Z is probably like the least trusting generation maybe in I don't know how long,
maybe ever, at least in the U.S.
And what government has to do is somehow regain that trust by radical changes that say,
we want to promote and give you good regulations and give you fair tax codes and give you all these
things. And even then it's going to be years before people will trust it. Because if you're
going to say, I'm going to start a business. Decades. Yeah, decades. If you're going to say,
and I do think the current administration is doing this. They're trying to encourage
development in a lot of different areas. They're trying to make this happen. But if you're looking
it like, okay, but two years from now, it could be literally the complete opposite.
And I'll close my point with one anecdote, and it wasn't me, but it was a friend of ours.
When the state is hungry for money, they come at you like bloodthirsty wolves. And this was the
state of Hawaii, and they just started going through their ancient documents. And a friend
of mine who has a 15-year business probably, when he first moved to Hawaii, he didn't realize about
excise tax. We have excise tax here, not income tax. We do have income, but not sales tax. And so
for the first few years of his business, he wasn't doing that tax properly. And so the state came
after him for excise tax that was like 15 years old or something like that. And they came after
him for multiple six figures, you know, like the entire savings of his family over the course of
decade, more than a decade. And this is predatory behavior by the state. This is not saying you
made a mistake. This is saying, what's the easy pickings? It's somebody who is saving,
who's doing what the Bible says about saving. And it doesn't even matter that it's more than a
decade old. Even the IRS doesn't go back more than seven years. So I just use that as an example of
when you start to view your state as predatory and antithetical to building,
you stop building and you say,
I'm just going to stick my gold in the ground or my Bitcoin in a cold wallet and wait it out.
And the thing that's really important here is because we can imagine,
this has happened in other places,
where there have been places where the economy gets bad and people flee to gold.
And then the government or people who are not good thinkers
basically try to fault those people for fleeing to gold and for not continuing in the economy as
normal. And so again, it's a form of gaslighting because it's like you can't have it both ways,
right? Because there's two ways that you can try to get trustworthiness. One is that you can demand
it. And the other is that you can be worthy of it. And so you can see this same principle with
parenting, right? You can have a parent who demands obedience from their children, or you
could have a parent who, again, basically warrants trust and love from their children because of how
they behave. And so if you're sitting here, there's Doug Wilson is a pastor who's written some of the
best books about child rearing that I've read. I can't recommend them highly enough. But one of
things he talks about is he's like, when you're basically requiring obedience from your children
is like writing a check. And, and so like, if you're, and if you're trying to cash checks that
you haven't been, you know, you haven't been putting money into the account, you can write
checks, but that doesn't mean that they're going to, they're going to cash. And so for, there's a
lot of, a lot of what the governments have been doing around the world is they've been drawing,
they've been demanding, they've been doing these things. They've been trying to withdraw. And again,
this is happening literally, something else we could talk about is Social Security, right?
Social Security is going to be unable to estimate by 2033. They're going to be unable to fulfill
all of their obligations. And so they'll be insolvent in the sense that they're not able
to fulfill their complete obligations. So they're talking about 18%, 18%, they're basically only
going to be able to pay out, I think like 82% in 2033 of what they would initially and what
they've promised to people. And so this is just a reality that's going on. People are depending,
they've gotten used to a level of stability, they've gotten used to a government who's just
been able to step in and solve any problem that they have by printing more money and kicking the
can further down the road. This is not sustainable. It cannot continue without severe injustice that's
already happening it's only going to get worse and so this is this is just something like if you
are depending on the government to come save you you are you're mistaken like you're making you're
putting your trust in the wrong place uh and it's not going to end well there's a could I share
something on the screen real quick and um yeah do it it's it's a super simple thing if someone
hasn't seen it before it's called the the laugher curve and um it's so easy to understand that I
think it'll stick. And this is an idea of taxation, but I think it applies to everything,
including the child raising that you said. Here's the Laffer curve. The maximum amount is, let's
say T in the middle here of revenue that the government could create for itself is at some
point, it's not going to be nothing. If you charge 0% tax rate, you're not going to get anything.
But if you charge 100% or 90% tax rate, you're also getting nothing.
so the number is not known exactly what's the perfect thing that's the game you know not to say
that the goal of life is to get the greatest tax revenue but keeping this in mind for the other
things we discussed you have to actually place that at somewhere where it's still motivating
to go to work and to do your thing but not too high because the higher if you make it too high
your revenue actually goes down because people will refuse to cooperate. They will refuse to
work. Or if you're a business owner, you will buy a Hummer instead of taking the profit,
you know, or whatever, section 19 write-offs, you know, or whatever. And so there's a thousand
ways that you will figure out not to pay when you perceive that what's happening is unjust.
And so I think this is true with taxes, but it's also true in those other areas that you mentioned.
And it's such a simple drawing.
I think it helps to sort of imprint that in the mind.
That is helpful.
Ryan, I did a little bit of math for your church.
Feel free to pass it on if you want.
Hypothetical.
I don't know the exact numbers.
It could have been a 40% increase, but still, we're still talking millions of dollars.
So we'll say conservative, it was a 40% increase in the building costs over the last five years.
So let's say, so I did the math with Bitcoin.
Okay, let's say it's a $10 million goal that they originally raised, okay?
and then it went up 40 percent um right let's say then it was 14 or 15 thousand or 14 or 15
uh sorry million 14 million 14 million let's say um so if they had put 10 percent into bitcoin
so 1 million into bitcoin in the summer of 2020 they would have bought 108 bitcoin
which today is worth $13.2 million.
So a 10% hedge would have made them,
what's that?
$12.2 million.
Okay, let's say it was just a 5% hedge
and they got $500,000 worth of Bitcoin, right?
in the summer 2020, they have about 54 Bitcoin.
That would be worth $6.6 million.
So just a 5% hedge would protect it against
even like a 50 or 60% increase in the price of their project
over a five-year period.
Yep.
Oh, man.
This is one of the reasons why every church needs Bitcoiners, and then also those Bitcoiners have to volunteer to be on the finance department or at least get the ear of those that make the decisions.
And yeah, and I would say on the earlier side, because the debasement's only accelerating.
So which influencers do we need in our culture to start speaking out about this?
like Christian theologians and stuff like that.
Is there anyone
besides Dave Ramsey
could repent?
Dave Ramsey, hey, let's go.
Let's see what you think of heaven.
But no, literally,
there's probably thousands of churches across the country
take their people
through his training material.
I mean,
if you're talking about influence, probably one of the
people just got killed, Charlie
Kirk. Charlie Kirk was a Bitcoiner.
he actually talked about it a fair amount
but yeah if you just think about who actually has
sway with people
that's a good question I don't know
who would need to
who would be the biggest
honestly it would probably
this is funny this is a conversation for a different day
but I was listening to a podcast
and they were talking about Stephen A. Smith
and Stephen A. Smith
is apparently seriously considering running
for president
and part of the reason why it's
even like,
I mean,
just if somebody would have told you that 10 years ago,
that Stephen A.
Smith,
for those of you guys are,
Stephen A.
Smith is like a host of a show on ESPN,
a few different theories,
but just like,
I mean,
debate show argues like crazy.
He's not,
he's not known for being a serious person,
but he is,
he is a well,
he's respected enough and has like a high enough Q score,
which is basically like the popularity at a,
at a,
you know,
national level or whatever it is.
He's got a good enough,
you know,
reputation where,
he's trying to, he's thinking about leveraging that into basically political career in politics.
And so this is what we're seeing is like, if you look, because of the fracturization that's
happening with, as media gets fractured, as all these other things get fractured,
you know, news doesn't have the same sway as it once did, all these other things.
The one thing that people, that still is like unifying people enough to have something
approaching what's called like a monoculture, where kind of everybody has like a shared
experience of something that's going on is sports. And so, so like somebody, it would,
it probably be something if we were trying to get a large, a number of Christians on board,
there's a probably a real sense. I mean, I'm sure Trump, Trump's probably the real answer to this,
just because of how big, you know, politics is. Um, he's, he's being positive about Bitcoin.
I'm sure that's had some sort of, uh, healthy angle, but, uh, I think that, you know, an athlete,
some sort of athlete, that would be helpful.
Hey, we need to get...
I'm not trying to belabor the point,
but I'm thinking if we're on the church topic,
you know, pastors are looking to...
20 years ago when I was doing my theological things,
it was like some of them are gone now.
You know, we just lost Vody.
We just lost...
We lost Arthur Spruill.
We lost MacArthur.
I was...
I'm a Piperian pietist myself.
we also had
what do you call it
Wayne Grudem but I think he has mental
decline now due to something
I can't remember ALS
maybe or something like that and so
I'm wondering who are the people
with that same level of
theological influence so that
the pastors go okay this isn't
me taking the trusted money
from my congregations and taking a big risk it actually the opposite because that the flip for churches that needs to happen is for them not to say um oh sorry about that guys if only we could i put it on do not
disturb you mute yourself it's continue the conversation if only we could do a series of
articles on the gospel coalition website do you make that happen hmm that's uh to be continued
it's uh yeah we need to we need to talk to our our boy but uh but yeah i mean this is this really
is it's something there's a lot of people who recognize that something's wrong but they don't
know how to put their finger on it bitcoin sounds too insane uh i get it i get it i just i just
tweeted the other day or i sent a message on facebook it was like i get that bitcoin seems
risky i get that it seems cringe uh but you don't get to choose the world that you live in like this
It doesn't matter what the outward appearance is of things.
What matters is what's real.
We were talking about that before we came on.
Everyone doesn't get to, like, if you don't want to deal with debasement, tough luck.
Everyone's going to deal with debasement.
Everyone's going to be wrecked by inflation in the years and decades ahead.
So, yeah, my encouragement, it's kind of like the gospel.
Nobody gets the gospel unless they see themselves as a sinner in need of a savior, right?
And the same goes for Bitcoin.
If you do not need safety from debasement or if you don't need an exit from it, you don't need Bitcoin.
But ultimately, what we're trying to tell people is you do need something to deal with debasement.
And so try to figure out what are the possible solutions.
Make a list.
Do your research.
Do the work.
If you don't want to do the work, you're being lazy, and then you're going to suffer for it, or your family's going to suffer, or your kids, or your church.
At the end of the day, sometimes we can be tempted to be a little bit impatient, but it's like this has been going on for a long time.
The four of us.
The Roman's Road.
The Roman's Road for Bitcoin.
Well, honestly, one of the things I think about all the time, I mean, we wrote a book called The Gospel According to Bitcoin because there's a hundred things in which—
There's a hundred things that happened in which you can analogize either Bitcoin with the gospel or the gospel with Bitcoin.
And one of the things that happened over and over again was that people's objections that they had to Jesus, they had aesthetic objections to what Jesus was doing.
Like they objected to the fact that he was a suffering Messiah.
Like this offended people.
They're like, we were expecting Messiah who's a king, who's ruling, who's squashing his enemies.
And so that offended people, the fact that he didn't look like the way that they wanted him to look.
And this happens over and over again.
Christians, we look weak, and yet we continue.
We're here 2,000 years later when other things aren't.
And so this is a temptation.
It's always a temptation is to look on the outward appearance.
And the outward appearance of Bitcoin is silly.
It's foolish.
It looks ridiculous.
It's magic internet money that somebody made up 16 years ago.
It looks stupid.
like and so people there's a whole group of people out here dave ramsey included david bodson included
all these people who they look at bitcoin and it looks so stupid it offends them to the point that
they don't want to take it seriously and we're past the time like we're past the point where
that's an acceptable thing to happen like at this point 16 years in it is now a character flaw on the
part of these guys for them to continue making fun of bitcoin and in treating it like it's for
little kids. Like, it's ridiculous. They ought to be ashamed of themselves and they need to like
wake up and or else their entire reputations are going to be destroyed. Like, that's really what
we're looking at. They need to humble themselves. It's arrogance and pride is what it is. It
absolutely is. Amen. So Ryan, what would it take? I mean, it has to start local. We have a lot of
conversations about our family. How do we raise our kids well? How do we figure out things locally?
so it has to start locally in our own churches so i was able to help my my church accept uh bitcoin
donations and i've started giving my my offering in in bitcoin um and i just i did the legwork for
it um and it's it's uh been been profitable my my tithe is up 25 percent um because they've they've
held it um so what does it look like for you to go talk to them like okay the cost of doing this
has gone up 40%. They're obviously going back to the congregation to say, we need to raise more
money. How do you build a proposal? How do you show them the backdated math? If you had done this,
you'd be here. Okay. Now in the future, is debasement going to continue? Because you might
say, oh, that was just COVID. That was COVID money printing. We knew there was inflation,
but it's stabilized. So you got to ask that question. Is this going to continue to happen
in the future if you can show that do you think your leadership would sit down and say hey it's
actually bad stewardship we know this bad stewardship to hold this in a four percent
returning savings account and can is it good stewardship to put a percentage into bitcoin
yeah i mean we'll we'll see i think uh from conversations i've had not i'm not talking about
I think our leaders in our church are coming around.
They've been reading books.
We've been having conversations.
I think there's another level of conviction that's required for pastors and elders because they're stewarding the people's money.
And so that can cause, like, you really need to be, you have to be really bold and you have to lead with a lot of conviction.
and that's not easy to come by because like as a culture and again this is i'm not saying this
this is no personal dig against anybody but we're a risk averse culture we're uh another way of
saying that is we're a very feminized culture that like uh when it comes to things like this
um i know that kind of sounds harsh but it's it's it's just true i don't i don't think we can
quite say like it's it's not just feminine to to want to be risk averse like okay right it's
there's a certain amount of wisdom in trying to avoid certain types of risks.
But again,
it just kind of depends on.
By the way,
you say,
I say that just because it's,
I feel like we've,
it's crossed over into the way we do a lot of things.
Yeah.
It's not just,
I think what you're saying is boldness kind of,
it's like being bold is not the same as,
um,
yeah.
Are you going to reach?
Yeah.
Um,
you know,
something we,
we talked about this a while back,
but it might not have been on this pod.
And one of the simple things could be Osh gives such and such amount of Bitcoin to his church and requests that it would remain as Bitcoin until it needs to be spent on something.
Or say, I'm giving you Bitcoin.
It would be like giving you a property, right?
And I'm asking that you don't just convert it into money.
Not to say you have to, because when you give a gift, it should be.
but it would give the freedom to a pastor or a church to say,
hey, it was given to us and requested that it would stay in this format as this asset.
That could be kind of a first few simple steps,
especially for a church that's open to the idea,
but doesn't want to cause strain and grief to their Bitcoin unbelieving congregation.
I still think for the vast majority of people,
Like, unfortunately, yeah, I think when I think about the churches and pastors, it really comes down to their objection to holding Bitcoin is just because they're thinking about in the terms of, I have so much capital and trust.
Again, it's like I have storehouses of trust with my people.
Is this something that I want to spend it on?
You know, and how much do I actually believe that this is actually a problem? And if I do, what's going to be the cost to try to get this across? And we've talked with our brothers in the PCA, like some of them, they had to really put 15 years of credibility on the line to try to get this, you know, the Bitcoin overture to try.
when they presented that they had, you know, uh, what's his name? Uh, Ben, uh, Haley has talked
about the thing. He's like, when I, when I presented that and started talking about that,
he's like, there were people I'd known for 10, 15 years who I saw it in their eyes.
They lost respect for me. And so I think that we, we do have to recognize like, this is a real,
like, this is a real thing that people are going to have to reckon with, uh, that isn't a small
thing and at the same time what the issue that we're talking about is a big deal so it it really
i think the the call for bravery and boldness really is you know we i'm sorry you're not owed
an easy choice like you're not owed an easy an easy situation yeah i think starting as a bitcoin
donor is definitely the first step but unless you're like you're you're the the the sugar daddy
of the church and you're the main funder of the building project it's just a drop in the bucket
um but i i think you can still be more compelling you can you can initiate it you can set up that
bitcoin account donation with with a five thousand dollar like it should be meaningful
like make it worth the effort yeah so give them a few thousand they they set up the the bitcoin
an account with River or Strike or something.
They do the work.
And then it's going to sit there
until you actually say,
let this be the last expense
to open the building.
Okay, that's your donor's request.
Church's honor donor's request.
I want this Bitcoin to be spent
right before we open the doors.
And then you can start talking to others.
Then you can build the campaign for,
hey guys, let's put 3% of this money
into Bitcoin.
Here's what this would do.
And I mean,
get some of our friends, right?
That are sophisticated investors
that are respected.
Say, hey, we'll do a phone call.
Don't have to listen to me.
The profits never woke him in his hometown.
So like Ryan's,
he's just the wacko.
Like he's crazy.
He's the Bitcoiner.
Yeah, we all get it,
but we like him, right?
But we can bring in some connections
from some like well-respected companies
that are Christians and Bitcoiners
who will sit down and say,
hey, here's the math.
And I'd had a crazy conversation
that was so surprising recently
with an older gentleman
who has authority to allocate money
for a Christian organization
and is not willing to risk
the organization's assets with Bitcoin
and has a number of questions around it
and is just not going to go there.
But I just found out that he has his own allocation to Bitcoin.
And it was really surprising.
But I think that is that difference.
You might find elders and finance committee members
that are like, you know what?
You're right, Ryan.
I'm going to buy some Bitcoin.
I'm going to put some high retirement in this.
But, oh, the church's money?
That's like an extra level of, oh, that's God's money.
What if I'm wrong?
and I think that's a good instinct
but it's still
wrongly applied
and you're being naive about the debasement
because you know the debasement is a given
it's bad stewardship
to lose
36%
because you only gain 4%
that's what I'm saying
again it's a longer conversation
but I really do think
there is worldly aspects
to our culture
especially being risk averse that has seeped into all different areas and it's kind of subtle but
you're like like like why is that the worst thing but but like holding a currency that loses eight
percent of its value why is that not that's actually worse like so it's just what we view
as bad like it's just um but here's the thing if you store it in the currency like we've all been
conditioned to to just take it right we're all boiling in a pot and if you leave it in the
currency and you get eight percent stolen from you each year well you know you were being conservative
you were being safe and it's like man like it's just acceptable losses at this point it's acceptable
casualties of the of the resources and that i just think that needs to change we need again this is
what christians need to speak the truth and not be ashamed debasement's bad it's impacting everyone
um and we can't be afraid to say it you know because you know at some point they will wake
up and they will look back at us three four crazy guys you know and be like here's they were right
yeah and i think it is there is this liability where and the risk averse where if you make an
active decision when you steward the finances for the church you can be actively to blame
if you sit and do nothing and well look the the the construction costs went up by 40 that's
outside of our control what do i control the cost exactly yeah surely not so so i've
It's playing not to lose.
It's not playing to win.
And again, it's another thing where we haven't been playing to win in so many different areas.
And it's like, it's absolutely devastating.
Oh my gosh.
We need to do a whole episode on that.
Again, that's kind of what every episode is.
Now that if we summarize that, yeah, it's like playing not to lose versus playing to win.
Oh, man.
And yeah, the implications, especially on culture, politics.
Yep.
Yeah.
Well, man, we could go a lot more on this topic, but we'll cut it there.
Ryan, Oshawa, appreciate you guys.
Matt had to leave.
Again, we are grateful for you guys for joining us on this episode of To the Unknown Pod.
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