And we are live. Welcome to episode 37 of To The Unknown Pod, a TGFB podcast. My name
is Jordan Bush. I'm the director of TGFB Media, which exists to help Christians understand
and use Bitcoin for the glory of God and the good of people everywhere. I am joined by
all of the Island Boys today. Wow. It has been a long time since we recorded a podcast.
I think it's probably been like a month and a half since we've had the full cast and crew.
It might even have been two full months.
I'll let these guys introduce themselves.
Go for it.
Hey, I'm Oshawa Hawthorne, founder and director of Brilliance Labs.
Stoked to be here.
I'm Ryan Finley, father of six, entrepreneur,
working with my boys on their various ventures.
Yeah, it's good to be here, Jordan.
yeah matt purvis pastor and business guy on in the lava zone in hawaii pahoa hawaii
nice and we are we are here today to do something that we don't do very often which is uh that is
to say agree with dave ramsey all right we try not to make it a habit uh given our our manifold
differences on a whole bunch of things including bitcoin but uh with that being said we want to
agree where we can. So we'll get to that in a moment. Before we get there, I do want to just
remind folks that we have so many exciting things happening with TGFB. We have, again, all three of
these books that you see behind me. We have the flagship book, Thank God for Bitcoin. We have the
old version right here. Don't get that. Go run over to tgfb.com or store.tgfb.com and pre-order
the second edition with a forward by Robert Borden's brand new cover. It just looks a lot
more professional, go do that, go find that, go pre-order it. We should have copies ready to roll
on Amazon or from the TGFB warehouses here very soon. We also have the Gospel According to Bitcoin.
If you have Bitcoiners in your life who are not Christians and you want to put a resource in their
hands that can help them think about why they ought to reconsider following Jesus, that's a
great resource there. And then most recently we have the, uh, the orange umbrella or a kid's book
that was a long time coming. We have the hardcore or hardcore hardcover versions here in stock.
These are super premium. These are sewn bindings. They've got dust jackets, everything. We also have
a coloring book so that you can decide if you don't like the colors that we have in the,
in the regular book, you can go through and it's got all the words, all the things,
just like the normal book. Um, we also have paperback versions that will be,
should be here this week. So we've got a whole bunch of really cool stuff.
You can pre-order all those things on the site. We also have the TGFP26 event conference that
we're going to be doing in Fort Worth in April 9th. Let me share this real quick. You can go over to
tgfp.com slash conference and order your conference tickets. There we are right there.
If you click on the buy tickets link at the conference page, it'll take you to this
ZapRite link where you can pay with either fiat or Bitcoin. We will happily accept either one of
those. You can get the, so the merch bundle that is included with these tickets is a hat,
super high quality hat, and then a high quality t-shirt as well. So go ahead and do that.
We'd love to see you there. We're going to have another, a bunch more things to announce
as we get closer there. So those are ways in which, you know, we can see you and you can get
to know more about TGFB. You can also bring people with you to know more about TGFB. If you have
pastors in your life and you want to get discounted tickets, reach out to us and we will be happy to
make that happen for you. Let me see here. I believe that's all of the super fun stuff we
have before we get to what we're doing today. So we will stop sharing there. And today's topic,
Like we mentioned, it's rare that we agree with Dave Ramsey, but we do agree with him when it comes to this critique that I found shared courtesy of one of the best Twitter follows, in my opinion, that you can do.
It's a guy named Harala Baz-Volgaris.
Really fascinating story.
Let me share this.
Bob, as he goes by, was a professional gambler.
Grew up watching his dad gamble.
And obviously that's not great.
but grew up watching his dad gamble.
And so he learned from his dad, who was a bad gambler.
He learned from him and ended up becoming one of the, long story short,
one of the most successful gamblers in the history of sports.
He amassed a fortune of over $100 million based on almost exclusively sports gambling and poker.
And so it may come as a surprise then that as somebody who did that,
that he has come out and basically now he owns a soccer team
and is doing a whole bunch of other things,
but he does not allow with the soccer team any ads from these gambling sites
due to reasons why we can get into.
So he shared this link today from Dave Ramsey.
So let's listen to old Dave and see what he has.
The fastest growing addiction that is destroying young men in their 20s
is online sports gambling.
FanDuel is a portal to hell.
Draft kings ain't king of nothing except their own pocketbook.
And they're screwing an entire generation of young men because you don't win.
That's why they can afford to buy ads.
They're back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back ads every time you turn on a sporting event.
They're spending billions of dollars.
You know where they're getting that?
It's out of your kid's freaking pocket because they're screwing an entire generation.
This is evil stuff right here.
The fat.
All right.
So we'll stop there for now.
I do want to
so again I want to point out what are we
talking about when we're talking about gambling
so sports gambling
this is just obviously pretty straightforward
gambling about the outcomes
of sporting games
is this team going to win or is this team going to win
but it's far more advanced than that
it's also will this player
will this player
score a touchdown will this player have
this many yards or this many catches
will he catch them in the first half or the second
have. You can bet on the color of shoes that guys wear. You can bet on just about everything
that is going on within a sporting event. And so the, yeah, just the amount of things that can be
gambled upon and the amount of money that is, you know, won and more likely as Ramsey pointed out,
lost is staggering. And so as we talk about things that, one of the things we've talked about in this
podcast is the tough situation that millennials and Gen Z and some of these other guys find
themselves in. It's even harder because not only do they have cheap assets available, they have
the siren song of things like sports gambling calling their name. So sports gambling is one
area of gambling that's tempting folks. Now, again, as we've talked about here on this podcast,
We could also talk about altcoin purchasing and futures markets and all these kind of things that go with that.
That's another way in which it is gambling.
Stock market.
This is not unique to crypto.
This is true of the regular stock market as well.
There's a ton of gambling that goes on there.
Promises and ways to make money quickly.
Here's another one.
Poly market, the surge in popularity of prediction markets.
Let me share this here.
I retweeted this earlier today.
Positively Clintonian.
Gamblers.
So there was a market that was made around the operation by the United States going into Venezuela to arrest Maduro, the president of Venezuela.
So gamblers, there were people who there was a predictive market about whether or not the United States would do that or go in there and carry out an operation.
And so there were gamblers who, when they saw the operation take place, were thrilled because they had bet that it would.
And then they found this, that gamblers who were trying to collect their payout from Polymarket were left baffled as they learned that the U.S. operation carried out in Venezuela does not meet Polymarket's definition of an invasion.
Oops.
and so what you find out is again you know your definition of invasion might not be somebody else's
definition of an of an invasion so that's another example of you know where you can there can be
lots of money lost um again we could just go through a few different ones here another couple
ones uh again we talked about sports betting some of the the the other examples uh show this step
instead here we go so draft kings which is one of the the sports gambling things that uh sports
gambling companies. In this case, it's kind of like the perfect Robin Hood happening. They had
an error on their site and a couple bettors found out the error. They exploited it and made almost
a million dollars. And then they tried to, DraftKings tried to deny the payout and they ended
up taking this guy to court to try to get it. And the judge ended up siding with the guy who won.
But there have been other examples of this where guys win and they are denied payouts and they have
to go to court to sell all these things. So basically you will lose. And even when you win,
they will try to make you lose. So they're kind of like the insurance companies.
Correct. And so we could talk about that as well. That's the more legitimized forms of scams
would be a lot of what's going on in the insurance industry. Another one that I've become familiar
with in the last few years is sports cards. In addition to just buying cards and then trying to
see where they go, there are something called sports card breaks. And so what these will do,
just to give you an idea, you'll have a break. And so you'll have, you know, let's say it's a
basketball break. There will be, they will divide up the teams and they will say, okay,
you know, how many, how many teams are there? Well, there's 30, there's 30 teams. And so if you,
you can bid on the right to get the cards that come from a certain team in, you know,
they come out of this box. And so it's totally, totally random. You have no idea what you're
going to get or not. And so there are people who spend, I am not exaggerating, tens of thousands
of dollars who've lost tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars doing
these breaks. And so, so again, that, that's another example where this is this article that
I'm, that we're sharing right now is about there's allegations that Fanatics, which is one of these
big sports companies that has really gotten involved with these box breaking. So there's
allegations that they've been rigging these breaks by sending influencers who have channels that do
these breaks, sending them boxes that are juiced with the best cards. And so then that creates the
allure, creates the allure that these, they call them hits, that these good cards are more plentiful
than they are. And so it basically lures people in. They say, oh, look, look how much success he's
having, I want to have success too. And so they end up doing this and then they don't get anything.
And so some of the, basically they say like the average profit margin, uh, from some of these,
these breaks is about, you know, you'll basically get cards that are worth, uh, 20% of what you're,
of what you're getting. Um, and so again, I've, I've done some of these a little bit,
you know, in limited capacity, but again, I've seen and heard stories that these are, I mean,
just the, the craziness that goes on, uh, in some of these things, because these guys are looking
to make money quickly. They're looking to just, you know, try to get wealthy or they're following
the examples that they're seeing in the culture. And so, so again, all of these, I guess here,
we'll do one more. I know we've been talking a lot, but here's, here's one more. This is more
along the lines with the sports gambling. So one of the consequences of it, listen,
all these leagues, we're going to embrace sports gambling. And then recently within the last couple
months, we've had this giant NBA gambling scandal where players were fixing games. Players were
purposely either missing shots at the end of a game in order to help people that they were
affiliated with make money, or there were guys, friends of players who were told by their player
friends that they weren't going to play that night. And so they put bets on the fact that this player
would score under a certain number of points. So this is a giant scandal, hundreds of millions of
dollars at stake. All of these things are gambling. And so all of these things are, you know, not only
do they not honor the Lord, they also are very, very dangerous, are destroying people, as Dave
Ramsey talked about. So again, talked a lot, but I really do feel like this is something that we
could talk about. And so, I mean, maybe we'll start with the current pastor among us.
Matt, how do you think about these things? Have you experienced any of these things with any of
people in your life and how do you think about them? Thanks. Yeah. I said right before we got on,
I've not ever once thought to myself, I want to bet on this sports thing, but that's not because
I'm so righteous really. It's just, I literally don't watch sports. I love martial arts. I don't
watch martial arts sports either. I have, but it's just not, hasn't been my thing. And in my
in my situation in my church, I don't see this as being a problem. It obviously is a major cultural
problem and that makes it interesting. And maybe, I don't know, maybe I even have an outsider view
because I'm so not tempted by this, you know, but, um, I also see it as just straight up foolish.
There's a hundred things I could do that might make my, bring my family or myself more and, uh,
developing a skill or starting a business or taking a nap so I can do better at the things
I'm already supposed to be doing, you know? Um, and I do have a question that's real practical. So
I, these are huge companies, but I don't think every state gambling is legal. And this is
something that you guys are maybe one of you would know better than me, but so is it okay
for people legally wise to bet on these sites all over the United States because the sites are
located in a certain state or? No. So there are, there are certain states where you can,
where there's certain states where, where gambling is illegal. And so you cannot, so let's say,
let's say use an example. So you live in Hawaii, let's say it's illegal there. What you, so you
can't place a bet in, let's say, uh, Massachusetts or something where, where it's, where it's legal.
But what you can do is you can give money to a friend who lives in another state and then you
can do this. They can place a bet for you. And so, again, technically, it's not you doing it.
Now, again, that does create a kind of sticky thing. So let's say gambling was legal in Portland
and Oregon. And so Matt gave Oshawa a thousand bucks. Oshawa places bets for Matt. Oshawa,
let's say wins 10X, so 10,000 bucks. Well, if the bets were placed in Oshawa's name,
now Oshawa has to pay the capital gains that were that were you know gained from those winnings
so it again you you can technically get around it but it does in the event that you do win it
creates you know even I would imagine that you I would imagine people use VPNs or other stuff
like that too to to just do it and see if somebody finds out I mean sure you know I think I think
we're talking I think we're talking about hopeless relatively like on we relatively hopeless people
in a situation where it's like, who cares? You can't take anything from me anyways. And I'm
trying to imagine myself as like 23 years old, you know, sitting here, like, what are you going
to do And it not even worth it your time to come after me You know I don I don think you would be doing this kind of thing unless you have a level of despair maybe about your situation Or I guess it is an addiction
So there's that.
Like maybe this is outsized gains.
And I guess before turning it over, I would just say, because I'm talking generally, because I don't have specific on this.
But generally speaking, the addiction part of it is like, for Christians, the last fruit of the spirit listed is self-control.
And so it's this idea that we shouldn't be mastered by anything, though if you use alcohol, don't be mastered by that.
If you enjoy, you know, extreme sports or anything can be an addiction.
I guess. Yeah, I don't know what I keep coming back to the feeling of like what despair it must be to say I'm going to try to make a big win.
And another thing I think based on everything you said, you're you're a young person.
I feel like I've got a feeling about this or even worse.
I feel like I have an insider knowledge because I've done so much research.
The problem is you aren't the insider.
because, as you mentioned, the real insiders are the people with huge,
people getting juiced boxes, you know, of cards.
The real insiders are the players.
The real insiders maybe are the person placed the bet on Venezuela.
You know what I mean?
And so you might have the feeling of inside because you've done a ton of research,
but you're not actually inside unless you're getting given special information.
And that's another part.
And it connects to so many problems in our country.
When the incentives are so high and the consequences are so low for bad behavior, it's going to happen.
It's going to happen all the time.
I think I could sum it up in two things.
We broke the money and we broke the family.
So when you break the money, it pushes everyone out on the risk curve.
And so you got young people growing up right now.
they're entering the world in the most like depressing state like it's the most unaffordable
time to buy a house in history everything's just extremely expensive inflation super high
it's really really hard for young people to get assets outside of bitcoin um and kind of
get into the game for whatever you know for lack of a better word um and so that like that's always
push people out on the risk curve. It's like, I mean, you can look up, you can look it up.
Young people are just, a lot of this gambling is being fueled by the fact that like at a certain
point when they can't see themselves ever being able to afford something like a house,
they're just like, screw it. Well, then fine. I'll gamble it and maybe I will, you know,
maybe I'll overcome the odds. Exactly. And then, and you couple that with the broken family,
perfect disaster.
Like I think about my own boys,
my own boys don't gamble.
And it's like, why don't they gamble?
It's not because their sinful flesh
doesn't have a propensity to gamble.
I think all men deep down
left to ourselves are gamblers, you know?
And that's something that should,
by God's grace, get worked out of us.
But a lot of times that comes from a dad
who's like, hey, yo,
let's talk about that. Like, what is this? Like, is that the best use of your money? Of course it's
not. Yeah. Let's, let's go do these, any of the, like Matt said, let's go, let's go start a
business. You have money burning a hole in your pocket. Let's go, uh, put it to work. Let's go
invest in something. Uh, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I, I, here's, here's what I, here's
what I want to do. Cause I'm sure there's people who are listening to this, who are thinking,
hey listen what is the difference between doing some of these things like whether it's you know
what's the difference between gambling and investing like what is the difference right
because like I mean you can invest in a certain stock and have you know good reason for doing so
and then you can be totally wrong and you the stock can go sideways and you know it can it can
be bad so like what do I would love to talk through because I do think there is a difference
but like what what are some of the differences how would you respond to someone who who tried to
relativize those two things. Yeah. So I think on the surf, go ahead, Ash.
I think, I mean, there's different perspectives on investing in general and you, you, you have this
like value investing idea that you, like the Warren Buffett that he buys dollar bills for 80
cents, you know, some valuation and you, you try to, uh, play on the inefficiencies in the market.
So you may have information, you may have a thesis about the future of a particular company and or an asset or a commodity or whatever.
And so you're going to allocate resources to that based on your vision of the future.
Right. So businesses are are valued based on future cash flow.
Well, no one knows the future, but we're all seeking to try to guess at it.
And so I think it's a deep question to ask,
what is the difference between investing and gambling or speculating?
So that was like Bonson's recent video on why his investment firm,
which focuses on high dividend paying stocks and stock picking solid companies.
And he was arguing for why they will not invest in Bitcoin
and why he views it as a speculative asset for traders.
and we've had this discussion and debates
on some of the Christian Bitcoiner channels
about guys that are into altcoins
and that are traders
and they spend a certain amount of time researching
hey, I think this next trade is going to do well
and I'm going to work on timing it
and being in and out
and I think we need to not be dogmatic
about saying hey, this is the line
if you do this, now you're gambling
I think the line exists
And I think there's motive and heart issues
And even we'd want to lay even like a theological groundwork
Of sowing and reaping and work, right?
So God established work
In the book of Genesis, it's good
But then it's cursed
So there's thorns in our work
We work to be fruitful and multiply
To subdue the earth, to fill it
To provide for our families
To provide for our own needs
Ephesians says, let the thief stop stealing
but work so he has something to give. So we work so we can be generous. And that's foundational.
And the question is, are we trying to bypass sowing and reaping? Are we trying to
live life without the curse? So the curse is a part of the reality. Book of Ecclesiastes,
this is our experience. Is there some get rich quick way where it's like, as a promise,
there's no curse. Here's a job like those YouTube ads, right? Where it's just easy,
passive income. It's promising fruit without having to tend your fig tree.
And I think for Christians, the tending is where we're sanctified. We don't want fruit without
tending. We don't want reaping without sowing. And so I think you understand that. I will say,
Unless God wants to do that.
Because there is such thing as fortune.
So the guy who finds the pearl in the field, right?
But he's not looking.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Yeah.
He's not out there running around trying to find free pearls.
He just happens across it because the Lord gives it to him.
But he doesn't tell anyone.
Correct.
Yes.
But the other clarification.
He doesn't believe he deserves that.
So that's also that.
Yes.
He's not trying to systematize this luck that he's getting.
Okay.
The other thing.
the one thing I would want to clarify, because again, there's a sense in which I'm sure for some
people, you know, we could think that the difference between investing and gambling
is basically like pornography. You know, how do you know what pornography, what is or isn't
pornography? And, you know, there's the common saying of, you know it when you see it, right?
You know the difference. But I think you can define the difference between gambling and
investment. And at least you can draw these kinds of distinctions, right? So in the case of those
sports card breaks, you're paying for the possibility of winning something. So when you
pay, you know, if you pay and then you don't win, you don't end up with anything. You totally lose.
You don't even have, you don't end up with anything. There's no actual exchange at the
end of the day. There's just nothing. Whereas if you buy a stock, okay, that stock might,
might, you know, not perform the way that you want to. And it's possible that the stock could
go to zero or something, the company could get, you know, could go down a lot and the company get
bought out, but you still maintain those shares that you have. So there still is, it still is a
transaction that took place in which you have something that's scarce, something that, you know,
is, is real and, you know, invaluable. Um, that's, that's contrasted with something like the,
the sports card score, excuse me, the sports card breaks or some of those kinds of things,
or like a lottery ticket, uh, you know, a lottery ticket, if you don't win, you've exchanged,
your money for a piece of paper that is serves no has no value beyond uh you know beyond the the
event that the that the lottery takes place and so um so but yeah and i can i say something on that
yeah go for it so i think that i want to try to take it even to a more foundational level
and to the person sitting in front of the screen if you were to take a picture of a person
betting on sports or a person investing, it looks the same. To me, the big difference is this.
Even when we understand this at a micro level, so let's say at a micro level, us four say,
hey, we can really get along on this podcast. Let's buy an apartment complex and we're going
to start an LLC and we're going to buy this 60 unit, I guess maybe be a six unit, but anyway,
whatever, we're going to buy it. We're going to buy a apartment complex and split the whatever
winnings. Uh, we're going to split the earning. Right. And we understand that we're investing in
something. And let's say for the sake of argument, we don't go out there with hammers. We're just the
investors. Right. Um, and it succeeds and we get our money or it fails. And we say, well, we tried,
you know what I mean? We, uh, everyone out there understands that was not the same as betting
because it's only four people.
Now, when I go, I don't have any stocks actually,
but maybe I will someday.
But let's say I invest in Tesla,
huge, massive company like breaking science
and testing the limits of AI and everything else.
Now, I have the feeling when I put the money down,
I'm hoping that brings a return to my family.
But what is actually really going on under the surface,
I'm participating in Tesla.
That's the whole idea.
I'm becoming a partner in Tesla.
And you're breathing life into Tesla.
Yeah, not only because I think it's going to bring me more money,
but I'm bringing them more money to invest in AI and all the other things.
And hopefully as a Christian and everybody,
hopefully I also believe in the mission at least at some level, right?
And I wouldn't say, oh, I think a porn site is going to bring me a return.
So I'll just do it.
It'll be good for my family.
And don't worry, I'll use the money to further the kingdom of God.
I wouldn't do that because my investment is furthering their mission, which is to destroy
people, you know?
So my attempt in this little spiel is to say at a very foundational level, even if you lose
or win, it isn't actually losing or winning.
It's investing into something which you hope that will succeed, but it's actually doing
a service or a product unless you are, you know.
And then, and Ash mentioned, there's a lot of, there's a line, right? And I think Polymarket
is one of the most interesting places to explore the line, but there's a line, but it's, it's not
that easy to nail because you got, you got the stock market. Let's just say philosophically,
it's a hundred percent legitimate, but there's also, unfortunately, a lot of insider trading
and government control and not necessarily control, but schemes and stuff like that.
And as we saw devil in the details of the definitions, like there's those games being played too.
Well, but that's even more interesting because that's not even in the stock market.
That's like on the site.
So you have to decide who says whether you won or not.
Who's the ref?
Now, we just discovered in the Venezuela thing, the ref doesn't always agree with what somebody might think.
So I don't want to keep going on.
I just want to say at a real foundational level, it is actually participation in a partnership,
even though it might be millions and millions of people,
it doesn't feel like a partnership,
but that's the philosophy behind it.
Yeah, I'll share this too, what we're doing here.
This is kind of getting at what you're talking about, right?
So the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5.11 says,
have nothing to do with the fruitless
or the unfruitful works of darkness,
but rather expose them.
And so this is the difference between a lot of,
between investing in a company,
we gotta say as long as it's a company
that's doing good things.
So like Tesla's creating cars that are conceivably good and for humanity and all this kind of stuff.
So then this is a fruitful work.
Okay.
You're, you're wanting, like you're investing in a company that's creating actual beneficial, you know, things of value, things that are helping humanity, things that are loving to, to your, towards your neighbors.
Um, and, and so that's money investing to, to lend them life versus something like, you know, these, these sports gambling companies.
Again, you can think about it like this. Do I want to lend life to these companies?
And in many cases, you know, the answer should be no.
Like, I don't, I don't.
Well, and I know there's a question in the chat. I just want to say one quick thing.
I just preached this Sunday on Luke 17, which says,
Temptations to sin are sure to come. Woe to the one through whom they come.
Yep.
It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea,
than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.
And we can come back to that because that covers this whole thing.
But when it comes to the state lotteries, people call that a stupid tax.
And it is.
It's a stupid tax.
It's a poverty tax.
And when Jesus, one of the ones I had to study, I said,
what does he mean by little ones?
And I think looking back on Jesus' whole thing,
all his teachings in that setting, he's saying that the poor,
the crippled, the lame, the young, all the vulnerable people of the culture are the little
ones. It's not just children who are physically smaller. And so when you target the little ones,
Jesus says you're better off dead. Yeah, this is, I mean, the scripture,
again, one example of this, another, I can't find how many there are, but I did a study
recently, a couple months ago, about the passages that talk about lying in wait.
So basically, you know, like somebody, like a thief who lies in wait. So you're setting a trap,
you're waiting for an innocent person to come into a situation so that you can take advantage
of them, right? And so you have the information asymmetry, you have the, you know, power asymmetry,
whatever it is. And so that's, there's a very real sense in which that is what's going on
in these situations.
There asymmetries of information asymmetries of power Again a lot of the algorithms are leveraged against you There even something like we can talk about this isn one with stock trading
but something like Robinhood blurs this line as well because Robinhood makes money by selling
their customers' information to these larger companies that can execute trades faster than
their customers can. And so they're counter-trading a lot of their customers and shutting down in the
case of uh what's the uh what's the there was a look on that game yeah game game stock or game
boys no flash boys flash flash but that's right what's but is it is it game stop uh that was one
of the ways like so they they just shut down trading you know again they thought okay great
you know we're gonna do this thing but they didn't realize that they could get their trading trade
shut down the shamelessness which which is which is really which is really a sorry situation because
based on my reading of that situation, the GameStop thing was the country saying, you guys suck.
So, so it was in, in a certain sense, it was in, it was a financial, um, what's the word I'm looking
for? It was a financial, uh, what's it, when you get in the street, you protest. They were
financially protesting and saying, we hate you. We hate everything you stand for. We're going to go
and buy GameStop. And you have, I think in their shoes, the righteous thing to do is to take the
licking, you know, because it's like the people said, we don't like you. And then you just said,
we're shutting it down. Well, we didn't even, no one even thought there was central control going
to do something like that. Yep. So we, we do have a, uh, one dull geek. Uh, I'm not accusing him of
being that that's how he's identifying himself. Uh, he has in the chat on YouTube. Uh, he says,
so again, he's trying to flesh out this thinking and, you know, testing these things. So he says,
so do people who pay an entry fee into a golf, so do people who pay an entry, is it gambling?
Let's put it back up there. Is it gambling when someone enters into a golf tournament?
Some make the cut and get paid and others miss the cut and come away with nothing. Is that gambling?
How would you guys answer that question? So I think the question of, is there skill involved?
That might be one solution. So someone is participating in the effort, right? So they're
entering in a tournament, if they play well, and there's obviously luck involved in the game and
skill, they get, they benefit from their effort. And then you might have a, you have someone who's
watching the game who is not paying an entry fee, but may bet on their favorite player.
And there may not be skill involved per se, but maybe information. Maybe they've done the research
and they're like, oh yeah, this is the best player on the course.
He has the best chance of winning.
I'm going to put my money there.
And so I think the question of whether or not you have effort and involvement,
I don't feel like that answers the question
because you could be addicted to participating in either the playing of the sport
or the betting on other people playing the sport.
and and so i would want us to make a i would say ask some heart questions um and and so this other
he continues to ask about poker so there's this old documentary called holy rollers where it's a
group of christian uh card counters that go and they have investors money who give them money
They take that cash to the casino.
They play blackjack.
They count cards.
They win more often than they lose.
And then they return money to investors and take a cut for themselves.
And I literally know a guy who funded his church plant doing this.
And so, yes, that involves skill.
And you know what?
You're not breaking the rules of blackjack necessarily.
They might say, hey, no card counting at our table, but hey, I mean, who are you?
Maybe you're like Robin Hood and you're stealing from the rich and giving to the poor and supporting church planting.
So maybe you justify it.
But all that to say, I don't think you can have externalities that say this is the line you can't cross.
I think it really is about fruit of the spirit or fruit of the flesh.
And what comes of this?
Are you, is it leading to fruit of the spirit in your life?
Are you taking advantage of the poor?
Are you stealing from others?
Are you like, can you stop?
So I would want to ask individual like pastoral questions
as opposed to being like,
here's our list of the 10 commandments of thou shalt not gamble.
And this is where the line is.
Yeah, I think another thing that kind of like the whole,
is is the activity zero sum like i think the golf tournament question it tends to be zero sum right
so you might be the best golfer uh it is a little bit of gambling and if you win everyone else loses
so it's like in that sense is it super helpful um like i don't know like i think there's a lot of
I don't think gambling is good.
And I think there's a lot of like,
like quote unquote,
innocent ways we gamble.
Like,
so I grew up,
my main outlet of gambling,
probably my whole life has been bingo at the fair.
I would go to the,
our County fair and sit and play bingo.
Like did I,
I'd spend like most of my time just sitting there drinking soda,
gambling before I could gamble.
Right.
Cause that's what it was.
Of course, it was like a fundraiser for the cheerleaders at the local high school and the cheerleaders are going around and stuff like that.
But at the end of the day, it's like the slippery slope, right?
Yeah.
I mean, what's the baby step to get people into actual adult gambling?
It's like it's all the little forms of gambling, which is, you know.
Correct.
Like buying baseball cards when you're five and then bingo, you know, in your teens and next thing you know.
Anyway, so it's.
Yeah, I think that's the more interesting, right?
Because like you could, I mean, so let's talk about golf, right?
Or let's talk about poker, okay?
In both of these cases, many of the best poker players, they have sponsors.
so they're making money by virtue of the fact that these companies want their products to be seen
and so they'll wear a hat with a logo on it so it's not in those case in the case of those guys
it's not zero-sum because they're getting paid regardless by the sponsors the sponsors content
regardless because they're making money you know or they're getting their products seen so like
at the highest levels, there's more like marketing, like marketing is like, is gambling to an extent,
right? If in that kind of a thing. Um, so again, I, I'm not saying that there's, I do think this
is something that's worth thinking about. I think that just because we're kind of what we're, uh,
what one dog geek, uh, who I would imagine is not, is not a dog geek. If he's listening to this
podcast, surely he can't be that. Um, but I think it's one of these things where I like the instinct
And I think we ought to have the instinct and be willing to say, all right, even if there's something that is totally normalized within our culture, are we willing to question it? Are we willing to push on it and see if it actually is legitimate or if it's not?
But while still giving grace to others who, you know, maybe aren't convinced or haven't thought through these things to that degree, I still think these are conversations that are very valuable and worth having.
Because, again, at the end of the day, it's like what type of world is being created by, you know, what kind of world is being incentivized by a world that lionizes this type of behavior?
um and something else to think about uh the making of the bed that we're now lying in
our entire culture encourages kids to gamble their childhoods away at the lottery chance of
becoming a professional athlete that makes millions of dollars yep it is literally probably
the worst form of gambling that exists.
I would say it's worse than, like Dave Ramsey,
you're wrong in the sense of it didn't start
with DraftKings or FanDuel.
It started with youth sports.
And if you go down that rabbit hole,
we're not talking about some kids wasting
a couple hundred dollars.
They're wasting 15 years of their life.
And all of a sudden they wake up and they're a nobody
when it comes in the athletic world.
They're never going to become a pro athlete.
Their knees are already destroyed.
Their knees are destroyed by the time they're 19.
Yep.
I mean, and it's sad because it's literally, it's all for the hope.
It's the chance.
They're going to the camps.
They're blowing all their, they're blowing their inheritance.
Their parents are in on it.
Look, I love sports more than most people growing up.
But at the end of the day, that's the brutal truth.
And it's, it'd be, it'd be 10 times more productive if kids spent that time actually preparing for life, actually learning skills.
I think our, our gam, the gambling nature in our, in our culture, it runs really deep.
And yeah, I mean, I think we could talk for a long time about when did it start?
Uh, you know, what were the, um, yeah.
And again, I would at least throw out one of the biggest contributors is when you completely break the money and you make the future murky and cloudy when it comes to flourishing.
It causes even parents to be like, well, you know, to dream up ways to have their kids somehow make it lucky or make it big.
And it's like, eh.
Again, that's a deep rot.
Yeah.
And then, I mean, here's Wendell Geek is joking about me saying he can't be a dull geek if he's listening to our podcast.
Are you sure I would think that listening to this podcast and debating the minutia?
No, that's not what geeks do.
That's what philosophers do.
So welcome.
You're a philosopher.
But I do think, again, one other way that we could push into this would be, okay, so even if, let's say, I mean, one example would be Coca-Cola.
I saw an article recently that Coca-Cola has been in the tank.
Like they're actually, they haven't performed as well this year because people are drinking less soda.
And part of the reason they're drinking less soda is because thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., you can no longer use, what's it called, something, whatever the snap benefits.
You can't use like the snap benefits for Coke, for soda now, whereas for years you've been able to do that.
And so let's just say, again, let's say Coke is a totally legitimate company, right?
Like they're selling sugar water to poor people largely.
but like they're actually selling a product.
It's a legitimate transaction.
People are buying it.
Again, the fact that you can,
the fact that there is the legitimate transaction
and the fact that you can make money off of it,
that there's more of a,
there's, you know, this isn't just gambling,
but still, you still have to answer the question of,
am I actually, I am breathing life into a company
that is selling products
that's drawing its life from somewhere.
And so where is it drawing its life from,
from selling sugar water to people.
And isn't Berkshire Hathaway,
like that's all the kind of companies they have?
Correct.
Insurance companies, soda companies.
Now, again, in a potentially related bit of news,
Warren Buffett just retired.
He just retired the other day.
So, you know, maybe-
I'll give you, you know, I'll tell you something.
In my personal opinion,
I would have my conscience awakened much more
by investing all in addictive things like Coca-Cola
than I would playing a game of poker,
which I don't have any desire to personally,
but I'm saying if you play a game of poker between friends
and you're not taking advantage of the little ones
or like your description, Ryan, of doing bingo or whatever
and it's supporting the school,
I see that as so innocent in comparison.
Again, for me, I know those are legitimate companies.
I would just say, I just don't want to.
You know what I mean?
I would invest in something else because it just wouldn't feel good for me.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And I wonder too.
It goes up and more, you know, you celebrate with everyone else getting diabetes.
You know, yeah, exactly.
And especially if that's all you invest in, right?
It's like that's all things that you know are going to do okay because people are addicts.
You know what I mean?
That's not a great moral standing, even though it might be legal, you know?
I know the podcast won't last forever, so we only cover so many topics, but one of the things we talked about before was like, I think Ashi brought up was like labor and making products and services and stuff like that and how the Bible encourages us to that.
And it just stuck in my head.
Like, I don't think that there's anything wrong for Christians either in seeking an advantage.
You know what I mean?
Like if you know that such and such is going on before other people know or 1% and Bitcoin's one of those things.
I don't think it's more.
It's a speculative asset.
But if you knew ahead of time, you could say, wow, this is like the gold rush.
I get to California before everybody else and I'm able to find a silver mine in a gold mine.
And I always remember listening to Mark Twain's story of himself doing this because he lost a silver mine.
He got a silver mine.
He didn't turn the paperwork in on time.
it turned out to be worth like 10 million dollars uh it's just like a classic story but anyway um
you know when you do that you're taking a lot of danger too you get into bitcoin early you don't
really know if you're doing it for that sake you don't really know but you're also doing it for the
mission so you know you go out to the wild west and there are literally murderers at every table
you go eat at i mean he's talking about the the murderer like bad bill or something taking being
like, oh, there's only one more pot left in the coffee pot. You can go ahead and take it.
He said, Mark Twain, he's like, I'm not sure if that was, he was trying to give me an excuse to
kill me. You know what I mean? And if you kill somebody, you get out in like four months,
you know what I mean? So it's like, I'm just using these as parallels. I don't think it's
wrong for Christians to seek, to take that special information and take a risk and try to get
outsized returns. But it really depends on if you're taking advantage of somebody, you know?
Yeah. I'll give you, I'll give you an example of this. It's like trying to, of trying to walk this,
trying to walk this line. Right. So again, so there's, there's a difference. So one of the
things I've, I've invested in some sports cards at different points of my life. So like, I think
four years ago, I had a buddy who's just been in, been in sports cards, not, he doesn't do
like the things that try to make money quickly. He just, what he does is he goes like a sports
card store and buys, you know, buys little cards for like two or three bucks and then flips them
for four or five. So he's, he's constantly trying to make like, again, if you think about that,
that's, you know, it's stuck in 30, 40% returns. But in many cases, he's just content to make a
couple dollars on each sale. And he's done this for a year. Like I'm talking decades. And so he
was just kind of talking to me about what he was doing and we were living in Uruguay. And so I just
I was like, what is the information asymmetry
that I have given where I am?
You know, like you had Moses who's in the desert
and what, you know, God says, what is that in your hand?
And Moses has a staff.
And so then God uses this thing that's in his hand.
So I just started to think like,
what is the information asymmetry that I have
by virtue of being in Uruguay?
And I was just thinking, well, potentially,
Uruguay is obsessed with soccer So like maybe I can find out the newest soccer players you know like these guys when they young I can you know find and I can buy their cards while they young
And then when they transfer to Europe or something like that, I can make some money off that.
And so I ended up in a place where I invent, there was one guy, I ended up buying some of
his cards, bought them for cheaper.
And the cards ended up, long story short, the cards, I ended up selling them, or I got
the point where I could sell them for about four times what I paid for them. But as I was sitting
there looking to sell them, I was looking and there were, there were rumors that the guy was
going to transfer to one of the biggest, biggest sports teams in the world. And so I knew that when
it like, when, and if he did that, those cards were going to like Trump, triple, quadruple,
whatever in value. But I also knew that I had, I had already gotten a good return off of them.
And as I thought about it, I was like, I don't want to, like if I wait and then sell these cards to somebody at the absolute peak of the market where there's pretty much no chance of them going any higher, like I don't want to put myself in a situation where I've benefited and put somebody else in like a losing situation.
And so I chose to knowingly sell those cards at a 4x profit, knowing that unless the guy like tore his ACL or got in a car accident and died or something crazy, that the cards value were going to go up significantly in the next like month or two.
So I ended up selling them for a 4x return. And within a month, the guy transferred in the cards all 3, 4x from even where I was at.
And so even though I'm looking at it and I was like, oh man, Lord, it would have been great.
I still was, I was like, I have a totally clear conscience.
And I was able to serve my neighbor who bought these cards and put him in a better situation than I was in.
And so again, we're not, every situation is not going to be like this.
But I do think that this is a Christian way of thinking.
Like this is a Christian way to think about these things is we don't want to, unless it's wickedness.
And then we do, we have the scriptural warrant to like, to rug, but like, we, we don't want to just quote unquote win or get wealthy at the expense of, you know, like at the expense of doing right by other people.
Or, you know, this is not how could, we don't try to maximize profit.
The scriptures talk about this.
One example is where the Lord tells, he told the people, the people of Israel when they were in the land, not to, he told them to leave the corners of their fields.
Right.
he said you know when like leave leave the corners of the fields for the poor don't absolutely
maximize every ounce of profit that you possibly can don't do it you know because like the lord
why because the lord took care of you when you were in egypt you know he didn't you know he
basically helped you when you were poor when you had nothing and so again these are these are
foreign ways of thinking in in a you know god-forsaken world in a world where you know
everyone you know where the love of many is growing cold to quote another scripture
Um, and so that's, I, I've just been thinking about that the last few days is, you know, when,
when money, when money is, um, you know, when money is not sound, when money is soft, then the,
the love of many grows cold. Like that's what it is. Like you, it's, it's, it's a hard world to live
in. Uh, when people are just looking, there's constantly more and more opportunities to screw
over people around you. So Proverbs 13, 11 in the new living translation says wealth from get rich
quick schemes quickly disappears. Wealth from hard work grows over time. And I think that's a,
that's a helpful, um, maybe metric or measuring line for, for the, the things that we're doing
is, is this a get rich quick scheme?
Am I trying to bypass work and how God has made the world?
And what happens, and you hear all the stories
about people that won the lottery
and then their life is like exponentially worse
because of it and they wish they had never won it.
It's because we're designed,
wealth from hard work grows over time.
The hard work sanctifies us
so that now we're good stewards, right?
So he can entrust to us more
because we've been faithful with little.
That's kind of just how God works the world
and how he works our hearts.
We're stewards.
And so if we inherit a lot,
whether it's from parents or from a lottery
or for some big win,
and we haven't built the character first,
it'll actually do us more harm than good.
But if we build the character through the hard work,
then we can be rich and wealthy
and it's a blessing to ourself
and others. I worked for Drywall once with a Romanian guy who was just a machine.
And he was a Christian too. And he said, if you get tired, just let me know. I'm just going to
keep going. You know what I mean? But he also said partway through, he looks around and we're
sweating. I don't know if you've ever done drywall work, it is hard work. And he says,
when you work so hard, it makes you think twice about spending your money, doesn't it?
You know, and, you know, it's true though, as you, hopefully as you mature as a man and a provider,
you go ideally, if God wills, and if you're, it's possible, you go from just hourly work,
hopefully to being able to manage things, to maybe being able to even manage money or be
investing in other things. And that's a good progression if it's possible. And we should
maybe aspire to that. But yeah, if you have that foundational work of I've worked and I could say
for myself, I worked so hard in my business that the next stage was death. You know what I mean?
Like we're working till like six in the morning because we're going to open at six and I'm fixing
things until literally six in the morning and zero sleep. And this is, you know, and so I don't
think, I think it's good to have that. And maybe some people can come at it by conviction without
going through that process, I think. But yeah, if you, it can be a curse. And I do think,
you know, we, I do think it would, it'd be, it's a good aspiration to get to where we can
be providing for others as not only our family, but managing others. And what you said hit me,
because I've been managing a cafe for 13 years. I shut it down about a year ago. And in my mind,
And I'm just like, I don't ever want to manage like 20 people at a time in for the rest of my life, you know, but I've been I've been a little bit convicted lately.
How much Jesus talks about he's trying to develop us into being good managers.
Yep. And I literally told my wife about two weeks ago, I said, I was praying, babe.
And I'm like, I think I think I'm going to have to not give up on managing, you know, because I am 10 times the manager or 20 times the manager that I was when I began that journey.
And God actually wants us to be a wise steward in his field and in some strange way to manage things in eternity. And so I feel like I've come to a conviction personally recently that I can't give up on that people management. I just need to get better at it and be wiser.
It is one of those things where, you know, again, if you thought about, you know, if you invest in somebody, I mean, if you have like a trade, right, and you invest in somebody as an electrician or something like that, you, I mean, there's people where, there's businesses where they will, they'll hire you and do on the job training with you.
So you're taking a risk, you're making an investment in somebody in a way that they're not able to immediately pay you back for that.
They're not able to pay dividends on the training that you're giving them.
That requires a faith-born investment in some part.
And so it does make sense that that is done with a view towards being able to enjoy some of the return in the long haul.
And so thinking about God as an investor, I think is a very, it's a fruitful metaphor. It's a fruitful thing to think about. Because again, yeah, God has, God invests in all of us life. He invests all of us with skills and abilities, and he wants a return on those things.
And so, you know, to your point to just basically turn around and say, I don't want to do this anymore.
You know, you're it's like that's that's not the attitude that a servant or that a slave has.
And if Christ is is our Lord, then that that's an attitude that's incompatible, you know, with what it means to to, you know, to be a Christian and, you know, for the Lord to be your Lord.
Now, I will say, again, a lot of us, I mean, we could I'm sure I think all of us here have have altcoin stories.
We have examples. I mean, there's, you know, like I've, I've delved into all these worlds. And so
there's, there's things where, you know, for a lot of the same reasons that many of us who get
into altcoins at some point, like we are, we are very anti. Ryan has some great NFT stories.
Correct. Yep. Yep. And so again, all of these things, like we, we have, we can all get into
these things. The point of talking about these things, it is not at all to say, how dare you
other people, it's like, Hey, how dare us? Like we've, we've fallen into some of these things.
You know, we've, we've lost money. We've been poor stewards and, and, you know, we were learning
from them. And so again, this, the goal is just to, is to think the goal of this podcast and the
goal of talking about them is just to help us both for our sake, for the glory of God and for,
you know, generations of people coming after us. And so I think that it's again, profitable
and helpful just to think through this. And, and also again, Matt, to some of your point,
to be prepared and to kind of bring this full circle, be prepared to help the, the hundreds
and thousands of men who are just walking day by day, headfirst into this wood chipper.
And, you know, who, who are, are, you know, are losing more money than they have and putting
themselves and their families and all kinds of stuff into super, you know, dangerous situations.
So, again, we've been going for, go ahead.
I was going to say, I feel like I said this maybe six months ago or something, but to repeat it and expand, I think that maybe a message to Bitcoiners, right?
Specifically Bitcoiners.
I have a sense, and you guys can reflect on it with me, that there's a lot of like, when is it going to moon?
You know what I mean?
I'm waiting for it to moon.
And when it moons, I'll finally make it, right?
And we all feel that.
I hope I'm unreasonably put myself in the, at the mercy of Bitcoin, but it's for the revolution too.
And, but here's the thing, here's my message is we need to keep, we Bitcoiners, we need to keep our
eyes, especially Christians, like you have a future of service and making things and building things
and helping people and managing people and not just waiting for Bitcoin to moon. You know what
I mean? And, and, and I don't know if you guys get the same sense, but I just, I feel like there's,
I hope that on we and that sort of despair is not infecting also the Bitcoin community too much in terms of like, go make something, go help somebody.
You know what I mean?
Go, if you have nothing going on, go buy a pressure washer for 50 bucks used on marketplace and just walk down the street and say, can I pressure wash your driveway?
You know what I mean?
Like do something because I think that sometimes we can, and maybe all of us are tempted by this, like, wow, it could be worth this much money later.
and I wouldn't have to worry.
You still have a future in using your gifts in some way.
And the management kind of thing I did
as managing a cafe with restaurant work,
extremely difficult.
Everybody would say so.
I don't think we're all called to do
exactly the same kind of management.
But when I look at Jesus's parables,
it's like, man, it is strong in there.
You are supposed to be growing,
to be more like Christ in governing, managing, his stewarding his things. And I think you can't get,
the people can't be out of that equation. You know what I mean? And your point about
the heart behind the gleaning, you know, I think I'll apply it to what you said, Jordan.
Not everybody has literally trees or plants that you can say, go ahead and pick from. I actually do.
So I have people steal my fruit and I literally pull up and there's a truck with people stealing my avocados.
And I say, hey, if you guys want to take a few and for a bag for your family, go ahead.
But just don't just don't fill it up and sell it to people, which they'll steal my avocados and try to sell it to me.
But anyway, but it might but it might be like you said, you're an electrician and you take on somebody who it's like, eh, maybe not going to bring a return.
And that's maybe a form of even gleaning and saying this person is going to walk away with skills and I may not walk away with anything helpful to me materially.
I know that's a little off topic from the main topic, but I hope Bitcoiners are like staying on track with like learning skills, building things, serving your fellow man.
Yeah, I think we've touched on a lot of the negatives, you know, concerning gambling.
But I think, yeah, probably the bigger issue is I think there's a lot of people, and I would say I would include myself in this.
We didn't grow up with a very strong theology of work, and we didn't view work as worship.
It was just a separate compartment of life that is just something you had to do to make money.
and um but work work is worship and when you think about it like that and we're stewards of
the time that god's given us uh it changes how you think about work and when we if you have a
fear of god and know that one day you're going to get an account for how you spent your time and how
you worked and what you did when you can choose 10 one of 10 million different things you know or
ways to make money, it kind of just puts it in a different light. Like, well, Lord, I hope I was
faithful, you know, in this form of gambling. I mean, there's a lot of other ways that you can be
a blessing to people and make money and add value. And it's not zero sum. Like, your neighbor wins.
Like, it just, that's where it's just like, make your work be worship and then go do anything you
want, you know, and God will reward you in heaven and you'll sleep better at night if you choose
well, and you'll be a blessing to your community. And anyways, I just, it would be beneficial to us
all to spend more time just thinking about our work in that light, in my opinion.
Amen. We've been going for about an hour and four minutes. Grateful for you guys.
As we mentioned, if you want to pick up some of your TGFB books, pre-orders, you can go over to
tgfb.com or as it's store.tgfb.com. If you want to get your tickets, go to tgfb.com slash conference.
We sold a number of tickets this past week. Run over there and grab yours. Again, reach out if you
have a pastor or a ministry leader that wants to come and we will do discounted tickets for them.
We are grateful for you guys. Ash, Ryan, Matt, thankful for your friendship and for your
participation on this topic. We'll be back later this week for another episode of the
Thank you for the Bitcoin podcast.