And we are live.
My name is Jordan Bush.
I'm the executive director of TGFB Media, and we just want to welcome you to episode
65 of the TGFB podcast.
This is going to be a little bit different speed than what we normally do.
Basically, I was squirreling around the Twitter webs today.
I was looking around and happened to come across this.
Let's see here.
happened to come across this little, I guess it was on Canon Plus, canon.com, canonpress.com,
came across this little basically announcement of this book that they're just getting ready to
publish called Don't Invest in Your Enemies. It's actually called Biblically Responsible Investing.
It's by this guy right here. His name is Robert Netsley. He wrote a book called Biblically
responsible investing on Wall Street as it is in heaven. Ooh, as somebody who has written a couple
books and enjoys marketing and coming up with names for stuff, it's a great name, very catchy.
Mr. Netsley apparently has a lot of credentials, been talked about in a bunch of these places.
And this book is fascinating, very interesting, right up our alley. If you are a Christian and
somebody who's into Bitcoin for the reasons that a lot of us are. It's, again, much bigger than
just making money. You're looking at this from the standpoint of ethical investing and just a
lot of the looking at a lot of the downstream consequences of the decisions that we make every
day. And so this book is right up our alley, super interested in it. And it's an interesting
topic. I'd love to get Mr. Netsley on the podcast at some point. And I think it's possible to do
that. So here's kind of the back of the book summary here. If you ask Christian entrepreneurs
to invest in a new abortion clinic in town, all the faithful ones would say absolutely not,
right? This is pretty non-negotiable. This is very controversial if you're not a Christian,
but if you're a Christian, this probably isn't too controversial to you.
At the same time, something similar is happening. Christians invest in many investment funds.
For example, the Vanguard S&P 500 is one of the most popular funds, and it grows
with the sale of abortion services.
This is just one of the realities.
A lot of these S&P 500, a lot of these summary products,
they include things that Christians would not be excited about.
This book inspires Christians everywhere to stop investing in God's enemies
and shift their wealth towards investments that build God's kingdom on Wall Street as it is in heaven.
BlackRock, this stat is incredible.
I have never seen this before, but I was, if this is true,
this is, I mean, it doesn't surprise me on one hand, but it still is insane.
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager and secular investment firm, boasts of a $3 to $4 trillion fund.
According to Pew Research, there's $22.4 trillion walking around in Christian church members' pockets in America.
Christians could collectively buy Amazon, Google, and Apple four times over.
for those of you who are wondering at home. Yes, you could buy the entire Bitcoin network,
all of the Bitcoin that are available for a pretty good check of change. I think that would be
enough. We could still swing that with $22.4 trillion. The time is now for Christians to
invest the hell out of their money. That's very clever. Again, so this book, super fascinating.
If you're, you know, I would recommend, you know, go give a couple of shekels here, $22, 18,772 sats for those who are interested.
You can go pick this book up either on the Canopress website or on Amazon.
I'm going to be doing that.
Here's a little, if you're looking for just a summary of what this looks like beyond what he just said, I want to share this here.
We found this on Twitter as well via their Twitter account.
So let's see here.
How much money is okay for a Christian?
to make from the sale of pornography.
How much money is okay for a Christian
to make from the sale of an abortion drug?
Look, Laura, all the money I made for you
in abortion drugs and pornography.
Aren't you so happy?
I could not envision that conversation going well.
Carver 16.8 says better is a little with righteousness
than great revenues with injustice.
Apparently, there is a category,
biblically speaking, for unjust gain.
So there's voting with their feet,
They're voting with their feet.
But you're talking about voting with your money.
Let's pause this right there.
There's been a lot of things that, you know, a lot of good stuff here.
I think this is something where a lot of us recognize that there's ethical concerns in what we do with our money, right?
There's ethical concerns if I go and use money to purchase time with a prostitute.
Or if I were to go buy a nuclear bomb with the intent to drop it on innocent people.
We all recognize that there's ethical concerns about what we do with our money.
There's far less thought put into something like the ethics of investing.
And again, this reality that he talked about where if you're investing in the S&P 500,
you're effectively giving money to companies and corporations that for a host of reasons,
you could find that maybe Christians wouldn't want to be involved in and wouldn't want to be giving money to.
Now, why is that?
Because when you're investing money in something, whether you're purchasing a product or you are actually investing, looking to get a return, effectively what you're doing is you're breathing life into this company.
You're breathing life into this.
It could be a person.
It could be whatever it is.
And basically, you're extending its lifespan effectively.
Now, at the same time, I want to be the first to acknowledge nobody is perfectly consistent in this.
all of us at some point or another have given money or invested in a company or invested in
a person who, you know, we did it with good intentions or maybe we didn't. And it just was
a, it was a poor stewardship. It was poor stewardship on our part. You know, we, we look
back on decisions that we've made in terms of investment, in terms of supporting people or
companies. And we just think, ah, man, I wish that I hadn't done that. That was, that was wrong.
they used this money and did things that I don't think I would, well, that I know I don't approve
of. And I definitely, I don't believe God would approve of either. And so this is where within
the Christian faith, it's really important to have grace. And it's really important, you know,
God recognizes that we're going to come to points like this. We're going to have needs for forgiveness
and needs to, you know, points of recognition where we just recognize, man, this was wrong.
And so this is the beauty of this is that Jesus died on the cross to pay for all of our sins,
including sins of misinvestment, where we breathe life into things that aren't worthy of being
breathed into, that aren't worthy of having that life. And so this is just something that
we ought to think more about. Another issue that we're not going to talk about right now,
but that Christians have even thought about, I would argue, less than even what Mr. Netsley here
is talking about, is the fact that there's ethical constraints around the creation of money itself.
what you the production cost and the production process for creating money matters enormously
because of the downstream effects of it and because of what it says about the way that the
world actually works and the you know that that can either agree with god in the way that he's
designed the world to work or it can basically act in opposition to him so again we'll keep
listening here and we'll see if there's anything else i can't remember if there's anything else
He wants his people investing his money according to his value for his glory.
And we were missing the boat.
That's something that Christians have largely ignored.
I would agree.
I mean, Christians have ignored it to a certain degree.
At the same time, Christians have been, I've seen Christians, I remember, I'm old enough to remember,
Christian boycotts of things like Target for different policies that they've made,
or Christian boycotts of different things.
And those do make an enormous economic impact. I believe, I can't remember what specifically this certain, this boycott a couple of years ago of Target was, but I believe if I remember correctly, it cost them something in the range of $8 billion. I remember reading an article about it.
So again, both where you give your money and where you withhold your money, these can either lend life and give life or withdraw life and take it away from entities or people who aren't acting in our best interest and are acting against our interest, the interest of children, the interest of other people around the world.
This is something that we have the ability to do.
We ought to look at the spending of our money as this really holy and righteous thing where
we can act like God and give life.
This is really an incredible thing and something that ought to be sobering to us and that also
ought to give us joy.
It shouldn't just be misery.
As we think about this, it should give you joy to think about getting to imitate God by
stewarding the resources that he's given you in order to give life to things that are that warranted.
Let's keep watching here.
Christians have been just sort of aiming around the steps with, you know, picket signs.
Well, the real power is in the board ring.
Real power is the shareholder.
What is it that biblical investors are doing and having these effects on companies?
Sounds like you've picked up the task of lobbying compromised companies.
And then Chevron stopped giving money to Planned Parenthood.
And then Exxon stopped getting money to another abortion nonprofit that operates globally.
We'll stop here.
So there's a guy, I wouldn't say he's a friend by an acquaintance.
His name is Jerry Boyer.
He's written a number of books.
He's a believer, an investor.
He wrote a book called The Makers vs. the Takers or The Makers and the Takers.
Very thoughtful guy, loves the Lord, really wants to faithfully steward the position that he has as a shareholder in a lot of these companies.
If you're a shareholder, you have the ability to make your desires known and to express
what you think the company ought to do.
And so Jerry is one of the most vocal people doing this from a Christian perspective.
And so again, this is, as a Christian, you're called to be a good steward and you should
want to faithfully steward everything within your domain, everything the Lord has put in
your hands or all the relationships the Lord has put within your reach.
you ought to want to be stewarding them faithfully. And so the relationship that you have with your
stocks and as a shareholder is just one more way of doing this. It's one very impactful way.
And by neglecting this responsibility or neglecting this opportunity that we have,
we're losing an opportunity. We're throwing it away and wasting it. And so good on Mr. Netsley
here, and Jerry and others, for trying to help us see this opportunity that we've been neglecting.
On down the list.
So it's been really wonderful.
The little amount we do have turned, but really the large impact when we just step out and
they'd speak with the proper power.
I'm going to stand for the Lord one day.
And Jesus turns the page and says, okay, now let's move on to your best portfolio and
see how we've got done here.
Yeah.
And again, that's so brilliant to think about is that God cares what we do with our money.
It's not just some tangential thing.
It demonstrates what we love.
It demonstrates what's important to us.
And so if you're interested in this, I'm going to watch this.
I haven't seen it yet, but you can go either just stream this episode or you can pay to
get access to the other interviews that Pastor Wilson has done with a number of other people
on similarly themed topics.
Beyond that okay so let keep going here As far as Mr Netsley Mr Netsley he basically helped found Inspire Investing He the president and CEO
He kind of, you know, if you go to their website here, inspireinvesting.com, you can see kind
of his background, what this looks like.
He's written, I think, at least a couple books.
Yeah, this seems like an older one.
Biblically Responsible Investing for God's Glory and Your Joy.
Written a bunch of things, has a history in investing, lives out in life.
to hoe with his family, passionate about classical Christian education. I mean, just interesting guy.
Seems like a really good brother. Glad he's on Team Jesus. You know, really doing a lot of good
work. The other thing beyond this book that he does is that they have faith-based ETFs. So these
ETFs are exchange-traded funds. So these basically are, you know, big buckets full of just different
companies that, uh, you know, have certain things in common. And so, you know, you're allowed to,
you know, by putting money into an ETF, you can get, uh, you know, you can invest in all these
companies and get a return on them. And so, yeah, they're doing, seems to be doing a good job. So
glad, glad he exists. Uh, he, you can check out more about the inspire story, how they started.
He's got this cool little seven, uh, you know, seven part quick little, uh, you know, seven part
little series. I guess it is just short like that. And that's pretty much all of it. But just kind of
tells a story of how he left his job in the corporate world and making all this money, really
good job. And then started this faith-based investing thing. Super interesting. You'll look
over there. They've got a bunch of other stuff. But you may be asking yourself, why in the world,
why, this is the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast. Why, oh here, I just realized I'm not sharing this.
And here's his little seven-part series of how he started doing this.
Go check this out.
But you may be thinking to yourself, as I mentioned,
why in the world on the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast are you talking about this guy?
Now, granted, he's a Christian.
Granted, we don't just talk about Bitcoin-specific things.
But I did wonder to myself, as I saw Mr. Netsley and as I thought about his book
and thought it was interesting, I did wonder.
I wonder if Mr. Netsley has said anything about Bitcoin.
because there are many Christian people, many Christian investors who are very wise and very
good stewards and thoughtful and think deeply about the intersection of faith and investing
and what it looks like to do these things faithfully, who they bring all of this experience
and knowledge that they have. And then when they start talking about Bitcoin, which in many cases,
they actually haven't studied, it becomes very rapidly apparent that they haven't studied.
They are speaking and trying to speak about something they don't understand.
And they very frequently make fools out of themselves and very quickly reveal themselves to be, you know, not having taken the time that's required in order to understand what they're actually talking about.
So initially, when I first searched for this, I thought, oh, no, here's another one.
Mr. Netsley is in the same situation that a lot of other guys are in.
This article is from January 13th, 2018. Should Christians invest in Bitcoin? And so he proceeds
to go through. And again, 2018 is when Bitcoin had, or 2017, Bitcoin had climbed from $1,000
at the beginning of the year to $20,000 by the end of the year before dropping down to,
I believe somewhere in the range of $3,000 to $4,000 sometime in 2018, early 2019.
And so as this is happening, Mr. Netsly, again, trying to faithfully shepherd people and help people think through Bitcoin from an investing standpoint, pens this article, digitally pens it.
And as he opens the article here, let's just read this.
It was very disappointing.
And I thought horrible things were to come.
But again, guys, it actually wasn't as bad as I thought.
So here we go.
Making heads or tails of Bitcoin.
I just received an email proclaiming that if I started investing in Bitcoin today, that I could make as much as 55 times your money, to which I assume they expected me to respond to something along the lines of 55 times my money, eh?
Well, in that case, here's my life savings.
Shall I wire it to you?
Or do you prefer a suitcase full of cash?
Okay.
And so then he's just basically talking, you know, Bitcoin, there was a mania going on as Bitcoin's value increased 20x over the course of a year.
and again, he just sees that he's looking at this
and immediately presenting things,
presenting Bitcoin from the standpoint of
Bitcoin exists to make you money quickly.
Bitcoin, he's presenting and talking about
as if the only point of Bitcoin is to make money quickly.
Obviously, Bitcoin has done this.
Obviously, there are people who get involved in Bitcoin
in order to try to make money quickly.
But what Mr. Netsly is not addressing is why was Bitcoin created?
He's merely talking about the phenomenological experience and, if you will, like the above ground fruit expression or the way that some people are thinking about Bitcoin.
Some people are talking about Bitcoin.
This does not tell us anything about what Bitcoin is, about why Bitcoin was created, and about the goodness or badness of Bitcoin itself.
And so he begins to talk about how it works.
It's a cryptocurrency, virtual, decentralized.
These are true things.
He also talks about virtual wallets.
He's just given a good brief intro to how it works.
Bitcoin mining, this is great.
Then he starts talking about Bitcoin as big business.
He's talking about at this point,
the value of all Bitcoins in circulation
was about $223 billion.
That number is now about $2.5 trillion.
It's gone up a lot in value.
And so he's basically saying,
yeah, wow, this is loud, noisy, hyper-volatile.
It's no wonder that there's so much interest in this
and so much noise.
And then he comes to the point,
should Christians invest in Bitcoin?
And he basically says, he goes to Solomon.
He basically says Solomon gives us wisdom to how to think about Bitcoin.
Given that Bitcoin only exists to help make money quickly, we should heed the words of Solomon.
Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.
Okay, Proverbs 13, 11.
This is a true verse.
This is a true thing that we ought to take into account.
The problem is this applies to the stock market.
This applies to real estate.
This applies to anything you can imagine.
in addition to also being true of Bitcoin.
This is also true of other cryptocurrencies
and other things like it, NFTs, all these other projects.
Desiring to gain wealth quickly is dangerous.
It puts you in danger.
It puts people related to you in danger
and you ought to avoid this.
He goes on to say that the apostle Paul
would have a few thoughts on the matter.
But those who desire,
quoting 1 Timothy 6, 9 through 10,
but those who desire to be rich fall into temptation,
into a snare,
into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
This is true.
If the reason why you're getting into Bitcoin or the stock market or any other thing is
just to get wealthy and it's just to get wealthy quickly, you ought to be afraid because,
again, you're putting yourself in danger on a number of fronts, both spiritually and just
in terms of your own investment portfolio
and your monetary reality.
And so this greed is never a reason to do anything.
And so I think this is great counsel here.
If you're considering buying into Bitcoin,
first check your heart and be honest
about what your motivation is for doing so.
Is it greed?
Then don't do it, okay?
Again, he talks about, oh gosh, here we go.
He brings up tech stocks in 2001.
Yes, correct, correct. There was a mania in 2001. He brings up tulip bulbs in 1630. We have to do a whole nother episode on this. This basically is one of the most over-equivalented things with Bitcoin that I've ever heard of. Basically, there was this supposed mania over the price of tulips. People were buying them up and it exploded the value of tulips.
the realities that didn't actually happen that way. And this bubble, once it burst,
it never reemerged. Bitcoin, if you look at a Bitcoin chart, it explodes up and then bursts.
It doesn't go back down to the level before the bubble actually happened. It goes down around 80%
and then it continues exploding up a value every few years. And so this is not in any way analogous
to the tulip mania in the Netherlands in 1630, but we can talk about that later.
So again, he's sitting here and he says, when will the Bitcoin bubble burst?
I don't know, but it is coming and I don't want any part of it.
Now, again, I will remind you, this was, let's see, January 13th, 2018.
Bitcoin's price was somewhere under $10,000.
As of right now, let's take a look back over here.
The price of Bitcoin right now is $117,650.
Again, it's not that there was no wisdom in what Mr. Neckley was saying.
It's that he was speaking confidently about something he didn't understand.
And so he made what would be called in Christian circles a false prophecy.
And this is one of these things where Christians should not want to make false prophecies.
There was strict consequences over that type of thing happening.
And again, this just doesn't make him look good.
He also goes on to talk about the dark side of Bitcoin.
apart from just the speculation and apart from the mania that can happen to result in the loss
of lots of money. He talks about how, ooh, ISIS, ISIS and other terror groups are exploiting Bitcoin
to fund their massive budgets and evil purposes. Just recently, a woman was arrested and charged
with laundering $85,000 whole dollars and other cryptocurrencies to the Islamic State.
Now, again, you may wonder why is Jordan laughing? Well, it's just because the scale of the things
we're talking about, again, there's one side of this which is just funny for one reason. That's
the scale of the things we're talking about are pathetically small. It's not to say that these
aren't really being used this way. It's just that the scale is really small, especially when you
take into account something like, let's say, I mean, look at something like Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein, when the United States went into Iraq to try to get him out of power,
they went into a number of these properties that he had, and they found
you know, to Mr. Nexley's credit, they found tons of Bitcoin. Oh, wait, no, they found tons of U.S.
dollars. That's right. Saddam Hussein had no interest in Bitcoin. He had plenty of interest
in U.S. dollars. It was, he had, I believe, you know, millions and millions of dollars.
Also lots of gold for the gold bugs at home who are keeping track, who, you know, up to this point
were maybe laughing about the fact that Bitcoin and dollars, yes, they are bad money. They're
terrorist money. Well, they were also there being used illicitly as well. On top of that, well,
you maybe say, well, yes, that might've been Saddam Hussein, but Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
Now, when we, under dubious circumstances, went there to try to get rid of him,
remove him from power, despite the fact that basically he was, people in Libya,
I believe they didn't pay taxes. They had a number of things because they were making so
much money via oil. There was all kinds of great things going on, but they had the unfortunate
the unfortunate distinction on the part of Gaddafi to try to start selling their oil for gold rather than U dollars The United States showed up went to war to get him out of there And when they went into some
of these buildings, Gaddafi had tons of Bitcoin. Oh, wait, no, he also had tons of U.S. dollars.
So the problem is that good things can always be wielded by evil people for evil purposes.
this is always the case uh the fact that somebody could take here's the reality the fact that
somebody could take a child and train the child to become a child soldier and then use the the
you know the the ignorance of the small child to go and send him out to murder people as happened
in a number of places in africa in recent years uh this is not somehow an uh an indictment of god
for creating children, okay?
You can take good things and very useful things
and wield them for wicked purposes.
This is true.
And again, I guess the greatest culmination of this argument
is realizing people themselves.
Who created people who often use their life
for awful purposes?
Well, God did.
Does the fact that God created people
who were able to be corrupted,
is that somehow an indictment of God?
Of course not, that would be ridiculous.
And the same is true of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is useful, and so that utility is useful for all people, including evil people.
So then, let's see, Bitcoin, oh gosh, I missed this.
I can't let this pass by here.
Bitcoin may be the closest thing to blood money the world has ever seen.
Goodness gracious.
I mean, this is silly.
There's been, I mean, I would argue, I don't even think this is, it's not an argument. There's been millions of people, millions and millions and millions of people, millions more people killed via the US dollar, via gold, via all these things than have ever, and arguably for a number of reasons that we'll get into in a future episode, will ever be killed because of Bitcoin.
This is a nonsensical argument that Mr. Nexley is making because he doesn't understand Bitcoin.
And he doesn't understand how it works and why and all of the amazing things that govern it and the reasons why Bitcoin works the way that it does.
So he says this, listen, you are not evil if you buy some Bitcoins unless you're a member of ISIS and then you are evil.
Yes, there are a hundred ways in which Americans are evil.
We're war profiteering all over the world, doing all kinds of horrible things.
But sure, let's focus on ISIS. They're the only ones who are evil. Unless you're a member of ISIS, you're evil. But there are significant problems with the Bitcoin economy that any wise investor must take into account before jumping into that dark pool. Allow me to summarize them here. Bitcoin is very weird. You probably don't understand what you're buying. And you don't understand what you're critiquing.
You probably don't want to buy any Bitcoin because of the lure of fast, easy riches, that is greed.
Bitcoin values have skyrocketed to ridiculously astronomical heights in a ridiculously short amount of time.
Usually that means something has got to give.
And usually that means that the bubble is ripe for popping.
Okay?
That he's not completely wrong.
Again, there are corrections with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin's price did correct.
But again, it wasn't a bubble in the truest sense.
Uh, Bitcoin is perhaps the bad guy's favorite thing in the world and is funding the most
despicable acts of evil the world has seen in a very long time, all with complete anonymity
and without the pesky oversight of law enforcement.
This is asinine.
This is truly insane.
Bitcoin is not anonymous.
Bitcoin is pseudonymous.
Uh, it's actually, if you know what you're doing, you can track Bitcoin.
Uh, and this has been done by law enforcement.
And so this is just a total overstatement of reality, completely out of touch, especially for someone who lives in a nation whose currency is used for far more evil, including things like Jeffrey Epstein, including a banking system that knew about Jeffrey Epstein's activities and continued to allow him to do exactly what he was doing.
And then they were content to pay a small fee years after the fact to try to compare and act as though Bitcoin is somehow worse than that is just completely out of touch with reality.
And so he closes here and says, for all these reasons, you can count me out of the Bitcoin binge. How about you? That is, again, just nonsensical, silly to talk about something you don't understand. Now, how do we know? Why can we talk about these things and why can we critique Robert?
Again, we've all been in situations like this.
We all, when something first happens, we talk when we shouldn't.
And then things happen, we learn more,
and all of a sudden we're revealed to not know as much as we thought we did.
Here's what I found.
This was not the only article penned by Mr. Netsley about Bitcoin.
This one is written, if you're keeping track at home, January 13th, 2018.
A couple years later.
April 1st, 2022.
In the intervening four plus years,
Mr. Nexley's tune has changed a little bit.
Again, he's still critical.
He's got only two articles on his platform
talking about Bitcoin.
This is the second one.
It still is critical, but the tone changes.
We'll see if you, dear listener,
can keep track of his tone changing a little bit,
evidencing that he's learned a little bit
in those four years.
His tune has softened a little bit.
So here's the critique.
Crypto investors risk total wipeout
from platform bankruptcy, suggest SEC.
The SEC releases guidance that cryptocurrency investors
may be at risk of total and complete loss
of their crypto assets in the event that the trading platform
that they use files for bankruptcy.
Okay, so this is looking at Coinbase, FTX, and Kraken.
Oh, no, these are some of the biggest crypto investing platforms,
biggest crypto exchanges.
If they go broke, okay, so here's the actual,
we'll just read this.
the cryptocurrency, if they file bankruptcy, the cryptocurrency in the investor's accounts will
be counted as liabilities, borrowed money on the trading company's balance sheet rather than
private assets of the investor. Okay. Well, that's, I mean, that's ridiculous, right?
We can talk about that. Why is that? That's what you're describing is because of the way
that the SEC is treating this. This has nothing to do with the nature of Bitcoin. It has nothing
to do with these platforms themselves. It's basically saying because of the arbitrary way
that the SEC treats something, then you could risk total loss. And so this is the argument here.
Okay. And so the problem is this is acting like the only way to custody Bitcoin or any of these
cryptocurrencies, the only way to do this is to entrust your Bitcoin, your cryptocurrency,
to one of these platforms. I don't know if he actually believes this or not, but this is the
way that he's presenting the argument. The problem is that displays a complete lack of
knowledge about Bitcoin and how it works. Bitcoin was designed to be able to be self-custodied.
It was designed to be able to be custodied outside of a traditional banking atmosphere
that requires trust. Within the Bitcoin white paper, one of the things that Satoshi Nakamoto
said is that the problem with the existing financial system is all of the trust that's
required to make it work. And so Bitcoin was actually created to be a system, a parallel system
that doesn't require trusting third parties like banks, like investment companies like
Fidelity or BlackRock or any of these guys. You don't have to do that. And so you can custody
your Bitcoin in such a way that even if any of these other companies go bankrupt, you're unaffected
buy them. So this is not some just dagger to the heart of the Bitcoin industry. It's just not true.
Now, again, we go through, I'll let you guys read this. We don't need to go into it.
But here's where we see the tune starting to change. In the four years, it looks like he's
done some study. And this is what he has to say at this point, four years later.
I believe that crypto will be here to stay in some form or another. And there are potential
benefits. Ooh, oh no. Oh, Mr. Nexley's become one of those evil people who thinks that there's
possible benefits to the cryptocurrency world. There are potential benefits to the overall good
of society with a decentralized currency and further support that there are many benefits
to the blockchain. Oh boy, here we go. Many benefits to the blockchain technology that
underpins crypto. But the crypto craze that exists today is completely overdone in my opinion,
and much, much more speculative than most people realize.
Now, here's the reality.
He's absolutely right about that.
There is a lot of mania and a lot of craze
within the broader crypto, quote unquote, crypto world.
And so this is where it's really important to recognize
that Bitcoin is one thing.
Bitcoin was the very first cryptocurrency that was created.
It was designed with certain constraints.
It was designed to work a certain way
and for certain reasons.
Every other cryptocurrency that exists
was created for very different reasons
and they work very differently
and they create a very different set of incentives.
And we can basically see this
because when basically the second cryptocurrencies,
the subsequent cryptocurrencies that were created,
Bitcoin is created,
the first Bitcoin was mined in 2009,
in January of 2009.
Ironically, again, some would say
that this is intended to be this way.
On January 3rd, 2009, January 3rd,
after the Bitcoin white paper was published on October 31st, 2008,
October 31st, obviously famously the day that Luther nailed the 95 Theses
to the wall of the church and to the door of the church in Wittenberg,
the first Bitcoin is mined on January 3rd,
which is the day, ironically, that Martin Luther was excommunicated
from the Roman Catholic Church.
And so this is when the first Bitcoin is mined.
These other cryptocurrencies didn't come along, weren't created until 2011.
Now, the question is, why two years? Why did it take so long for somebody to create another cryptocurrency? Is there anything else important or notable about 2011 when these other cryptocurrencies were created? Absolutely, there is. And that's because there's this famous thing in Bitcoin circles called Bitcoin Pizza Day. Once a year, I don't remember when it is, I believe in April, maybe.
basically we celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day, which is the anniversary of the first time Bitcoin was
ever used for basically to complete a normal transaction, buying something physical, tangible
in the normal, quote unquote, real world. There was a guy named Laszlo, who basically was one of
the earliest Bitcoin miners. He was expending real world energy, paying for it, paying for the
computation power, the electricity paying for these specialized computers to be able to do this.
He had mined a ton of Bitcoin, so much so that Satoshi Nakamoto reached out to him and basically
said, hey, I think you have so much of this. The goal, we want to make this decentralized. We want
to spread around. We don't just want a few small people to be massive holders of a meaningful share
of Bitcoin. We want this to get out to the masses and reach critical mass so this can get around the
world. And so as part of complying with this and as part of honoring what the creator had asked him
to do, this guy, Laszlo, decided to see if there was somebody out there who'd be willing to accept
Bitcoin in exchange for pizzas These were Papa John pizzas two Papa John pizzas And so Laszlo ended up spending I believe it was 80 Bitcoin or no maybe it was 10 I think it was 10 Bitcoin on two pizzas Okay Obviously
I'll let you at home do the math on what 10,000 Bitcoin would be today. But in 2011, Laszlo paid
10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas. This is super well-known, super famous. What's less known is
that laszlo did this i think a total of eight times uh he did this a number of times and so
this distributed 80 000 bitcoin out into the world and so this was the first time people
recognized wait a second this bitcoin uh you know this cryptocurrency and somebody created this and
then they used it to buy something in the real world and it clicked with a whole bunch of people
who are programmers who understood that you can literally spin up a cryptocurrency in 15 minutes
if you know what you're doing wait you're telling me that anybody could create their own cryptocurrency
with rules and constraints that they design.
And they can do this up
and effectively make themselves,
they can basically make their own economy,
make their own Federal Reserve
where they're on the board.
This is something that was possible to do.
And so all of these other cryptocurrencies,
excuse me,
all of these other cryptocurrencies
or many of them,
there were hundreds and then thousands
that were spun up in 2011
directly after Bitcoin was used for the first time
to buy something in the real world.
This is why you start to see things
within the crypto world.
This is why you start to see now
there's hundreds of thousands of cryptocurrencies
that are out there.
And so again, this is a real thing.
There is a mania, there is a craze.
There are people who are creating currencies
out of thin air, cryptocurrencies out of thin air
to make themselves very wealthy.
Some of them, again, some of them aren't as brazen as this.
Some of them actually look at this and think, hey, we could do good.
Think about if Christians started a cryptocurrency, we could do lots of good with the money.
This is a dangerous way to reason from a Christian standpoint, because again, as we heard with
the video that Mr. Nexley mentioned, listen, we could go out and invest in abortion clinics
and make tons of money and then use that money to fight abortion.
We could make tons of money through funding pornography, and then we could have all this
money and then use it for good. And so this is where we ought to hear the apostle Paul in our
ears saying, should we sin that grace may abound? Is this something that we ought to consider in
Paul's words and our words ought to be, no way, far be it from us to consider that type of thing.
So I agree with Mr. Nexley that there is a ton of mania surrounding crypto. There's a ton of
mania surrounding the idea that the idea that the real technology, the real innovation about
Bitcoin is the blockchain itself and not necessarily Bitcoin in particular. That is a horrible fallacy.
The only thing in which Bitcoin, the blockchain actually has been able to work, able to benefit
people has been through Bitcoin, been with money. And there's a whole host of reasons that we could
go into and probably will go into on a further episode. So he's sitting here, he talks about the
fact that the risk of total loss is real, just like I would argue, Mr. Nexley, the risk of total
loss within the stock market is totally real. The risk of total loss if you lose your gold or your
silver is very real. There is no risk off asset in the truest sense. There is no avoiding
risk in investing. That's just a fallacy. That doesn't exist. And so he comes down to the end
here and we see a shift, again, a further shift in his perspective on Bitcoin. I'm often asked
about my opinion on cryptocurrency and whether investors should add crypto as an allocation
percentage to their overall portfolio. This is in 2022, recall. My answer continues to be, well,
it doesn't continue to. That certainly wasn't what you were saying in 2018. My answer continues to be
Tread lightly, do your homework, and only invest with money you're capable kissing goodbye if you suffered a complete loss in your foray into the wild west of crypto.
If that sounds too risky, then you should probably stick to more developed asset classes, or at least until such a time as the cryptocurrency market becomes more developed, volatility subsides, risks are lowered, and risk-reward targets are more readily calculable.
okay again this is the the the problem with this as we just mentioned is there are no assets that
where you can totally escape risk look at the performance of the bond market in the united
states here in the year of our lord 2025 look at the bond market and the yields that the bonds have
had recently the most accordingly according to governments this is you know many cases propaganda
they want you to believe that this is the safest money that you can possibly have
just give money to the government. It's basically a risk-free return. This just isn't real.
That's not the world that God made. God didn't make a world of no risk. He made a world where
he calls us to make calculated risk in order to be faithful stewards of the resources that he's
given us. And so again, our goal should not be to evade all risk, should not be to avoid any and
all risk. In fact, we have scriptural warrant for avoiding that exact type of thinking in the
parable of the stewards where you have a rich man who's getting ready to go on a journey. He gives
one steward five talents. He gives another steward, I believe it's, is it two? And then one, or yeah,
I think it's five, two, and one. He gives the, you know, the one guy. And so basically gives the,
gives out these talents. How do they respond? The first two, by the time he returns, they come to
him and they say, Hey, you know, we, you gave us five. We earned five more. We doubled your money.
great get to the second one the second one was hey you gave me two i doubled your return we have four
incredible you doubled your money great the third man what does he say i i knew that you were a harsh
man and you bury and so i buried the current or i buried the money i buried in the ground
and how does the the the steward okay the person who gave them the money how does he respond
he's he's basically the stand-in for for god in this story and so he basically says you wicked
servant. You tried to avoid risk. You buried it and didn't even get me, it didn't even double it.
You didn't even get me any kind of return, even the type of return you could have got if you'd
taken my money and put it in the bank and got an interest from the bankers lending it out to other
people. This is something you could have done, but you didn't. You tried to avoid all risk.
And he calls him, you know, an unfaithful servant. He's actually the one who's commended the least,
the one who's rebuked in the story. And yet this is the situation in which many of us intuitively
find ourselves tempted to put ourselves in that situation of taking as little risk as possible.
God calls us to take risk, entrusting the risk that we're taking, calculated risk to him.
Because by taking risks with our time, with our lives, with our money, basically we're demonstrating
that we actually trust God. We demonstrate that he is a good God, that he has things that he wants
in the world. And there's places, you know, demonstrating that by putting this money to work,
then we can, you know, we can, we trust him. We're going to entrust ourselves to him in that while
we are acting, we're going to use our minds. We're going to use and try to think and act
in the way that we think he would have us do. You know, this is what faithful stewardship looks like.
And so, again, we ought not to want to avoid any risk. We ought to be looking for calculator risk, and calculator risk requires information about the situations that we find ourselves in. Calculator risk requires knowledge of situations, knowledge of ourselves, knowledge of the situation in which we're considering putting capital, investing capital, or even in the situation in which we're considering saving.
in the case of doing something like buying Bitcoin.
So again, all of these things.
So we see, if you're keeping track at home,
we see a large difference, a huge difference
in the way that Mr. Nexley talks about Bitcoin
between 2018 and 2022.
Again, I know I've been joking and being a little bit,
I wouldn't say uncharitable,
but maybe a little bit jokingly harsh with him.
Again, this is the, gratefully,
this is the path that a lot of us go down.
We think Bitcoin's, when you first find it, you think it's folly, you think it's stupid, you think it's a scam. And then over time, as you look at it more, as you do more work to try to understand it, you realize, oh no, this is actually far different than I initially thought.
And so I don't know what Mr. Dexley thinks about Bitcoin in the year of our Lord, 2025. I'm hopeful that he's done more research and that due to the fact that Bitcoin, even from where it was in 2022 at its peak, I believe, actually, I think the peak was in 2021.
So by the time 2022, I believe it went as low as like 17, 18,000.
I would hope that he's done more work to try to understand it and that he would look back
on both of these articles with shame and speak differently about it.
But again, hopefully, dear reader or dear listener, dear watcher, we'll get to have
him on the podcast and see what he thinks about it these days.
Again, in conclusion, this ought to just be a really encouraging thing for all of you.
This ought to be encouraging because somebody who is as intelligent, as successful as Mr. Netsley, he's somebody who's experienced all kinds of well-deserved success, well-deserved and understands and looks at the world in very good, faithful ways, understands the ways that God is trying to act in the world, is motivated by the good desire to honor the Lord and invest God's money in things that will produce all kinds of benefits.
not just monetary benefits. Somebody as intelligent as him and as successful as him,
if they can get Bitcoin wrong, then you ought to take heart. The fact that you might understand
Bitcoin, it shouldn't actually surprise us. It shouldn't surprise us because in reality,
money itself is very complicated. And Bitcoin, at least how it works and everything,
is also very complicated. And so it takes time. It takes a dedicated study in order to understand
why Bitcoin exists, why it was created, what problems that it was created to solve. And to
understand that those problems don't always coincide with the things that are important to
the person who is telling you about Bitcoin. Or that's even important to the vast majority of
people who you might be hearing talk about Bitcoin. The fact that something is important to them,
the fact that Bitcoin serves some purpose for them is not necessarily an indication positively
or negatively about how you ought to think about Bitcoin. So we're going to leave it there for this
week. That is a, again, we've been going for a while. This won't be the last one of these we do.
There's a bunch of other folks. Again, Robert, would love to have you on the podcast. Would love
to kind of see where you're, what you're thinking about Bitcoin these days. Again, we're super
grateful for your life and your ministry and what Inspire Advisors are doing, broadly speaking,
and would love to have you back and see you guys on future episodes of the Thank God for Bitcoin
podcast.