BITCOIN RUINED MY LIFE - Ep 023

Unveil the paradox of Bitcoin as JD, Bondor, and Cory explore its dual impact on relationships, materialism, and self-perception. Navigate the sacrifices and truths reshaped by Bitcoin's transformative power.

 

Watch this episode on YouTube

 

Hosts:

JD - @CypherpunkCine on 𝕏
Bondor - @gildedpleb on 𝕏
Cory - @PykeCory on 𝕏

 

 

Sponsors:

Unknown Certainty - The Bitcoin Ad Company
IndeeHub - Reshape the Business of Storytelling - @indeehub on 𝕏

What is Better By Bitcoin?

Bitcoin makes everything better. Join the team and our guests as we unpack how, why, and where we go from here.

Hey friend, listen. I know the world is scary right now. Corruption, war, inflation, demographics,

degeneracy, disease, unrest, hatred, and despair. We didn't come here to tell you how it is,

but that it's going to get way better.

Love that song. So good. All right, guys, welcome back to the show. We wanted to talk

about, we got, well, first off, we got JV and Corey with us today, myself, Bondor. Today we

wanted to talk about how Bitcoin has ruined our lives and also made it better, but how it's ruined

our lives. Which is just to say, what are the sacrifices you've had to make for Bitcoin?

What are the, like, how does it change what you thought was true and what does that mean?

And it's like, this is a real thing that actually happens to Bitcoiners because they understand

as you go down the rabbit hole, things change. So with that brief introduction, I know JD,

you had an answer. I still need to work on my articulation of my answer, but JD, you had an answer.

So I want to throw it off to you first. How has Bitcoin ruined your life?

Bitcoin ruined my life because it made me get rid of all of my friends. The biggest thing for me

when it came to going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole is I just realized that the amount of surface

level, unfulfilling relationships I had with a lot of people, because Hollywood just does that,

needed to change because there's a lot of people who are just here for the next gig or here for the next whatever.

And Bitcoin really makes you take a lower time preference stance on everything.

And so then you just actually have to ask the hard questions of like, hey, is this relationship actually

benefiting either of us? Because I think that's the one big part about Bitcoin that people don't,

or low time preference that people don't realize is that a really good low time preference thing to do

is actually culling of everything, you know, getting in there and removing clutter from your desk

or getting in there and like weeding your garden, essentially. Like that's what this kind of like turnover

of friendships kind of was. And I think it's actually been a really good thing.

So it let me kind of pause and reflect on like Bitcoin is ruining a lot of my relationships.

But now the ones that I have because of Bitcoin are so much stronger and so much better.

And that's actually where I'd rather spend my time is what people are trying to build things versus people

are just trying to tear it down. Yeah.

And Corey, yeah, Corey, what was your off the top of your head? What's your answer?

The way Bitcoin ruined my life was it forced me to not be a materialist anymore.

I was on the drug of it, of you get as much fiat as you can in order to get things to make you feel better

about what you had to do to get the fiat currency. And I got on that train as a very young man

at a Fortune 500 corporate job right out of college. That was the envy of my of my college.

And I hated it so much. I found myself buying things in order to make myself feel better about it.

And I wouldn't discover Bitcoin for some time after that. So there was some personal development in there.

So I knew that there was a problem, but I didn't know what the solution was.

It just forced me off of that, that whole rat race. Like, what a what an enormous waste of time.

Every hour that I spent in looking at, you know, and then buying cars and clothes and vacations and things.

And now I price all of those things in Bitcoin and in future and in the quantity of my effort,

the time and effort that it took to get money or to get Bitcoin.

And I see I would rather not have those things.

And it forced me into thinking into into a long term time preference

and totally changed my outlook on on what money and value was,

which upstream reoriented how I view my own time and the value of my own time.

It really raised the value of my own time and how I view the value of that time and the value of other people's time in my life.

I want to jump in real quick. Sorry, Steve, I love what you said is Bitcoin ruined my life because it made me price everything in the future.

I just think that that's such a great call out because it's so difficult to have that happen in such a fast microwave materialistic culture.

So I think that's really cool. Absolutely. If you look at buying the fancy car today and you think about a college education for your kids in the future,

even even if you were to invest in the S&P 500, that's an evaluation you have to make.

If you're pricing it in Bitcoin, it's the most effortless decision in the world.

It's not even a battle of materialism. Right. You'd have to be the most prideful, arrogant, materialistic person in the world to price that in Bitcoin and still make still make an irrational financial decision like that in the present.

Just makes it obvious. Yeah, I think for me, Bitcoin ruined my life in that.

I spent decades like in music, pursuing music, in art, pursuing art film like it is is basically said that all like completely undone what I thought was valuable in beauty and completely undone what I thought was valuable in taste.

It's like go to a bunch of nightclubs and you like go like you're on the like, no, no, I'm not. I'm not going to the to the to the club to see the thing.

I'm like going to the after party at the club to see the thing that's like the super hip new thing. Right. And like all of that is just.

Anathema to me now, it's like it's just and I was like the guy who's like, yeah, I know the connections of the club, so I can like literally just walk inside and I have VIP access like that was kind of like my life.

And it's like that's just so uninteresting. There's nothing to that. It's like now I listen to classical music all the time.

I'm way more interested in traditional architecture or films that are old. And I also just don't have time to pursue many of these things anymore.

But it's just like I don't care about whatever pop music is, because I know it's garbage, it's trash and there's literally nothing to it.

It exists to like, I don't know, get your blood pumping as opposed to get your mind working. It's a totally different paradigm. And that's directly because of Bitcoin.

Corey, I'm curious, is there a like a hobby or something you used to do that just Bitcoin totally took all the joy out of?

There is. Investing. It's the most natural one, right? I loved it. I loved it. I started a real estate company and bought houses.

And with any money I had left over, which wasn't a lot at the time, I was constantly looking at stocks and the best way to build portfolios over time.

When I started pricing all of those things in Bitcoin, it all became nonsense. All of that was nonsense. And I don't think the instinct to invest is bad.

I think it's a biblical thing. I think it's a really good thing to build the assets that you have over time, make them work for you, make them help your community in a way that's mutually beneficial.

I think that's great. But I think the things that we should be investing are our skills and our time and our interests rather than how much time I spent on charts and drawing Fibonacci numbers and researching companies.

It's like I think about that in my life, realizing how much time I wasted on that, like how much time I was just like swiping around Robin Hood trying to get from 8% to 9% annualized. Right.

It was higher than that, you know, but so to speak. But yeah, I think that was a hobby. That was literally a hobby. That was soul sucking. It wasn't a good hobby. It was a waste of time.

So I'm going to have to kind of revise my answer, but like the I'm trying to find it right now and I don't think I can find it fast. But there's a quote in Andor. Have you guys seen Andor?

Oh, the best. It's good. It's incredible. It's so good. It's so near the end of the first season.

Luthan has this monologue and it is like I listen to the money was like, well, it's a good monologue when I first heard it. But then I was like, as of going down the rabbit hole, you know, more and more. I'm like that.

The monologue kind of just like just like kind of just plays on repeat in my head. What have you lost? Like calm, peace, friendships, like all this stuff. It's like, wait a second.

It's like the more you go down the rabbit hole, the more you kind of realize that like we're fighting in a war against very evil entities and we can win and we can see that we can win.

And we're like, wait a second. I thought I was going to have this life. And Bitcoin basically just says, no, no, no, you don't get you get to sacrifice everything.

Right. It's just a totally different paradigm. So like to answer Bitcoin ruin my life and how to ruin my life. It put me to war as opposed to an ideological war, like non-kinetic, of course, but like it put me to war.

Like I'm now fighting on a mission for this thing. It's crazy.

I love that. I would say to it, you know, as a Christian man who is aggressive about figuring out my place and bringing about the kingdom of God, that's the economy to me.

That's the only thing that is eternal is the kingdom of God. And I don't think that's just evangelization of a very, very integrated view of of that, especially in art.

That's the way it's most natural to me. But it's true that there's eternal things happening all around us all the time. And it's very easy to think about the immediate dopamine hit rather than focusing on those things.

So the disconnect for me of being a materialist who's making money and trying to figure out how to impact the world while I'm buying myself nice clothes to make my feel make myself feel better about my job.

And wanting to impact the bringing about of the kingdom of God and play whatever small role in that I'm capable of playing. That was a disconnect for a long time.

Bitcoin blew that up because it gave an actual economic reality to the eternal. Right. Or, you know, even if we stop sort of calling it eternal.

My eternal essentially, for as long as Bitcoin will be around is essentially eternity to my influence on the world for, you know, the next multiple hundreds of years should be the global reserve currency.

It gave the economy to me to align that with the way that with what my soul already wanted.

Yep. The man, I really wish I could find this thing. Just got to drop it. Just got to drop it. So for me, it literally is this idea like Bitcoin ruined my life in that my I was basically asleep, right?

Asleep at the wheel, like just consume whatever, like, oh, yeah, this is great. Don't think about it too hard. Like, you know, is it a banger? Great. It's a banger. Great. We're going to we're going to have a party. We're going to do the thing.

Don't think about it too hard. You're just put to sleep about all of reality and all the evils and everything else that's going that's going on in the world. And Bitcoin basically just wakes you up from that. You're like, wait a second. How do I participate? How do I push this forward? How do I make a difference? That's actually.

Biblical and reasonable and justified and changes reality and like brings things that are good, like pulls them out of the ether and pushes them forward like none of that existed before Bitcoin. It was just I'm just going to be asleep. It's fine. Yeah, I'll just get it. Whatever. We'll figure out the money. So, you know, whatever. It's fine. Yeah, just crazy.

It's funny in that regard, like Bitcoin ruined my self-image. It ruined my ability to look myself in the mirror and accept any of the lies I was telling myself about myself.

Because if you're looking at stuff on a long enough time horizon and you have an understanding of that little thing that I don't like about myself that I just do over and over and over again because I see that train or that thought or whatever it is coming and I just do it anyways on a long enough time horizon, which is where Bitcoin points you, you realize it takes you to eternal damnation and death.

That's it. It makes you a bad person. It makes you not what you want to be. And it forces you to confront those things in a way that is a little jarring. And I think that's the thing that's been really hard is Bitcoin has forced me to confront my demons. And it's really hard. And sometimes it's depressing.

You know, there's a lot of moments where I'm like, man, like this is pretty overwhelming because everything matters. You actually have to assume everything matters because, you know, in a finite world, it does.

Yeah. It breaks the illusion, especially as a man, that you can just take breaks from your responsibility to the world and to yourself and to your family that are just kind of yours. Right. You just write the short term time. I'm not talking about healthy rest. I'm talking about I'll just allow myself this and it should be fine.

And it gets into every aspect of your life in a similar way that faith does. And it says, no, no, everything that dies, dies. And you can engage in that sort of thing, but it will die and you will die. Part of you will die along with it. Or you can be focused on the long term at all times and actually work to the benefit of yourself and your community and your world.

So one of the things that's been connecting for me a lot recently, and I've posted about this just almost every day, but it's it's this idea that, you know, if we're going to be good stewards of our lives and which we're called to do as Christians will.

Before Bitcoin, there was essentially no decent way to steward value, because you had to measure value in something that was debasing, deprecating and falling apart.

Like, like, how do you measure value in that? Well, OK, this this this thing is supposed to be valuable is measured in this value, but it's being debased. So I don't really value it that, you know, as it should be valued because it's being debased.

Now, Jesus talks about this. He like literally says with with the measure you used, it will be with the measure you use. It will be measured back to you and more.

The consequences of that are like when you measure value with something that's debased, you will be debased. Right. It just comes right back to you and more.

And so it's like, OK, cool. Well, it doesn't matter that I do this or that. I don't think like participate in growing my own wealth or do that.

It was just there's just like this malaise about everything because everything's devalued with Bitcoin. It's the exact opposite.

It's. You're using a righteous measure to measure value now. And therefore, it returns back to you and more.

So your life starts to matter, your that your opinions start to like, actually, I should form a better opinion about this because it matters. Right.

Like, oh, I got to figure out what that thing is. I got to figure I got to do this stuff over there, that thing, whatever.

And it's just, man, completely add such meaning to everything you do.

Yeah. Bitcoin ruined my ability. Like what's the what's the best way to say that?

Bitcoin ruined my ability to look at. Anyone in a way that I wouldn't look at myself.

I think there's a really cool thing about Bitcoin is you can now look at any side of any argument if you're properly down the rabbit hole and understand there's probably deeper aspects to this that you probably would agree with or you probably wouldn't be as far off from.

And I think the level of understanding, you know, we run a meetup and the cool thing about that meetup is we have people on both sides of the political spectrum.

And that's awesome. Like, that's how it should be. You should be able to have a conversation with somebody you don't agree with without just hating them.

And I think that's the thing that I really hate about the mainstream media and just media in general, is people have this TV complex on my TV.

Tomer. Now, in this case, my phone told me and that's the truth. And that's just not true at all.

And I think that's what I love about Bitcoin is it forces you to do your own research and dig in and actually be educated on things.

You don't know everything and you know that, but it really does challenge your presuppositions of, oh, the TV told me or this headline told me or the Wall Street Journal told me or the New York Times told me or CNN told me, whoever told me, Fox told me.

Like, you can't take that at face value anymore. You have the Internet, you have the access.

So now you need to do the work to actually realize, is that correct? Is that true? It's getting harder with AI. It's kind of unfortunate.

But I do actually think when we get into a Bitcoin standard and Bitcoin is the denominator, AI will actually be forced into truth.

And the rationale there and the logic is people are not going to be willing to spend money on falsehoods.

And so right now we're in this world, we're still in fiat. And so like, you know, you have the hydras coming out, but you're going to get to a point where it's like is too expensive to lie.

And so it's just easier to just be truthful and you wouldn't want to spend your money on something not truthful anyway.

So like if you're making a movie, cool, that's different. Your storytelling, like fabrication of things will get to a point where it's a really simple and binary decision of risk reward.

And most of the time, hopefully the reward for doing something dishonest or untruthful won't be there.

Yeah, the one thing that comes to mind when you're mentioning that is I've been seeing this like in my own life, like how did Bitcoin ruin your life?

It's like it basically took we live in a postmodern paradigm and in a postmodern paradigm, like, oh, everything's relative.

Well, that's cool for you. That's cool for you. But the reverse side of that is that everybody kind of just tested like really just be absolutely defensive about what's cool for them.

No, no, no. That's cool for you. But for me, I only do this and I only do that and I only do.

And there's like this weird like like you'll see it in Christian circles.

One of the things that you'll see in Christian circles is the Orthodox, the Catholic and the Protestant, the eternal.

Like, you guys don't have the truth. Only we have the truth. And you guys don't have the truth. Only we have the truth.

And how dare you make this truth and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just goes on and on and on. And there's no resolution to any of it.

And you can also see it in smaller things like you only read or I only read the N.I.B.

It's the only translation that's worth reading. Oh, well, no, no, no. That's a terrible translation because of gender, blah, blah, blah.

The only translation that's actually worth reading is that the N.I.B. It has to be the ninety five version.

If you don't read the ninety five N.I.B., you're you're you're loony tunes, you're heretic.

It's like, wait, where's all this like this? This plurality come from one and then the reverse of that, which is this ultra self-defined.

This is the only truth. Right. With Bitcoin, that just gets totally reversed.

It's like, wait a second. We can we can find truth in so many different things, especially the things that are that are kind of they seem at odds.

We just dig down beneath the surface of pointing to the same place.

And like that's the thing. That's the exact same case with Bible translations.

I mean, apart from the very few exceptions that are just completely erroneous and ridiculous.

Most of them, the intent and the purpose of it is to point towards the underlying truth that can be found in all of them.

If you know how to look for it correctly and then the certain different translations will say like, oh, they'll reveal something to you that you wouldn't have even thought of had you not like gone down that.

Version of of just the lettering. Right.

And you just miss all of that in a in a postmodern world, but in a Bitcoin world, you can actually see that because you're you're operating from a position of strength in a position in a.

In the in the postmodern world, you're always operating from a position of weakness because you don't I guess I don't know what's true or whatever.

So I have to be really, really I got to hold on tight to all these things.

But in a Bitcoin world where your agency is increasing all the time, you're like, well, actually, I can afford to be a little bit more loose about this thing that I always thought was the only way to go.

And it just completely breaks that paradigm.

Yeah, I really like that. I had a I had a friend who did a long, silent retreat, 30 day silent retreat at this monastery.

And then you got about 15 minutes to talk to the monks every day.

And he said, I don't know exactly what those guys are doing, but they're the Navy SEALs of it was how he how he said it.

And they've been since they were consecrated as monks.

They've been essentially silent except for 15 minutes a day and unusually not even that.

And he got to, you know, interview the head guy, you know, later on, and they had this fundraising project for the Abbey.

This is big, this big deal.

And he's like, when's when's this, you know, coming together?

And he's like, it's a hundred year project.

So we just do our part.

And whoever is, you know, a couple of generations past me will see it done and just completely at peace about it.

And that those are guys who have completely removed themselves from society to do a thing to be completely devoted to a thing.

And when he told me that story, I immediately thought Bitcoin would allow the normal person without someone like me who's never going to do something like that to get a little bit of a step, like one step closer to that level of devotion, commitment, long term thinking.

And there's something so beautiful and so peaceful about that.

Yeah, I love that.

Do you think, Corey, kind of digging in there?

Do you think Bitcoin makes it easier or harder to be religious?

Harder to be religious.

So that's a good question, because if you have, Steve, what Bondar was just talking about, about territorialness in religion, I think Bitcoin blows that up, makes it a lot harder.

If you have what I say, what I would call an eternal mindset, and you're constantly looking for the truth, whatever it is, and you're willing to let your assumptions be blown up by new evidence and new things, new communities, new perspectives and new ways to see the world.

I'd say that Bitcoin will support your journey to eternal truth wherever that takes you.

And I obviously have a pretty specific view on what that is, but I have a category for everyone else and everyone else's opinions.

And I understand that as accessing something that I don't have access to.

Even if you're a completely dyed in the wool Christian, you have to believe that every human life has an individual fingerprint and reflects God in their own way.

So literally your worst enemy on Earth is teaching you something about God that you wouldn't have access to if you didn't know that person.

You necessarily need the community of the world to understand the kingdom of God better and to understand the character of God and the person of God better.

And I think that territorialness blows up completely in a Bitcoin standard when you are forced into that long term timeframe.

J.D., you mentioned at the beginning of the call that you ruined your friendships.

So that's a very tangible, practical day to day kind of this is how you interact with the world kind of thing.

What about for you? What's something that it ruined at like a higher intellectual or philosophical level?

You spend the majority of your time at work, whatever your work is.

If you're a farmer, you're out in the field.

If you are somebody who works a desk, you're at your desk, you know, and now wherever that desk is.

Right. It's different with remote work.

But that's where you spend the majority of your time.

And Bitcoin ruined my ability to lie to myself about where those hours are going and who I'm spending them with.

Because at the end of the day, which is all I'm focused on now of the end of my days, what am I passing on?

What is going to be there?

You know, is it going to be just this legacy of, you know, relationships that were transactional or it's like, hey, you know, I worked with you on this one thing.

Do you want to do this thing together? Hey, I know you do this.

Like, can we do this? We partner like very, very transactional.

And it forced me to take a look back and then just get an understanding of like, hey, you know, Arthur Brooks, if you know who that is, he's the Harvard professor who studies happiness is the Harvard Business School.

And actually, it was both great right over here.

Love your enemies.

And then his first one was actually like, who really cares?

That was the first Arthur Brooks book I ever saw, which is kind of talking about how like the evangelical slash Catholic community in the United States are the largest givers in the world.

He's done all this research.

And what he kind of came to was there's a Harvard study done about the people who live the longest.

And the indicator of that was the size of your social group directly correlated with the length of your life.

And if you really distill that down, it's where tribal people or other humans are tribal.

Humans are social creatures.

But when it really comes down to it is if your purpose is people, if your purpose is outside of you and like making other people's lives better and not just like the transaction, it's like the actual like, hey, I just want to help this person for whatever reason.

Your purpose is fully outside of yourself.

And it totally strips back any of the transactional like nature of like, hey, if I do this, I might get this and I do that.

And it just totally reframed everything.

And so coming back to your question, Bitcoin ruined my ability to be transactional and relationships.

And it also changed my perspective on who I want my relationships to be with as much as I can.

I want to work for and with Bitcoiners, period, just because of the.

Foundational beliefs that we all share, having spent a long time in Hollywood, a long time in entertainment, a long time in advertising.

It's 100 percent lip service or rather, try saying ninety nine percent lip service in most of those scenarios.

And that just doesn't fly with Bitcoiners.

And so it's really cool to be able to like dive in and then kind of confront, you know, relationships.

I'm like, ah, like that was not great and that was good.

And but kind of Arthur Brooks, let me land on that.

Sorry, I'm rambling, but laying in the plane.

Relationships must matter.

Bitcoin has confirmed for me that I just can't have transactional transactional relationships and it's all the relationships that matter.

But then what Arthur Brooks has coined and one of the things that he's been studying at Harvard is coming back to the first study of the amount of your like the size of your friend group, the size of your long term friend group is directly correlated to your life.

And what he likes to call those people as is your useless friends.

And I think that's actually one of the most.

Important things for people in today's transactional culture to hear is your useless friends or your most valuable friends.

It's the people who you just like them because they like sports ball or they like this thing.

You know, you just like them and then they just like you for whatever reason.

They like a hobby or whatever it is.

And I think it's really helped me because I used to be.

I mean, that's was my business was Hollywood.

That was entertainment. I was always very transactional.

I'm just like, OK, I'm doing this and doing that.

And so Bitcoin is just like forced me to confront that and slow down and really try and hold on to, you know, as many useless friends as I can because I just like them.

So, J.D., I wonder, too, if there's a way to to put that in the eye statement, because I really identify this to being in Hollywood for almost 10 years now.

That Augustine quote where he was a womanizer early in life and then over time after his conversion.

Do you know this one? Is this too obvious that he runs into one of the women from his past life and she's like, you know, hey, what's up, what's going on?

Don't you recognize me? And he's like, I recognize you, but you don't recognize me or, you know, something to that effect.

Right. I've become a different person. Therefore, we are.

That's relationship isn't the same as what it once was, is what he's getting at.

And because I really identify with that and especially early on in Hollywood, it is very transactional.

A lot of that's very transactional. And there were people who, you know, who are superficial and paper thin and all of that.

But I also recognize in myself when I look back on those years that I was a pretty transactional person and I wasn't a great friend or, you know, community member necessarily.

Right. And that was that war within myself.

And it's not necessarily that everyone I was coming across was a was a thin, superficial person.

A lot of them were wonderful people, but I wasn't engaging with them in a way that would have led to a fruitful friendship.

Anyway, it was a two way street and it slowly started to shape me and evolve me in a way that the people I naturally attracted were the useless friends.

I became a useless friend to people intentionally because it's so much more rich.

And I now I believe I add more to those people as well.

Yeah, I want to button that with like Bitcoin forced me to confront the transactional nature I had in a lot of my relationships.

And that caused me to really assess why I had them and forced me in the same thing you did.

Like, oh, hang on. Am I adding value to this person?

Because it's like, oh, no, I'm extracting value in the transaction.

But like, am I just adding value and I just adding to add.

And I think that was the biggest thing for me is like, oh, man, it's actually better for this person if I see myself out.

Because at the end of the day, you know, I'm not adding anything to them.

I'm not two plus two equals five in their situation.

I'm literally, you know, it's one plus one equals one.

And in this particular case, I'm the one.

I'm the other. I'm the wrong side of this equation.

And so, you know, I need to really be focused on adding and not expecting anything in return.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's jumping into the other side of this.

It's like, you know, how is Bitcoin ruined your life?

Like, how has it made it better?

I think that it like exactly what you're talking about, Judy.

And I'm sure all of us on this call experience this.

During covid, we all lost friends.

Our social group.

I mean, for me personally, social group just collapsed.

It was like it's not that these people died.

I mean, some people lost friends in that regard, of course.

But for us in L.A., it was like this.

We're not I'm not living in the city anymore.

I'm moving to Tennessee. I'm moving to Denver.

I'm like, I'm out of here. I'm done. Right.

So, you know, that was a huge constriction on.

Like and and like for me personally, you just feel it when a friend leaves L.A.

Like it's like I stabbed the heart in some capacity.

Like, well, that like really hurt.

And like, man, it really hurt.

And then it kept going like in another friend.

Like, oh, my goodness.

And like even today, like we just had another good friend leave L.A.

And it's just like, oh, man, another one.

And then you go to these things.

It's like, well, why are they leaving?

It's almost all the same, like politics and money.

And we can't get a job or whatever the thing is. Right.

L.A. is an incredibly difficult place to live.

But then JD goes to your point.

It's like, yeah, well, of course, it's a crazy difficult place to live if you're denominated in fiat.

But if you're not denominated in fiat, you can make it here because of Bitcoin.

Because Bitcoin tracks them, too.

Because if you are measuring your life in Bitcoin, it's returned back to you.

Threefold, tenfold.

Like in terms of how does how does Bitcoin make my life better?

Well, like the fiat ruined all my friendships.

And also, you know, like I had the same thing as you, JD.

Bitcoin ruined a lot of my friendships as well.

Like, for real.

My Facebook friends went from over a thousand to five hundred.

But then also it creates new new friendships that it's like way more.

It feels like there's way more depth to those friendships.

Feels like we're on the same page about those friendships.

Like at the meetup, JD, you're talking about this.

It's like, yeah, these people are like totally different backgrounds, totally different political, etc.

But you're like, wait a second.

We're all operating from a position of strength.

We don't need to be tribal about any of this.

We can all kind of, oh, I hear your point.

I haven't considered that.

Maybe I need to revise my point now or revise your point.

I need to revise my point now or whatever the thing is.

It's like there's just so much.

There's so much more peace about reality and hope about moving forward in it.

Corey, has Bitcoin changed your perspective on dating and relationships?

Because I know, I'm just curious, your thought is like, did Bitcoin destroy any idols you had in that regard of dating or relationships or things you're looking for?

Yeah, I mean, as the one unmarried guy on the podcast, I would say Bitcoin ruined my immediate pull with women and simultaneously made me a better partner, better potential partner.

Because the dating environment, especially as it's become right now, has become extremely transactional.

What are you both offering?

And when that transaction works, it can feel like you've found a real partner, but it can be a very surface level connection.

And I would say that my idol in those areas was around the transactional things.

Do I have the things that will attract a woman in the next 10 minutes or in the next hour to the point where I have a chance, where there's an opening?

And Bitcoin undoes almost all of that.

Almost all of that is like the TikTok of being a man.

It's the 10 second chunk of being a man.

And specifically around resources, it used to be a thing to be able to show off how much money you have.

And Bitcoin literally, if you're a true Bitcoiner and you never tell anyone how much Bitcoin you have, you're literally living as frugally as possible while not communicating how much money you have.

It's the antithesis of that kind of bird all mating dance or whatever you want to say.

It's a completely different outlook.

I would also say the quality of my relationships improved after that significantly.

I will say a funny thought you gave me while I was hearing you kind of discuss that is putting you in like a Bitcoin fragrance commercial.

And it's like, what would that look like?

It's like instead of this like sexy model, it's like dad bod, like old shoes, like run down car.

And it's just like all this stuff.

You know, there are certain things that's like steak and like filtered water.

But for the most part, it's like how frugal can this like how how sexy can frugal look in a fun way?

Yeah. Yeah, that's very good.

Oh, yeah. I mean, you think about the things you want out of out of a long term partner like commitment and, you know, responsibility and ability to delay short term gratification for long term gratification.

These are all things that Bitcoin naturally puts into you.

It just doesn't necessarily help you at the bars.

Also, women still don't love talking about Bitcoin.

I don't know if you guys have run into this, but that is that is very much a thing.

I can tell you post marriage.

It doesn't change.

I don't know if you have a similar or a different story over there.

Bond or but, you know, it's a it's ongoing.

I think there's always there's always like it's like it.

So here's kind of my theory on the whole thing.

And this is I don't know if this is orthodox or whatever, but like my theory on the whole thing is kind of in terms of dating and relationships and sexual ethics and the whole thing.

We live in a fiat world and like Corey, the consequences of that is that all the social signaling around sexual ethics basically says, well, big plumage.

You're talking about right.

But it goes further than that goes way further than that.

It says, no, no, no.

Not only can I have do I offer the most money I can offer the most enjoyment, the most like physical pleasure.

Right.

That's what everyone optimizes for.

That's where you see like crazy gym rats.

That's why you see like bikini Instagram just for everything like everyone.

And it's like and you can go back on Instagram just like I'm not that you should do this, but you can do this.

And like look at people's Instagram from five years ago, seven years ago.

And look what the photos they were making are as they grow older.

They just get more and more scantily clad like the fiat minded individual.

You're like, this is ridiculous.

Or they get more ripped, right?

Like especially outside of outside of Christian circles.

So you can see where this goes, right?

We're optimizing.

We're signaling for ultra high time preference.

Me here now.

Drugs, sex, violence, etc.

Right.

Under Bitcoin, all that's just totally reversed.

Oh, now the thing that I want to signal for is long term stable relationship, childbearing and child rearing and being around to be able to do that.

Facilitate that long term, you know, pointing towards kids, grandkids, great grandkids, etc.

So what are those signals look like?

Well, it just looked like traditional like trad trad relationships that have been around for centuries because that's all that's the only thing that matter.

Like, I mean, you look at the age of somebody from to an average age of world population 200 years ago, like 30 years.

Like you basically the only thing that matters is that you procreate as soon as possible, because if you don't, you're dead.

And now the average age of the average age of your first kid being born is what I don't even know.

It's got to be over 20 years.

30.

It depends on where you're at.

I think in the South, it's like five.

But in L.A., I think it's like I think in San Francisco, it's 34.

Yeah, I don't like that.

It's like we're reproducing at a rate that's literally four years after you would have been dead.

200 years ago, it's it's bonkers.

But anyway, like Bitcoin completely inverses that.

It says, you know, Bitcoin ruined my life.

Well, it completely changed how I signal for things that are important with regard to sexual ethics.

And how did Bitcoin make my life better?

I could for the for the exact same reason says, oh, no.

Now you're like what's important is like everyone talks about how to Bitcoin.

Never sell it.

Never sell it.

Never sell it.

Michael Saylor saying never sell Bitcoin who doesn't have any kids.

Right.

No, no, no.

You send your you spend the Bitcoin on the kids.

You spend Bitcoin on time with kids because that is far more rare than.

Any any ordinal right like any rare sap, it's just it's just so much more rare, especially for you personally.

So, yeah, it's just the whole thing.

I love that thought.

And actually, I want to say this is Bitcoin has ruined my understanding of the future, but it has completely expanded my appreciation for the present.

Because we don't know, you know, we all have this belief and understanding Bitcoin is going to a million bucks.

And why we believe that is just the math that how many did back in the day is all right.

Let's just say Bitcoin takes this percentage of the global total market.

That's a million to ten million dollars per coin.

And so that seems pretty reasonable.

And we're kind of on that train right now.

And once we got to one hundred thousand, like a million seems way more inevitable than zero.

Right. But Bitcoin fully expanded what you just said, Bondar, which is.

I think the only thing more rare than Bitcoin is you and your specific time, because Bitcoin in and of itself, just like money, will outdate you.

It will outpace you. It will outlast you.

And so spending Bitcoin on things that are more valuable, your kids, time with your kids, time with your friends, time moments in my mind, because I had somebody ask the other day, what what would you spend your Bitcoin on?

I would spend my Bitcoin on moments.

Bitcoin to me is worth my moments and trying to think about those moments that I can provide for my kids, kids like that's the future piece of it is really difficult calculus.

But I do feel Bitcoin gives you a an appreciation of the present and an understanding of, you know, a moment now.

That you would spend your Bitcoin on could be more valuable than one hundred million cents.

Yeah. And that's like to be like explicit, that's a different economic model than the experience economy like that.

Oh, I was at this fantastic Airbnb. It was a moment, man. I had such a moment at this. It's like, no, no, no, no.

It doesn't like I'm like what you're talking about is a moment with your grandkid. It doesn't matter where it is.

Like a hundred percent. There's so much part. There's so much expensive or cheap parts of that equation that don't matter.

Yeah. I mean, I'll just give one last thing on that is like we just had a good friend of ours called yesterday and say, hey, my, you know, my family member die just out of the blue.

Kind of thing. And so it's like, you know, there's there's no. There's no time like the present when you have an understanding of the actual value of it.

Now, do I need to go to in or McDonald's or Starbucks right now? Probably not, because that means five years from now.

Oh, that Internet I just bought is a MacBook Pro. But when you look at it, the other side of should I take that flight to go see my dad?

That's probably worth it. Mm hmm. Yeah. Exactly.

Corey, Corey, how has Bitcoin ruined your family relationships like mom, dad, brothers, sisters?

Well, they're sick of hearing about it. That counts.

Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving.

And my dad is a dyed in the wool trad fi because it worked for him.

He had he was a tenured Ivy League professor for most of his career.

And then he was a dean of another business school for a long time, which are about the most stable jobs in human history.

Right. If you're as long as you're not actively committing murder, it's almost impossible to get removed from tenure positions at good universities.

So Fiat really worked for him over that time frame, especially over the decades that he was working.

When the market was generally up and to the right, when technological growth generally outpaced money printing.

So it felt like you were getting wealthier over time.

Having a having a first principles conversation about the nature of money with someone like that is incredibly challenging, even though he's a business school professor.

Which is interesting. Right. It feels like a generational shift.

When I sold my real estate portfolio to buy Bitcoin with it, he looked at me like my head had fallen off.

It was the most bizarre. He could not understand it.

He could not understand why I was doing it, even though I said, look, in three years, I will be able to buy this real estate portfolio back, plus a bunch of houses.

Watch. And it happened. And he still doesn't understand it. Right.

I would say that that level of of generational disconnect is probably the biggest thing that that that Bitcoin's caused.

J.D., do you have you want to weigh in on this? I got something. But if you want to jump in, you're first.

OK, so. Between me and my dad, shout out, hi, dad, I think that there is probably some tension with regard to like political involvement and political discourse.

I've held for a long time that it's voting in the legacy system.

I mean, I'm not against voting. Vote if you're you know, vote your conviction and the rest of that.

Like do it. For me, it's been a lot of wait a second.

You look at who you're voting for and they either have the same policy or they get elected in office and completely change their policy to whatever the, you know, uniparty policy is.

So there's like you never actually see solutions from voting.

So there's a very low return on that investment of time and energy and whatever.

And I mean, this is where the mean like vote harder, vote harder next time like comes from.

Right. And, you know, my dad is a dyed in the wool conservative and like that's his that's his party.

That's his thing. Him and I have definitely butted heads on this.

And Bitcoin absolutely fuels the fire of voting doesn't matter.

Voting doesn't matter. Voting doesn't matter.

Voting doesn't matter. Voting doesn't matter.

Until you start to really get into Bitcoin and start to really understand.

Wait a second. Running a node is voting. If I don't run a node, I'm not voting.

But I need to like then there's all these issues and policies that are happening on the Bitcoin network.

And if you're not running a node, you're not voting. You're not participating.

It's just it's like the switch goes off in your head.

Like, wait a second. The political discourse of that world and my world, they're just different political discourses.

And it's it's really fascinating. I mean, you know, there's a there's a lot to unpack there.

Probably way more in one episode. But. Man, that like relationship wise is like that.

There was a point where in my head it clicked. It was like, wait a second.

Oh, he's just in a different world than I am.

And there's no point in like having a heated debate or a discussion about this and trying to see eye to eye on something because we operate in different worlds.

That said, we probably deeply have the same convictions about very higher ideological things.

So, Bonner, would you say that it blew up the way that you see engagement with your community at large?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It is like.

Like, oh, man, there's so much to that question.

It takes. Bitcoin allows you to take ownership of your community and but it doesn't tell you that you can't.

Right, because it's just a blind protocol or whatever.

Now, if you can take ownership of your community, will.

And you're growing an agency and you you're able to influence things like that's a whole different paradigm.

Like, yeah, you can go to the polls and vote and maybe maybe you guys get the person you want or maybe not.

And maybe they get corrupted when they get in office and maybe not like I don't know.

But I get to take ownership of my own like my own personal community and my agency is growing.

So I get to expand that community.

I get to have parties at my house.

I get to have barbecues.

I get to be influential in the people in my life.

Like I get to have time to have a conversation with somebody as opposed to working a nine to five job or.

Nine to nine job coming home and having 30 30 minutes with my kids and like not having any friends.

Right. There's a whole generation of people who basically just did that.

And look at like they're they're now ruined relationships, ruined friendships, ruined like family dynamics, all sorts of stuff.

And it's like all of the agency has been eroded for their entire life.

So does it like how does it how does it affect my interaction with like my community?

I get to take ownership.

And for all I know, I might be the first generation that's been able to take ownership for the last 100 years of my community.

I get to say how and when and why and how like just all of it.

I get to decide how my community is going to go.

And you kind of build on that.

I just kind of snowballs in this other thing where it's like we're doing a meet up now.

We're like and that is growing like there's real people that are really connecting and really making actual friends and actual actual community building.

And this happens and and it's not just us.

Right. Like as we're well aware, this is happening everywhere.

This Bitcoin thing is has unbelievable staying power to completely change what community dynamics are and own all.

But basically just wrecking ball go all the way through all the way to the top of it's all grassroots.

But it goes all the way to the top.

Yeah.

Go ahead, JD.

One really quick thing on that was, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the chinks in the armor and kind of like how humanity circles the wagons around whatever in group is being attacked.

So if you are in an in group, you know, you see somebody in your in group get attacked.

You know, you kind of circle around them and like, you know, Hollywood's a perfect example of that is, you know, they circle around, you know, Cosby or Harvey Weinstein or whatever it is until they don't.

And what's interesting, though, is Bitcoin's is really interesting kind of like virus where you can start throwing barbs at things like the Fed or whatever it is.

But this virus, after they've circled the wagons, can still kind of get in there because it's not a physical thing that you're trying to get in there.

It's an idea. And so because this idea is so.

Insatiable once it takes hold, you know, you just kind of have to go deeper.

Bitcoin completely ruins any and every political ideology because it forces you to actually go all the way to the root of it and be like, hang on, is the actual root of this thing valuable and viable?

And I think that's one of the coolest things is you kind of have to, you know, it forces you to confront.

Hang on a minute. Am I just doing this for a transaction or whatever it is?

And actually, I'll give an anecdote from today.

I don't know if people are paying attention, but Palantir, one of the largest, you know, profiteers off of war, just had, I think, ten like six or ten of the largest shareholders sell like a huge stake in Palantir.

What that tells me is that the war hawks are losing.

What that tells me is that, you know, Trump and this current administration are winning the war war because they're not, you know, people who are inside and who are going to make money off of insider trading because that's literally what it is for Palantir and Boeing and all these other people.

They know there's no more war coming, which is so good for humanity.

But my belief would be it's people who are like hardcore Bitcoiners that are kind of in this in-group that kind of catch that bug and get this understanding like, hang on, like we need to change this.

Like, I don't think we should ever not have great weapon systems.

I'm going off on too many tangents, but we should have great weapon systems, but we should have great weapon systems that are founded upon the idea of utopia.

Because I do actually think utopia to a degree is possible in a Bitcoin standard, because all utopia means is everybody takes responsibility.

Yeah, the only other thing I was going to say on the community thing was the sense of individualism in America and arising in a fiat system that's increasingly breaking at the seams.

That sense of individualism becomes more and more antagonistic over time.

And what I love about Bitcoin, it ruined my sense of individualism as an American market actor, so to speak.

Bitcoin broke that sense of individualism and gave it back to me in a way that is a benefit to my community.

It's not antagonistic at all.

It's individualism that is to the benefit of your community, which is what you really need, because it allows you to be ambitious and to be voracious in your career and in your life.

So you're not collectivist, which is anti-human, but you're also not individualist to the expense of the people around you, which is also anti-human, right?

Both ends of that spectrum are very bad.

And I think one of the issues with political discourse right now is between those two things.

Individualism is the only good value.

Well, no, it's not.

It's not the only good value.

Collectivism is the only good value.

No, it's very anti-human.

But there is.

You need something that empowers the individual as a part of a community and in a mutually beneficial way.

And I think Bitcoin does that.

That's directly correlated with how Bitcoin ruined my relationship with my family, because Bitcoin ruined my ability to relate with my family financially in any way, shape or form that they would understand.

And so what that made me do is get even stauncher and more, you know, steadfast in my resolve to do the thing that I'm doing, which is like go full bore into Bitcoin, because I'm not just doing it for me.

I'm actually doing it for my entire family.

Like, I'm stacking for my mom and my dad and my brother and my nieces and nephews and all that.

Like, I'm stacking for them because they can't get out of their own way.

And so I've just realized I'm like, hey, these conversations are not valuable.

So what can I do insofar as it concerns me?

I can stack to protect them and myself.

And, you know, I need to protect my house first.

And help you as much as I can.

We're running low on time.

I know some of us have a hard stop here.

Yeah, I think we're coming up to the to the end.

To the end. So any last.

Yeah.

Last words, last thoughts.

Good last topic.

I'll give my last thoughts first.

Here we go.

All the bits.

I think my last take is.

Bitcoin.

Bitcoin ruined my ability to ignore things.

It forced me to come to an agreement with myself that doing nothing was never and is never the correct answer.

I always need to do something.

I can come to a decision where inaction is the correct decision, but no action at all is never the correct decision.

Yeah.

Very, very similar.

It ruined my understanding of my own time as being something expendable.

And now I see it as valuable.

And in turn, the time of everyone around me as exceedingly valuable and increasingly valuable.

And it gave an economic reality to that.

Yep. Ruined my.

Bitcoin ruined my ability to be like a fully private individual.

Right.

Once you see it, you realize that you have to do something, JD, as you're just saying.

You have to push.

You have to go forward.

You can't just let it let it all pass.

Oh, yeah.

I'm just going to make money off this thing.

No, it's so much bigger than that.

All right.

Sounds like we've exhausted the topic.

Good stuff.

Well, hey, thanks, y'all.

Thanks, everybody, for tuning in, and we'll see you next week.

Peace.

Bye.