Principles the Bitcoin Mind - Ep 042

Explore how Bitcoin principles can reshape accountability and integrity in society. JD and Bondor discuss the transformative power of Bitcoin on a personal and systemic level, arguing for a shift from fiat principles to a world where accountability is rooted in truth and integrity becomes the cornerstone of human interaction.

 

Watch this episode on YouTube

 

Hosts:

JD - @CypherpunkCine on 𝕏
Bondor - @gildedpleb 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. Better By Bitcoin.

Hello everyone on the interwebs. Now for you. How's it going? I am Cyberpunk Ciny and we have Mr. Gilda Bleep here as well. Bondor, super stoked to be here, man. There's a lot of stuff going on in the world today, but glad we got to jump in and kind of have a quick chat. I think that is a great place to start and kind of go in the principles of the Bitcoin mindset. One is one of the things that we want to talk about. I think principles have been kind of front and center over the last week for sure, if not for the last couple of years, especially with election cycles and things like that. But I think there's a lot of interesting aspects with what's going on with knots and core and all those things. And I think trying to unpack some of the principles that we think are interesting for the Bitcoin mind as something that can actually be really, really valuable for everybody kind of coming up. Because I think some of the principles that work really, really well in a Fiat world actually won't work as well in a Bitcoin world. Would you agree with that? What do you think?

Correct, yeah, definitely. There's an entire slew of things that we value in the Fiat world that are just incompatible with the Bitcoin world.

Yep. Yep. No, totally agree with that. And I'll even start with that is like, I think one of the principles that's the most underappreciated when it comes to the current modern world is accountability. I think in a Bitcoin world, we're going to move back and I'm going to use the word to a more clandestine style of accountability. But we're going to get to a place where the rawness of what something is or is not is actually going to be the bigger piece of value it can provide you. So, like, as a perfect example, like nature, like what I say is, like, nature, you know, F's or whatever it is, like, you know, nature is raw. Like, the accountability of if you want to go eat that day, you have to go out and kill something, right? If you're a lion, you're gonna go need to, you know, get any of the gazelle or whatever it is to actually stop and eat and feed your family that day. And I think that's one of the things that we're going to get back to is in in a Bitcoin world, people are going to want to sell their Bitcoin. They already don't want to sell their Bitcoin, right? Nobody wants to sell their Bitcoin. FOMC is actually talking right now, so who knows what's going on. But I think the bigger piece of this is going to be is.

Everything.

Will get better because it's going to have to get better. And what I mean by that is when you're on a Bitcoin standard and the money actually matters, you're not going to just part with your money willy-nilly like you're not going to just think about the fact that, oh, hey, I can get the government handout and then I can take this government handout and roll into this government handout and then I can do this like capital flow flywheel that sailor is doing right now, rightfully so, to try and kind of like boost what strategy is doing. But that's not going to work in a bitcoin world. Like, what are your thoughts on that? I've like response, like accountability specifically, like, how do you think accountability changes in a bitcoin?

I mean, the obvious one is obviously it's every coin transaction is public information. You want accountability? Oh, we want accountability for the nonprofits that we just gave a hundred million dollars to. What did they do with that money? In the Bitcoin world, it's like, oh yeah, that money went here. And then you see that it goes to these addresses. We don't know exactly what those addresses are, but we know exactly how the money was spent. 100% accountable. There is no, oh, it's a backroom deal. And I went back to, hey, this is a politician that's getting a kickback on this. We can just trace that. We'll just know. And yeah, sure, there's probably some implications for privacy there, which are well thought out and well articulated elsewhere. But in terms of public accountability, if everything was just private, then you're just doing no much better or you're not doing any better. But with a public access to a public blockchain, the whole entire government just predicated on Bitcoin, great. There's a complete accountability in terms of funding. I know exactly where my tax dollars are going. Specifically, I can trace the transaction. It goes through the whole thing, 100% accountable. And then that, naturally is a selling point for whatever you're working on, whatever you're doing. And it offers the ability for the change of culture. So, oh yeah, well, our government has 100% accountability because you can actually see the funds flow. Now, interesting. Gosh, our public corporation should do the same thing because that's a value add to the shareholder. At a public company, right? And we already have this example of a government doing it. Or maybe the examples go different ways, right? Oh, the public company does it, and then it becomes a standard thing that every public company does, and then it works its way up the ladder through social means and then becomes political means, and that affects the government, and that's how it changes. So and then all the individual people out there too, like obviously people want to remain private individuals. They'll have that option. Don't publish your Bitcoin addresses.

Great.

This is easy. Public companies, public governments, maybe you should publish your addresses. And, you know, there's certainly, you know, state secrets that need to be protected for the interests of national security. Okay, use a different thing or use a different medium or use a different disconnect the addresses you know from the addresses you don't know. There's plenty of ways to do that.

I'm actually curious about this one, especially with the events of last week. I don't believe the official narrative, by the way. But do you think with the cryptographic accountability. And, you know, and that's not the correct phrasing, but do you think we will get to a world where we will actually have more access and information into stuff like a tragedy like this to where within a government organization that you pay for, whether it's a US government or whether it's a European government or whatever it is, but do you think like there will be a demand for more accountability of, like, a chain of custody, but not even that, but, like, truth of, like, okay, hang on. It's like, where did you get that? Why are you sending me these text messages? Like, what? Like, what do you, what do you think is actually going to happen on the other side of, of this? Because I'm kind of curious. Like, I think it could be, I think it could be a demand, but I don't know if we'll see it in our lifetime. I'm curious. Your take. I mean.

Yeah, we'll definitely see the accountability. Like, for the exact same reason I just outlined, we'll absolutely see the accountability because the culture will demand it. The culture will have expectations and demand it. The social interactions will just demand, like, why would I do that if it's clearly being obscured? Why does it need to be obscured? There's going to be all sorts of social layers on top of this that are going to be affected like that. So yeah, definitely. When you say accountability, you're coming at it from not a big picture government stuff. You're coming at it from a practical live your life accountability. How do you connect the dots there? Why does accountability come to mind when someone says principles of the Bitcoin mind? For you.

Great question. There is no help desk for Bitcoin. And so accountability, I'm kind of slightly making it synonymous with responsibility, but I think the biggest thing is going to be, you are going to be forced into a world where you can't just pawn it off on somebody else. There's going to be a mindset shift where, you know, we're already seeing it with cancer culture, right? Like, I think the thing that's interesting about cancer culture is cancer culture is an abomination of accountability. And so what I mean by that is somebody wrote a set of rules that were not real, and then they indoctrinated a bunch of people to believe that their rules were real, hashtag fiat, and then they used that cajole to force people into the accountability of the system that they had created. Bitcoin will do a similar thing, but a different thing, because the accountability that Bitcoin is going to bring is an accountability to truth. We're going to move from this accountability of your truth and my truth to the truth. And so everybody will be accountable to the truth. And I think that's where I'm kind of going with this whole accountability thing, is at the end of the day, you will be accountable for the exact count. In your account, you will be accountable for, you know, I can't remember who said it. It's also in the Bible, though. But it's the, the, the key thing here is, you know, and this is, this is a Charlie Kirk quote, not to bring him into this, but from a moment. But, like, I'd never heard this said before, and I'm sure it's not a quote that he made up. It's a words of wisdom, which was taste your words before you speak them. That really kind of hit me with a ton of, with a ton of bricks, because I think the taming of the tongue is talked about over and over and over again in the Bible. And just kind of in general parlance, it's like, you know, people who curse, I curse people who do all these different things. Like, if you can't tame your tongue, if you can't, you know, make yourself accountable to a truth, your truth, the truth of these words that you're saying. And I'm not, this is not going down the path of, of anything outside of, like, words and actions are related. And I think that's the issue here is like, yeah, like, we're going into an interesting, like, nuanced place as I'm, like, talking to this right now, because I'm just. Bring it out there and I'm not a great debater. But the core of where I'm trying to go with is this. If you can't control and make yourself accountable to yourself and what you're saying, then how could you expect to remain or be accountable to anybody else for what you do? And I think that's the issue here is if people are not holding themselves accountable for what they say in any way, shape or form, then they're a child. They are still acting in a childish way and they're not doing anything that would actually show that they are cognizant and capable of being an adult and being in polite society. And I think that's the bigger piece of accountability, like landing the plane on this is people are going to have a higher standard of accountability for themselves and a higher level of accountability for other people. And that will be a virtual cycle that will make everything better because it's kind of one of those social proof things. And a perfect example would be the young lady who was killed from Ukraine. I can't pronounce her name. People will feel accountable, just like Japan does, for other people and for the society at large. And that's where I'm going with this. Like there will be a social responsibility that will be born out of the Bitcoin mindset that goes to like Christendom and Christians being the people who give the most. Because at the end of the day, there's a sense of responsibility, a sense of accountability to, in the Christian sense, it's an accountability to God. But in the greater, broader sense of a Bitcoin mindset, it's like if everybody is valuing this one thing, and by the way, that one thing is the only thing we value our time in, that's the whole point of fiat currency is you're valuing your time in this thing you're trading it for. That'll change the entire belief system around accountability, in my opinion, in ways that we've never expected.

Yeah, love that. It touches on, so what comes to mind for me, for principles of the Bitcoin mind is the idea that you touch on, which is let your yes be a yes. The idea of integrity, actually saying what you're going to do, doing what you're going to say or doing what you said, right? Making those things tied, making your words tied to reality. Ensuring that your words are tied to reality. We've touched on this in the podcast before, but the idea that your word is your bond, that is going to be huge. The only thing anyone actually has at the end of the day in terms of how they interact with civilization is really going to be their reputation, which tons of stories about how people have basically just spent down their reputation for whatever monetary gain they could get or whatever other random gain they get. I think that goes away in a Bitcoin denominated world because you recognize that your time is limited, your money is limited, and the only leverage you have on either of those things is essentially what you can bring to the table, the value that you can add. Part of the only thing, or not the only thing, but part of the value you can add is your reputation, is your ability to assert by yes is a yes, My no is a no. And you can, you know, bank on that. You can put that in the bank. Like, oh yeah, he said yes. So it's going to happen. It's going to happen by this date because that's what he said. That's how he brings value to the world, right? It really like, and you not just like business stuff, but like really, you can think about this. Sorry, my voice is going out. You can think about this from a whole, just any kind of human relationship. A marriage, a marriage, you stand in front of, you know, you stand in front of your future spouse, you make a vow, like I promise to through sickness and in health, et cetera, et cetera. And in front of all of your friends and family and everybody else in attendance or a judge, and that's what you've done. This is like, okay, make that real. In our current culture, fiat culture, all those words were BS and you can just get a divorce at any time for any reason, it doesn't matter. In a Bitcoin denominated culture, no, that affects your reputation as someone who's a vow maker and keeper. This is very, very, it's almost, it becomes this holy ground that if you violate it, it becomes anathema, just an abomination. You become socially impure. All sorts of problems happen to you because you broke your word completely different than our current paradigm of oh, you broke your word, doesn't matter. We can paper over all our problems. Like, you can do anything you want, man. You can say anything you want. No one's going to reprimand you, right? Like, there is no such thing as a bad move or a false move or any kind of just doesn't matter. Everything's good, man. All that goes away under a Bitcoin standard.

Yeah. The thing that's really interesting about that, like the integrity aspect and just kind of like tying both of these together, like integrity and kind of better. But like, it's interesting to think about the adages that will go away. Like passing the buck will die. It'll be one of those things, like you're gonna have to explain to your.

Kids, take it to the bank, will die.

It will die. Like trying to explain those adages to your kids or to your grandkids. To be like, I saw this thing in a history book and it was like passing the buck. What does that mean? It's like, well, outside of passing a physical dollar, it's literally like passing the blame, but like, that's not something we do. And so it's just interesting the.

You.

Know, it's funny, the, the other adage of, like, politics is Downstream of culture, but culture is Downstream of money. It's like, that is, I think, the thing that's going to change the most is, is that, that adage is going to be true. 100. And I think, actually, that's how we get to this inevitable conclusion of politics is Downstream of, of culture, but culture is Downstream of money. But if we can make money.

Matter.

If we can make money important again, it, it will change everything because it's like, no, I'm listening to Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly effective people, which I highly recommend. If you haven't read it before, I read it. Probably 20 years ago. And then I finally am just, like, picking it up again.

So good.

I'm like, it's hitting me like a ton of bricks, dude. One of the, the visualization exercises he tells you to do is, is you're, you're pulling up to a funeral parlor and you're pulling up to a funeral. And so you kind of get out of the car and, like, you think about your suit, you think about your wearings, everybody you walk in, and as you walk in, you get to the front row and you look to your left and you see your family members, and then you see some of your best friends and then you look to your right and you see some of your co-workers and you see some of your acquaintances and then you kind of finally get all the way up to the open casket in the front and you look down and it's yourself. And the exercise is then to pick four people from that front row, somebody from your family, one of your friends, one of your co-workers, one of your acquaintances, and think about the eulogy that they would give you. Think about how they would talk about you, like what you left behind, because once you're gone, that's it. What you did is all that matters. What you're going to do is irrelevant because you can't do anything anymore. And so I think that is kind of what spurred this whole conversation on for me anyways, or rather, this, like, this idea of talking about the Bitcoin mindset, because at the end of the.

Day.

That's all we can actually pass on to the next generation is our principles, is our values, our morals. And I think that's why the big debate going on in Bitcoin right now about the technical limitations and ramifications of all this block size, all this like non-servicE core type thing, the OP return and the 80 bytes or whatever it is. For me, that's just missing the mark. Like the point of this entire thing is what is the culture around this asset we want to create? Do we want to create a culture that's filecoin?

Right?

Filecoin exists, right? Like, do we want to create a culture that is like, Hey, if you can create spam or whatever their C Sam, I don't even know what that is. Like, if we can create these things and they fall within this little parameter over here, it's okay to go on. On the blockchain versus this culture of, hey, this is money. It needs to be respected. And you're still going to get that guy who's going to draw on the dollar bill and he's going to make a, you know, put the little curly cues on Lincoln's face or Jameson Lopp's face or whatever it is. Like, that's still going to happen. You're not wrong. Like, you cannot stop 100% of spam. That's not the point. The point is, what is it? Like, is this the greatest monetary asset to ever be created, ever be discovered, ever be thought of? Or is it a database? There is no wrong answer technically. But theologically, because I am going to make it a theological argument. It is a religious argument. It is a cultish argument.

It's a moral argument.

Yeah, it's a moral argument. The, the, the, the, the moral relativism, the moral relativism that a database allows. Is the problem in my mind. And that goes to this whole bitcoin mindset thing is at the end of the day, if you're not thinking about bitcoin as exclusively money, you're missing the point. Like, we can do all these things technically. You're absolutely correct. You can build a rocket that can go to Mars. Technically, you're absolutely correct. But should you, like, that's another thing too, is like, we think about these bigger things and like, as Humanity, like, oh, we need to go to the Stars. So we get that. But I think nobody has made a really good moral theological argument for the Bitcoin monetary principle. And I think that's one of the big things too, that also spread this on for me is like the moral implication of Bitcoin being money is way more important to me than the fact that I could put a family photo on the blockchain that my kids, kids, kids, kids, kids could see. I don't care. Yep.

I mean, we could definitely dive off the deep end here. I think, but getting back on topic, but also staying here, it's one of the principles of the Bitcoin mind that I think is going to come about is the idea of rightly ordered priorities with regard to the Bitcoin thing. I'm in a discussion with somebody right now online that's I would, I assert Bitcoin is money is the first intention of the protocol, first and only intention of the protocol. And because it's money, therefore it needs to have censorship resistance for the money purpose. Right now, in my mind, that is a rightly ordered priority. Because if we elevate censorship resistance, Above or equal to the money? Well, what's going to happen?

Well.

If we elevate censorship resistance equal to the money, the censorship resistance now asserts that for it to be censorship resistant, it needs to accommodate CSAM, which is child sexual abuse material. Needs to accommodate it, right? If censorship resistant is elevated to equal purpose with the monetary intention of Bitcoin. Now, if it's subjected to the monetary purpose of Bitcoin, why on earth would it even need to include CSAM? There's no reason for it. It has no monetary, any monetary, like you can have a transaction from A to B sending a certain amount of money, and as long as nobody can censor that transaction, fantastic. If you have a transaction going from A to B, same amount of money, exact same transaction, same private keys, et cetera, and you chalk in a bunch of CSAM, like that should be an invalid transaction, not just because it's CSAM, but because it has all sorts of other, any other arbitrary data in it that's not in service to the primary purpose, which is money. Now, if we can nail that, awesome, then the future is going to be golden. If we can't nail that, it's going to be a lot of murky times ahead. But I think we're going to figure that out because people's time preferences are going to be lowered. Again, principles in a Bitcoin mind, principles of a Bitcoin mind are going to be, you're lowering the time preferences, you're ordering your priorities correctly. And then when your priorities are ordered correctly, you can go through the whole process and really think about things in order When they're in order, you're going to have way better outcomes. You're going to have way better success. You're going to protect yourself from all sorts of different attacks, all sorts of other stuff. When your priorities are in order, if your priorities are out of order, it's a whole different ballgame. If you value, like, when I went to crazy, not crazy, but just great example of how, what happens when you misappropriate your priorities. When I went to college, Like in the first like six months of being in college, two, three, four friends, maybe not four, but two or three, the parents got divorced because their parents were only together because the kids, the kids were a higher priority than the marriage. And when there was no more kids, there was no reason to have the marriage anymore. The inversion of priorities. So my friends parents are getting divorced when they're 18 attending college. It's like why did why how long has it been like it's just a whole whole thing. But if the priorities were correctly ordered the marriage is before the children higher priority. That's not a risk. You don't have to deal with that. You're already processed like sure marriages tons of marriages have tons of different problems. But if the marriage is the priority you'll work through the marriage problems and you won't just stay together with all the problems because of a other priority that's wrongly ordered. So in a bitcoin world, we get all of that. We get the priorities ordered correctly. In a fiat world, it's just garbage all the way down.

That actually goes to my next principle for a bitcoin mindset and for a bitcoin world is legacy, right? It's really interesting, like the whole thinking about 100 years from now question, right? Because it's like 100 years from now, you won't be here. All that's left is your legacy. And I think that if you can bring that into, I've been of the last, since last Tuesday, I've been actually trying to bring that in every everything I do and trying to use that to rightly order my life, because for me, one of the issues that I have, like, personally, I was a workaholic. I love work. I love work, man. Like, I love me some work.

Any more of that work?

Yeah, any more of that work. Just mainline that. But the. But here's the thing. It's like, I, you know, I laugh when I. When I think, and it's funny when you say that, but then, like, you know, the Stephen covey thing, like, really convicted me on top of everything else going on is, I'm like, dude. Like, you know, if you have young kids or you have whatever, like that's what they're going to remember. And ironically, that's what I remember about my dad, right? It's like that guy loved to work. That's what he did. And he would come home and I'd see him every so often, but I'm like, dude, you know, there's so many mismatched priorities there. Like my dad was not focused on the legacy piece. And I think that's one of the things that's interesting is the only way to change your legacy or your family tree, as they call it, is for somebody to suffer, period. In the mindset where we are now and what, like, as I'm becoming aware of these things, what I'm realizing is if I want to change this workaholism that is in my life, the person that is going to have to suffer is me, because I'm going to be the one who needs to put the effort in to get an understanding of that I'm going to need. I need to be the one to take a step back, detach, get an understanding of what's going on, and be like, dang. Yeah, if I were to get hit by a car yesterday, all of my clients aren't going to care. They're going to care for five seconds. Wow, that's super sad. But they're going to figure that out. They have a monetary incentive to find somebody to sit in that chair. My family doesn't. Like, they have a monetary sense of incentive because they need somebody to provide. But at the end of the day, like, no one can fill the father seat, period. And I think that's the thing is, like, somebody can get in that chair and they can do it differently. But, like, you are uniquely and wonderfully made for the purposes that you were created for. You are uniquely and wonderfully made for the family you have. You are uniquely and wonderfully made for the partner, for the wife, for the husband that you have your ability to sit quietly with that thought and gain an understanding of how you can purposefully live into that is going to determine the success of your legacy being remembered or being forgotten. And that's the truth. The data, and I'll just say this last piece, the data shows that it's like the amount of money, and this is an interesting thing, and I talked about it for podcasts, but basically it's like generational wealth is usually gone by the third generation. If you can hold on to it until the fifth generation, it stays. It goes to like all the way down to like 20%. So it's like 20% of people who have generational wealth will lose it by the fourth generation, but if you hold it to the fifth generation, it goes up to like 80%. And I say all that to say this, and that was a Grok study, but I say that to say that makes perfect sense because that means that that family had a generational mindset, a principle, a value set that was passed on generation to generation in a very well codified way that they lived in that. So it's like 20% of people live in this world where for five generations, for a hundred years, there's consistency. And so it's really, really interesting to kind of think about that. It's like, oh, wow. If I actually think about wanting to leave something for a hundred years, fun fact, that's kind of what Bitcoin was thought of, a hundred year money. You can do something that can impact people for generations, but then reverberate well beyond what you individually have done to create it.

Yep. I love the idea you have of you have to, if you want, what was it? If you want change, you have to, something has to suffer.

Someone has to suffer. If you want something to change, someone will have to suffer. Whether someone will have to sacrifice.

Yeah.

So I think that touches on one of my next principles for the Bitcoin mind, like living a Bitcoin mindset is living courageously. Being courageous, part of that, not all of it all the time, but part of that is, you need to suffer. You need to be okay facing that. You need to be able to go through hell and keep going, right? You do not retreat, you do not surrender. You face evil, you face what is wrong, as you're discussing, you face your own shortcomings and things that you fail at. You face those and you fix them and it's hard. But you do it because that's what you need to do. That is the right course of action. And it doesn't matter if, if anybody's screaming at you, you know, saying you're a bigot or whatever the thing is, you do it because it's the right thing to do. You do it in the face of adversity, in the face of suffering, because it's the courageous thing to do. And you have, like, now, how does that tie to a, to a principles of the Bitcoin mind.

I mean.

Maybe you have an answer for this. The thing that's coming to mind right now is like, well, we could all just, like, pack it up and go home. We could all say that, you know, it's not worth fighting Fiat. They're probably going to win. If they don't win, they're going to get all the node operators or whatever. But you know what? I'm going down with the ship, so. This is the right thing to do. So I'm gonna go down with the ship and you, you know, evaluate the truth of your, you know, axioms and suppositions about how you come to your conclusions, constantly prod them, of course. But if they point you in one direction, you are obligated to follow through with that conclusion.

To the courage piece, and this obligation of falling through that conclusion. I 100 agree with that. And that actually goes to, I'm reading now, so that's why I'm looking off. But in the book, Kovi said he had this idea of courage. He's like, what people miss about courage? Courage is where something else matters more, and we have the wisdom to choose it. And so you can be in a moment where your life is in danger, but you realize the wife of your spouse or your kids, whoever it is, is more important than you saving your own life. That's courage. Courage is you having an understanding and a rationalization of the danger ahead, but still making a choice that is actively more dangerous for yourself. And there's a radical thing about courage that like everyone listening now, like having the courage, like not just the understanding, but the courage to really analyze your own flaws and look at yourself and doing it.

Yeah.

Yep. Because that I think is one of the biggest things that I had is I'm constantly, you know, looking at myself and it's so easy to be like, it's like, oh, it's like, you know, this person's fault. You did this. You did this. You did this. But it's like, all right, how do I take every single time? I'm like, it's their fault. This is the reason why this is like, you know, whatever it's like. And put a mirror on it and be like, okay, but what was my part on that? What did I do that got me there? And not only that, what are my predispositions that got me here? Am I too quick to say yes? Like, using yes as a crutch, I would say, for a lot of people, myself included. Is really, really damaging. Like, it is actually more courageous in my mind to say no than it is to say yes.

Yeah.

And I think that's one of the big things we're going to get into, which, you know, is actually one of the things that excites me about the Bitcoin mindset, because we're going to get to a place where, you know, my next one is responsibility. People are going to be so predisposed to doing the responsible thing that no is going to be the more common response from people. And the entire world will be better for it. What I mean by that is you're going to ask your dad, Hey, Dad, can you come over and fix my car? And I'm just using as an example for somebody. And your dad who might have a predisposition to be like, Yes, I want to be a savior. Was like, I'm actually not good at that. So it would be better for all of us from a well-being for our relationship, for your car, because we're trying to replace something in the middle of your engine or whatever it is, for us to actually just find somebody who knows what they're doing. Because it'll probably take less time, it'll probably cost less money. And at the end of the day, we're gonna like each other better because we didn't have to bicker and argue and fight over this whole thing. And so I think there's gonna be, and I think that's a simple example, but let me use a bigger example.

I mean, context dependent example, too. Like, what if your dad actually is a mechanic? Well, then it would be, like, irresponsible for him to not, you know, of course, but.

But I think the, the bigger, the bigger example of not being going to be is coming back to bitcoin.

Right.

It is going to be a lot easier and cleaner for people to have an understanding of what Bitcoin is and is not. And that, I think, is why this CSAM thing is so important. Because you're gonna have a very quick, everything is binary to a degree. And what I mean by that is you go left or right, making no decision, the gray area, staying where you are, is actually still part of the binary. Because what I mean is you have to say yes or no to everything. And if you just say no, you're still sitting at that fork. Nothing has changed. And so until you make a decision, you're actually still sitting in, you're still sitting on that same line. And so where we're at right now is kind of like, it was like, oh, it's kind of murky. It's like, no, we're going to make a decision. And Bitcoin will become a database or it will become a money, and there will be no in between, because it cannot be both. You cannot be everything to everyone. If you try to be everything to everyone, you will be nothing to no one. That's the adage, and it's totally true. And that goes to myself when it comes to the work stuff. It's like, oh, I want to be the best person in my business, and I want to be the best person in my family. I want to be the best husband I can. I want to be the best dad. I want to be the best friend. I want to be. Something's got to give, dude. There are 24 hours in a day. And if you want to break it up into four equal blocks, you can sleep, you can eat, you can, you know, you sleep, you can work, you can spend some time with family, and you got a little bit of time for whatever it is. And it's like, if you want to do something for yourself, great. If you want to do something for somebody else, great. But, like, that's it. So you got to say no in some way, shape or form. And I think that's the thing that's going to be really cool is as responsibility goes up, I think no becomes easier. And then we're actually gonna get to a place, especially with AI and AGI and all that, we're going to get to a place as no gets easier. Human flourishing expands at an exponential rate that we never expected because you're gonna have the right people in the right seat and they're gonna self-select to be in that seat. You're gonna ask somebody, hey, do you wanna make this video for me? And they're like, nah, that's not really my thing. Or, hey, do you wanna do this ideation session for me? I'm like, nah, it's not really my thing. Hey, do you wanna build me some cabinets? And it's gonna be so, like, we're gonna unlock stuff that I'm super stoked.

Yeah, totally. People are not going to be completely constrained and being forced to say yes about everything because they have no agency and they really just need to eat because they don't have enough money to say no. Right. One of the things that comes to mind in terms of what you're talking about with responsibility is, I mean, obviously this is a huge thing in in Bitcoin world, Bitcoin ethos, which is ownership and taking extreme ownership. This is a pillar of what it means to be a Bitcoin or what it means to have a Bitcoin mindset. You run a node, you take ownership of the time chain as you realize that your time, this is my copy. There are many like it, but this one is mine. As you take ownership of that, what's going to happen is that you're going to start taking ownership of, you've taken ownership of the time chain. You like that, you're going to take ownership of more time. You're going to take ownership of your time. You're going to take ownership of your responsibilities. Take ownership of your financial health. Take ownership of your physical health. You're just going to start checking off these boxes. It doesn't all happen overnight, of course. But as you lean into ownership, it's a clear signpost. And signpost reads sovereignty this way. And then on the other side of the sign is slavery this way. So sovereignty or slavery. And you know at every step, once you have the Bitcoin mindset, every step, you know if you're getting via ownership, you know, if you're getting closer to being self-sovereign or if you're getting closer to being more of a slave. And it's just, it's plain as day. It's incredible. I love it. But, yeah, we're, we're all going to be taking so much ownership of our time, so much ownership of our families, of our marriages, of our kids, of our relationships, of our schools, of everything else. The Fiat world, it's like they do everything they possibly can to divorce you from ownership. Divorce you from having any agency, divorce you from having any influence. You are literally a slave and you just have to suffer through whatever they shove down your throat. But not in the Bitcoin world. In the Bitcoin world, you take ownership. You move, you keep going, you fight, you. You be courageous, and you do what needs to be done to affect your world and affect your life and the things that you can affect. You will. That's another one.

The. The.

What is it? The prayer of Serenity. The Alcoholics Anonymous prayer. Just, like, fantastic prayer. You. You know this one, right? Like, give me. Give me the power to change the things I can change and the. And to let go of the things I can't change. And the. The ability to tell the difference. Butcher did something like that.

Yeah.

What's the difference? We're going to have explicit guidelines or explicit understanding about what those boundaries are. And to your point, we're going to be able to move quickly through the things that we can change, and we're going to be able to affect them, and we're actually going to be able to make change. And the things we can't change, we're going to be able to divorce ourselves from those things because we can't change them anyway. We're going to have those clear delineations, and because of that, we're going to be able to say no. We're going to be able to say, this is not interesting to me as opposed to being forced to say yes to everything despite the fact that it's of no interest.

I think what's interesting too about this actually is I'm just now thinking about it is the trickle down accountability. And so what I mean by that is if we can get everybody on a Bitcoin standard, this is by the way governments, this is why they don't like Bitcoin. They don't like Bitcoin because of the accountability, because at the end of the day, with this true ownership aspect of things, right? Literally owning a finite. So it's not just owning an underlying asset like gold. It's under, it's owning an underlying asset that is auditable by anyone. So there's ownership of the blockchain by everyone who runs a node, by everyone who participates in the monetary network, in the P2P aspect that it was generated and created to be interacted with then. And so what's going to make this really, really interesting is depending on how quickly we get to the, and if we can keep Bitcoin surviving long enough, but depending how quickly we get to this world where the ownership and the sovereignty and the integrity and the accountability are kind of like aligned with this Bitcoin ethos of things, you're going to have a lot of trickle down accountability. And what I mean by that is there's going to be people in government looking over their shoulder who are going to make more correct decisions for you as a voter or for you as an individual that lives in Des Moines when everybody else is in DC, because at the end of the day, they know that you're going to be able to actually hold them accountable, hold them responsible. For making a poor decision in DC. And that is such a great thing because everything will get better. Governments around the entire world, all this mass where somebody, whether it be Pelosi or Ted Cruz or whoever it is, like, I don't really care. All of them do waste in some way, shape or form. If you are in government, you are a waste. And I don't mean that in a nasty way. Just government is a waste. Government is effectively one of the most wasteful things in the world because It is other people spending other people's money on other people. Period. That is the number one way to waste money is other people spending other people's money on other people. They just care about the cost. They want it cheap and they want it fast. In manufacturing and in business, you can have two of the three good, cheap, fast. And government, they just want it cheap and fast. They don't care how good it is. That is always what government does. Why do they want it cheap and fast? Because then they spend on themselves all of that bonus money so they can have good and fast. They don't care about the cost. And so this is that issue is actually will make it will put upward pressure, not downward pressure, but it'll put upward pressure from the bottom on these people at the top in these strongholds of power because it's going to force them to be accountable for every penny. They're going to get to a point where they're just like, hey, what did you do at this address that belongs to a strip club? Why did your office send all this Bitcoin to this particular office in, you know, I'm just saying Oman because I was talking about Oman earlier today, but, like, in Oman, like, why were you in Oman? Why would, like, there's going to be an opportunity for people to hold people in government, to hold their leadership to an accountability standard that they say they want, but they really don't want. And I think that's what's really, really exciting for me is, like, this, this. Bitcoin mindset, if it can mind virus, everybody like it's mind virus us, it will actually just force everyone as a whole, as a collective, as a society to be better, which is cool.

A lot of that. I mean, I don't think we've touched on it yet, but, you know, we've touched it on this pod ad nauseam every episode. But a lot of that is the high time preference versus low time preference thing. And again, just to explain it. If you're new, because you should absolutely know this stuff if you're into Bitcoin or trying to figure it out, high time preferences are when you value the immediate effects of something at the expense of the long term consequences. If you have low time preferences, it's the reverse. You value the long term consequences at the expense of the immediate effects of something. So how does Bitcoin affect this? Bitcoin affects this because when your money is deflationary, it doesn't lose value over time. It doesn't lose value on the longest timeframes. In fact, you would expect that it gains value on the longest timeframes. Consequently, your immediate spending today has to be taken at a discount of, well, what do I think it's going to be worth? What is this actual cost for me in the future?

Right?

So Bitcoin, because it's deflationary, pushes your time preferences lower. It pushes your time preferences out into the future. You prefer to think longer term. The opposite of this is Fiat, where your money is losing value constantly. So if you hold onto it and don't spend it right away, you're guaranteed to have less agency in the future. Consequently, you're going to say, oh, I need to spend this today. I need to make financial decisions today. All of a sudden, debt makes a lot of sense to get into. Why? Because if you take on a whole bunch of debt right now and it's spread out over the next 30 years, what's going to happen is that the nominal value of that debt or the agency of that debt that that debt can purchase will be way more valuable upfront and it will slowly erode over time as the currency devalues. Therefore, as people go through this process of high time preference or low time preference incentives in the system, what's going to happen? Oh, they're going to get psychologically re they're going to get psychological reinforcement. They're going to get that teeny little dopamine hit in the Fiat world. They get that dopamine hit when they choose today me here now drugs, sex, violence over long-term consequences. In a Bitcoin denominated world, they're going to get the dopamine hit when they choose long-term consequences, us together for a long time, instead of drug sex violence, they're going to choose sobriety, long-term stable relationships, and peace, because they're going to be thinking long-term. How do we make this peace last? How do we make the, like, bro, can we even begin to understand how this makes the world better? No, it makes the world monumentally better. And it's all baked into the protocol. It's fascinating stuff. Incredible Bitcoin mindset. It's gonna hit you.

And I think that's the other thing that's so challenging about it. And also, if you guys, anybody watching and you have a principle you want us to discuss or talk through, because I'd love to hear. I know we don't have all the answers and I'm super curious any other ideas, so feel free to drop in the chats. But the the thing that's interesting about that is like when you really try to think about a hundred year problem, like money is a 10,000 year problem. People have been trying to solve this problem for tens of thousands of generations, billions upon billions upon billions of people. And so it's really interesting to think about the fact that we just did not have the technology to do it in the way that we can do it now in this digital age. And I think that's one of the things that can be interesting. I do think the digital age, if Bitcoin can survive and if Bitcoin can be correctly monitored in the way that it is, we will move to a place where it's not the digital age, it's the Bitcoin age.

Yep. I think you just got muted there for a second. I don't know how. Yeah, I did.

Yep.

So what. What other Bitcoin principles? I mean, at the top of the show, we wrote them. We wrote. We wrote a handful down. I can probably recap them. I think we covered all the ones that I wanted to cover. Which was make your yes a yes for integrity, tell the truth. We got a little bit of that with accountability and be courageous. So yeah, those I mean, and then as we go through it, we get extreme ownership, which I think is just one of the best things. Once you figure that out, oh man, game over. It's incredible. And then rightly ordered priorities. I mean, they talk about this in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, right? The big takeaway for me from that book when I read it was there's important tasks, less important, more important. And then there's immediate tasks, like things that are due right now or things that can wait.

And you.

So then you have four categories, four boxes. Immediate, but not important. Immediate, but important. Not immediate. Not important. Not immediate. Important. And unless I messed that up.

No, that's right. I think it's called the Eisenhower Quartet. I think if I remember, it was a Dwight Eisenhower invention, or rather, that's how Dwight and Eisenhower used to. Organizes calendar.

So if you go through this and you basically have to choose how you spend your time on these four various categorized tasks, if you neglect the important but not immediately necessary task, if you neglect to do it regularly, your life will be wrecked, just wrecked. But if you do that task regularly, And you always check it off the box, you know, at the end of the day or whatever the time scale is for immediate, your life will be so rightly ordered that all the other tasks kind of just fall in line according to how they should actually be falling in line.

Right?

And now, obviously you need to do the important and immediate tasks too, but oftentimes, most of the time, our priorities just get so whacked that we categorize everything as important and immediate and we don't even categorize anything as not important. And then we fail to do the tasks that are important but not immediate.

Yep. That actually goes to, and it's funny, I was just thinking about this quote earlier today and this kind of goes as like a personal admission to the world of being a workaholic is I'd always kind of ascribed my life to the adage, if you want something done, give it to a busy person. And I was a busy person.

I do that to you all the time. I know you're busy, so I just give you things to do.

Like I do that to you too, so it's mutual. But I've come to realize that that is a incorrect interpretation of the quote because I think busy now has a different connotation than it did back in the day when that quote was probably invented. And I believe the correct interpretation of that quote is if you want something done, give it to an effective person. Because I think if you have somebody who's insanely effective, then you will get a lot of done. Like Elon Musk is an insanely effective person. Like, at the end of the day, he might not always, you know, hit a home run, but that guy gets up in bats. That guy gets up at every at bat and every at bat is he swinging for a home run? You know, I have a quote on the wall over here, and it's the. It's been floating around the internet, but I'll read it. But it's stop being patient and start asking yourself, how can I accomplish my 10-year plan in six months? You will probably fail. But you will be far ahead of the person who simply accepted it would take 10 years. 100%.

100%.

Because at the end of the day, it's the whole, you know.

Shoot for.

The moon and even if you fail, you'll land among the stars. It's that exact premise. And I think- Quantified.

Yeah.

Quantified. And then it's also an interesting thing of like, you know, the, I'll use the space analogy here. Shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars. But if you keep going long enough, you will come back around and you will probably land on the moon because of the nature of how space works. So there's a possibility. I know. I'm not a physicist, but like to that end, right? I know.

But 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.

I'm not saying it's gonna be a short trip, right? But it's the whole thing of like how we use gravitational pull to accelerate ourselves, you know, around just basically the universe to get to Mars or to get to anywhere else like that. It's like that whole concept of like, you know, if you shoot for the moon and you end up getting in the gravitational orbit of Earth and the moon and kind of go back around, like, eventually you'll most likely land back on one of them. And the point there that I'm trying to make is like, don't give up. Don't give up. Because if you do something like Elon says, it's like, shoot for your six, shoot for your 10-year goal in six months. If you grind long enough and hard enough and go in that direction, you'll get there. You will you will absolutely get there if you think you can you will you think you can't you won't you're absolutely right.

Yep, I agree We're coming up on the top of the hour so we could turn it in right.

Now.

What'S your last thought? What's if you if you had to give like a last thought for the folks listening and we appreciate everybody kind of tuning in and kind of watching and listening through, but, like, what's your, what's your, what's your commission or your benediction, if you will, for, for everybody on right now with the, you know, principles of the Bitcoin mind?

I mean, just to take a step back, I mean, we just watched a, and, and hopefully we'll, we'll spend some time on another episode in the future, but we just watched a horrific assassination of a father. Getting shot. And if that, like, that should motivate you to reevaluate your own principles, what's important to you, what, what are your priorities? How are you going to live out your day and your days going forward? Right. Part of the motivation for this episode is that we wanted to actually, like, codify. These are the, these are the things. Just you can do a considerably better job at codifying it, but just to get it out there to talk about what's important to us. What are the values that, what are the principles that we want to try and live by? What are the principles that Bitcoin actually teaches us about reality and about our relationship with other humans? You're free to disagree with what we've you know, come up with here, but you should, especially today, especially in light of the last couple weeks, really be thinking about the person you want to be. Really be thinking about what you want to be known for, what you want your kids to know you for, the whole thing. Really have deep existential questions with yourself and do it. Keep going. It's not easy.

Yep. I'll take a little bit of a Dig and Goggins approach on this because that's kind of motivates me personally.

But.

It is your fault. Whatever you are struggling with is your fault. At the end of the day, you have the choice of how you respond to whatever your situation is. And there are some terrible situations. And so I'm not saying this lightly to be like, oh, XYZ, you know, genetic, whatever it is. There are some tragic things, right? Or just some natural genetic things, right? Or just some situational things. But at the end of the day, how you respond is your fault. It's not your wife's fault. It's not your wife's fault. It's not your husband's fault. It's not your friend's fault. It's not your co-workers fault. It's not your boss's fault. It is your fault. It's not your kids' fault. How you respond, how you take responsibility, how you act in integrity, how you share the good news that you know how you build a legacy that is accountable to truth, to honor, to society at large, is 100% your fault. And the thing to take solace in, and that is, that also means it's 100% within your control to change. And I think that's the thing that, you know, for me, There's a lot of whoa is me and EOR to my life. It's like, no, dude, pick yourself up. Pick yourself up. You can do it. And if you tell yourself you can't do it, it is your fault because you're being your own crab in a bucket. So what you need to do is dust yourself off, gain an understanding of it is your fault, but then also gain an understanding is, and it's your problem to solve. And you can do it. You can absolutely do it. So with that, everybody, thank you for joining this week's Better By Bitcoin. We will probably be back again some other time this week. But, yeah, man, stay safe. Hug your loved ones. And, you know, let's pave the way for a Bitcoin future.

Indeed. Thanks for tuning in to Better By Bitcoin. Bitcoin makes everything better. Like, subscribe and follow us on X@betterbybtc, YouTube@betterbybtc, not financial advice, mathematical certainty.