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The Honest Money Show is your guide to understanding what money really is, and where Bitcoin fits in. Hosted by Anja Dragovic, Australia's female-led, Bitcoin-only podcast, it cuts through the noise to explore how money shapes our lives, why the current system leaves so many people behind, and what a clearer, fairer future could look like.
Expect honest, accessible conversations with some of the most interesting thinkers in the space, the kind that take you from "I don't really get this" to genuinely curious. No hype, no pressure, just money, made clear.
Whether you're brand new to these questions or already deep in them, you're welcome here.
Welcome to Honest Money. I'm your host,
Anya, and today's episode is brought to
you by Hardblock.
Welcome to Honest Money Show. Can you
respond, Holm? I hope I said that right.
Thank you very much. I practiced just
before we joined the call, so hopefully I
didn't butcher that name too much. We were
just talking about how much I enjoy saying
it. Thank you very much, Anya. Yeah. If
that's the correct way to pronounce your
name. Yeah, it sure is. It sure is. I'm
super pleased to have you on the show.
I've been following you on Twitter for
some time, and I've just always found you
really interesting. I've also listened to
you on a number of podcasts. Think of you
as this person who's lived this very rich
and interesting life, and you have all
these weird and wonderful hobbies on the
side every now and again. I see you
playing the guitar and singing in a band.
So yeah, today I just want to know a
little bit more about your background and
how you got into Bitcoin. Yeah, my
background story is not very similar to
other Bitcoiners. It's also kind of odd,
because I had a career in shipping. And
for the most part of that career, I was on
traditional sailing ships.
And I was on a ship for eight years on a
tall ship sailing across the Atlantic with
high school students. So it's a school
that had a tall ship, which the students
were on for like two or three months per
year. And we sailed like down from Sweden
and down the coast of Europe, and then
sometimes into the Mediterranean and then
crossing the Atlantic via the Cape Verde
Islands and saw a bit of South America and
the West Indies and then up to the
Atlantic. And then I've been on a little
bit of the North American coast and then
back over again. So I did that for quite
some time after I graduated from the
Merchant Marine Academy in Gothenburg,
Sweden. And after that, I had a career in
the CTV industry, which is the crew
transfer vessel industry for technicians
to wind farms. So I met my wife on the
tall ship, and then we got some... Yeah.
We got two kids, and I had to find a job
that was closer to home. And when you're
working on a ship, you're sort of trapped.
You don't ever really have the time to go
looking for other jobs and introduce
yourself to people because you're on this
on and off system. And whenever you're
home, you don't really feel like working.
And you also have all the other things to
do, keep your social connections and so on
and so forth. But I finally got a job at
this shipping company that mans crew
transfer vessels. And eventually, I got
into the office in the crewing department.
And my last Fiat job position was as an HR
manager for this company. We had around
250 employees on the Swedish and Danish
contracts. And I had to find crews for all
the ships and make sure that everything
worked. And a lot of logistical problems
to be solved. And amidst all this, I guess
I stumbled upon Bitcoin even during the
tall ship days. So quite early on, like in
2013-ish, I don't remember the exact time.
But I took an online course and I started
writing articles about Bitcoin in 2016, I
believe, or 2017, maybe. One of the
articles got viral. It was, during the
block size wars about how to take control
of your own private keys, which you needed
to do if you were to sell the Bitcoin cash
bullshit tokens for real Bitcoins during
the fork. So I wanted to educate people
about how to do that. And that article got
a lot of attention. So I figured, maybe
this is something I could do. And I was
watching these Andreas Antonopoulos videos
where he was basically the only guy
traveling the world. And I was like, oh,
I'm talking about Bitcoin. And I thought
to myself, maybe I could do that one day.
It seems like a neat kind of life. And I
was sort of stuck in this fiat rat race.
So I started aiming for that. And I wrote
a proper Bitcoin book in 2019, which I
then took to the Baltic Honey Value
Conference in Riga. And I sold, I brought
50 books in my hand luggage, and I gave 25
away and sold 25 for, over the Lightning
Network mostly, even back in 2019, that
actually worked. And then that book
started taking off. And a couple of years
later, I got a DM from Michael Saylor who
said he really liked it and wanted to put
it on his website. And amidst all of this,
I also wrote an article, which featured a
sentence that said, imagine everything
there is and everything there ever will be
divided by 21 million. And I wrote an
article that said, which became a video
eventually and a meme that sort of took
off in the Bitcoin world. And people
started adding the infinity over 21M
equation to their handles. And around that
time is where I decided to like, maybe I
should, you know, quit my fiat job and
start taking this seriously and doing this
Bitcoin education stuff full time. So I
did. And then we moved on to our holiday
home in Spain, and which is where I live
now. Sold our whole house in Sweden. And
now I do all things from here. And I
basically do what I decided I would do 10
years ago and traveling the world and
doing Bitcoin stuff and writing books and
having the pod and whatnot. Yeah, and I
also, as you mentioned, I also play in
bands. I that's another thing that made me
think that this was actually possible is
because a band I was in like 15 to 20
years ago got some attention when the
Pirate Bay featured us had us as a
featured artist, the Pirate Bay were
promoting local bands all over the world.
And we we were one of those bands. And
that's also a moment where I realized that
there might be something to the internet,
it's not really impossible to be
discovered or recognized. So I guess that
played a role in me actually trying to get
out of my fiat sphere. Yeah, and the
nowadays there are these Satoshi rockamoto
events at some of the conferences where we
basically have jam bands that go up on
stage and do whatever. And it does work
quite a lot. And people seem to like it.
And we now have a couple of or mainly one
actual semi actual group that plays
Nirvana covers and it's me and Samson Moe
and Marti Malmy and Luke The Wolf. The
lineup has changed over the years but
that's always good fun. And there's a lot
of people. So the way I see it, I didn't
become a rock star until I stopped trying
which is so I've been having fun at the
conferences with that speaking of that you
see the guitar behind me here right now
I'm finally recording an album of acoustic
songs that have been on the shelf for like
the last 5 to 10 years so I thought it was
a good time, I had some time to do this
now in between conferences here so I'm
trying to record something and see if we
can have something released within a month
or two here just to try and see if there's
an interest for that I like doing
different things, I like seeing how far I
can take things and I like hyper focusing
and deep diving into things and learning
about things so my plan is just to
continue doing that and see where it takes
me yeah I love it but I'm super curious, I
know you love Austrian economics and that
you've recently interviewed Konza, he's an
Australian Bitcoiner, I absolutely love
that episode did you find Austrian
economics first or was it Bitcoin that you
found first? I'd say I knew about the
Mises Institute before I knew about
Bitcoin but it wasn't until I found
Bitcoin that I really sort of fell deep
into that rabbit hole and I've written a
book about fractiology at this point like
my attempt at condensing Mises human
action into 200 pages a book called The
Invisible Hand That Feeds You and yeah
Konza has been a good friend for many
years and we have good back and forth he's
very he might not be the most diplomatic
guy online but he's usually right about
things and I like that you know I created
a decision chart for him to give to the
Australian community and it's so funny I
just did this like a scribbled on an A4
piece of paper took a photo with my phone
and shared it with like Bitcoin Australia
chat and people were laughing and then
Konza took that same picture and shared it
with kind of his libertarian groups and
they're just like yeah this is spot on and
all it was like Konza at the top and then
he's like are you economically literate
yes or no if you are are you honest about
it yes or no if you are honest about it
yes or no if you are honest about it then
Konza's going to give you book
recommendations if you are not honest
about being economically illiterate he's
going to call you an economically literate
neophyte exactly and it was like I can't
remember the rest of it but it was pretty
funny I'll send it to you after the call
the only problem I have with the term
economically illiterate is that I tend to
misspell the word illiterate I tend to
mispronounce words.
But I am really curious to know, because I love
asking this question of my guests, and try to tie back to their stories in Bitcoin
What is your first memory of money
like a child? Oh, that's a good one. I had
a lemonade stand called Knuttes Kiosk.
And that was, I mean, I lived on the
countryside. I grew up on the countryside.
So I had like my, we had one house with my
family. And there was a bigger house where
my grandparents lived. And my mother's
sister and her family lived next by too.
So it was like that and maybe a neighbor
would be like 500 meters away. And these
were the only customers available. And it
was all sort of not very organic. But they
came and bought lemonade. So I guess
that's my first memory of it. I also
remember when, my brother got a 50-krona
bill to buy chewing gums for. He got that
from our parents. And they believed that
he would, because you could buy chewing
gums for half a krona. And he went to the
shop and bought a hundred of them instead
of just buying a couple of them, which was
probably my parents' plan. So he came home
with a hundred, like, stylized chewing
gums each in one single package. So that's
another early memory of money. Another one
would be at the bank where they had
something at the bank. This is so, I mean,
this is 40 years ago, so it's hard to
remember. But they had something at the
bank where the kids would learn how to
save and how to get a bank account and
that they could get interest on their
money if they saved their money. Which is
something I do not think the banks do
anymore. So this is sort of before
everything went bonkers in terms of, like
this, this saving up for something. And
then delayed gratification was sort of
the, the main idea of how to think
economically back then. So it's not at all
as it is now where you're sort of, you
know, the correct play in Fiat, if you
want to win the Fiat system is to take,
take on as much, as many loans as possible
to buy frivolous shit or, or, or buy shit
or buy assets rather, buying things that
supposedly go up in price. Houses, for
instance, real estate, you buy real estate
and with the expectation that that will
not only store your value, but go up in
price over time. Which is all fictitious
and a, and downstream of the money being
broken. Money is supposed to have that
function. Money is supposed to not only
store your wealth, but actually increase
it because prices are supposed to go down.
And if you view the world through the
Bitcoin lens, you can see that this is
actually the case and your house actually
drops in price every year in comparison to
the sound money that you hold. So, but I
guess the Fiat madness had, hadn't really,
started in the sense of, you were still
taught to buy parents and teachers and
whatnot, and even the bank to, to save up
before you bought something you weren't
like people weren't pushing one another to
take out big loans. That was not really a
thing. And when you bought a house, when
my parents bought a house, they took out a
loan, but there was always the expectation
of paying it off, like within 10 years or
something. So, um, which has disappeared
since. Quick one for the Aussies
listening. Hardblock is offering a $10
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with another exchange, ask yourself this,
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forward slash honest money. And if you're
with another exchange, you can start
stacking stats today. Yeah. And now we've
got 50 year mortgages being floated
around. Yeah. Um, but how would you
explain money to someone who hasn't
thought about it very deeply? Uh, money
ought to be, uh, what money is and what
money ought to be are two very different
things. So money ought to be the best
insurance for the future. You can get your
hands on. Um, I believe that's the, uh, a
paraphrasing of the, uh, uh, explanation
of it or a definition of it. Uh, Rothbard
and Mises said something along the lines
of, of money being, uh, solely a medium of
exchange, which I think is true, but only
if you view a medium of exchange as four
dimensional thing. So I, I don't like the
term store of value. I think it's more
accurate to say medium of exchange over
space and time. And over space is
obviously with other people. And over time
is with your future self. You trade with
your future self. When you, when you save
money, uh, and, uh, money being the best
insurance for future against future, uh,
um, unpredictability, uh, or the best
insurance against unpredictability is the
way I, I, I, I would define money. So you
want money to be, hold its value and even
go up in value if the, and if the entire
economic pie growth, which it should do,
uh, and, uh, you also need to be able to,
uh, trade it, uh, easily and exchange it
with other people. Um, uh, because money
solves two basic problems. The, the one,
the, the first problem it solves is the,
uh, the, the coincidence of needs that is,
uh, necessary for a barter economy to
happen, which is why barter economies
don't scale. So if, if I have three goats
and you have one cow, I, I need you to
need the three goats and me to need the
one cow for an exchange to ever happen. If
I have money, I, I can mitigate that
problem and I could just buy other things
for the money that I exchanged for the,
the goats or the cow. Uh, the other
problem it solves is economic calculation
because without a common medium of
exchange, it's very hard to plan for the
future. And to make economic assessment
of, uh, if I use this money for this thing
now, uh, how, how will that, will that
yield me more income in the future? So to
make investments, uh, and, and make an
assessment of how good that investment is,
uh, actually is that you need, uh, a unit
of account and, uh, that's the other
function that money serves. So meaning we
will change over space and time. Uh,
that's the solving the barter problem.
And, uh, unit of account, that's the
economic calculation problem. Yeah. It's
interesting that you mentioned that
because yeah, when I think of money, I
predominantly think of, um, yeah, money
being predominantly a medium of exchange
first and foremost, and then the store of
value and unit of account. Um, but then I
also always wonder if like, if money is
supposed to be predominantly medium of
exchange, then Fiat does an average job at
that. And is it good enough? Yeah. I mean,
I think the two aspects, which is why I
don't like the term store of value,
because the two aspects are inseparable.
You, you can't have one without the other,
uh, Fiat money, eventually dies. All Fiat
money monies, die at some point because
they're a bad store value or, uh, a
medium, a medium of exchange over time.
Um, so it doesn't matter how fast you can
trade it. If you're constantly, it's like
trading, uh, leaky water buckets back and
forth until there's no water. left in it.
It doesn't work. It has to be both. Gold
was not a very good medium of exchange
over space because gold is not very
divisible nor very portable and not very
easy to verify that it's real gold which
is why fiat money was invented in the
first place. It's just receipts for gold
that people figured out that it's easier
to trade the receipts than the actual gold
and then the banker realizes that he can
print more receipts than he actually has
gold in his vaults and that's how the
system still works today. Which is
detrimental to all of civilization because
it distorts every investment. It
misallocates resources because people's
economic signals people get from prices.
Prices are really signals to the market
about people's wants and needs. But that
gets distorted by the money being broken.
So for instance you have artificial high
demand for real estate. We talked about
real estate before. The demand comes not
only from people wanting shelter but from
people wanting a better form of store of
value than their money because their money
is broken. So you get all these distorted
market signals that make people want the
wrong things and not what they would have
necessarily wanted had they had sound
money. So the resource misallocation
problem is much much bigger than people
think and that's what sound money
ultimately solves. Yeah that's actually I
just had a random memory pop up that kind
of proves that point. Like I'm old enough
to be around in the 90s and I remember
that you know many people back in the day
used to have a family home and they didn't
really have investments like the I'm
talking about average middle class family
but they did sometimes have a holiday home
and more often than not that holiday home
was not even occupied by a tenant. I don't
like yeah I don't know if you kind of have
a similar experience or memory. Having two
homes is fine and having many all of this
like who am I to say what the right number
of homes is and who am I to say if they
ought to be inhabited or not. The problem
when you have fiat money is that people
that all the beachfront property goes to
the billionaires and they buy up hundreds
and hundreds of houses. So. To just to
store their value. And this is what for
instance close to nearby here where I live
in Spain there's an area that is
completely devoid of people this luxurious
houses and the more luxurious they are the
fewer people actually live there because
it's all store of value things. It's all
like properties that people buy as a you
know pension insurance or whatever. So. So
I don't think there's. Something
necessarily bad with an empty house is
just when it becomes vulgar so that
hundreds and hundreds of houses are empty
because because the money isn't isn't
working properly. So I wouldn't have
anything against empty houses if people
had voluntarily bought them with sound
money but the reason they buy them is that
the money is broken. So I don't think you
can fix that by regulation and stuff. But
the only real fix is to fix the money. I
mean we have a. A. A. Monetary cancer in
society and all the politicians try to
cure the cancer with band-aids. All the
time they try to they do the quick fixes
and set up a new regulation here and there
for what a bank can do. But in the end.
The theft is still ongoing. The theft of
counterfeiting the theft of money printing
and as long as it as it is all the market
signals get distorted and the resources
get misallocated. And it leads to poverty
and the sad state of the world. Yeah. No
no I completely agree like I definitely
know of some people who kind of I live in
Byron Bay and there's definitely a lot of
luxury homes and some of them go empty
that are held by like high net worth
individuals that use it as a store of
value but I was just vaguely remembering a
time when that was a possibility for like
an average middle class family. Yeah.
Which no longer is the case and that's
because yeah like it's it's unheard of
that you would let have a spare house
that's unrented in this kind of economy
that we're experiencing today. Yeah that
was just a random memory that popped up
for me. Yeah I think there's a statistic
saying that in the US more properties are
sold like over 50 percent of all the
properties sold are for Airbnb purposes
and not for. Yeah. Like for people to
actually live in the homes they own so the
money is going from it's
going from people actually owning their
own homes to some some and fewer and fewer
entities all owning all the property and
then everyone else renting it's this path
to the you'll own nothing and be happy
world economic forum the dystopian future.
Yeah. I'd say if people are smart they'll
choose the Bitcoin route instead and you
just change one letter in that catchphrase
and it'll be you'll owe nothing and be
happy and that's a much sounder way to
live. Yeah but it still baffles me like
because I'm very new to Bitcoin and I've
very recently started learning about money
and economics and all of these things and
when I speak to people who are very smart
university educated have studied finance
have studied economics in Australia and I
ask them did you learn this they're like
no we didn't and a lot of these people are
now Bitcoiners and feel like they've
learned what money is for the first time
through Bitcoin not through university
education and it's just baffling
absolutely baffling. But it's easily
explained I mean if you who funds the
university and why. In Australia. Yeah.
Sorry. I know I was going to in Australia
it's like government funded donors and
then yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So so
everyone's in bed with the government who
is successful nowadays because they have
to be because they have to follow the
regulations they have to I mean the
lobbyists are in bed with the politicians
and vice versa like the left views big
corporations as the big problem the right
views big government as the problem in
reality they're both connected they're
they're part of the same problem they have
a symbiotic parasitic relationship and
they're sucking the. Life power out of
everyone else in society.
Mostly through the money because you the
closer you are to the money money printer
into this money spigot the the better
you're off called the also known as the
Cantillon effect. So this is why this
happens and all of these these
institutions are the institutions funding
the universities and funding economic
education that's the reason why they're so
popular. And so for instance why John
Maynard Keynes is so popular still all his
theories they basically say that
government spending is the most important
thing for economic growth and of course
governments like that because that's what
they want to hear they don't want to hear
the truth they want to hear whatever
whatever story that makes their narrative
okay to them so they can rationalize their
their stupid decisions because. And. The
incentives. Are all in place for that to
just grow like a cancer because it it
serves those on on top on at the expense
of those at the bottom of that ladder and
the saddest thing is that it leads to in
the long run it leads to everyone being
poorer than they otherwise would have been
in a more sound money society if you look
at the Soviet Union it didn't fall until a
a Soviet leader. I can never remember if
it's Gorbachev or. Yeltsin I think it's
Gorbachev who travels to the US and enters
a supermarket in a one horse town in the
middle of nowhere and sees that there
there are more products there to choose
from then then the elites had in the
Soviet Union so he sees he first hand sees
that something is very very wrong with the
system we have and unfortunately all the
Western countries are going more and more
in that direction governments are growing
and their their influence grows. Now the
it's that it is in every single democracy
it's like. Regardless of. What side of the
foot if you vote for the right so called
right or the left of the political aisle
that that they know know party in the
Western democracy a. Of any significant
size wants to reduce the the size of the
state. It's it's. It's. It's all the
debate. It's. It's always about what to
spend the money on. not that there
shouldn't be that much money there in the
first place. So it keeps growing
everywhere, and it's very scary because
the hardest pill to swallow for me was
that democracy is not at all what it was
advertised as. It is a very destructive
system, and it's a slippery slope system
towards totalitarianism and towards very
commie things. So for me, when you think
about it, why would a popularity contest
make theft more ethical? And the truth is
that it doesn't. Democracy is inherently
evil in that it presupposes that the will
of the masses somehow justify theft, which
is a complete lie. So Fredrik Bastiat, who
lived at the same time as Karl Marx, wrote
in a book called The Law that a
government, the extent of a government's
power should not be a problem. It should
not be higher than the extent of any
citizen in that society. So the state
shouldn't be allowed to do anything that a
normal citizen can't do to another person.
And it's such a simple phrase, but if you
ask yourself the question, why should the
government have the ability to tax people
if I don't have the ability to tax my
neighbor? Why? And there's no good answer
to it. So for most people, that's the
hardest pill to swallow because you get
the ability to tax your neighbor. And
that's the question that I get all these,
what about the roads question, and that we
couldn't build roads if we didn't have
veiled gun threats,
extortionist policies. And I simply don't
buy it. I think people would build better
and smarter roads if roads had been
voluntary than what they are now, which is
compulsory. Like you cannot choose whether
you want to donate to road or not. Your
money gets stolen from the government and
they build the road regardless of the
consequences or whether there was supposed
to be a road there or not. So I simply
don't buy the premise that you need
extortion and coercion to make
civilization happen. On the contrary, I
think civilization happens because of the
voluntary interactions between people and
consensual interactions. That's where the
real, that's the civilized way. And the
only thing the government can do is take
the fruits of that labor that was created
or the economic value that was created
voluntarily from people, then take it from
them and spend it on whatever they deem
necessary to spend it on. Which in some
cases would have happened anyway. People
would be inclined to build hospitals even
if there was no state. Because there's a
demand for being cured. They would build
roads because there's a demand from taking
yourself from position A to position B.
These are not things that government are
necessary for. And when you really, really
deep dive into the necessity of
government, you come to the conclusion,
the lovely Rothbardian conclusion that
governments aren't really necessary at
all. All they can do is make worse
decisions than people would have made
voluntarily. Yeah. I love that we're going
down this path because I have a small
confession to make. And this is so
embarrassing. Like only a few years ago, I
was the sort of person that would just
parrot things that were somehow
indoctrinated without me ever questioning
them. And one of those things was, you
know, we need to pay taxes to live in, you
know, that's the price we pay to live in a
civilized society. And I just like used to
parrot that without ever questioning that.
Let me paraphrase that. The real quote
should be, taxes and inflation are the
prices we have to pay to live in a still
uncivilized society. Yeah. Because the
civilized part simply isn't there. If your
resources are taken from you
involuntarily, that's not a civilized
society. That's the society of parasites
and hosts. Yeah. That are forcefully,
I mean, struggling to find the words here.
But if it's not voluntary, it's not
civilized. Yeah. But did you, if anyone's
kind of coming in cold into this
conversation and doesn't understand what
we mean by words like parasites and hosts,
and, you know, those words kind of carry a
negative connotation and sound kind of
heavy hitting, do you want to explain what
is kind of meant by that in the theory? I
think if we use slightly more diplomatic
and friendly words, I think we should
rebrand the private sector and the public
sector should really be the consensual
voluntary sector and the coercive sector
or the compulsory sector. Once you start
seeing things that way and that, you know,
morality, between two consenting adults,
it's the same morality applies to macro
stuff. So like government, I mean, we're
having this conversation completely
voluntary and with consent, like both of
us, this is a transaction. Everything
human beings do with one another is
transactional in its nature. We wouldn't
do stuff if we didn't, with one another,
if we didn't both believe that we had
something to gain from, from doing it.
However, that is not true. If like the
saying is, it's easier to get what you
want with a kind word and a gun than just
a kind word. And this is what the
government does. They put a gun to your
head and you give up your tax money
voluntarily. However, not necessarily with
consent. You didn't consent to it, but you
gave it up voluntarily anyway, because you
know, you knew what would happen if you
didn't. And at the end of that, uh, chain
of actions, uh, are men with guns coming
to your door and taking your freedoms
away. And most people don't want that. So
they pay their taxes. Um, but it is not
different from any other mafia or mobster
rule in, in that sense. It's, it's the
same. It's organized crime and, and
scheduled theft. Uh, and I think we would
do better without it. However, I think
it's in human nature. Like the, there will
always be a, a portion of, uh, uh,
humanity that are psychopathic enough to,
to want to take other people's stuff and,
and don't have many second thoughts about
it. So the thing we can really do to
defend ourselves is to focus on building
tools that make it more expensive for them
to try to rob us. And Bitcoin to me is the
ultimate, uh, tool for doing exactly that
for, for protecting yourself, uh, against,
uh, theft. Uh, because I, I believe the
Bitcoins do not really, they're not
physical, uh, and they're not really
digital either. Uh, the aspects of Bitcoin
that are digital is just the, the, the,
the time chain and whatever information
ends up of that. But the ability to move
the Satoshis, which is really what gives
the Satoshi its power. That is all within
the human mind. Uh, we are, we literally
are our Satoshis, because if you have, uh,
your private key, if you control that,
what that really means is that you're
keeping a secret from everyone else in the
system. And that allows you to act as if
you owned your Bitcoins. And it, uh,
because you believe a, that's, uh, it's
very unlikely that someone else controls
the same key as you do. And B, you also
believe that it's very unlikely that the
system will change to such an extent that
your Satoshi will be rendered, uh, uh, uh,
not valuable anymore. so those two things,
uh, in the long run, at least makes, uh,
make theft, uh, a lot less profitable for
the attacker, because I can threaten you
and say, give me all your Bitcoins. But me
as the attacker, I have no idea how many
Bitcoins you actually have. So you can
give me a portion of it, but I have no
idea, uh, how much you actually own. So it
makes more sense for me to give you
something of value back. Uh, than to, than
to forcefully take, uh, your Bitcoin. And
this is not true for physical possessions.
Uh, the attacker, sure, there's a cost to
attacking someone else. Always. There's a
risk to it because the, the one you're
stealing from may put up a fight. However,
if you have, uh, the full force of the
government and with all its police
officers and army, then it's easier to
take stuff because people will not put up
a fight, because it is futile. Tn Bitcoint this is not true, because
Bitcoin is not physical, but rather lives within our heads.
I think, it goes way deeper than people
realise, because what that means is that we are all
connected now through an abstract thing that allows us not only to
protect ourselves but we are also incentivized
to help one another so I'm I'm
incentivized to to come on your pod and
talk about this because i'm incentivized
to help you with whatever you're doing and
you're incentivized to help me because we
both want the same thing we want more
bitcoin adoption uh and in in in the long
run that means number go up so we actually
get wealthier by more bitcoin adoption
about by more people knowing about these
things so we are incentivized to be good
to one another and this is true for every
bitcoin earner and and what that this is
sort of a tldr of my whole philosophy and
why i'm so so uh deep into this but uh in
the long run that means that you humanity
we always had this ability the only thing
we needed to do was like stop aggressing a
one against one another if we if we had
known that all along and had just
cooperated instead of uh threatening one
another and doing something like that we
and we would have been able to do it all
things forcefully we would all have been
better off and bitcoin is sort of showing
that the the truthfulness of that claim
through a magic number which just keeps
going up over time if you zoom out long
enough because that's what it is like it's
just humans cooperating humans being good
to one another and that leading to
everyone being better off in the long run
that's that's what number go up means
that's what the value of bitcoin going up
is and that's what it means it's just
people being good to one another and
producing the goods and services that the
other person asked for and thereby growing
the entire economic pie for all of
humanity or and everyone who uh everyone
who took the time to understand bitcoin
and is in it every bitcoiner benefits from
every other bitcoiners success need a way
to sign verify and secure your bitcoin
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yeah very true very true like i've had so
many other podcasters help me out in my
journey to podcasting it's just like it
doesn't happen in fiat as much as it does
here but you said something and it was
actually one of the criticisms that i
received on linkedin um when i was talking
about bitcoin which is what i do um it was
just some fiat maximalist saying um oh
you're just talking about bitcoin because
you want to fill your own bags for me like
i know ultimately the more people that
adopt bitcoin the price is going to go up
but i don't think i'm powerful enough to
move the needle like yeah it's probably
like even if i got in you know hundreds of
people i don't think we'll do anything um
to the price the thing i i would ask in
return is like how is that not true for
every single person on earth regardless of
what they're talking about i mean if
you're doing something you're doing that
like this is at the very core of human
action is uh i i do things voluntarily
like out of my own free will because i
feel a little uneasy i imagine a state of
the future where i've used some means to
reach a certain end expecting that i will
feel a little less uneasy when i'm doing
something and i've done so so i'm
explaining this to you because i think
that after i'm done with the explanation
it will feel me it will make me feel a
little less uneasy uh so so so and that's
true for everything humans ever do so the
person defending the fiat system and
claiming that you are doing this because
you want to pump your own bags he's
pumping his bags even though those bags
might not be full of money but it's still
he's doing the things he's doing to make
sure that he's doing for his own
psychological benefit uh so so how how is
this a bad thing wanting your money to go
up in value over time like all we're doing
is viewing the world through a more honest
lens where there's no money printing
meaning that all prices drop forever
deflation is the true nature of the free
market the the the whole notion that
prices ought to go up and that nothing
would happen if they didn't is a complete
lie it's it's a lie that they're using to
uh rationalize printing more money which
is just stealing it's counterfeiting but
like why should the central bank be
allowed to do that or a normal bank for
that matter when regular people aren't why
can't i print money and there there is no
good there is no good answer to this
question and if money printing was good
for the world why don't they just print
all the money they can and give it out to
poor people so everyone's you know rich
because it doesn't work it's it's it's not
it's a lie it's not the truth it's a lie
so all bitcoin is is an agreement on a
fixed set of rules and the reason we uh
agree to this these this specific set of
rules is that we know that these are the
the only rules known to man where it's
more expensive to try to cheat than to
just follow the rules and what this allows
for is this absolutely finite number uh a
commodity that you keep in your head uh
that will stay finite forever 21 million
will never be changed and when you have
that it unlocks everything else and you
can see the world through these uh truth
goggles if you will uh where you see that
all prices ought to be falling forever and
all you need to do to experience that
meaning that you become wealthier over
time by by just delaying gratification and
waiting for the rest of humanity to come
to be more productive is to acquire some Bitcoin and not
sell. Is that simple. Of course people who didn't do this ten years ago,
and who still think that Bitcoin will fail.
and who still do not understand that is actually
can go forever. The number can actually go up forever.
Like even when old fiat is gone
it can still go up, because total economic pike still grow.
There will be more people there will be
more products, there will be
more services. And all of that is in
service of Bitcoin number go up. So it's
every single person on earth working for
everyone else, for everyone's benefit. And
this is the true nature of the free
market. And this is the most beautiful
thing we have. But it has been smeared
with these socialist narratives for so
long that the market can't solve this, it
can't solve that. It's all untrue because
we've never had a free market because
there's always been interventionism.
There's always been taxes. And first and
foremost, there's always been inflation.
Someone has always been able to print
money. The mental leap is too much for a
lot of people. And especially if you think
you've quote unquote missed the train,
then you've completely missed the bigger
picture that nothing stops this train, as
Lyn-Aldyn likes to say. Yeah. There is no
such thing as being late to Bitcoin.
Everyone's early, always, forever. And
this is too much for most people to wrap
their heads around because they think that
this ends at some point and just goes
away. But nothing like, okay, I could
admit that there's a chance that there's
some unforeseen future event that we, that
us evangelists couldn't see. And Bitcoin
goes, the value of a Bitcoin goes down.
And it goes to zero. But it still makes it
the best binary bet ever because it's
either that or number go up forever.
There's no in between. There's no like,
okay, it goes to a million dollars and
then it levels out and it never goes up
again. No, you cannot be late to Bitcoin.
There's everyone forever is an early
adopter. It's never too late to upgrade to
better tech. No, I mean, the tech aspect,
this is not tech. This is, this is. I
should have known you'd say that. Yeah.
But as I said, it's an agreement between
people on a fixed set of rules. Switching
to another rule set is, yeah, you can do
that. But why would you? That rule set
will be cheaper to break than Bitcoin is
because of the first mover advantage. And
also that this is what intrigued me about
Bitcoin in the first place. It's not the
notion of money. It's, it's here was the
promise of something. Yeah. Something in
the realm of computers that couldn't be
copied. And that's what I couldn't wrap my
head around because like the very nature
of data is that it's infinitely copyable.
It's just ones and zeros information is
copyable. That's why I don't like
intellectual property laws and copyright
laws and stuff. But so that's what
intrigued me. How can this be true? It's
like sounds outlandish to me that it
couldn't be copied and took me like five
to ten years to figure out that the reason
it's true is because the thing that cannot
be copied is true. It's not on the
internet. It's in people's heads. The
ability to move the Satoshi is the thing
that cannot be copied. Everything else in
the Bitcoin code can be copied. The time
chain can be copied. The thing that cannot
be copied is you keeping your private key
a secret from other people, meaning that
the Bitcoins are in our heads. And this
can only happen once. It's like because
it's this is a discovery and not an
invention. There is no tech. You cannot.
Discover America twice. That's not how it
works. And this is what people need to
understand about this, that we've got this
one shot of making this what it ought to
be. And here we can go into like debates
about the evolution of Bitcoin and what
BIP 110 and all of this. If we ought to
fight for it as sound money and the fight
of the spam or if we'll just think that
the spammers will price themselves.
There's a lot of technical discussions
about how to do it. There's a lot of
technical discussions about how to move
this thing forward. And it might still
fail. Sure. But it's the best shot we'll
ever have at absolutely sound money. And
anything else blockchain related that
comes after Bitcoin can never fulfill that
role. Not even if Bitcoin fails. There
cannot be another blockchain because all
of them are inherently not decentralized
enough. Because people were aware of this
technology. There is no disappearing
Satoshi. There is no proof of true
decentralization. To me, it was the block
size wars that showed me that the users
are really in charge because you had this
cabal of big companies that tried to
overtake Bitcoin and try to make it into
whatever they thought was right. But the
user said no. And no other cryptocurrency
ever had that or will ever have that. No
other cryptocurrency can have that because
it's the insider trading has. It's already
begun the day that they launched their
token. There is no second best. That's the
phrase I'm looking for. I'm glad you
brought up the block size wars because I
keep getting attacked by the BSV crowd on
Twitter. I don't know who they are. I
don't know what they do. And I don't know
why they're after me. But what's going on
with the BSV crowd? I'm really curious. To
ask that question. Okay. So the story of
BSV is a funny one. And it's so easy to
see. Once you know a few things about this
story, it's very easy to see why it's
bullshit. And the thing is, the block size
wars, there's a book written about it
called the block size wars. I don't
believe that that book tells the entire
story because that book frames it as two
different opinions. And one turned out to
be the block size wars. And the other one
that got adopted and the other one didn't
get adopted. And they forked off and
became this other token. I don't see it as
that. I see it as a hostile takeover
attempt by a cabal of companies in Bitcoin
that wanted to increase the block size
because they knew that that would
centralize Bitcoin. And they wanted to be
on top of that food chain and be in
control over it. So the thing is, with a
bigger block size. The argument they were
giving is that the blocks will be full and
therefore fees will go up. And therefore
trade, Bitcoin can't facilitate trade
because it'll be too expensive to send
back and forth. And the small blockers
said, yeah, yeah. But what we want here is
Segwit because Segwit, segregated witness,
was a Bitcoin improvement proposal that
allowed for the Lightning Network to
happen. So scaling will be a big part of
it. And the other thing is, the blockchain
will happen in layers. It has to happen in
layers because these are all tradeoffs.
There is no free lunch in this. So you can
either because what happens if you
increase the block size is that every
block is a heavier load on the nodes. So
in the long run, it becomes more expensive
to run your own node, which is what
decentralizes Bitcoin. Bitcoin is
decentralized because we, the users, are
in charge of the network. And this is the
outcome of the block size wars showed that
we were. But I'm getting to that. So we
don't want block size. We don't want
bigger blocks because that would make the
initial block download and therefore the
hardware needed. It makes running a node
costlier over time. And you need to
minimize that cost because it will go up
forever. So all these big, big companies,
though, wanted this. And if you can
increase the block size once by a hard
fork. A hard fork is also very dangerous
because it requires everyone in the
network to upgrade their nodes. A soft
fork is easier because it doesn't. It's
more backwards. Yeah. So this is the TLDR
on it. It's a bit more complicated than
that. But if we had had a successful hard
fork and Bitcoin Cash would have been the
dominant chain, that would have set a
precedent for hard forking again and again
and again. And increasing the block size
again and again and again. So to me, that
was doomed from the start. And when I saw
how the network reacted and that everyone
and that the small blockers won quite
quite a decisive victory to like a Bitcoin
Cash token was never worth more than a
fifth of a Bitcoin or a fourth of a
Bitcoin, I think. And they got sold off
pretty quickly by clever people. And their
price tanked. It took a while. To the
extent where they had to adjust the
difficulty adjustment algorithm because it
took too long to find blocks because of
the drop in hash power. So they had to
manually adjust that, proving that they
were centralized. That could never have
happened on Bitcoin because this was a
cabal of people deciding over that network
what would happen to it. So even in that
moment, a couple of weeks after, they
proved that this wasn't decentralized. And
Bitcoin Cash then started. Fading into.
Irrelevance. Irrelevance. Yes, exactly.
And about a year later, after Craig Wright
had started his old I am Satoshi thing. So
there's this big fraud narcissist guy who
claims that he's Satoshi Nakamoto. And
he's on the Bitcoin Cash camp colluding
with these dishonest people that were on
that side. A lot of nasty people. I won't
name them. I won't name names here. But
some of them were dating underage women,
two at a time in the West Indies. So a
year
down the line, Craig Wright and Roger Ver
has a sort of a fallout. And Craig forks
Bitcoin Cash. So the hard fork had another
hard fork. It split into two. And that's
Bitcoin Satoshi's vision. Satoshi
referencing Craig Wright. Who is about the
only one. The only person on earth that
isn't Satoshi. By the way. Who is provably
not Satoshi. And so that, of course, it
forking again, of course, split the value
of those two crap tokens in half. And BSV
was a joke already at inception. But it's
definitely a joke at this point. And I
think what you should do is block every
single BSVer that says anything to you.
Because they're irrelevant at best. But I
think most of them are just bots or trolls
or scammy people. There's no honesty there
whatsoever. So just block them. This has
played out years ago. And whenever there's
talk about forks or whatever or some other
FUD like the Quantum FUD or whatever
narrative de jure that they want to. To
shove down your throat about why you
should be worried about this and that. All
of these shitcoiners resurface and say
that our token is secure against this.
This is quantum proof. This is this and
that. This is much better at this and
that. And it's all designed to rob you of
your Satoshi's. Every single other
narrative that you hear in the so-called
crypto space has the same single purpose.
And that is to steal your Satoshi's. Make
your Satoshi's go from you to them. That's
why they exist. And there are two types of
shitcoiners. Avoid both. Okay. What are
the two types? Yeah. The two types are
actual scammers and gullible morons.
There's nothing in between. Either you're
a scammer yourself or you're gullible
enough to fall for the scam. And
unfortunately. If you're watching this and
you're sitting there saying, hang on, I'm
not a scammer and I'm not a gullible
moron. Then sorry, you're a gullible moron
because you fell for the scam. It's that
simple. Yeah. Yeah. If I was a shitcoiner,
I think I would be a gullible moron. Yes.
And that's better than being an outright
scammer for sure. Yeah. I'm not malicious.
I'm just stupid. Yeah. Which is much more
okay. Yeah. I just cause harm to myself,
not to others. Yeah. But I'm curious to
know, like, obviously one of the
misconceptions that people on the outside
have looking at Bitcoiners who are kind of
critical of the community is that, you
know, we like the greater fool theory that
we'll just, you know, don't critically
think about all the risks. And I just
don't think that's the truth. I think
that's the truth because I feel like
there's so much debate going on in our
community and we're always on the lookout
for threats. You have mentioned a few
times that, you know, there might be like
an unforeseen event. Do you have any idea
what it might be or what the current risks
are? Like, obviously you can't see
unforeseen events. No. And that's the
thing. I don't think it's... If there's
such an event, it will not happen. It will
not be advertised. I mean, it will not be
something that we're already thinking
about. The quantum threat, for instance,
it's a pretty big leap to think that
computers of that power will ever exist to
begin with. And also, like, if quantum
mechanics is what it is, how do we know
that, okay, there are connections
between... How do I even put this?
Connections between how the time chain
works and how quantum mechanics work.
Because it's not... The particle does not
decide what it is until you measure it.
And the same is sort of true for the time
chain. It stays in limbo until a miner
actually finds a block. And this
determinism, inherent determinism, maybe
that makes the whole quantum threat not
work at all. But, I mean, this is... Yeah.
Wiggly, woggly theories. I mean, quantum
mechanics is weird. The little I know
about it, I think the many worlds
interpretation sounds like the most
plausible one. But that makes everything
very, very strange.
But the big thing that people miss when
they talk about the quantum... FUD is that
everything else is in danger much more
than Bitcoin. In Bitcoin, we at least have
10 minutes to fix the problem. Everything
else on the internet does not. That uses
public, private key cryptography. So if
you can break Bitcoin, you can break
everything else. However, I think that 99
.9% of everything that is written about
quantum computers being a threat to the
world... To Bitcoin. Is someone trying to
sell something to you. Everyone's a FUD
salesman. They're trying to sell you a
narrative. Sometimes it's in the form of
another crypto token. Sometimes it's in
the form of, oh, you should read my
articles. That could also be... Even that
is enough to start spreading FUD. You want
to be recognized as someone who gets a lot
of clicks. I... And I simply don't buy it.
I think one of the things that Bitcoin
teaches you over time, if you've been in
this space for long enough, is to see
through the narratives
and the FUD and the stuff. And yeah, think
for yourself. Not your keys, not your
coins. If you're holding Bitcoin, your
self-custody setup needs to be done right.
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Yeah, it really does. It makes you focus on what is
real and what is true and what you do
know. So yeah, that's what I appreciate. A
much more real threat to Bitcoin is miner
centralization, which we arguably already
have, which means that the miners... So
people have a lot of misconceptions about
mining. The biggest one being that they
think that the miners find the Bitcoins,
which is not true. What is true is that
the network rewards the miners with
Bitcoins in terms of the block reward. I
mean, the block subsidy and fees. We allow
them to give themselves that for finding
block space for us to put our transactions
in. And in finding the block space, they
also secure the network through the proof
of working mechanism. So the miners are
the slaves of the users. And the problem
with miner centralization is that they are
still incentivized to keep Bitcoin intact
and follow the rules, because not doing so
would... would destroy the value of the
very thing they're... of the money they're
making. They're getting paid in Bitcoin,
so they don't want to destroy Bitcoin.
However, what they can do... You always
hear that you should wait for three
confirmations to trust a Bitcoin
transaction, because theoretically, there
could be a double spend within those three
confirmations. However, if the same mining
pool finds three blocks in a row, you need
to wait for another three blocks from
other mining pools, because if it's the
same pool, then they're the ones that they
can still double spend, and they could
build on the double spend chain. So like
the whole security model is not as robust
as it could have been if mining was more
decentralized. There is light at the end
of this tunnel, though, because what a
mining pool really is, is a... an entity
renting hash power from hash. So, you
around the world. So if you have a mining
rig at home, and you're using one of these
FPPS pools, full pay-per-share pools, like
all the bigger pools are, then you're not
really a miner, because you have no say in
what block you're mining on. But you're a
hash salesman, and you sell your hash
power, so you're basically selling
computing power to a bigger entity. Now
there's something called hash renting for
plebs. So plebs can actually rent hash
power from hashers around the world, and
mine on whatever block they like using
Ocean and Datum, which allows you to
construct your own block templates. So you
can actually rent hash power from a bigger
mining pool, or from the users of... from
the hash salesman involved with that pool.
And instead of letting Antpool or Foundry
or something decide what block to mine on,
you can decide what block to mine on
yourself. And if you do this, there's even
a chance that you get paid more than you
put into it. Because Ocean pays each
hasher every time that they find an actual
block. The other pools pay for it. And
they pay you a fixed sum regardless of if
they find a block or not. So it's more of
a lottery for Ocean, but over time it
actually pays more. Because they don't...
The other pools need to cover for this
extra cost that taking the risk costs
them. There is always the risk of them not
finding blocks for a long time. And they
have to mitigate that risk, and that's why
they take such a large fee from everyone
using the FPBS thing. This is very...
technical and complicated, but there is a
movement right now in Bitcoin for this
renting of hash power and construction in
your own block templates, which is
basically the plebs becoming mining pools
themselves, effectively. And I love that
development. Because most of the people
doing this are doing this because they
want to run a node and signal for BIP110,
which is a reduced data temporary soft
fork, which is basically trying to fight
spam by setting Bitcoin back to what it
was in 2023. And using those rules instead
of the newer rules, because Bitcoin Core
has made updates to the most dominating
software that a lot of people are against.
So signaling for BIP110 is now easier and
more powerful. And it's a lot easier.
Because you can do it with an actual
mining node and not just a listening node
or a node that doesn't really do anything,
because those nodes don't really have any
say over the direction of Bitcoin. So
there's a lot of this stuff going on and
I'm trying to read up on it. It's complex.
Yet I'm not the most technical Bitcoiner,
but I'm interviewing a lot of technical
ones and trying to understand how this
whole thing works and trying to see
through the lies. And listen for the real
signal. There are, of course, a lot of
people that are against BIP110 that have a
good rationalization for why they are. I
am publicly for the soft fork, mostly
because it's temporary. So I don't think
it does any damage because it's not
really... No normal Bitcoin users funds
are in BIP110. So I think it's a lot of
things that are in jeopardy here. Only
like what we consider illegit use cases
like putting monkey JPEGs on the
blockchain and stuff. So it buys us time
to fight that more efficiently. There was
an exploit. There was a bug in the tap
root upgrade and it has been exploited by
these spammers. And this is our best
attempt at trying to fight them off. And
we'll see what happens. The fork becomes
mandatory. And early August, I believe,
somewhere around that, a certain block
height. And we'll see what happens after
that. If it has only like around 10% of
the network, though, miners are
incentivized to mine compatible blocks
because mining incompatible blocks risks
losing the block completely. And I don't
think miners want to do that. They'd
rather skip the extra. A hundred bucks
they would have made from spam fees and
just mine blocks that everyone is in
consensus over. That all of the network
allows. So it's going to be very
interesting to see how this plays out
because it's another hint at what's
actually going on on a consensus level. I
don't think any Bitcoiner actually knows
how Bitcoin works until we see what
happens. This is the thing. It's more of a
thing to be studied than to have opinions
about. We learn from every time a scenario
like this plays out. And we'll see what
this leads to. Is this like a little bit
of a debate between the money people and
the computer people? It is. Ideally, if
you have a Venn diagram of economically
literate people, as Konza would say,
computer literate people, you can't do
anything about it. Because there is a big
discrepancy between the two. You want
Bitcoin developers specifically to be in
the intersection of that Venn diagram.
However, in the first 10 years, they were.
Bitcoin developers were passionate
Bitcoiners who wanted to secure the
Bitcoins they had. That was their only
incentive. And then 10 years down the
line, I think the real problems really
started in 2019. Bitcoin developers
started to become funded by nonprofit
organizations and bigger entities that
wanted to fund them. And this may sound
innocent, but as soon as you get funding
from something else than just securing
your Bitcoin, you are under a different
set of incentives. And this led to a wave
of wokeness and non-meritocratic selection
of who got to be in the Venn diagram. And
then, of course, you become a Bitcoin
developer and whose ideas you would listen
to. And nowadays, most Bitcoin core
developers are in San Francisco or New
York or London. And there's a lot of what
I view as woke garbage going into the
thing. And people being hired because of
their gender or skin color or whatever, or
religious beliefs or whatever, instead of
their actual merit and how good they are
at it. And I think that's the biggest
think the well-meaning developer is a very
dangerous thing to Bitcoin because Bitcoin
ought to be boring and not change. Its
biggest feature is that it doesn't change
very much. It just adapts to the
environment around it changing. And this
is sort of the job of the Bitcoin
developer, is to make Bitcoin be the same
over time, regardless of what happens
around it. It's not to add features or
make Bitcoin... The question I think every
Bitcoin developer should ask themselves
before thinking about anything is, does
this make Bitcoin better money? And if so,
how? And in order to do that, you need to
understand what money is. You need to
understand the two problems that money
solves. You remember the mutual
coincidence of needs and economic
calculation. You need to know what this
is. And you need to know that Bitcoin not
so much, but it's changing, is much more
important than Bitcoin changing to
facilitate more private transactions or
more complicated multisig schemes. These
are neat features. Developers are very
often very eager to add features. But
Bitcoin is one of those innovations where
it's not done until there's nothing left
to take away, not until there's nothing
left to add. It's much more of a
conservative thing, and that it should be.
But there are a lot of good things
happening in that space too. There is this
production-ready thing. Samson Moe and
Jimmy Song and Parker Lewis and a couple
of others are starting a third
implementation of Bitcoin, a more
conservative one. Right now, there's
Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knot. So the two
biggest ones. The problems really started
with Bitcoin Core version 30, which is
where they introduced a very big size op
return as a mempool policy. So they
changed the mempool policy, which is not
consensus, by the way. It's not consensus
rules, but a mempool policy. So it's a
smaller change. But the Bitcoin users were
very much against this change. And I think
that's what triggered the suggestion of
BIP110. BIP110 wants to un-cancel. It
wants to undo all that. So we'll see where
this leads. It's a very interesting time
in Bitcoin. An interesting time to be
alive in general, but especially if you're
balls deep into Bitcoin. Yeah. Regardless
of if you have balls or not. Yeah. I'm
always really mindful of what role I play
in the Bitcoin ecosystem. So I'm very
honest with I'm not that economically
literate. I'm learning. And I'm not
technically literate. I'm learning. So I
don't really have opinions on knots versus
core BIP110. But I was just recently at a
bit devs here in Northern Rivers. And we
were talking about the quantum threat. And
it was interesting. I was like, how many
bits are there that so far proposing some
sort of a solution? And apparently it's
only two. So 360 and 361. And we were
going over BIP361. I was like, I knew we
had an opinion on it. Isn't that the one
that wants to steal Satoshi's coins? Or
force Satoshi to move them? And this is
like against everything ethical ever.
Yeah. And it's written by it's suggested
by one of the spammers or one of the
people making making money off of the
spam. So this is it's totally this look at
my right hand and don't pay any attention
to what my left hand is doing behind the
curtain here. That's exactly what the
government does. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So
very anti Bitcoin, in my opinion. Yeah,
yeah, I immediately had an opinion on that
one. And I'm like, I'm a newbie. I'm like,
but I have thoughts about this. I mean,
it's called it psycho. Bitcoin needs more
what it had in the beginning, which is
disagreeable autists like left and right
that that are just not going to bend or to
the will of any kind. I mean, I'm not
going to be collectivist ever. It's like,
no, I'm like, this is my node. There are
many like it, but this one is mine. I'm
not going to without without my me. My
node is nothing without my node. I am
nothing. So military thing. But that's how
it ought to be. Like, we need to fight
this one node at a time. Each each node
needs to be sovereign. Otherwise, Bitcoin
is not what it's was designed to be. Yeah,
or what we want it to be. So what gives
you hope right now in the world? Bitcoin
is one thing. I mean, I am a very hopeful
person. I think that free market forces,
which are really people being good to one
another, are stronger in the long run than
than coercive forces. Yeah. People being
bad to one another. So I think that this
is yeah, Consul is going to hate me for
bringing up game theory. But there's a
thing called the prisoner's dilemma where
two prisoners are basically incentivized,
incentivized to rat on one another. If
they cooperate, they also get less jail
time, but they get even even less jail
time if they rat the other guy out. So if
you play that game once. You the correct
play, if you want to win, is to rat out
the other guy and do something bad.
However, if you play a series of prisoners
dilemma games, and especially if you play
them in in into absurdity, if you play
them forever, you are not incentivized to
rat the other guy out. You're incentivized
to cooperate until the other guys rats you
out. And then you're supposed to return.
And then you're supposed to retaliate
appropriately next turn and rat him out
the next turn and then start collaborating
again. And this is mathematically proven
that this is the best strategy to win this
game. And I think this echoes how nature
works and how you humanity works in the
short term. We are incentivized to steal
because if if if you steal from your
neighbor and take all this stuff, then you
get all his stuff. But over over the long
term, if if you instead of stealing his
stuff, start trading with him and
collaborating with him, you you get you
yield better results because people
collaborating creates a greater economic
pie. And this is this is how good good
wins over bad in the long run. And I think
that just that the power of collaboration
rather than. Yeah. Coercive interactions
are are so under underappreciated and the
world is a much more hopeful place than we
think it is because we see our newsfeeds
and we see how they're the EU bureaucrats
are doing this and that the government of
Australia is doing this and that they're
building concentration camps to put COVID
patients in. And painting rainbows
everywhere like. There's a. There's a.
There's a lot of FUD, a lot of like bad
news get clicks and good news does not get
clicks. But if you think about what the AI
revolution is doing right now, in terms of
just productivity gains, every single
person is able to accomplish in minutes
what took months before. And this is what
every industrial revolution has been. And
I think we should count like the personal
computer and the mobile phone and social
networks as industrial revolutions or
revolutions in coordination between
people. I mean, imagine ordering something
from China in the 80s or getting it, not
only ordering it, but getting it
manufactured and then sold on a different
continent. That can be done in minutes by
promise. Hey, I want to start an AI now.
Hey, I want to start a company that orders
shit from China and sells it in Belgium or
whatever.
All of that was unthinkable in the 80s. So
humanity is so much better at producing
stuff and transporting stuff and doing
services. If you view the world through a
Bitcoin lens, you can see this through all
the prices going down over time. And I
think there's so much more to be hopeful
about. And I think there's so much more to
be hopeful about than to be scared about
in just the sense that everything is so
much more efficient. And that should give
the good stuff even more of an advantage
above the bad stuff than it had before.
The world is becoming a better place to
live for the most part. And it has been
for a long, long, long time. So there's
good reason to be optimistic. And now
circling back to money. And Bitcoin and
the medium of exchange. Do you think
Bitcoin needs to become a medium of
exchange in order to win? Well, it already
is. And I say that here. The biggest
misconception there is just people make
the false dichotomy between medium of
exchange and store of value. And as I said
before, it's medium of exchange over space
and time. And how many transactions you
ought to do or ought not to do. And how
many transactions you ought to do or ought
not to do is completely skewed by currency
and economics. Yeah, velocity of money.
Exactly. Velocity of money is a bullshit
metric. So, for instance, I think there
will be fewer transactions in total on a
Bitcoin standard. So, for instance, if you
go to the central station in Zurich today,
you'll probably pay one Swiss franc coin
to go to the bathroom. Right. To get into
the bathroom. You need to make a micro
transaction. While, on the
Bitcoin standards, the train company is actually incentivize you
to sell you a lifetime subscription instead.
Because, the earlier they can get
their hands on the Bitcoin, the more value
they would bring them over time
So, if lifetime subscription to all the train rides
you can ever imagine within Europe
costs you 1 Bitcoin
The, the train company is much more incentivized to give you
that offer than to charge you for every single thing along the way.
So I think that on a Bitcoin standard, we
will have fewer transactions, but more
powerful ones. And I think this is part of
the so-called scalability problem.
Everyone thinks that scalability is just
more, that the world will be more like the
fiat world on a Bitcoin standard, and
microtransactions are advertised as a good
thing. I don't think there will be fewer
and fewer transactions on a Bitcoin
standard, and that's a good thing. We're
getting away from bullshit consumerism.
We're getting quality over quantity. The
opposite of quality is equality, which is
bullshit. So we're getting into more and
more quality over quantity, meaning that
there are fewer transactions in total. So
I think the whole needing to be a medium
of exchange is bullshit. It's trivial to download
a Bitcoin wallet then accept a Bitcoin.
Having said all this, I still urge all the Bitcoiners to
orange pill as many people in retail as possible,
show other people how easy is to
download a wallet and start accepting Bitcoin
Yep, I love it. I really feel like I needed
this conversation and I think it's so much us.
I really been doom scrolling a lot lately
and binging Simon Dixon podcats
and it put me in bit of like a mood,
and obviously this is my first bear market
as well so it's like it just yeah they i i
wrote about this hopefulness in the newest
edition of the praxeology book and i draw
a parallel to the Shawshank Redemption
you've seen the movie right i have i
certainly have yeah uh that's a movie
about hope and that like so uh there's
this old inmate that gets out of prison
and within two weeks he hangs himself
because he's been totally
institutionalized by the prison and he
cannot survive the outside world he thinks
it's scary everything is scary on the
outside uh and then Morgan Freeman uh says
to uh the the protagonist's character's
name is Dndy DeFrain uh what's the Tim
Robbins right is the actor so Morgan
Freeman says to Tim Robbins uh that uh the
whole hope is a dangerous thing it will
only get you depressed and look what
happened to Brooks this guy that hung
himself uh but andy uh the protagonist
doesn't care about that he chooses hope
and he chooses to act as if the walls
weren't really there that it and meanwhile
he shows the ultimate low time preference
by digging himself a tunnel with a
teaspoon day by day over a couple of years
and then he just crawls out of the prison
and is freed forever uh so the the the the
morale of the story and i think the
underlying point there is that uh we
cannot change uh the world around us but
we can't to a very big extent and
especially not other people but we can
change our perception of them and we can
change our attitude towards it and that's
the most powerful thing um your attitude
towards whether i you should focus on the
bad things and the good things and the bad
things and the bad things or the good
things in life is entirely up to you and
your reality is shaped by your thoughts
and vice versa uh so if if you choose to
be a Debbie Ddowner and think that
everything is uh threatening and that
everything is pessimistic then that's what
your world becomes if you choose to be an
optimist then uh i i think you have a
better chance at living a good life
Absolutely. Great, great um words of advice
there do you have any final thoughts that
you want to leave my audience with i'm
also very conscious of your time i could
keep going forever well uh nothing else
then if you if you want to see more of my
stuff then follow the bitcoin infinity
show I'm at Knut Swan on on X uh and on
noster as well uh i'm one of the people
you automatically follow when you download
primal and their list of people who to
follow people um also my books are
available at uh on amazon or from bitcoin
infinity.com so yeah follow all the things
and hope to see you at the conference one
day awesome i'll obviously link everything
in the show notes as well so people have
easy access to it but yeah thank you so
much for your time and uh say hi to all of
my australian bitcoiner friends who other
than Konza uh i mean the Dunworths uh uh
Peter and Michael uh and uh and a whole
bunch of others in uh uh i've been to
bitcoin alive twice in Sydney nice yeah it
takes me about two years to forget how
dreadful the flight is and uh then i
returned was your last one 2014 i would
you to have you again uh i was there last
year so okay last year skipping this year
but maybe next year who knows yeah awesome
thanks for your time yes thank you you're
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