The Green Faces of Dead Presidents - Ep 041

Join hosts JD and Anton as they unravel the looming shift towards a cashless society, examining how inflation and digital currency are reshaping our understanding of value and consumption habits. Delve into nostalgic memories of saving, the psychological implications of going digital, and the potential future of money through Bitcoin.

 

Watch this episode on YouTube

 

Hosts:

JD - @CypherpunkCine on 𝕏
Anton Seim - @antonseim on 𝕏

 

 

Sponsors:

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

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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 Happy Friday.

Yeah, Friday show.

Friday.

Welcome to Better By Bitcoin. It won't surprise me if some other people hop on, but right now it's just JD and myself. JD, what's your X handle?

Cypher Punk. Cine.

Cypher Punk.

There we go.

And I'm just Anton Seim. I don't know.

It's just me.

Well, you know, so many people have NIMS and I probably should have one at this point, but just using my name, Anton Seim. If you don't know anything about me, I'm a filmmaker. I am a director of photography. I was behind the movies what is a Woman? Recently, Am I Racist? And a few others. So, I'm a Bitcoiner, but I'm also a filmmaker. JD, you also are in entertainment commercials. Is it doxing us to say that we live in and around Hollywood?

Yeah, I think everybody knows we're in LA. I think we've doxxed ourselves on that.

We're coming at you from Southern California. Today we're going to be talking about the death of paper currency and specifically there was something on my mind. I was looking at physical currency. I was looking at $100 bill. And I was thinking to myself, psychologically, this thing still feels valuable. It feels a little less valuable with the blue strip and the big face. And they've recently changed the design. And as much as they try to make this not happen, There is debasement even in paper currency. And the bills do start to feel cheaper to you as inflation devalues them. So if you hold $100 bill from the 90s, has a little small face, Benjamin Franklin, it looks different, but it actually does feel a little bit more valuable to you. But going back to my original point, $100 bill, a a paper piece of currency with Benjamin Franklin's face on it still feels valuable. You hold it, you're like a hundred bucks. This is enough money to really do something. But when you compare what you could have bought with a $100 bill 20, 30 years ago, you could buy three times, four times as much quality products. With that $100 bill as you can now, but we still think of it as valuable. And my belief is that the reason why it hasn't quite set in that the actual $100 bill has been devalued is because we're not really using $100 bills that much anymore. Almost all of our spending has gone digital. And so we're not physically holding money, so we're spending a lot more money. I go to the grocery store, I spend $300, $400, $400 at the grocery store to buy a shopping cart full of groceries that only feeds my family for a few days. Whereas, you know, a few years ago, I could have taken $100 to the grocery store and bought four times the amount of groceries. So the money has absolutely been devalued. But because we're spending digitally, we don't even think about it. Like JD, how how much physical paper currency have you held in your life? Like, when is the last time you held a stack of bills?

It's actually why I got up. I have bills from all over the world, right? But that's different than what you're talking about.

It's different, but I want to get to that. I want to get to foreign currencies in this discussion.

All over the world. But it was funny, actually, opening this box and just kind of, like, seeing these, these bills from all over, like, these are from. Which ones are these from? These are some Euro or. No, this is some. What are these ones for? This is Uzbekistan. And then this is a Euro and. Yeah, but, like, all these things, these are Russian. So there's, like, a Russian, Russian currency here. Like, there's just. Yeah, the. The answer to that. My wife and I have been very blessed to travel a lot, and I. So we. And we collect current. We. We have been collectors of currency for a long time, so I haven't been here of all. The currency from everywhere we've been. And actually, like, up here, I have a couple of Ugandan Shillings. But the answer to your question is we, we still paid our babysitter last night in cash. Right. But the thing that's interesting to me, and I think that's part of the, the, the idea here of, like, you know, the green face, the green faces of dead presidents is, like, how did we get here? How do we get to a point where exactly you're talking about is, like, we're now at this point where the currency is being Physical currency is being killed because they understand that it's going to help with what comes next. There's a reason during COVID outside of them saying you needed to wear a mask everywhere. If you were paying attention, you saw at every single government establishment that took money, the DMV, the post office, these giant signs saying the coin shortage, the coin shortage. And I was like, what the hell is the coin shortage? Right? And it's like, you know, they're just literally propagandizing you into this understanding that we're going to a digital currency. I believe that they're trying to prep us for a CBDC and they still kind of are to a degree. But I think the bigger thing is, you know, and I've talked about this on the pod, I worked at one point in time for one of the credit card companies with the previous employer. Excuse me. And the reason they moved from the slide to the dip to the tap is because with each of those various motions, you spend more money. Like they understand that when you physically hand somebody from some bills, when you have to go in and you have to count these things out, you have to be like, oh, I did this much. And you get that, you get that sound, you get all that stuff, you have the smell of it, right? Like I opened that box, I was like, money just smells the same all around the world because it's the same printers. Fun fact, there's more there too. But the big thing is like they understand that psychologically they take the pain away. And if they take the pain away, you're gonna spend more money and you're gonna be more amenable to things costing more because you're not changing the habit, right? Like you're still sliding a card or tapping a card or dipping a card, but the habit's not changing. When you have different bills, when you physically have to go in, and change the bills, right? Like, I think if people would think back in the last 10 years, the biggest currency change that happened that people know about was in India. They got rid, I believe it was the 500 rupee note. And that was the equivalent of their 20. Right. And there was a mass run to the bank. It was the 500 or 5000. I can't remember. It was red.

Like a physical run to the physical.

Runs on the bank because people had these notes. They said, after this time, we are not even gonna accept these anymore. The government is just going to say these don't exist. And that was a giant, like, shock to people physically because I had to go do a thing. But it was a giant shock to people also because, like, hey, I can't actually accept this because nobody's gonna actually, like, allow me to accept this. And so they're trying to train us, and they are training us by the story that we have to tell ourselves and that we have to tell about what is kind of going on right now at the physical, with the physical currency. But yeah, anyways. Yep.

Pretty soon you won't even have to tap. You will just, and this already exists, Amazon stores, you'll just put things in your cart and walk out the door and be billed for it. Like, do you even look at prices anymore? I literally don't look at prices. And it's not because I'm so wealthy that it doesn't matter. It's just the prices are gonna be whatever they're gonna be. I want, I go to the grocery store, I want the thing that I want. The prices are all over the place. We've had such inflation and some of it was, sort of localized inflation that was a little bit BS, like when eggs went up to $12 for a carton of eggs. And it's like, if I want eggs, I just got to pay $12. And then the next time you buy eggs and you don't even look at it and you're like, Eggs are $3.50 now. Like, what is the real price of egg? What even happened? So people have gotten out of the habit of even looking at the prices. And that's not a good thing. People used to go to the grocery store with a physical $100 bill. And they would be like, this is all the money that I have. I am going to buy groceries. I'm going to use coupons. I'm going to fit my groceries within this. Now people are like, I need to eat to survive. It's going to cost what it's going to cost, and I'm just going to put it on a credit card, and I'm just going to go into debt if I have to because I have to eat to survive. People aren't even aware that they're suffering this right now, but they are, and we're all. Paying the consequences of everybody having this psychological stress on them, which is caused by fiat currency, by the taking away of physical currency by the debasement. This whole thing that has led us all to being so bullish on Bitcoin, knowing that a Bitcoin standard would solve all of this. And why we're doing this podcast and telling other people about it, because Bitcoin literally solves this. And until the whole world figures this out, everybody is suffering the effects of inflation. And that sucks. I hate watching people suffer.

I hate it. Can you unpack a little bit? I gotta jump two seconds to do one thing, but I would love you to unpack kind of for people this. I actually, where I want to go with it is the, the, kind of like where you think your understanding of that these little pieces of paper had value came from. Like try and think back to like as you kind of grew up and as you kind of saw stuff like do you remember the moment when you're first like because like even now, you know, my kids are like, I have money, I want money, I want money. It's like, oh, I have money. All right. And it's like, you know, and I had, you know, one of my kids at one point time like, hey, can you take this money that they took out of my like, you know, just a little change thing, but like I'm giving you this money like why? Oh, because I don't want you to work. You know, I want you to stay home more. I don't want you to work. And I'm like, ah, man, that just like cuts deep. But like, even now he's being conditioned by these coins, by this stuff that this is valuable. Oh, this is what I'm going to trade for this stuff. And so I'm curious, can you unpack your story of how it started to become valuable to you? Because I'm actually kind of curious. I think there's something interesting about this trying to actually just unpack the psychological state of how did we get here?

Yeah, let's go. Do you remember when you were a kid and you had your first bicycle? For me, one of the best days of my life, my parents came home with, well, they didn't come, they bought me a bicycle, but there was a knock at the door. This was on Christmas Eve. I opened the door, they're sitting there was a black Huffy with gold handlebars. Later on in my life, as I grew out of that bike, my friends introduced me to the idea of brands. And I had saved money. Basically, my grandparents gave me a little bit of money for birthday, Christmas. So, I'd saved money. And my friends were obsessed with GT bicycles. And I'd grown out of the other bicycle, so it came time to get a bicycle. So go to the bike shop. GTS and dinos were 500. I think maybe the GTS were a little more expensive, but I found this blue Dino Nitro. I bought this bike with my own money for 500. If you were to jump forward today, that bike would cost the equivalent of around 1500 to 2000 for that same little BMX bike. And I paid for it with my own money. And it's this number in my head. $500 was an immense value. Okay, so glorious time in every kid's life when you have the freedom of riding your bike around. And a lot of us who are around 40 years old are thinking about what's called old school BMX or these vintage bicycles and stuff. Like all this 90s nostalgia is in our head. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. Like, why are we so nostalgic about this stuff? Okay. Those bicycles were made and manufactured in the USA. That's super cool. They were made out of chromoly steel or aluminum, which was very high grade aluminum. And I was looking the other day at what bicycles cost now. Now, you can go buy like a cheap Walmart bicycle that falls apart and they're made in China. And you can buy them for possibly even cheaper than bikes were back then. Okay, so that's interesting. Manufacturing has gotten so efficient. And outsourcing things overseas has also gotten so efficient that it's brought costs down. But if you want to buy a really good bicycle, which by the way is not manufactured in the United States, it's also manufactured overseas. Those bicycles are around $5,000. So you have this insane jump from this cheap Chinese made garbage, which is $250 to What is a quality bicycle that's $5,000? It's actually more expensive than bicycles were when we were kids. What caused all this to happen and how in the process of all this happening did it totally kill manufacturing in the United States? All of these things are interrelated. So to answer your question, the first time that I held on to value, I bought this thing that was super high quality that had it was a high cost. I saved that money myself. Now, if a kid were to try to do the same thing, they literally could not have that same experience that I had. It doesn't exist anymore. And if they they have to set their sights way higher if they want something of equivalent value. And all of this happened through this catastrophe. Of going off of the gold standard and of permanent inflation in fiat currency. And it has to have an end point, which I think is why all of us are so nostalgic. We realize that something was taken from us through this process. So I'm answering your question by bringing it all back to vintage bicycles.

You're muted. Hilarious. It's interesting though, the, the, like, you know, it's all about story, right? Everything's about story. You told yourself that this bike is valuable and they're like, oh, I gotta look, what are people trading? Like, what is, what is a valuable thing I can trade for this valuable thing, right? And it's just, it's, it's funny because it goes to what we're talking about last week, like, you know, we're in it. We're in an interesting place where the bottom of the pyramid, and I think we should just start using that as our referral link on the, on the Pod is like, yeah, right. You just say it's like the people with the day laborers. Right. But it's like the bottom of the pyramid are telling themselves stories to trade for something. And, you know, that's the group of people that are, you know, going to be affected the most by all these things. But the whole point for the people at the top of the pyramid who are the schemers, right, is for them to try and get the people at the bottom of the pyramid to fight over something worthless so they can stay on top of the pyramid because they just want them fighting about things that are just, you know, nonsense, right? It's like, oh, what's your sports ball team or what's your, you know, whatever it is, you know, they want to keep you in this rat race. Oh, I had to spend 85 years at the DMV to get my driver's license, whatever it is. They don't care about any of that stuff. What they care about is at the end of the day, can they look at a spreadsheet and have it be predictable? Because people are, for better or for worse, predictable to a certain degree. You know, it's all things like why you can't yell fire in a crowded theater because people might, people will panic if they're in a big enough group of people. But if you have one person by themselves, which is also why they, you know, don't like having, you know, individual heroes, right? Like one person by themselves will statistically, more often than not, help in a situation where they can. Like, that's just, again, like, Dan Ariely wrote a really great book called Predictably Irrational. Highly recommend it for any, like, stats nerds. But where I'm going with this is every group of people, whether it be a four-year-old or, you know, a 10-year-old you or, you know, a 30-year-old a 20-year-old an 80-year-old or whatever it is, has these stories that they've told themselves that they're willing to trade some kind of value for. Something, right? Like, you know, in this case, as we started out, like the green faces of dead presidents, it's like they're trading these green faces of dead presidents, these coupons for something that somebody else has, like, added value into. But the whole premise of the game is fudged because the dead presidents and the currency that their faces on is not real. It's fake. And it's even more fake now with what we were talking about, where It's 100% abstract now. It's moving to a 100% abstract place. I actually think it's a dangerous place for Bitcoin. That's a whole other topic. But I do think physical Bitcoin will become a thing. Like, casacius coins are one aspect of it. And I think that's not going to be the correct form for physical Bitcoin. But I do think we're going to get to a place where Bitcoin is $10 million a coin or whatever it is. And we're at homeostasis and a sat. Is the same as a buck, right? And it's like, oh, it's like 50 cents. And people are just gonna, like, throw, you know, throw a 50 sat coin on the counter. And in some way, shape or form, it's going to be verified immediately just because of the nature of how stuff is going to go. And you can actually do quick transactions versus people being like, I'm going to scan your QR code, dude. It's like, no, like, that's not, that's not scalable. That's not fast. You know, it doesn't work in, in Italy when you're paying for your espresso.

Or it doesn't work.

In Uganda when you're trying to do something under the table. So, yeah, I'm rambling a little bit, but I wanted to land on your, like, you told yourself a story about something was valuable and you looked at your adults, you looked at your elders, you're like, oh, cool. I can go do these things for you and you'll give me these little pennants to save up. And at that point, yeah, it was like 500 bucks and it was for something that you was actually valuable and now it's like 500 bucks and you're just buying a piece of crap because, you know, just of the way that the bottom of the pyramid is broken, or rather, the people at the top.

Broke the bottom for everybody else. There was. There was actual saving at that point. Do you remember saving money? That was a thing. Remember the Banks, man?

The piggy Banks, the glass Banks or whatever. And it's just like. And this is the crayon one. That's why I was doing this motion. But, like, it was like the Crayola crayon that you wanted to fill up, and then we actually needed to take anywhere. Your dad was mad because he stubbed his toe on it because it just got so damn heavy. Like, those things. Yeah, those were. Yeah, it was just like, that was the thing. Like, oh, I found this stuff in the couch cushion.

But kids are not saving money anymore. I mean, you can go to an ATM and you can get cash out and you can give it to your kid. But in general, we're not spending cash. So they're not going to be getting a lot of cash. I realize you said you paid your babysitter in cash. It still does exist. In the US, cash does exist. You can go spend it in most places. But as you know, there are many places, especially in La, where literally you walk in and it says, we do not accept cash.

Yep.

I didn't even know that that was legal for them to do. I guess it is because there's tons of restaurants that I go to where they literally will not take cash for payment. You have to use a tap or a card or whatever. But when I was a kid, you know, if I went and bought a pack of baseball cards, I got some change back. That change went in my piggy bank. You could save. And then at the end of that six months or whatever, where you wanted to buy the bicycle, you would have the money. Now with inflation, there's the risk that the thing you're saving for keeps getting further and further and further away from you. I'm experiencing that right now with saving for a house. I tried to save money for a house. Houses got so much more expensive that if you compared how much I could save, compared to how expensive houses got over the last five years, the goal of getting a house got further away from me as I was saving money. It should be getting closer. You're saving money. You should be getting closer. But no, the inflation of assets was so much faster that by saving money and having not bought a house as quickly as you could, it ended up, and this is true for a ton of people between the ages of 20 to 40, They will never own a home because inflation goes into assets first. So if they don't somehow buy a home, no matter how much they save, the goal gets further and further away from them. So for our generation, we still psychologically think that saving exists. Only it does exist now if you saved in Bitcoin, thankfully, for us bitcoiners, if you were even dollar cost averaging a little bit of your money into Bitcoin, the growth that you've seen over the last 10 years in Bitcoin far outpaced inflation. And thank God for that. Thank God for Bitcoin, as we say all the time. I did want to say one more thing about the, the coin shortage that didn't exist, by the way, there was no coin shortage. They, they debased the coinage and they started making coins out of cheaper material. The truth of what happened is that inflation ran so hot that it cost more money to mint coins than the coins were worth.

Yep. It was like 3 cents for a penny or something like that or something. Yeah.

It costs more money for the government to make a penny than the penny is worth. And so they keep trying to find new metals and you can do this yourself. Go get a 1982 penny and just flip it and get a new penny. The 1982 Panda go thing. And the 19. The 19, you know, 99 or, you know, anything after 1983 will go, like, you can hear the debasement in the coins.

Yep, yep, yeah. It's. It's. Excuse me, it blows my mind how. Unfortunately predictable people are, though. And this actually goes to the, the, I really want to read solo linsky's rules for radicals. I know it's like the Playbook for all politicians, and so I do think there's, like, a lot of value to read it, and I'd love to read anything by che about it as well. And I know I'm saying that not because I'm a communist. I'm saying that because I think there's actually a lot of really interesting and Powerful ways to use propaganda, and I do think we need to use them more. That's where the whole cyberpunk Cinema handle came from as bitcoiners. Because at the end of the day, I have a firm belief right now this whole conflict going on with Nots and Core is a story war, but I think they're arguing about the wrong thing. Bitcoin mechanic at one point in time said this on one of his earlier episodes when he was talking about the topic, but the whole point is bitcoin is money or it is a database that cannot be both. Period. Like it is a, it is money, which money can be a store of value, right? And money can be a medium of exchange, right? We don't have to argue it's like a store of value. Like it's money. Like if I have money right here, like this money in this container is a store of value, right? It's going down in value, but this is a store of value technically or theoretically. Or it is a medium of exchange if I want to hand it to somebody. But the point is the, money aspect of Bitcoin is so important because you need to craft your storytelling for the lowest common denominator. You have to, you have to talk to the lowest common denominator. You have to be able to articulate your points to the lowest common denominator. And if you are truly a believer in Bitcoin and what it's going to do, you do actually think it's going to do it half any thought, which is take over, you know, even one percent of a 300 trillion dollar global asset cap. That's going to double, triple, and maybe quadruple, by the way, before Bitcoin is done. That was $300 trillion in 2009, 2010, when Bitcoin was initially created. So 300 trillion is not a lot based on where we are now. I think the last number I saw was like 712 trillion is like the actual market cap of the global market right now. But if you do believe that everyone is going to be forced through the door like cattle at some point in time, they're going to come through that door. You're right. But they're going to come through it in one of two ways. They're going to come through feeling forced. And if they're feeling forced, they're going to be mad and they're going to be angry, and they're going to feel like at the end of the day, they were robbed in some way, shape or form by people who were bitcoiners and the people who, like, paved the way, you know, in the same way, you know, the Chinese were mad at the, the models and the teachers and the business people and everybody else like that, which caused the Chinese Revolution, which is why Taiwan was created. Right? Like, everybody went through the door. It's the same thing as what happened with the communism in, you know, Paul Potts, Cambodia. Everybody was mad at the, you know, affluent people. And the story that was told was, oh, you guys were oppressed by this group of people. That is the story that was told. The only way to not have that happen again and not have every single Bitcoin or $5 wrench attacked, whether you have, you know, .001 of a Bitcoin or a full Bitcoin or more is if everybody has a baseline understanding of what Bitcoin is. And that is why I think this war is actually so important, because this war is for 2140. This war is not for the year, you know, 2025 or even 2030. Right. This is a war for the year 2140. Because if, you know, for the same reason that the story of Christ compels you, I would say more than the power of Christ compels you for most people, is the story of Bitcoin will compel you and it will compel you to come to that door angry or come through that door, you know, with a sigh and being like, oh, what else is on? Like, that's the point. And that is actually, I think, the most important point that people like Jameson Lop and Shinobi and Portland, huddle and all those people are missing. It's like, nobody, nobody freaking cares about your 80 kilobytes or your thousand or your 80 bytes or your thousand byte. Op return. Nobody legitimately cares. And the tales of that bell curve are the only people who actually care about your inscriptions or anything else like that. 99.72% or whatever it is in the middle of the bell curve of people are not going to give a flying flip about your inscriptions or your token or whatever it is. They just want to know what is and how can I use it. Bitcoin is money and you can buy your coffee with it. Fantastic. I'm happy you're here. This is great. Can I have a beer and can you turn on the Cowboys? That's what we need to actually be talking about. Because at the end of the day, all the other stuff will be figured out by the tails, right? The tails of people who just love the technicals, they love the instrumentation of it if you're Wall Street or whatever it is. All of that will be figured out. Those people will do it themselves. Why? Because they're highly motivated. The 99% of people though are not. And they need to be spoon-fed what to do. And that's unfortunate. But it's the truth, which is why you can have Predictably Irrational and Dan Ariely and Robert Cialdini and all these old thinkers and philosophers and marketers be able to sell you a product like an iPhone, habitually, and have planned obsolescence be a thing, habitually. Everyone does it, Samsung does it, Google does it, every single company does planned obsolescence, why? Because it works, because it's easy, because you can market people into a new product. And so that's actually one of the reasons why I think it's so important to get the Bitcoin story right, because there is no planned obsolescence. This is it, guys. And if we screw it up, back to square one, which is the Fiat co-opting that we have at the current moment in time.

Bitcoin has an incredible story. You have the story of Satoshi creating Bitcoin and everything that went into it. There was a time period from about 2008 to around 2013, where there was so much drama involved with the creation of Bitcoin that you could make an incredible movie about Satoshi creating Bitcoin. Had Satoshi not created Bitcoin, the need for something like Bitcoin would still exist also. So you have the story, you have the actual story of Bitcoin, and then you have the story of what happened to our world, the corruption of the monetary systems that we had. That is also a story. Right now, you have people like Luke Dasher and Bitcoin mechanic. They are engineers, and I'm thankful for them because they are actually working on the nuts and bolts of Bitcoin things that I don't even understand. They're not good storytellers. I don't think that they would be offended hearing that. I'm pretty sure that they're aware that they are not good storytellers. So there is a need for people like you and I. We're filmmakers, we're writers, we're commercial producers. And I know that there are other people, especially in our circle, on the Better By Bitcoin podcast, pretty much everybody who is in our circle. We all live in LA, we've all worked in Hollywood. Some of us are in the actual film industry. And so we're set up, we're good people to tell the story of Bitcoin. And there is a need for more storytellers to tell Bitcoin specific stories that will help so many people because when you're reaching out to the lowest common denominator, all of this engineering speak, it says nothing to them. It doesn't move them at all.

Yeah.

These people are suffering because of all the things that we're talking about. They need the help of Bitcoin, and they need this story to be told to them in a way that they can understand, which is what we're trying to do.

Yep. And which is also the reason why politicians tell stories. Right. There's a reason they go and find that Fringe analogy. There's a reason they go and talk about that mom that has cancer. There's a reason they go and talk about that little girl. You know, who, who had terrible things happen to her, whatever it is, right? You know, I, my, my, the first degrees of my, or the first two years of my degree were in journalism. And the first thing I was taught in my first journalism class was oddity is what you look for. And if it bleeds, it leads, period. Like, that's what they teach you in journalism school, is if it bleeds, it leads. Because at the end of the day, you know, and I remember the, the description the professor gave, she's like, you know, on this, and Judge Ely was the name of the street, but it's like, on this, street over here. If there is a parade that was happening, you know, on the 4th of July, and I'll probably get a story, whatever, you know, but if there's a parade that happened, you know, on a random Tuesday where somebody just went down and they just had, like, a mass Slaughter of people or whatever it is, and I'm being a little over the top with it, but it's like it would be national news because on the 4th of July, everybody's gonna do a parade down the big Main Street of whatever city and town you're in. But if it's got something unique and different about it, then that's what people are going to talk about. People like oddity. That's one of the things that the human condition is all about. You know, even you go back to the story of Cain and Abel, you know, where, you know, Cain killed his brother Abel, and Cain was the shepherd and. Or here, rather, Cain was the farmer and Abel was a shepherd. Right. I always forget, but the. I believe it was the farmer who was killed. Or rather the shepherd who was killed. Regardless, the point is this. The story does matter. And I do need actually go.

We need a producer. Producer.

We need a producer. We need to do a little more prep. But, yeah, I think the, the big piece here, though, is, you know, Cain basically said to God, am I my brother's keeper? And that was the story. He's like, I don't need to, you know, tell you anything else like that. It's like, you know, God already knew the story. But he's like, am I my brother's keeper? And the whole point there is, it's like, you know, the, the story we tell ourselves is how we live our lives. And so Cain told himself story that, you know, I don't need an answer to give you God because I'm not my brother's keeper, right? And so it's like the stories we tell ourselves are the most important thing. And that's actually what America got right. America got right. Hey, what is our number one export? Entertainment, storytelling. And so that is why we are the greatest nation in the world, because we've told everybody that. And we've told people that we're the land of opportunity. We've marketed it that way. And that's actually why it's important to maintain that and actually why it's so important for Bitcoin for us to do that, because we need to have an understanding of what the hell it is we're selling. And people need to know what they're getting. Oh, you're getting money? Sweet. Cool. What else is on? Yeah.

And it's why English is the lingua franca of the entire world because Hollywood exported these stories to the world. It's incredible. I mean, for us, we are very fortunate to speak English as our mother tongue because we can literally communicate with anyone in the world. So we have a massive leg up. Yeah, we need to tell better stories. So to all of you writers, filmmakers, artists, if you're also bitcoiners, tell good stories that tell the Bitcoin story and it's going to help a lot of people. There was something that you mentioned in there. Oh man, I totally lost what it was. Everything else?

I gotta run and do one more thing real quick, which is frustrating, but I do have one more question to kind of actually go on that is like, the whole point with cyberpunk Cinema was to come in and start telling, like, the story of Satoshi and do it a bunch of different ways. And I'm still trying to do that. And actually, AI is fantastic for that because a lot of these things are just expensive. Right. And I think that's one of the things is, you know, from a bitcoin perspective, it's, you know, coming in late and not having a lot of bitcoin. Where am I going with this? I'll land the plane really quickly. You get back to this tale analogy, right? Is you have this group of people that have a lot of Bitcoin that sit at the top of the Bitcoin pyramid. We're going to use the philosophical Bitcoin pyramid, but they need to get an understanding of what they're trying to do. And I think that's the part two with storytelling and everything, like everything is story. Like you tell yourself you get up at a certain time in the morning and you go work out or you don't work out because of the story that you tell yourself. And so I think the thing that's going to be the most interesting aspect of the Bitcoin store war and the story in general is going to be the story people start to tell themselves and why about whatever it is Bitcoin relating that they're doing, Bitcoin related that they're doing. Because if you tell yourself, I'm saving for my kids, kids or my kids, kids, kids, it's actually going to change how you parent your kids. Because there's, you know, in a couple pods ago we talked about how generational wealth is basically lost all the way up until the fifth generation. Statistically, like every generation will just drop the ball. But if you can plan a five generation contingency plan and basically be planning out for your kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, right? So you have a, you know, let's just take that, you know, from a simple perspective, you know, if you're looking at, 10 generations, 500 years. So that's 250 years. So plan out 250 years from your lifetime. Once you get to that fifth generation, there's an 84% chance that that next generation will maintain your wealth. But the idiot force they have to go through to get there is the big problem. And so it's like you have, there's a chance that every generation up to the fifth is going to drop the ball. But if you're thinking about five generations from now, you're gonna actually plan differently, you're gonna coach differently, you're gonna think differently, you're gonna do things differently. And I think that's the thing that's the most important right now. That's kind of like being missed in the core camp is like the core camp right now is they're talking about, oh, miners right now are gonna want high fees. And it's like, sure, everybody wanna get paid more for their stuff. But it's like, but what are miners gonna want in 100 years? In 100 years, miners are gonna want a really, really clean, simple, and I don't know, right? Like, I actually don't care about the technicals, and I don't even want to get into it for this particular reason. In 100 years, miners are gonna want Bitcoin to be money. That's it. They are not gonna care. They just want Bitcoin to survive. So 100 years from now, they want Bitcoin to survive. And the technicals will absolutely change in 100 years. I can guarantee you they're gonna change. And I can guarantee you nobody who's listening to this and myself and yourself we have no idea what Bitcoin's going to look like. But if Bitcoin is money, that's all that matters. That's all that matters. And whatever money is 100 years from now, that's the point. That's the thing. The medium of exchange, the value. That's the story that needs to be told right now. That's the story we need to win. Because if we. We lose that, then who cares? Who legitimately cares? Who cares what micro strategy is going to own a million Bitcoin by the end of next year? Who cares? Legitimately is not going to matter because it's going to be worthless. It's not going to have a story of value behind it. And so diatribe over. But that's, I think the thing that's the most important in my mind is like, we got to get that right. And I think we're missing the mark at the current moment of time.

Satoshi couldn't have fully predicted where we would be right now with Bitcoin being worth what it's worth and being so distributed. I mean, it is one of the greatest assets of all the assets to own currently. It has one of the biggest market caps of anything that you could compare it to, like a stock or real estate or gold and all these things. It's getting up there. But when Satoshi created Bitcoin, he created it for multiple generations. I think that at the current mining schedule in 2140, the last of the 21 million Bitcoin will have been mined. So Bitcoin, as it was created, was created to operate in the way that it's operating now for over a hundred years. So he was thinking that far ahead. Whereas in this current system that we're in, people take essentially mortgages, whether it's a mortgage on a big commercial building or your house or whatever, you take a 30 year mortgage. So that you can have that asset or so that you can live in your house for that 30 years. People are looking at assets more like they're renting them than owning them. So as long as a building can last that 30 years and provide cash flow to a business, then all they need it is for that 30 years because the loan is a 30 year loan. If the thing literally falls over after 30 years, it doesn't matter. The loan's paid off. They got their cash flow, and that's it. That is not the way that anything should operate. We should be building things that last for hundreds of years, planning for multiple generations. But this thing that Fiat has done to us, talking about all the suffering that it's caused, is it's made people very, very short-sighted. They don't make products that last. They don't make buildings that last. They're thinking in, in like, what can I do right now to make enough money so that I can buy the things that I want because the prices are going to be higher later. So I just need it. I need to earn money right now and spend it right now and earn money right now and spend it right now. And it's exhausting. And I think it's freaked out our generation because our generation is thinking about retirement. And, you know, when we were younger, we would have thought, oh, if I have a million dollars one day, I'm going to live like a king. Now our generation is thinking, even if I had a million dollars in my bank account right now and something happened to my health and I didn't have the physical ability to work, that money's going to run out so fast that I'm going to be destitute. And so there's this existential dread that we're all feeling that Fiat has caused. But Bitcoiners in general are tending to think, okay, Bitcoin is this thing that isn't going to even stop being mined until 2140. I won't be alive in 2140. So I'm holding on to an asset that is going to outlive me. So how do I think for my future generation? And the government can't just come in and take it. They can't seize it. They can't estate tax my Bitcoin. My Bitcoin is mine. I have it, and there's lots of different ways to hold in custody your own Bitcoin. And it's kind of like, I remember listening to Robert Kiyosaki talking about gold, and somebody asked him, well, where am I going to store the gold? And he's like, if you own the gold, you're going to figure out how to store it. And that same thing is true for Bitcoin. If you hold a tremendous amount of value that you're seeing going up 10x, 100x over the time you hold it, you're going to figure out how to hold that value. You're going to figure out how to secure it and how to store it. And that is Super empowering.

Yep. Yeah, I think the most interesting thing about the white paper, outside of the technical aspects of it is the story that it tells and the story that it tells with what you were just talking about 2140. This was built to be a multi generational currency, right? At least two to three generations is kind of what Satoshi was thinking, maybe even four, depending on how you want to break down 2140. Do you look at that as four generations or five generations? He was writing this in such a way that we need to be looking for generations out. We need to be looking ahead of us because at the end of the day, like the road is going to be bumpy, the road is going to be hard. And I think that's actually the, you know, that's one of the things that I really do appreciate about Luke from a like thinking perspective is he really does try to go back to like the fundamental, like the long term thinking of it, a little crass in terms of his approach, but it's not wrong. And I think that's actually what you need. Like you need people breaking down the fundamentals of it for like the long term he's doing on the technical side. And I think that's the thing that we, you know, as storytellers need to come in and do it is on the storytelling side because, you know, and I've said this over and over again, like my mom doesn't care about Michael Saylor. My mom doesn't care about Robert Breedlove outside of the fact that he's nice to look at. Like kudos to you, Robert. I would love one day to look as good inside of a barrel, you know, just with my head sticking out. But the goal is legitimately how do we tell stories that are going to move people? And we don't even need to move them into buying Bitcoin. Like, I think that's the big thing that, you know, is missed a lot of times on the Bitcoin side. It's people like, oh, I need to, I need to orange pill somebody. I need to make them buy Bitcoin. It's like, no, you don't. You just need them to understand that Bitcoin is valuable. That's it. You just need them to know that Bitcoin is money. And if they want to come back to you and they want to ask you another questions and they want to do whatever, fantastic. But outside of that, they just need to know what the elevator one floor answer is when somebody says, have you heard of Bitcoin? What is that? And they just need to say money. And if they say money, you've won because money has so many things tied to it. Freedom, power, empowerment, weapon. You can use this as a cajole. You can use this as a carrot. It doesn't really matter what it is. Money has so many different dichotomies and aspects to it. And I think the thing that's the most I listened to 38 Letters from John D. Rockefeller to his son, one of the best books I've read in a long time. But what's fascinating about it is he talks about the verse in the Bible that's always misquoted, which is money is the root of all evil. And that's no, it's not money is the root of all evil, it's the love of money is the root of all evil. And I actually think that's what the core people are getting wrong right now is what they're getting wrong is they have removed They have filtered out in their brains to use the whole Luke Dasher argument, the beginning of the argument, which is the love of money is the problem here, right? Because if you are a business and you are focused wholly on the love of money, wholly on the love of getting more fees, wholly on the love of a little bit more, you're not actually going to service your customers well. You're not actually going to do what you need to do to succeed in the long run. And so you're going to bring about your own demise, which is the whole point. Of that verse in the Bible is like at the end of the day, if you love money, you will bring out your own demise. Money in and of itself is just a thing. Bitcoin in and of itself is just a thing. It is a database. Yes, I get that. Fundamentally it is to a degree a database, right? Like blockchain is a different type of database technology if you want to break it down that way. But fundamentally it is a different thing because it was created to do something different. It was created to be a ledger over a long time 140 years at least to store things into the future and to create and understand value for this digital age, which is a fantastic thing to find out in the sovereign individual. I don't have anything funny to say after that. I think if I found something funny, I could make the point land better. But.

You said something earlier that Bitcoin is going to become physical and I completely agree. There's this. It's fascinating to me that we. I'm saying we. We didn't do this, but we created the greatest digital money to ever exist. And yet it also manifests itself in these physical forms. Personally, my favorite physical form currently are the stuff that nvk is making with, like, coin kite cold cards in the, I think, Q4. Is that what it's called? The Q or.

The Q.

The Q.

It's the Q and then the Mark II, the original cold card, and then there's these guys, the open dimes. Although I love these things, but this is like the open dime carrier thing. And I've had it in NVK. This is not a knock on you guys, but legit just these things being knocked around. Now, it could be the fact that I have them knocking around in here with the USB stick thing because nobody has a regular USB thing.

Yeah, none of you guys.

Well, none of these read now. And I'm like, yeah, sweet.

So if I were to have one of these to make it work now, and who knows what the future. So, yeah, but bitcoin is. Bitcoin is physical. That's something that people who are not in bitcoin can't understand. And so there's this argument. I'm just going to break it down real quick, like, because I am regarded and for other people who cannot understand. I'm going to break it down. According to my understanding, people are worried that Bitcoin is going to die. And so people are like, why would I put my life savings into this thing? You're telling me there's an argument happening with the people who run Bitcoin. What if they get it wrong and Bitcoin dies? I'm assuring people that Bitcoin is not going to die. This thing is not going to kill Bitcoin, even though Luke Dasher says that this is an existential threat. And if we get this wrong, Bitcoin will die. This is Zach asked us to explain it to him, you know, like, like explain, like I'm five. And my explanation was that Luke is talking about Bitcoin in 100 years, and we should be talking about Bitcoin in 100 years, but he's not doing a good job of explaining that. The argument still stands because we need to be talking about Bitcoin for multiple future generations, but he's not talking about a thing that is going to kill Bitcoin right now. We are fighting to set up Bitcoin for success that far outlives us. So there's a debate going on right now. To run Bitcoin, you have to run what is called a Bitcoin node. That when a Bitcoin transaction goes out and gets broadcast all around the world, it pings around to all of these different computers that people have built that hold a copy of every Bitcoin transaction that has ever existed. And as soon as it writes on to two of those, it's basically written in stone. But specifically, once it writes on to six of them, you could use all the compute power that has ever existed running on running with nuclear power plants, running whatever, it's never going to be able to be erased. It's there forever. So some people want to create software that allows you to put all sorts of things onto the Bitcoin ledger, not just money transactions, but it's all data. You could put little movies, you could put JPEGs, you could put anything that is in a digital form onto the blockchain. But Bitcoin is money. Why do we want JPEGs and why do we want movies? And people can put all kinds of weird stuff, images that you don't want on your computer. And if your computer is running a node and somebody puts something explicit on there, now you have something explicit on your computer. And so it makes everybody, like, criminally liable for anybody who slips anything in. So that is what is going on. And Luke and mechanic are fighting to keep that stuff off. The blockchain from a ideological, philosophical standpoint of they don't want explicit material on their computers because it is morally wrong to have that stuff. But it also creates a problem of making too much data on Bitcoin. And Bitcoin does not need this added data because Bitcoin is money. It is the money. It is the greatest money that we've ever had. And so we need to fight to keep it pure. And so that is the, the sort of breakdown of this argument. But that's all to say bitcoin's not going anywhere. Bitcoin is not getting destroyed, and we are fighting to make it as pure as possible because it already is the purest money.

I think I agree with everything you said. Save one thing. I think the, the, the I think the risk is real. And I think actually, if we don't get it right now, it will be the demise, which I think is Luke's point, you know, because, again, it's like Bitcoin trying to be positive. We're past the 30 minute Mark.

That's true.

We gotta be positive. But it's, it's the, it's the, the positive take on this, though, is Bitcoin is an oil tanker, right? It's an oil tanker that's getting up to speed. It always was an oil tanker. You know, it was created as an oil tanker. I think the best way to think about this is like, the Federal Reserve is an oil tanker, right? And the Federal Reserve as an oil tanker is running aground right now. It is legitimately heading at full speed and then they just keep going down into the boiler room and pouring more money and pouring more effort into making this thing go faster and it's going to hyperinflate and it's going to nuclear bomb itself into an iceberg. That's what's going to happen. Bitcoin is fashioned after a similar thing, right? A currency, but it's an oil tanker that was designed to go forever in a forward direction, just like the Federal Reserve. But the difference is now we have people like Luke and mechanic and others, and even Adam Back came out today and he was saying Bitcoin is money and making the similar argument is we need to be thinking about one degree right now, or even four degrees right now of a change. In the network, which is what everybody's saying, is like, oh, it's only four degrees. There's only four percent. It's only whatever. It's like, yeah, but you're not thinking 100 years from now, four degrees, a.

Hundred years from now is thousands and.

Thousands and thousands of miles off the mark. Puts you out of our solar system. You're not even playing the same game anymore, right? You're not even, you're not yet in the same solar system. None of that stuff. And so I think that's why it's so important. And I think that's why, you know, it needs to get to this, like, War type situation again, because As a storyteller, I totally agree. We're the reason we're in this quagmire of the United States right now. And I'm talking about left and right. I don't care if you're red or blue. The reason the United States has become such a political quagmire right now is because we have allowed it to happen. And how did we allow it to happen? We allowed them to lie to us and we believe the story they told us. That's it. And there were simple things we could have done, you know, like term limits, which great men saw, George Washington, right? Like there are things that great men in the past saw, but people just didn't heed them for whatever reason. And so that's why we are where we are is, you know, we had the bailout in 2008 by Obama. We had Trump just printing money like it's going out of style right now. And then his tariffs, like, I don't care who's in office right now, be it Trump or Biden. I think all the Bitcoiners kind of saw that this plane was coming in for a really rough landing. And so I think we're probably in a better situation right now for the short term, but I think regardless of who's in office, red or blue in the long term, this plane does not land. The only way that this plane lands is it goes into the stratosphere and it keeps flying up until it hits another planet. And at that point, it's probably Elon shooting it off to Mars. Because that's the only way the Fiat number goes is up. And so, yeah, that's a rosy thought, right? We don't have to worry about the Federal Reserve anymore because we're on Mars.

Oh, man. Yeah, you're totally right. You're totally right. It is an existential threat. I personally believe that Bitcoin is a good and moral money and that good is going to win out over evil, but it still is a battle to be fought. It's just so far beyond my understanding. I wish that I was more technical. So, you know, what we can do is we can keep telling the good Bitcoin story and supporting, you know, if we can understand who the good actors are and who the bad actors are, we can do our best to support the good ones and essentially destroy the bad ones with storytelling. And storytelling is super powerful. And I'm not talking about by the way, I'm not talking about documentaries. I'm talking about stories.

Narrative.

Narrative is the most powerful, motivating force in existence for the human mind. Narrative.

Yep, I totally agree. And actually, I think one thing that's interesting is if people would disagree with that sentiment, try and hypnotize yourself. Try and sit down. Simon cynic has a good piece on this, but the human mind is not possible of comprehending negatives. And so what I mean by that is don't think of an elephant is the whole thing he does. It's like, what are you thinking about right now? You know, you're thinking of an elephant because the human mind is not capable of ignoring these, these abstracts that you talk about. By the same token, it can't understand extreme abstracts. Like, it can't understand exponentials. Because exponentials, the only way you can understand an exponential is to stand in the middle of a nuclear bomb, and you will understand what exponential expansion feels like for a fraction of a second, but after that, it's not going to matter because your experience has now been vaporized. And so the whole point about the human mind and the value of the human mind and the value of human understanding is the now. And is this story that you tell it and the story, what I call your internal tape, that you tell yourself. And so, yeah, the narrative story you tell yourself, you have an internal tape. If you're listening to this, whatever story you're telling yourself is the truth. You know, as Henry Forest said, if you think you can, you're right. If you think you can't, you're right. And the reason that's true is because you have told yourself the end of that story. I can't do this. I'm fat. I can't do this. I'm slow. I can't do this. I'm ugly. I can't do this. I'm weak. Whatever it is. You know, I'm, you know, a fair, I'm going to call myself a fair looking fella, but I was able to get married and, you know, do all the things that I need to do. You know, I'm a mildly intelligent individual and I was able to, you know, to find ways to figure it out. You can always do it. And I would say don't speak to yourself in that language though. You're going to figure it out. Go do it. Go succeed. Go make it happen. Go do five push-ups. Go do those things that you want to do. Why? Because the only person stopping you is you. You can do it. Go do it. And that comes back to Bitcoin is like, we can tell the story that Bitcoin is money. Why? Because it matters. And the way we need to do it though is in a narrative format. I think documentaries are great. But documentaries are just a way to put skin on statistics. And at the end of the day, nobody really cares about statistics. Why? Because they're all fake.

You've got those pretty hazel blue eyes.

Happens, man. Happens.

Sorry, I make it weird.

Just, no, it's fine. You know, my mom is going to love that. So thanks, Mom. That one's for you, Mom.

Yeah, man. I just want to encourage people that life gets better on a bitcoin standard. It gets better for you personally. And if you're looking around the world, around the world where you are, like if you're driving around your city and you're seeing these horrible problems, you're seeing trash on the street, seeing homelessness and despair, all those things get fixed as soon as the money gets fixed and Bitcoin is the fix for the money. So to keep that positive mindset, it is important. The positive mindset is how you essentially hypnotize yourself into the mentality that you want to have, which is the mentality of possibility and positivity. And Bitcoin will immensely help you to realize that positivity because you have money that hasn't been corrupted by this. This evil force of inflation. I was thinking today, I tweeted this out that. That there will be mental institutions on a Bitcoin standard. I was thinking about this because there's a homeless guy in my neighborhood.

This.

I want to feel bad for him because he has an IQ of about 60, but he stabbed two women in the face. The first time he stabbed a woman in the face, he didn't go to jail. So a year later, he stabbed a woman in the eye and he went to jail. Well, the other day, I think it was yesterday, I was driving, I look over and I see him standing back in the same spot. He hasn't been in my neighborhood in two or three years. I almost didn't recognize him because he looked so much better. He looked healthier. He got healthier in prison. Prison is a terrible place. It's not a good place. And our prisons aren't even run well. But his life in prison was better than his life on the street. I'm telling you, this guy, before he went to prison, was the dirtiest human being I have ever seen in my life. He didn't change his clothes for at least seven years because I was living in the neighborhood for seven years, and I literally saw him in the exact same outfit. Covered in filth for seven straight years. He never changed his clothes or took a shower. And he came back from jail. He looked healthy. He had a decent amount of weight on him. He was clean. I guarantee he's going to get dirty again. But currently, under our Fiat standard, Society is falling apart. The only thing that's keeping it from falling apart is our own will. To not want it have a have it fall apart under hard money. We will take care of people because we will be incentivized to make everything look and feel as good as possible. Because there's nobody else who's going to do it for us. Right now, everybody thinks that the government is going to take care of people. They think that is more compassionate to let people sleep on the street. That is not compassion. It's neglect. Everybody's neglecting it because they're too busy trying to hold their life together as inflation is trying to take everything away from them. All this stuff is getting fixed on a Bitcoin standard. So I don't know how long that's going to take, but I feel really positive about it personally.

Yep. It's interesting even thinking about this, too. And I know we'll, we can do last thoughts after this, but the, the, the. It's funny, the people who have done the most damage and helped the most in terms of the, I'm gonna say, the kind of the story of our nation have been storytellers. And I'll give two examples. And this will be kind of my last thing. And this also is like, why is the Bitcoin story so important? When JFK painted the picture of the value of going to the moon and winning the space race, he United a nation in a way that had never been seen before since World War II. When Ronald Reagan told the story of the tragedy of our mental institutions, and he closed all of those institutions and cast those people like that homeless guy you have onto the street, he did more harm to the next several generations in this generation that's going right now and ruined places like San Francisco because he told a story that was unfortunately a lie. And he told that story because people wanted to make money. And the people knew that they could make money through the cantillion effect, which is, you know, something you should look up. But it's. It's all based on the story of a lie. The value of story is if you have a really, really good story that has a lot of momentum behind it, it can change the face of history forever. Jesus is a perfect example. And in my mind, I think the next great story beside Jesus for humanity will be and is the story of Bitcoin.

Yeah, I agree. I fully agree. Well, hey, if you've stuck with us, thank you for listening. Another episode of Better By Bitcoin in the can. And yeah, that's it for us. Thanks.

And if you have any thoughts about, oh, I don't like your face, like that, we can't help with those. But if you're like, hey, it'd be cool if you guys tried to do this, tried to do that, like we're gonna try now once we get into the next, you know, episodes 41, which we're at now through 100, are all about experimenting and trying to find the format. You know, the first 40 episodes are about, like, hey, getting comfortable in front of the camera, making this stuff work and kind of talking and starting to, like, figure stuff out on the Fly. But now we're going to start trying to actually, like, plan things out a little bit more. So if you have any ideas or thoughts, drop them in the comments. Subscribe, share. We really do appreciate all of it, and we want to try and give people something interesting. So we're trying to figure out what that is, but we appreciate you being here.

Yeah, I wanna. If you're listening to us right now and you've listened to any of our episodes or watched our shorts on YouTube or you subscribe to us on X, drop us a note, put a comment on YouTube or, you know, reply to us on X, reply to Anton Seim or Cypherpunk Cine. We would love to hear from you. And if you have ideas for our show, I. I kind of even want to. Even if you have criticism, bring it on. Let's hear it. But thank you for watching.

Cheers, Joe. Oh, I pushed.

I didn't leave.

No, I just pushed the wrong button. Thanks, y'all. Technical difficulties. Apparently we need 40 more episodes to figure this out. Yeah. Thanks for tuning in to Better By Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Makes everything better. Like, subscribe and follow us on X@BetterBYBTC, YouTube@BetterBYBitcoin, not financial advice, mathematical certainty.