Bitcoin Adoption and Resiliency with Tuur Demeester - Freedom Footprint Show 51
In today’s episode, we’re joined by Tuur Demeester, editor-in-chief at Adamant research and longtime Bitcoiner.
In this in person, interview, recorded at Baltic Honeybadger 2023 we explore a wide range of topics. We discuss the connection between Bitcoin and Austrian economics, we explore trends in Bitcoin adoption, and we explore Bitcoin’s resiliency. We even cover how we can avoid the biggest long-term threat to Bitcoin!
Connect with Tuur on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TuurDemeester
Check out Tuur's reports at Adamant Research: http://adamantresearch.com/
00:00:00 - Intro - Welcoming Tuur Demeester
00:02:34 - Austrian Economics
00:09:42 - Hyperbitcoinization and Violence
00:16:59 - Freedom of Speech and Property Rights
00:20:08 - Austrian Economics and Bitcoin
00:25:08 - The Bitcoin Scene in Argentina
00:29:13 - Bitcoin Adoption
00:32:00 - Bitcoin Adoption vs Internet Adoption
00:35:12 - Bitcoin Resiliency
00:38:22 - Bitcoin is Backed by Human Action
00:45:18 - The Biggest Threat to Bitcoin
01:01:34 - Wrapping Up - Where to Find Tuur
The Freedom Footprint Show is hosted by Knut Svanholm and BTCPseudoFinn. We are concerned about your Freedom Footprint! Join us as we talk to #bitcoin philosophers about how #bitcoin can expand your Freedom Footprint and much more!
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The Freedom Footprint Show is a Bitcoin podcast hosted by Knut Svanholm and Luke de Wolf.
In each episode, we explore everything from deep philosophy to practical tools to emit freedom dioxide to expand your freedom footprint!
00:00 - Intro - Welcoming Tuur Demeester
02:34 - Austrian Economics
09:42 - Hyperbitcoinization and Violence
16:59 - Freedom of Speech and Property Rights
20:08 - Austrian Economics and Bitcoin
25:08 - The Bitcoin Scene in Argentina
29:13 - Bitcoin Adoption
35:12 - Bitcoin Resiliency
38:22 - Bitcoin is Backed by Human Action
45:18 - The Biggest Threat to Bitcoin
01:01:34 - Wrapping Up - Where to Find Tuur
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one number that I've long looked at, like for a very long time is,
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just simple internet adoption.
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If you look at the percentages I think early 1995, it was 9%, and then it
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jumped to 16 percent in the next year.
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So to me, that is what I want to see in Bitcoin, where like, we can
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really say like, Ooh, this is a moment where we're really going mainstream.
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And I think it's coming this cycle.
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it doesn't mean we have complete saturation, but it does mean that the.
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The S curve starts to accelerate
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Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint show, the Bitcoin
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philosophy show with Knut Svanholm and me, Luke the Pseudo Finn.
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In today's episode, we're joined by Tur Demeester, editor in chief at Adamant
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Research and long time Bitcoiner.
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In this in person interview recorded at Baltic Honey Badger 2023, we
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explore a wide range of topics.
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We discuss the connection between Bitcoin and Austrian economics.
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We explore trends in Bitcoin adoption.
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And we consider Bitcoin's resiliency.
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We even cover how we can avoid the biggest long term threat to Bitcoin.
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Stay tuned for that.
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But before we jump in, a quick reminder that the best way to support the show
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is to send us a boost or stream us some sats using a value for value
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podcasting app such as Fountain.
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If you're listening to this show as a podcast, check it out on Fountain.
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You can earn sats from listening and you can support us and
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lightning address freedom at getalby.
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And if you want to exchange your dirty fiat, you can support us on Patreon.
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All our links are in the description.
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If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to like the episode
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Even if you're listening as a podcast, head over to our YouTube
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It would be a big help.
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And finally, we want to thank today's sponsors Wasabi Wallet,
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Orange Pill App, The Bitcoin Way.
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We'll be talking a bit more about them later.
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And now, without further ado, here is Thurde Meester on
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the Freedom Footprint show.
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Welcome to the Freedom Footprint Show.
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Yeah.
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We've, we've been, uh, eager to talk to you for a long time.
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Yeah.
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Or like, we've been talking about talking for
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quite some time.
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Yeah.
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And it's so nice when you can finally meet someone in person.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It just, it's so much nicer than to do it over
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Zoom.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And, uh, yeah, give us the, the T L D R on tour.
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Dester, who are you?
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And uh, what is your thing
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like, uh, sure.
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Yeah.
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Um, I mean, I grew up in Belgium.
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I, um, kind of was very undecided about what to do after, after high school.
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I tried like a million things.
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I dropped out of university.
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Um, I traveled.
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I, I lived in Norway for a year, all kinds of stuff.
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Um, eventually found, um, Some Austrian school ideas, like early on, like, uh,
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you know, Human Action from Mises and some other books that, and not just
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me, like, several friends of mine.
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Did you read Human
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Action
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at an early age?
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It was it was, uh, it was Human Action.
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We were, I mean, not that young, like, you know, twenty...
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Maybe I was 22, 23 or something, um, but yeah, to me, it was very profound to
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encounter that stuff, because not only was it economic ideas that made sense,
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but like, the first part of human action is just, you know, hardcore philosophy,
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and he basically just, you know, wipes the floor with like, relativism, and
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a lot of things I had been struggling with, like free will, or like, you
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know, the power of the group, or like, all these kind of ideas that are, I
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Almost, like, subliminally passed on to you through public schooling, you know.
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Mises was very, not only talking about them, but very decisively
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debunking a bunch of those things.
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And it was such a, it was very emotional, like, for me to, like,
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you know, be exposed to that.
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And, uh, and so from then on, I really, that became a big part of my life.
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Like, you know, economics, Austrian school, philosophy.
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Yeah, same thing happened to me.
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Like, I, I, I couldn't let go of the book.
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People think it's a hard read, but I felt, uh, I think it flows very well.
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And I mean, there are long sentences, but.
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Come on.
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And it's also, it's so quotable, like it's so dense.
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I love that.
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There's no fluff.
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You can just
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like...
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It's like 1, 800 pages of no fluff.
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So that's why I wrote the Praxeology book, to like squeeze those
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1, 800 pages into 130 instead.
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And like, uh, I don't know if I succeeded or not, but I, I felt there was a...
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whole in the market there for a
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beginner's level, of course.
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And Mises, like, he invents new words.
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I mean, clearly he is German in his mother tongue.
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I think he only moved to the US when he was
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60.
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Yeah, and he was friends with Ayn Rand, or became friends over there,
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and they have, like, a similar story.
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His life story is fascinating.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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I mean, that whole rabbit hole is so, to me it felt like reading
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something like Newton or something, something very fundamental that was
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just missing from the entire school curricula, like, this is like, holy
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shit, why haven't we talked about this?
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This is as important as mathematics, really, but, and I think it was
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Rob Breedlove who said in a, just a casual conversation that Uh,
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praxeology is to the subjective what mathematics is to the objective.
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And I, of course, I use that in my book because I think it's so, I think
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that puts the finger on what it is.
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I think Mises would be very happy with that because his brother
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was a mathematician, right?
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And so to like, to have that validation that people see his, his
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thoroughness as a, as being so Solid, that you can actually even compare
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it with something like mathematics.
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Yeah, and, yeah, because, like, mathematics is a priori, too, in a sense.
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It starts from a set of irrefutable axioms, like 1 plus 1 equals 2,
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because we define 2 as 1 plus 1.
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Yep.
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Sort of, and, uh, yeah, this...
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Just a priori versus a posteriori or logical deductive
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reasoning versus empiricism.
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I think that's so much there, like it, for me, it put the finger on why,
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like, why science, empirical science.
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And empirical science by itself just isn't enough to understand the
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world, like you need to understand incentives to understand anything.
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Right, and empirical science has a lot of presuppositions that are not
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talked about, that are actually a
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priori.
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Yeah, yeah, and also that it's never precise because the map
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can never be the territory.
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That's the a priori is precise and that's, that's why it's limited, but it's also
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why it's so more rigid, I would say.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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I think there is only one.
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It's hard to say if it's, I would have to study it more to decide, like, is
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it really a gripe for me with Mises?
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It's just that I personally lean more Aristotelian, you know,
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which is phenomenology and you're looking at more things from, from
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different angles, uh, rather than.
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The Kantian framework feels a bit more like, you know, this, this,
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this thing is on the board and then you kind of just reason within your
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mathematical proof, so to speak.
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And I think sometimes you lose aspects of reality.
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Like, for example, the, you know, Mises, you know, being so emphatic that,
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um, economics needs to be wertfrei, like free from value judgments.
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I think he...
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Eventually you get stuck, like it gets too limited if you cannot talk about fraud
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or theft or, you know, and that's where Rothbard has a bit of a different take.
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But like as far as purely aesthetically or just purely as a,
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as an experience, I prefer Mises over any of the other, you know, it's,
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it's incredible to read, to read
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him.
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Did you read a Hopper book called, uh, Economic Science and the Austrian
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Method?
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I, I think I've read.
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Parts of it.
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Cause at some point, cause he's, this is a method, methodology.
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It's a lot about methodology.
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Yeah.
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I've read parts of it,
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I think, a long time ago,
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but yeah.
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I love that book.
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That was also very dense.
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It's very much shorter than human action, but yeah, it talks a lot about methodology
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and like the differences and how
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significant they are.
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And does the, uh, go into argumentation ethics there?
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Uh, uh, If I remember it, because it touches on it, but argument,
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his argumentation, I think it's one of the most profound insights
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of the last century and it's never talked about and like, Yeah,
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it's, uh, it's very under, underappreciated.
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I agree.
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It's so powerful.
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It's so powerful.
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Yeah.
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Um, and, and, I mean, who knows in the future, we'll see some, it
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would be great to have some debates about how, how it started and
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where, where, um, Uh, where, uh, Argumentation Ethics started, because...
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I think they were independently kind of uncovered, discovered, uh, both by
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Hoppe and then a little bit earlier, Frank van Doorn, but he wrote in
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Dutch, and so he had a whole, uh, the, the foundational principle of law,
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which he basically makes the argument from argumentation, um, And so they
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really complement each other nicely.
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But I agree.
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It's so, you know, it's so foundational.
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Although I think, you know, if you're an Aristotelian, it's more like it's one
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proof, but I think you can find multiple proofs to kind of, kind of, you know, be
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going at the same framework eventually.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And it's tightly connected to philosophy, as you say, like they're tangent
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to one another, the way I see it.
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All right.
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So, so, if we take the, uh, the deep hopium stuff about Bitcoin and that we
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will hyperbitcoinize and it'll take over everything, does that in your mind, does
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that remove violence from the equation?
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Almost entirely, so that what we have is, left is argumentation
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and just conversation and, well, peace, world peace.
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Is that
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where we're going?
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Yeah, I, I, I'm afraid it's not enough.
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I, I really am of the camp that like, even under a gold standard, you had
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enormously bloody wars and, you know, and, and, uh, a lot of, a lot of issues.
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I think that, you know, there's a great.
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Opportunity here.
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Like that's what I had my talk about today.
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This is great opportunity because uh, if you think about the principles
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that allow for peace in society, one of those principles, I think
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there are four according to Van Den and I follow him, there's four.
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One of them is Restriction of access, you know, because if you have open
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access, if any kind of, there's no real property rights, right?
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If your stuff and mine, it's all fuzzy and that then people live
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in this perennial uncertainty, anxiety, anything can be conscious.
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The Fiat regime is kind of like that.
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Because literally your bank account is just a free for all, you know,
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they can take value from it whenever, whenever they want, you know,
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banks or governments or whoever's, whoever can add to the money supply.
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And so Bitcoin.
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And of course, the cypherpunk movement as a whole, and encryption, all that
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technology allows you to restrict access, um, restrict the world from
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accessing your, what's yours, your property, and so it's a great engine
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for peace, you know, and it creates that certainty, so it's a super important
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and foundational But I still think we need more than just that to, to really
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go towards, um, a society where, yeah, I mean, ideally there is no war, right?
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I mean, that's a pretty, pretty.
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What would that more be
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though?
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Yeah.
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So, so the other principles.
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One of the other two foundational principles, uh, is, is unity, which you
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could kind of dismiss because unity is the idea that if, if, uh, you know, you
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are sitting there with two, you're both thirsty, there's only one bottle of water.
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How do we prevent conflict?
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Well, we make sure there's only one person sitting there.
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So, so like physically, how do you do that?
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How do you create one out of multiple people?
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And I do think there is something to be said for Embracing the idea that
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you are part of something bigger, like that's why we don't murder other people,
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because we feel like we're part of humanity, right, it kind of, it kind of
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elevates us, or like, you know, people have certain ethical standards because
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they feel like, it's not just for me selfishly, it's just because it is.
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It is.
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I want to be part of something bigger that, that is, that, that means something.
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And so that is like another, that, that sense of, of unity to be, to voluntarily,
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which is important, to voluntarily give up a little bit of your Individual
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preferences to elevate the greater good, I think is, uh, it's, it sounds very corny,
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but I think it's, it's pretty, pretty foundational because in a way, like some
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of the goodwill is, some of that goodwill is sometimes what people give up to invest
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in understanding Bitcoin, because they feel like, oh, maybe this is something
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that can make things better for everyone.
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Um, or, or even if it's against my career, I'm still going to have
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the intellectual honesty, just, you know, so that's just one, one other.
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Example, and then there's a few more, but there they're more higher up.
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And it's more to do with like, uh, having a healthy debating culture,
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for example, like free speech.
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And, and, uh, I think, I don't think Bitcoin guarantees that.
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I think Bitcoin can facilitate some of it, but we still need to do the work to Well,
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can Bitcoin culture though that then like Yeah.
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Is, is Oh yeah.
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Yeah.
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But it's, but it, but that's something that is alive and that we also need Yeah.
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It's like a garden.
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You need to maintain it.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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You
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know, but that's the thing.
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For me, it's hard to make the distinction between the protocol, the money, the
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culture, like it's all part of the same organism in a way, and it's, I see it
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as, as like being just different aspects of the same phenomenon, which is just
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Oh, we found a way to communicate value with one another without third parties.
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And that's so profound, like that means, that means peace.
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Like the way I put it in one of the books was like, when you cannot put a, when you
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cannot know how much another person owns.
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Which is true for everyone on earth right now, since they might
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hold a private key in their heads, and you cannot take it by force.
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The best way to enrich yourself is by interacting peacefully
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and trading with that person.
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And violence, the, the...
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The shelling point for violence, if you will, or like the incentive to, to aggress
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against another goes down drastically.
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But what, what I struggle with is like, how drastically, like, uh, game theory
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sort of says that you get half of the Bitcoin if you like torture the guy.
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But, uh, but, but still, I think it's, I think it's more than that
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because the, the incentives to just be good to one another are.
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They get boosted as well.
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Like that, that vector is very, very powerful.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I, I hear you.
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I think it's very significant.
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Uh, I, where I would hesitate is just, you know, maybe it depends on how long
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a timeframe we're talking about here.
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For example, when, when the printing press was invented and, and, and, you
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know, gradually books became cheaper, like the price of a book went roughly
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from, A year's labor, which is in the Middle Ages, to the price of a chicken.
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Like that's, that's how much drastically information became
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cheaper in that one century.
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Um, you know, back then, imagine realizing like, oh my God, information has been
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locked up for centuries and centuries.
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All of a sudden, it's liberated.
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Everyone is going to have access to these incredible ideas.
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They can make up their own opinion, you know.
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Uh, this is such a force for good.
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I would agree with that, but at the same time, over many generations, some of
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the appreciation for how valuable it is to have like a plethora of ideas, how
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important it is to have freedom of speech, because I think a lot of the enlightenment
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thinkers were really trying to Come up with theoretical foundations for why
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freedom of speech is important, because they, it was a fact, it was happening,
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people were interacting more freely than before, and so they needed new theories
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to try and justify that, and so, you know, I think still, the theory, and I think
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they You know, you could kind of debate on how successful the Enlightenment was in
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really elevating humanity and not throwing the baby away with the, because there
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were some good things in the Middle Ages, so, so that's, I think, you know, that's
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kind of our job, is to start working on trying to sort of live up to that.
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Really, uh, treasure what's great about Bitcoin, help people understand what's
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great about Bitcoin so that the ethos of Bitcoin can really spread and people don't
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get confused in a couple generations.
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There's, there's a section in a Rothbard book called The Ethics of Liberty
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about freedom of speech, which changed my mind on it because like he, he,
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points out that everyone forgets to ask, like the, there's a word missing.
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Are you, are you pro freedom of speech?
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Well, the question should be freedom of, the counter question
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should be freedom of speech where?
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And you realize that it's only in publicly owned spaces that freedom
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of speech is important, because he argues that freedom of speech is only
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Necessary because property rights have been violated at some point, because
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if I own my house, I get to dictate the rules in my house from natural law and
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ethics, Austrian ethics, if you will.
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Uh, so, so, so he argues that freedom of speech is sort of a facade in the
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sense that It needs to be preceded by a violation of property rights.
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I find that framework very interesting.
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Wow, yeah, I like that a lot.
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And you can think about a place like Dubai or even Saudi Arabia as
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compared to, you know, a European free speech maximalist place.
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And you could argue that, yeah, sure, uh, freedom of speech is suppressed here in
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the, uh, in Dubai to a certain extent, but, but the property rights are stronger
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and which one is more important because like in, in Sweden, for instance, you
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don't have the same level of property rights, but you have freedom of speech,
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uh, which leads to people burning the Quran and, uh, there's a big, um, uh,
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police escort for the guy burning it and there's a big riot and the media
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is there and they're turning this into this big news event and like what what's
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more important like property rights or freedom of speech or is is that dichotomy
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real or what are your thoughts on that
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yeah yeah Yeah, well I think property rights are more foundational.
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I think property rights belong to, um, the, the layer of
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the restriction of access.
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And I think that is, that is just more foundational.
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Um, and then that enables, uh, the safety to engage in open debates, to
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have all these differences in opinions.
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Because if I know that you're going to respect my body, we're, we're, Get
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into argumentation ethics, almost.
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If I know you're going to respect my bodily integrity, well,
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then I feel safe to say things.
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If you're sitting in front of me and you're playing with your
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knife, and I know you have a history of assault, I'm going to be
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more careful.
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What's that quote?
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It's easier to get what you want with a kind word and a
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gun than with just a kind word.
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Exactly.
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Yeah, no, totally.
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Yeah.
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So yeah.
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And so to me, that, that is also right.
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I mean, had, had Rothbard been around during the enlightenment and kind of
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like, you know, whip some sense into metaphorically into the philosophy of
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the day, maybe there would have been a stronger foundation for, for freedom
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of speech or, or just thinking about intellectual expression than we have now.
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00:20:08,821 --> 00:20:12,001
I think, I think this is a really interesting line here when we, when we
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tie it into the Bitcoin of it all, right?
385
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Uh, I, I think the, the line between all we'll talk about here,
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the, the argumentation ethics, Austrian economics and all this.
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00:20:24,466 --> 00:20:28,066
What, so this is the first thing that you brought, brought up basically, like
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you found this stuff before mm-hmm.
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Bitcoin.
390
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Oh, yeah.
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Right.
392
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Oh yeah.
393
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And so, and so how did that influence your journey into Bitcoin
394
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and, and how you, uh, found it and, and how it impacts your life?
395
00:20:38,586 --> 00:20:38,736
Yeah.
396
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So, Austrian economics.
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Like we started the Rothbard Institute in Belgium.
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We translated some books, organized seminars, things like that.
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and, uh, I, I started to look for ways to, to use this somehow.
400
00:20:54,130 --> 00:20:57,670
I mean, I, I, I made a little tiny bit of money translating,
401
00:20:57,670 --> 00:20:58,900
so that, that kind of helps.
402
00:20:58,900 --> 00:20:59,260
Actually.
403
00:20:59,260 --> 00:21:03,160
You might know this book, uh, money Bank Credit and Economic Cycles by De Soto.
404
00:21:03,890 --> 00:21:05,020
Yeah, yeah, I heard about it.
405
00:21:05,020 --> 00:21:05,460
I haven't read it.
406
00:21:05,460 --> 00:21:06,500
I translated that to Dutch.
407
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Oh my God.
408
00:21:08,350 --> 00:21:09,510
What's the title in Dutch?
409
00:21:09,760 --> 00:21:11,630
I spent nine months doing that.
410
00:21:11,680 --> 00:21:11,990
Sorry?
411
00:21:12,040 --> 00:21:12,890
What's the title in Dutch?
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Geld, Krediet en Krisis.
413
00:21:14,890 --> 00:21:19,310
Yeah, and it's, it appeared in a very low volume, but it's still out there.
414
00:21:19,350 --> 00:21:22,000
Um, the footnotes are just enormous.
415
00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:22,820
It was really hard.
416
00:21:22,850 --> 00:21:27,330
And actually, Koen Swenkels, another Bitcoiner, helped me translate it.
417
00:21:27,400 --> 00:21:30,390
Um, but so yeah, that was, that was work that I did.
418
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Um.
419
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And then, uh, with the Rothbard Institute, uh, yeah, we just wanted to connect with
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other communities in Europe, um, and so I remember, for example, going to the
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Libertarian Alliance Conference in London 2009, Sean Gabb organized that, and,
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uh, they had, um, um, David Friedman, he spoke about, uh, anonymous e cash and
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assassination markets, which is very, I mean, weirdly I just listened to it
424
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as a theoretical thing and then only thought about it much later, but I do
425
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think that, like, had a little bit of a seed for me, and then also, I, I needed
426
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to start some kind of a career because I was involved with little private schools
427
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and I was like, man, If, if I ever want to send my kids to a school like this,
428
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I need to find a way to make money.
429
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Like I, you know, I need to be able to pay for tuition and things like that.
430
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Yeah.
431
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So I was like, all right, how do I make a career?
432
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And I started writing about the markets, 'cause the, the things started rumbling by
433
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2006 seven in, in the, in the US markets.
434
00:22:30,645 --> 00:22:30,646
Mm-hmm.
435
00:22:30,652 --> 00:22:34,575
. And so I started writing about the crisis, the economic crisis.
436
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And uh, eventually, uh, in 2010, a publisher found me and
437
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he is like, Hey, you know, you wanna make your job out of this?
438
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I was doing it for free and he basically offered me an opportunity
439
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to become an author of a A financial and investment newsletter.
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So that's what I started doing.
441
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That became my career.
442
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And so then, because I was, you know, I had some history background of banking
443
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and finance and this Austrian stuff.
444
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And so I was really thinking about how to find investments
445
00:23:05,900 --> 00:23:07,720
that will keep you safe during...
446
00:23:08,105 --> 00:23:12,035
A banking crisis or doing a very high inflation because I was worried about the
447
00:23:12,035 --> 00:23:13,745
euro or, you know, scenarios like that.
448
00:23:14,145 --> 00:23:18,415
So I traveled to Latin America to learn more about how people, people
449
00:23:18,565 --> 00:23:20,485
survive inflation in general.
450
00:23:20,505 --> 00:23:24,645
And, um, and so then, you know, in Argentina, I learned about Bitcoin.
451
00:23:25,005 --> 00:23:30,295
Friends of mine were mining Bitcoin in their basement, literally in 2011 and, um.
452
00:23:30,565 --> 00:23:31,375
Uh, I'm trying to think.
453
00:23:31,375 --> 00:23:34,485
There was some other touch points with Bitcoin early on.
454
00:23:34,905 --> 00:23:39,425
Uh, well, I guess, yeah, I was just looking for that gold.
455
00:23:39,725 --> 00:23:43,975
I was into the gold world and investing, uh, investigating
456
00:23:43,985 --> 00:23:46,285
mining companies and so...
457
00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:47,450
It made sense.
458
00:23:47,460 --> 00:23:52,030
I had been, you know, downloading, I don't know, like, self help books
459
00:23:52,070 --> 00:23:55,600
with BitTorrent and movies and stuff like that, and so the idea
460
00:23:55,600 --> 00:23:59,750
of, like, a BitTorrent for money, it kind of made sense, you know, so.
461
00:23:59,960 --> 00:24:01,140
And when was this?
462
00:24:02,110 --> 00:24:04,050
I first learned about Bitcoin in, like, uh...
463
00:24:04,295 --> 00:24:06,295
I don't know, I think April 2011 or something.
464
00:24:06,295 --> 00:24:07,075
Yeah, pretty early.
465
00:24:07,095 --> 00:24:08,635
Yeah, very early actually.
466
00:24:08,635 --> 00:24:11,995
And, and, uh, and I had the time to just research it.
467
00:24:11,995 --> 00:24:17,355
And then by early 2012, I, I went, uh, I, I wrote about it for
468
00:24:17,355 --> 00:24:21,875
my subscribers, uh, and actually recommended it also as an investment.
469
00:24:21,875 --> 00:24:26,645
And then I went to a Bitcoin conference in London in 2012 as well.
470
00:24:26,645 --> 00:24:29,985
And then I started making some connections in the Bitcoin world.
471
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:34,250
So it clicked easily for you?
472
00:24:34,260 --> 00:24:35,290
Like, it clicked fast?
473
00:24:35,820 --> 00:24:36,590
I was just lucky.
474
00:24:36,620 --> 00:24:39,970
I was so lucky that I had, you know, some of the Austrian background, like, you
475
00:24:39,970 --> 00:24:45,430
know, and that also I ran into, I reached out to Pieter Goyle, core developer who
476
00:24:45,430 --> 00:24:48,930
was living in Leuven at the time, like, he's a Belgian, and I had, like, a long
477
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:54,040
Skype call with him, which I transcribed into an interview for my readers.
478
00:24:54,580 --> 00:24:58,860
And then, of course, my friends in Argentina, like, they really...
479
00:24:59,470 --> 00:25:03,190
were really into Bitcoin, they really, and they also knew their Austrian
480
00:25:03,190 --> 00:25:07,230
economics, so it just, it just really helped to solidify things, yeah.
481
00:25:07,300 --> 00:25:07,740
So,
482
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:13,110
uh, Argentina, like, there's a Bitcoin scene there now, I don't know how
483
00:25:13,110 --> 00:25:17,330
big it is, but, but it's still kind of small as far as I understand.
484
00:25:17,910 --> 00:25:20,700
And why do you think that is when it's been around for so long?
485
00:25:20,700 --> 00:25:24,500
Like, why doesn't it take off in a place like that where it's, because
486
00:25:25,450 --> 00:25:29,500
people always tell me that it's easy to, um, uh, orange pill people.
487
00:25:29,625 --> 00:25:31,215
who have lived through hyperbitcoinization.
488
00:25:31,235 --> 00:25:32,515
And I've seen it firsthand.
489
00:25:32,605 --> 00:25:37,415
I mean, uh, so, um, so why do you think that is?
490
00:25:37,415 --> 00:25:38,865
Why, why is the community not
491
00:25:38,915 --> 00:25:39,625
larger?
492
00:25:39,805 --> 00:25:42,555
I think there's two, two things I'm thinking of.
493
00:25:43,375 --> 00:25:46,085
One is just Bitcoin is just incredibly volatile.
494
00:25:46,085 --> 00:25:49,755
And so for a lot of Argentinians, you just, you save in dollars, you save.
495
00:25:49,755 --> 00:25:53,685
And I remember back in the day, the number was like 50 billion in paper
496
00:25:53,685 --> 00:25:55,095
money circulating in Argentina.
497
00:25:55,095 --> 00:25:57,125
I think it's now triple that or more.
498
00:25:57,565 --> 00:25:59,745
And so, you know, if you want to buy a house, you just, you know,
499
00:25:59,765 --> 00:26:01,125
just a suitcase with dollar bills.
500
00:26:01,125 --> 00:26:05,395
Like, so, so in a way, they are on a dollar standard in, in, in many
501
00:26:05,415 --> 00:26:07,535
practical, you know, sense of the word.
502
00:26:07,575 --> 00:26:09,315
And so Bitcoin cycles are so long.
503
00:26:10,165 --> 00:26:13,205
It is, you know, if you don't have a lot of savings, really risky to be
504
00:26:13,205 --> 00:26:17,715
very exposed to it, uh, for, for, you know, more than like a couple months.
505
00:26:18,255 --> 00:26:19,275
So I think that's one reason.
506
00:26:19,275 --> 00:26:23,145
I think the other reason may be that there could actually be more adoption,
507
00:26:23,655 --> 00:26:25,735
but there's not a lot of showing.
508
00:26:26,340 --> 00:26:29,650
You know, like, for example, in Belgium, I talked to some people, and I'm surprised,
509
00:26:29,650 --> 00:26:33,920
it's like, man, there's actually quite a lot of adoption, but people keep quiet,
510
00:26:33,970 --> 00:26:40,350
because they don't want to be seen as being rich, or, you know, and so, the
511
00:26:40,360 --> 00:26:43,160
thing is, especially in countries with high inflation, you just don't want to
512
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:49,650
become a target, so, I think it could 500 billion worth of value around the world
513
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:53,185
somewhere, and, um, Yeah, I don't know.
514
00:26:53,235 --> 00:26:56,835
So I don't know if it's necessarily lower than in other countries.
515
00:26:56,855 --> 00:27:01,775
I do think the level of education and level of like, um, tech, you know, if a
516
00:27:01,775 --> 00:27:05,235
country is very tech savvy, you do tend to see more Bitcoin adoption, I think.
517
00:27:05,285 --> 00:27:05,575
Yeah.
518
00:27:06,159 --> 00:27:08,049
So how are you enjoying this episode so far?
519
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Alright back to it.
563
00:29:11,649 --> 00:29:13,349
Don't forget to like, subscribe, and brush your teeth.
564
00:29:13,776 --> 00:29:18,886
We, um, recently Found out a number, uh, talking to Christiana,
565
00:29:18,886 --> 00:29:21,256
the, the founder of the B T C X.
566
00:29:21,256 --> 00:29:23,176
The, the oldest Swedish Exchange.
567
00:29:23,386 --> 00:29:23,566
Yeah.
568
00:29:23,656 --> 00:29:27,166
And he is, had around 300,000 customers over the years.
569
00:29:27,256 --> 00:29:28,306
Is this all Swedish?
570
00:29:28,396 --> 00:29:30,196
Uh, almost all Swedish.
571
00:29:30,201 --> 00:29:30,466
Yeah.
572
00:29:30,466 --> 00:29:30,676
Wow.
573
00:29:30,676 --> 00:29:34,546
So, so, and if you add the other big exchange there and the fact that
574
00:29:34,546 --> 00:29:38,386
people buy from others and accept Bitcoin and buy from, you know,
575
00:29:38,386 --> 00:29:43,986
Kraken or whatever, Coinbase, uh, the, we, we sort of estimated them.
576
00:29:44,166 --> 00:29:49,121
There might be a, um, Half a million people owning Bitcoin in the country,
577
00:29:49,241 --> 00:29:50,881
which is a 10 million population.
578
00:29:50,911 --> 00:29:55,181
Yeah, so it's it's 5 percent of the population Yeah, and then you
579
00:29:55,181 --> 00:30:00,641
realize that All of these people can pay other people in Bitcoin, and
580
00:30:00,651 --> 00:30:07,431
100 percent of the population can receive it within a minute by just
581
00:30:07,431 --> 00:30:08,961
installing something on their phone.
582
00:30:09,321 --> 00:30:12,051
Yeah, and all of a sudden, Bitcoin standard doesn't sound so crazy anymore.
583
00:30:12,071 --> 00:30:12,401
No,
584
00:30:12,451 --> 00:30:16,191
so, so, so, and the way, uh, yeah, my experience, like, traveling to
585
00:30:16,191 --> 00:30:18,821
all these conferences around the world and seeing the communities
586
00:30:18,821 --> 00:30:20,651
and meetups and stuff, it's that...
587
00:30:21,141 --> 00:30:24,841
It's sort of small everywhere, but it's literally everywhere.
588
00:30:25,281 --> 00:30:29,471
And every one horse town in every country, there's a Bitcoiner somewhere.
589
00:30:29,841 --> 00:30:33,511
And like, so I feel this like undercurrent, it's,
590
00:30:33,711 --> 00:30:35,571
it's just waiting to explode.
591
00:30:36,051 --> 00:30:36,561
Uh.
592
00:30:36,866 --> 00:30:39,326
Then again, it has felt that for quite some time.
593
00:30:39,326 --> 00:30:42,196
So like what, what's your view on that?
594
00:30:42,256 --> 00:30:43,426
Like, is is that a
595
00:30:43,486 --> 00:30:44,836
accurate representation?
596
00:30:44,866 --> 00:30:45,466
I think so, yeah.
597
00:30:45,466 --> 00:30:49,216
Do, do you think there is Bitcoiners in like North Korea or the Vatican or both?
598
00:30:50,756 --> 00:30:51,776
Oh, that's, that's
599
00:30:51,776 --> 00:30:52,406
hard to tell.
600
00:30:52,406 --> 00:30:54,446
I mean, the, uh, yeah.
601
00:30:54,566 --> 00:30:57,536
In North Korea, I, yeah, definitely.
602
00:30:57,566 --> 00:30:58,166
I would think so.
603
00:30:58,166 --> 00:30:58,556
Yeah.
604
00:30:58,616 --> 00:31:02,186
Uh, the Vatican is, uh, significantly smaller.
605
00:31:02,186 --> 00:31:02,336
Yeah.
606
00:31:02,336 --> 00:31:02,996
I, many, there's not a
607
00:31:03,001 --> 00:31:03,596
lot of people actually
608
00:31:03,596 --> 00:31:03,956
living there.
609
00:31:03,956 --> 00:31:04,046
Right.
610
00:31:04,046 --> 00:31:06,006
They're, they're quite conservative there, right here really are.
611
00:31:07,316 --> 00:31:08,076
That's the first thing I hear about it.
612
00:31:08,076 --> 00:31:08,856
So, I don't know.
613
00:31:08,926 --> 00:31:10,306
Uh, very
614
00:31:10,306 --> 00:31:13,396
tied up in the fiat system as well, I believe, so, yeah,
615
00:31:13,456 --> 00:31:14,366
their, their own version
616
00:31:14,366 --> 00:31:14,626
of it.
617
00:31:14,636 --> 00:31:18,056
I mean, I mean, in terms of portfolio, they have a lot of art, they have some
618
00:31:18,056 --> 00:31:20,036
gold, like they have real estate, like.
619
00:31:20,196 --> 00:31:25,226
I mean, don't trust verify, it doesn't sound like a, like a mantra that's,
620
00:31:25,506 --> 00:31:27,116
that's compatible with the Vatican.
621
00:31:27,116 --> 00:31:27,536
I don't know, I
622
00:31:27,536 --> 00:31:32,006
don't know, like the Catholic tradition, you know, the, the, the scholastics
623
00:31:32,006 --> 00:31:34,726
like Aquinas, they believe like through, through reason, you could,
624
00:31:34,746 --> 00:31:36,486
you can reason your way, you cannot.
625
00:31:36,651 --> 00:31:40,461
Through reason, know everything about God, but you can at least prove
626
00:31:40,461 --> 00:31:44,391
that he exists and, and, you know, discover parts of his nature so well.
627
00:31:44,391 --> 00:31:46,971
There's a, there's a, you know, I'm not convinced , it doesn't mean
628
00:31:46,971 --> 00:31:50,171
that there's still, you know, but I mean, you know, there, there's at
629
00:31:50,171 --> 00:31:52,691
least, there's at least a, a pathway.
630
00:31:52,696 --> 00:31:53,171
Yeah, yeah.
631
00:31:53,171 --> 00:31:55,151
For, for reason, for sure.
632
00:31:55,241 --> 00:31:56,741
So, but I, I forgot your question.
633
00:31:56,741 --> 00:31:57,221
I'm sorry.
634
00:31:57,491 --> 00:31:59,771
Uh, I don't even know if there was a question in there.
635
00:31:59,856 --> 00:32:00,686
It was, it was,
636
00:32:00,696 --> 00:32:04,086
uh, the, the situation, I guess, on hyperbitcoinization generally, since
637
00:32:04,126 --> 00:32:08,306
we're, we're maybe at some kind of inflection point, maybe in terms of
638
00:32:08,306 --> 00:32:13,346
the number of people who now have, have had or used Bitcoin, it doesn't
639
00:32:13,396 --> 00:32:16,976
take long to, I mean, maybe we're in a bacon number situation, if that makes
640
00:32:16,976 --> 00:32:20,616
sense, like the, the number of people who are, who know a Bitcoiner is almost
641
00:32:20,636 --> 00:32:21,876
getting to all the people, right?
642
00:32:22,166 --> 00:32:23,996
So, so, so what do you think about that
643
00:32:24,116 --> 00:32:24,606
situation?
644
00:32:24,816 --> 00:32:25,116
Yeah.
645
00:32:25,116 --> 00:32:28,896
I mean, one number that I've long looked at, like for a very long time is,
646
00:32:28,996 --> 00:32:31,916
um, is just simple internet adoption.
647
00:32:31,946 --> 00:32:37,526
Like that trend, um, you know, you, you, you also remember in 1995 being
648
00:32:37,526 --> 00:32:43,021
such an important point in time where all of a sudden it went from how do
649
00:32:43,021 --> 00:32:47,581
you do this, what is the internet, to like, okay, here's a box, you
650
00:32:47,901 --> 00:32:51,241
press the button, and we are online.
651
00:32:51,251 --> 00:32:53,241
Like, that was the Windows 95 moment.
652
00:32:53,251 --> 00:32:55,171
Like, all of a sudden it came together.
653
00:32:55,596 --> 00:32:59,746
And, uh, and, and if you look at the percentages, adoption went from
654
00:32:59,746 --> 00:33:03,896
9 percent in 1994, I believe, or maybe it was 1995, and I think early
655
00:33:03,896 --> 00:33:08,176
1995, it was 9%, and then it jumped to 16 percent in the next year.
656
00:33:08,226 --> 00:33:12,486
So to me, that is what I want to see in Bitcoin, where like, we can
657
00:33:12,486 --> 00:33:16,136
really say like, Ooh, this is a moment where we're really going mainstream.
658
00:33:16,146 --> 00:33:18,096
And I think it's coming this cycle.
659
00:33:18,236 --> 00:33:19,226
I really do believe that.
660
00:33:19,376 --> 00:33:23,366
I, it doesn't mean we have complete saturation, but it does mean that the.
661
00:33:23,746 --> 00:33:25,026
The S curve starts to
662
00:33:25,136 --> 00:33:25,706
accelerate.
663
00:33:25,716 --> 00:33:26,366
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
664
00:33:26,716 --> 00:33:33,026
I, I, uh, uh, remember 95 and 96 vividly and what I was doing and like,
665
00:33:33,686 --> 00:33:35,576
seeing the potential of the internet.
666
00:33:35,616 --> 00:33:38,516
Like, uh, guys, have you seen this thing?
667
00:33:38,526 --> 00:33:42,896
Like, and so many people like not getting it or like not seeing that.
668
00:33:43,186 --> 00:33:43,426
Yeah.
669
00:33:43,466 --> 00:33:47,186
And for, for me, that was, that experience when, when I
670
00:33:47,186 --> 00:33:48,636
discovered Bitcoin, it was like.
671
00:33:49,671 --> 00:33:50,451
I see this now.
672
00:33:50,471 --> 00:33:51,891
This is 1995.
673
00:33:52,221 --> 00:33:53,121
I should be in this.
674
00:33:53,281 --> 00:33:54,201
I should be doing this.
675
00:33:54,241 --> 00:33:55,181
I should be acting on it.
676
00:33:55,191 --> 00:33:58,311
Because at the time in 95, I decided to like, not go into
677
00:33:58,351 --> 00:33:58,371
it.
678
00:33:58,431 --> 00:34:00,811
I also felt like I knew a secret, but I didn't know.
679
00:34:00,811 --> 00:34:02,221
I mean, I was maybe a little bit younger.
680
00:34:02,221 --> 00:34:05,821
I was, I think I was like 14 or 15 when 1995
681
00:34:05,831 --> 00:34:06,331
happened.
682
00:34:06,441 --> 00:34:07,301
Yeah, it would be.
683
00:34:07,681 --> 00:34:08,001
Yeah.
684
00:34:08,141 --> 00:34:09,781
I think you were a couple of years younger than me.
685
00:34:10,021 --> 00:34:13,641
Well, and also I only had my first own, my own computer when I was
686
00:34:13,641 --> 00:34:15,886
like, 20 years old or something.
687
00:34:15,936 --> 00:34:19,566
So in a way I always felt like my friends were far ahead of me
688
00:34:19,916 --> 00:34:21,086
because they had that access.
689
00:34:21,126 --> 00:34:24,286
Like Pietro Bello told me he started programming at age 10.
690
00:34:24,826 --> 00:34:25,916
Yeah, so
691
00:34:26,426 --> 00:34:28,486
did I, but I gave it up for a long time.
692
00:34:28,536 --> 00:34:31,806
So like, I had a Commodore 64, if that counts.
693
00:34:31,866 --> 00:34:34,166
Like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't really count that.
694
00:34:34,166 --> 00:34:35,776
But, but it certainly gave me a...
695
00:34:36,646 --> 00:34:41,146
A basic understanding of what a computer is and what it can and cannot do.
696
00:34:41,586 --> 00:34:44,776
And one thing it couldn't do was, you know, keep a secret or,
697
00:34:44,796 --> 00:34:47,446
or make something uncopyable.
698
00:34:47,716 --> 00:34:47,856
Yeah.
699
00:34:47,856 --> 00:34:50,456
So that's, that's the aha moment for me with Bitcoin.
700
00:34:50,476 --> 00:34:51,476
Like, holy shit.
701
00:34:51,596 --> 00:34:51,836
Yeah.
702
00:34:52,296 --> 00:34:53,196
Something that cannot
703
00:34:53,206 --> 00:34:53,806
be copied.
704
00:34:54,106 --> 00:34:55,946
That was, that was my big...
705
00:34:56,766 --> 00:34:57,856
Point of doubt.
706
00:34:57,956 --> 00:35:00,986
When I first learned about it, I was like, wait a minute, how do you
707
00:35:00,986 --> 00:35:02,536
actually create, like, I was suspicious.
708
00:35:02,836 --> 00:35:03,766
How do you actually do this?
709
00:35:04,696 --> 00:35:08,096
So that's where talking to the engineers was like, okay, like there
710
00:35:08,096 --> 00:35:09,816
is actually, they thought about this.
711
00:35:12,516 --> 00:35:18,186
So for me, the, the denial of the Seg two X hard fork was a, a, an important
712
00:35:18,246 --> 00:35:23,346
point because that's when I realized that holy shit, this really, really works.
713
00:35:23,346 --> 00:35:31,346
That like, that's the evidence I needed for, for this to be like full blown 100%.
714
00:35:31,466 --> 00:35:32,396
This is the thing.
715
00:35:32,401 --> 00:35:33,056
Yeah, yeah.
716
00:35:33,061 --> 00:35:34,766
To fight for this is the hill to die
717
00:35:34,766 --> 00:35:34,946
on.
718
00:35:35,366 --> 00:35:40,406
Like, and then that was why I think the year 2015 was so different from 2017.
719
00:35:40,411 --> 00:35:40,736
Yeah.
720
00:35:41,006 --> 00:35:41,486
Because.
721
00:35:41,896 --> 00:35:45,396
The year 2015, there was so much doubt about like, but what if we get an attack?
722
00:35:45,746 --> 00:35:46,486
Are we going to survive?
723
00:35:46,486 --> 00:35:49,234
And then 2017, we're like, man, like, we can do this.
724
00:35:49,234 --> 00:35:49,976
Yeah, we got this.
725
00:35:50,326 --> 00:35:50,636
Yeah,
726
00:35:50,696 --> 00:35:51,016
yeah.
727
00:35:51,686 --> 00:35:52,006
So.
728
00:35:53,186 --> 00:35:55,856
So, have you seen something similar?
729
00:35:56,426 --> 00:36:02,186
Similar in anything else to something similar to the Seg two X, hard fork denial
730
00:36:03,146 --> 00:36:06,656
, like that kind of proof of resilience
731
00:36:06,776 --> 00:36:08,786
in in literally anywhere else in the world?
732
00:36:08,816 --> 00:36:09,296
Yeah.
733
00:36:09,296 --> 00:36:13,501
Uh, Well, I haven't seen it in shitcoins and I don't think you have
734
00:36:13,501 --> 00:36:15,991
either, but, but in, in any, can you...
735
00:36:16,111 --> 00:36:16,951
That's a good question.
736
00:36:17,011 --> 00:36:18,311
Uh, that's a really good question.
737
00:36:19,422 --> 00:36:24,022
I was actually just listening to a podcast about a guy who was a big, big...
738
00:36:24,827 --> 00:36:30,227
LSD dealer in the 70s and he even sold like LSD to Steve Jobs and like, you
739
00:36:30,227 --> 00:36:35,897
know, and he was talking about how they would have 50 gallon jars full
740
00:36:35,917 --> 00:36:39,837
of LSD pills, like just enormous.
741
00:36:40,182 --> 00:36:44,712
Just oceans of this stuff was made and the shelf life was about five years and
742
00:36:44,722 --> 00:36:47,102
he remembered they were talking about it and like thinking like five years
743
00:36:47,102 --> 00:36:52,362
is forever and so their plan was they thought and he said later I believe I
744
00:36:52,732 --> 00:36:57,862
was wrong but they basically thought that using this chemical they could
745
00:36:57,962 --> 00:37:00,222
make everybody become peaceful, right?
746
00:37:00,382 --> 00:37:05,807
That was the hippie idea and that's why there's this story of um, you know, They
747
00:37:05,807 --> 00:37:08,397
were going to lace, um, Nixon's coffee.
748
00:37:08,397 --> 00:37:10,467
Like they were going to slip some LSD in there.
749
00:37:10,467 --> 00:37:12,637
But so he's saying like, that was our plan.
750
00:37:12,637 --> 00:37:15,657
Like we would just kind of, you know, LSD pill the world.
751
00:37:15,657 --> 00:37:17,927
We had so much supply, we could just do this.
752
00:37:18,537 --> 00:37:22,637
And, uh, and then he said, yeah, eventually I discovered that if someone
753
00:37:22,637 --> 00:37:25,117
who's in a certain kind of mindset.
754
00:37:25,302 --> 00:37:30,252
They just won't change, like they will have this experience of near
755
00:37:30,252 --> 00:37:33,462
death or ego death and then they will just kind of still say the same.
756
00:37:33,932 --> 00:37:38,622
Um, but so anyway, I'm just thinking out loud, you know, like is there maybe,
757
00:37:39,572 --> 00:37:44,302
maybe a parallel to where like, you know, that experience that we had was so...
758
00:37:46,297 --> 00:37:49,787
important that we, we think like, Oh, now we're good.
759
00:37:49,787 --> 00:37:50,067
Right.
760
00:37:50,067 --> 00:37:53,597
Whereas like in the seventies, like we created all this LSD, like we're winning.
761
00:37:53,677 --> 00:37:54,767
Like that's what they thought.
762
00:37:55,127 --> 00:37:59,147
And so I'm not saying that there's exact parallels here, but it's like,
763
00:37:59,177 --> 00:38:02,227
it's kind of the avenue where I would, I would want to think about,
764
00:38:02,227 --> 00:38:03,907
like, you know, are we that safe?
765
00:38:03,907 --> 00:38:09,167
And I, I just keep going back to trying to double check all the math, right.
766
00:38:09,167 --> 00:38:11,607
They're really trying to like, which I'm sure we're all doing right.
767
00:38:11,607 --> 00:38:12,947
If you're in Bitcoin, you're like.
768
00:38:13,822 --> 00:38:15,342
Am I having survivor bias?
769
00:38:15,342 --> 00:38:20,222
Like, do I feel like I'm invincible because I survived 10 years, or is this
770
00:38:20,222 --> 00:38:22,882
really as sustainable as I hope it is?
771
00:38:22,942 --> 00:38:23,762
Yeah, yeah.
772
00:38:24,222 --> 00:38:29,330
And that, like, that, LSD parallel, and especially the ego death.
773
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:30,180
Parallel.
774
00:38:30,630 --> 00:38:37,420
Like the way I I view that is, uh, like since, since all Bitcoin all
775
00:38:37,420 --> 00:38:39,400
owning Bitcoin is, is keeping a secret.
776
00:38:40,130 --> 00:38:44,510
So like the, the first thought I had was, holy shit, if you, if you memorize
777
00:38:44,510 --> 00:38:46,400
your seed phrase, you are your bitcoins.
778
00:38:46,790 --> 00:38:50,270
If, if that seed phrase is nowhere else, but then when you think deeper
779
00:38:50,270 --> 00:38:53,680
about that, like, uh, all seed, all.
780
00:38:55,160 --> 00:39:00,050
Everything that unlocking a Bitcoin is, is like someone keeping a secret.
781
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:03,650
So even if you have the seed phrase written down, if the attacker doesn't
782
00:39:03,650 --> 00:39:06,600
know what he's looking for, there's no way he knows, like it's just
783
00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:10,900
words or it's just numbers or it's just ones and zeros and whatever.
784
00:39:11,250 --> 00:39:17,480
So, so viewed through that lens, all Bitcoins exist within people's heads.
785
00:39:18,610 --> 00:39:23,510
And also the, all the nodes and all the miners that they're not really the
786
00:39:23,510 --> 00:39:25,750
machines, they're the people who decide.
787
00:39:25,930 --> 00:39:31,840
To take the deliberate action of firing them up and running them, um, because
788
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:34,000
they require a human being to do that.
789
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:39,730
They, yeah, they, so it's, it's backed by human action and not energy in that sense.
790
00:39:40,140 --> 00:39:40,230
Yeah.
791
00:39:40,235 --> 00:39:45,300
And, and, and, uh, a computer, a minor, and Luke is laughing because
792
00:39:45,305 --> 00:39:51,820
he's heard this a quadrillion times, but, uh, uh, a minor, uh, all it
793
00:39:51,820 --> 00:39:54,250
does is guess a number and, uh, do.
794
00:39:54,735 --> 00:39:55,585
Mathematics.
795
00:39:56,135 --> 00:40:01,085
So a computer is just a fancy abacus that helps our, it's an extension of our minds.
796
00:40:01,175 --> 00:40:01,795
So it is us.
797
00:40:02,345 --> 00:40:03,555
It's, it's nothing but us.
798
00:40:04,505 --> 00:40:06,475
So, so the entire network is us.
799
00:40:06,525 --> 00:40:10,385
And I, I, this is how I see that it connects people on this, this
800
00:40:10,595 --> 00:40:14,215
profound level, like, because we are the same entity now.
801
00:40:15,005 --> 00:40:16,755
So, so that might be the.
802
00:40:17,090 --> 00:40:20,880
Like, ego death, LSD sort of thing.
803
00:40:21,370 --> 00:40:22,809
Like, do you think there's something to it?
804
00:40:22,810 --> 00:40:22,900
Like,
805
00:40:22,930 --> 00:40:24,630
we're all part of something bigger, right?
806
00:40:24,630 --> 00:40:27,180
I mean, we are kind of, this is a new way to connect.
807
00:40:27,700 --> 00:40:29,010
It's a way that didn't exist.
808
00:40:29,010 --> 00:40:30,360
A more profound way to...
809
00:40:30,670 --> 00:40:31,800
I think that's, I like that.
810
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:33,320
I think that's very true.
811
00:40:33,790 --> 00:40:34,430
Um...
812
00:40:34,925 --> 00:40:36,025
I like that a lot, yeah.
813
00:40:36,445 --> 00:40:41,205
And also, when you take into consideration the lowered time preference, so we,
814
00:40:41,645 --> 00:40:46,305
you know, to a large extent, value quality over quantity and all this,
815
00:40:46,445 --> 00:40:50,705
and saving and stuff, and we're also all, we all want Bitcoin to succeed,
816
00:40:50,735 --> 00:40:51,975
so we're incentivized to help.
817
00:40:52,055 --> 00:40:53,055
other bitcoiners.
818
00:40:53,095 --> 00:40:53,325
Yeah.
819
00:40:53,475 --> 00:40:58,075
So we're just, and you, I experienced this every day in this space that
820
00:40:58,075 --> 00:40:59,255
people are just awesome to one another.
821
00:40:59,765 --> 00:41:04,305
Like there's, there's no, there's no resistance to, the
822
00:41:04,315 --> 00:41:06,185
resistance is futile in a sense.
823
00:41:06,565 --> 00:41:11,075
Yeah, there's this virtual side of, um, uh, what do you call it?
824
00:41:11,085 --> 00:41:14,215
No, virtual, um, virtuous cycle.
825
00:41:14,435 --> 00:41:14,675
Yeah.
826
00:41:14,715 --> 00:41:15,715
Yeah, exactly.
827
00:41:15,935 --> 00:41:16,135
Yeah.
828
00:41:16,235 --> 00:41:19,795
And, and at the same time, maybe that's where I'm coming from is that I think
829
00:41:19,795 --> 00:41:25,605
that in order to, maintain the, where we're, you know, we're, we're doing
830
00:41:25,665 --> 00:41:28,385
good, but in order to maintain things.
831
00:41:29,245 --> 00:41:33,635
We need that productive paranoia, I think, where you have some vigilance of
832
00:41:33,635 --> 00:41:38,465
like, Hey, you know, you know, things, things are not guaranteed to go great.
833
00:41:38,525 --> 00:41:41,815
Cause then you can get into dogmatism and you can get into
834
00:41:41,815 --> 00:41:43,585
routine and then you get sloppy.
835
00:41:43,905 --> 00:41:44,915
And then what if we start...
836
00:41:45,470 --> 00:41:49,380
Oh, maybe it's not that important to always remember your secrets or, you
837
00:41:49,380 --> 00:41:53,340
know, you know, so and then people start custodying with a centralized
838
00:41:53,380 --> 00:41:56,830
custodian and, you know, so, so the vigilance, I think, is important.
839
00:41:57,110 --> 00:41:57,460
Yeah,
840
00:41:57,490 --> 00:42:03,190
but the way I see it, it's the vigilance that enables the trust between people.
841
00:42:03,230 --> 00:42:06,490
So ironically enough, the don't trust verify attitude of the
842
00:42:06,490 --> 00:42:10,860
hardcore core of this thing is enabling people on the outer layers.
843
00:42:11,025 --> 00:42:12,615
Just to trust one another more.
844
00:42:12,775 --> 00:42:13,755
Yeah, absolutely.
845
00:42:13,815 --> 00:42:15,615
And that's so weird because it's like...
846
00:42:15,955 --> 00:42:16,195
It's
847
00:42:16,195 --> 00:42:17,015
counterintuitive.
848
00:42:17,015 --> 00:42:17,525
Yeah, it is.
849
00:42:18,025 --> 00:42:22,935
Yeah, and I think I touched on a very related topic when today in
850
00:42:22,935 --> 00:42:25,995
my presentation I talked about, um, this is one of the other kind of...
851
00:42:26,060 --> 00:42:30,340
Foundational principles of order is that continuum between,
852
00:42:30,380 --> 00:42:33,630
um, diversity and consensus.
853
00:42:33,660 --> 00:42:38,350
So diversity means you're just, not only do you disagree, but you're entrenched in
854
00:42:38,350 --> 00:42:42,910
your disagreement and you start boycotting the other or you start attacking them.
855
00:42:43,270 --> 00:42:47,880
And then consensus is actually a situation where it doesn't mean you have to agree.
856
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:53,950
On the topics, but, um, there is a healthy debating culture, like
857
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:56,180
the Greeks, the ancient Greeks.
858
00:42:56,210 --> 00:42:57,320
We agree to disagree.
859
00:42:57,350 --> 00:42:57,660
Yes.
860
00:42:57,690 --> 00:43:01,230
And so, because that becomes the peaceful situation.
861
00:43:01,260 --> 00:43:02,240
Stalemate is fine.
862
00:43:02,260 --> 00:43:04,700
And we, in Bitcoin, we have to explain this all the time.
863
00:43:04,700 --> 00:43:09,640
People are like, yes, but my Bitcoin improvement proposal, it's important and
864
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:11,340
it's urgent and we need to do it now.
865
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:14,970
And then we say, I don't know, maybe not.
866
00:43:15,070 --> 00:43:16,030
Let's just wait.
867
00:43:16,340 --> 00:43:17,760
And then they're like, but, but, but.
868
00:43:17,790 --> 00:43:18,280
And so.
869
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:22,960
Even though there's this heated debate, there's no violence, there's no coercion.
870
00:43:23,550 --> 00:43:27,570
So it's totally, it's a very important overlooked thing in game theory.
871
00:43:27,570 --> 00:43:31,530
People think like, either you agree or you disagree, but you
872
00:43:31,530 --> 00:43:33,100
can also agree to disagree.
873
00:43:33,450 --> 00:43:36,550
And so it's such an important engine for peace, I think.
874
00:43:36,570 --> 00:43:37,760
It's argumentation ethics.
875
00:43:37,980 --> 00:43:39,080
Agreeing to disagree.
876
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:40,840
That's the basis of that.
877
00:43:40,910 --> 00:43:41,490
Yeah, I didn't think
878
00:43:41,490 --> 00:43:43,230
of that either.
879
00:43:43,230 --> 00:43:43,730
Exactly.
880
00:43:44,330 --> 00:43:45,690
We just reinvented our invention,
881
00:43:45,900 --> 00:43:45,960
at least.
882
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:51,580
And by the way, I don't think you ever have actually said the phrase that
883
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:53,100
Bitcoin is backed by human action.
884
00:43:53,100 --> 00:43:54,220
I don't think you've actually
885
00:43:54,230 --> 00:43:54,290
said that.
886
00:43:54,290 --> 00:43:56,700
I think I've said that in a talk or something.
887
00:43:57,030 --> 00:43:57,270
Not
888
00:43:57,830 --> 00:43:58,680
on the pod, though.
889
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:00,640
I don't remember you saying that while I was listening.
890
00:44:01,140 --> 00:44:03,360
That's what I was actually smiling about.
891
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:05,500
I think that's a really good...
892
00:44:05,965 --> 00:44:07,135
Way of framing it, right?
893
00:44:07,135 --> 00:44:07,405
Yep.
894
00:44:07,405 --> 00:44:10,765
That, that you have to have the human actions that, that, that, that trigger
895
00:44:10,765 --> 00:44:12,175
all of the things that make Bitcoin.
896
00:44:12,175 --> 00:44:13,315
I think that's really important.
897
00:44:13,315 --> 00:44:13,435
And
898
00:44:13,555 --> 00:44:16,165
of course, like human action requires energy.
899
00:44:16,255 --> 00:44:18,715
Like we are energy consuming creatures.
900
00:44:18,715 --> 00:44:21,565
So, so in that sense it's backed by energy, but more.
901
00:44:22,015 --> 00:44:25,375
By the energy in our foods, right?
902
00:44:25,385 --> 00:44:28,125
Than the electricity in the miners, in that sense,
903
00:44:28,255 --> 00:44:28,495
you know?
904
00:44:28,515 --> 00:44:32,645
And it's very synergistic, like how, uh, I don't know, like, we live
905
00:44:32,645 --> 00:44:34,835
synergistically with fire, for example.
906
00:44:34,845 --> 00:44:37,285
Like, it's happened for, you know, millions of years.
907
00:44:37,455 --> 00:44:41,095
And, and, and, and there's so many things that we...
908
00:44:41,720 --> 00:44:44,810
Maybe take for granted, but they're actually not technically, physically
909
00:44:44,810 --> 00:44:48,450
in our bodies, that are in the outside world, but that are so intertwined with,
910
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:54,030
with our society and our lives, um, you know, sources of water, we're drinking
911
00:44:54,030 --> 00:44:58,430
water, like in a way we live in synergy with water, and so I think similarly,
912
00:44:58,430 --> 00:45:00,650
yeah, we, we live in synergy with Bitcoin.
913
00:45:01,374 --> 00:45:02,574
Wonderful phrase here.
914
00:45:02,574 --> 00:45:05,634
And, uh, now I kind of want to come, come to a different point here.
915
00:45:05,694 --> 00:45:09,014
Uh, the panel that you, that you had actually just now that, uh, yeah.
916
00:45:09,014 --> 00:45:10,194
That you wanted to write after.
917
00:45:10,494 --> 00:45:15,204
Uh, it, it had the provocatively bullish, uh, when, when 100 k basically.
918
00:45:15,504 --> 00:45:18,474
Uh, but I, I wanna know, do, do you see any threats to Bitcoin?
919
00:45:18,479 --> 00:45:20,456
Like what would be the biggest threat to Bitcoin that you,
920
00:45:20,514 --> 00:45:21,624
that you can think of right now?
921
00:45:21,944 --> 00:45:28,244
Yeah, I really tried to go over that in my last report, because I think
922
00:45:28,244 --> 00:45:32,324
it is always at the end of a bear market, people have a long list of
923
00:45:32,324 --> 00:45:34,374
like, here are all the bad things that are going to happen to Bitcoin.
924
00:45:34,654 --> 00:45:38,774
And so I wanted to take it seriously and go over, you know, go over some of the
925
00:45:38,774 --> 00:45:43,314
worst scenarios and, and And, and, and because that's ultimately what happens
926
00:45:43,314 --> 00:45:49,984
is that when you go into a bull market, um, slowly the worries are debunked.
927
00:45:50,004 --> 00:45:52,924
Like you start to realize like, oh, well, we don't actually don't need to
928
00:45:52,924 --> 00:45:54,154
worry about that, but what about this?
929
00:45:54,184 --> 00:45:57,094
And then you get the wall of worry where you get the, the sell offs
930
00:45:57,104 --> 00:45:59,854
and, and eventually in the long run, it's just all a big uptrend.
931
00:45:59,864 --> 00:46:02,824
But in the moment you're like, oh no, we're going back to
932
00:46:02,824 --> 00:46:04,264
where we started or, or lower.
933
00:46:04,284 --> 00:46:08,934
Um, so, so in terms of biggest threats to Bitcoin, I think.
934
00:46:09,954 --> 00:46:14,464
I think Binance going bust is a pretty big one, um, as, as
935
00:46:14,464 --> 00:46:15,644
a, as a potential scenario.
936
00:46:15,644 --> 00:46:15,844
Wait, what?
937
00:46:15,954 --> 00:46:16,674
Long term?
938
00:46:17,354 --> 00:46:17,684
No, no, no.
939
00:46:17,684 --> 00:46:18,204
Oh, sorry.
940
00:46:18,214 --> 00:46:18,884
You mean long term?
941
00:46:18,884 --> 00:46:20,134
I thought I meant for this cycle.
942
00:46:20,134 --> 00:46:21,274
Oh, I definitely meant long term.
943
00:46:21,284 --> 00:46:22,264
Oh, I see, I see.
944
00:46:23,534 --> 00:46:27,384
Because I think long term, it's a necessity.
945
00:46:27,464 --> 00:46:28,284
Oh, yeah,
946
00:46:28,284 --> 00:46:28,584
yeah, yeah.
947
00:46:28,634 --> 00:46:29,034
Creative
948
00:46:29,034 --> 00:46:29,694
destruction, right?
949
00:46:29,694 --> 00:46:30,134
Yeah, of course.
950
00:46:30,484 --> 00:46:32,874
It's the great shitcoin purge.
951
00:46:33,174 --> 00:46:33,434
Yeah.
952
00:46:33,594 --> 00:46:34,464
No, absolutely.
953
00:46:34,474 --> 00:46:35,304
That's continuously happening.
954
00:46:35,709 --> 00:46:35,939
Yeah,
955
00:46:35,939 --> 00:46:36,419
no, no, no.
956
00:46:36,649 --> 00:46:38,429
No, we're totally on the same page.
957
00:46:38,939 --> 00:46:43,889
Long term, the biggest threats, I mean, in line with what you're saying, right,
958
00:46:43,889 --> 00:46:48,159
if Bitcoin is backed by human action, then complacency is the biggest risk, where we
959
00:46:48,349 --> 00:46:55,049
forget about the values, forget about what standards we have to hold up, for example,
960
00:46:55,399 --> 00:46:57,629
if all of us forgot how to apply rules.
961
00:46:58,549 --> 00:46:59,699
How electricity works.
962
00:46:59,729 --> 00:47:01,619
Literally, all humanity had amnesia.
963
00:47:01,619 --> 00:47:03,219
We don't, we forget how electricity
964
00:47:03,219 --> 00:47:03,459
works.
965
00:47:03,459 --> 00:47:04,179
That sort of happened
966
00:47:04,179 --> 00:47:04,799
here in Europe.
967
00:47:05,519 --> 00:47:06,959
Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, right?
968
00:47:07,029 --> 00:47:09,939
I mean, so then, then the infrastructure would start to crumble.
969
00:47:09,949 --> 00:47:11,489
Like the machines don't work on their own.
970
00:47:11,499 --> 00:47:13,089
We need to understand this.
971
00:47:13,399 --> 00:47:13,979
Yeah, yeah.
972
00:47:14,019 --> 00:47:17,019
So to me, that's, that's always been the biggest, uh, the biggest one.
973
00:47:17,379 --> 00:47:17,799
All right.
974
00:47:17,839 --> 00:47:20,959
I'm going to go, uh, down one of my little rabbit holes for a second.
975
00:47:20,959 --> 00:47:24,999
And Knut's smiling because I, I do this every once in the Vikings.
976
00:47:25,409 --> 00:47:26,789
Well, no, not this time.
977
00:47:26,789 --> 00:47:27,459
The Egyptians.
978
00:47:27,524 --> 00:47:34,054
So, so, so I, I am a big fan of the idea that, that, uh, there, there was a
979
00:47:34,064 --> 00:47:40,264
civilization, uh, long before civilization theoretically was like, um, 11, 600 years
980
00:47:40,264 --> 00:47:44,974
ago, younger Dryas, uh, impact hypothesis that a comet came down and basically
981
00:47:44,974 --> 00:47:48,714
ended something in civilization that there's Plenty of evidence for that.
982
00:47:48,774 --> 00:47:52,254
And the, the result and, and I'll, my, the, the source
983
00:47:52,254 --> 00:47:53,874
I'll give here briefly Sure.
984
00:47:53,874 --> 00:47:54,954
Is, is Graham Hancock.
985
00:47:54,984 --> 00:47:55,614
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
986
00:47:55,614 --> 00:47:59,274
The, the fingerprints of the gods, uh, magicians of the Gods American
987
00:47:59,274 --> 00:48:02,484
before Great books to, to check out on this topic, but the, the point,
988
00:48:02,754 --> 00:48:04,194
the thrust of also now on Netflix.
989
00:48:04,194 --> 00:48:05,094
Right, exactly.
990
00:48:05,574 --> 00:48:06,624
Uh, ancient apocalypse.
991
00:48:06,624 --> 00:48:06,774
Yeah.
992
00:48:06,774 --> 00:48:06,984
Yeah.
993
00:48:06,984 --> 00:48:07,434
Very good.
994
00:48:07,434 --> 00:48:08,874
So, so, so the, the.
995
00:48:08,939 --> 00:48:13,459
The point though is that, his point is that we are a society with amnesia, that
996
00:48:13,859 --> 00:48:22,049
this actually happened to us, that the, we don't know necessarily what this society
997
00:48:22,049 --> 00:48:24,074
was capable of, but we have some of it.
998
00:48:24,274 --> 00:48:27,594
evidence of it and these massive monuments such as the pyramids and
999
00:48:27,814 --> 00:48:31,834
and other, uh, other things that we're starting to find that are vastly old.
1000
00:48:32,754 --> 00:48:36,684
These are the, the bits of evidence and it's not to say aliens did stuff
1001
00:48:36,684 --> 00:48:41,199
like that, it's to say humanity was capable of, of Extraordinary things.
1002
00:48:41,299 --> 00:48:44,529
And so this is just to bring it back to the complacency point.
1003
00:48:44,529 --> 00:48:44,879
Yeah.
1004
00:48:45,099 --> 00:48:45,139
So,
1005
00:48:45,149 --> 00:48:51,169
yeah, it's so interesting, you know, and this is related to your general point I
1006
00:48:51,179 --> 00:48:54,909
just read and I don't know how credible it is, but apparently there's new, a new
1007
00:48:54,909 --> 00:49:00,589
research paper coming out arguing based on just DNA evidence of human beings that,
1008
00:49:00,589 --> 00:49:05,349
and this is a longer time frame, but that about 800, 000 years ago, the, the, the
1009
00:49:05,349 --> 00:49:08,399
human population pool shrank to about.
1010
00:49:08,444 --> 00:49:12,504
1, 200 individuals and it stayed there for like a hundred thousand years.
1011
00:49:12,534 --> 00:49:13,874
Insane, right?
1012
00:49:13,874 --> 00:49:15,264
And so we're all inbred.
1013
00:49:15,884 --> 00:49:17,004
Well, yeah, I guess.
1014
00:49:17,404 --> 00:49:17,644
Yeah.
1015
00:49:17,644 --> 00:49:19,224
Who knows how we got out of there?
1016
00:49:19,514 --> 00:49:23,114
Um, but also how much amnesia must they have had?
1017
00:49:23,114 --> 00:49:26,974
Like, imagine if humanity shrank to a thousand, this is only so
1018
00:49:26,984 --> 00:49:28,184
much information you can hold.
1019
00:49:28,184 --> 00:49:33,104
And so, yeah, I, I, I like the, you know, Younger Drives impact type, a little, I
1020
00:49:33,104 --> 00:49:35,204
mean, amateur as I am about this stuff.
1021
00:49:35,534 --> 00:49:41,384
Um, uh, to me, the most compelling is the, I like watching the Ancient Architects
1022
00:49:41,384 --> 00:49:43,234
channel on YouTube, the British guy.
1023
00:49:43,274 --> 00:49:44,144
I think he's British.
1024
00:49:44,584 --> 00:49:48,794
Um, and uh, just, you know, I forget there's also this Australian
1025
00:49:48,794 --> 00:49:51,014
researcher who often travels to Egypt.
1026
00:49:51,014 --> 00:49:51,634
Uncharted X.
1027
00:49:52,134 --> 00:49:54,014
I forget his name actually, but yeah.
1028
00:49:54,014 --> 00:49:54,194
Yeah,
1029
00:49:54,194 --> 00:49:54,674
that guy.
1030
00:49:54,934 --> 00:49:57,554
You know, I think it's really compelling when he talks about
1031
00:49:58,434 --> 00:50:00,454
how this stuff was actually made.
1032
00:50:00,454 --> 00:50:04,474
Like, you know, lifting these enormous stones inside the pyramids.
1033
00:50:04,904 --> 00:50:08,174
Uh, and then like how this, uh, what is it, alabaster?
1034
00:50:08,194 --> 00:50:09,014
How, how all that is.
1035
00:50:09,144 --> 00:50:11,244
Carved with this incredible precision.
1036
00:50:11,624 --> 00:50:15,994
Um, and then these like, uh, these simple bowls that they find, right?
1037
00:50:15,994 --> 00:50:20,434
And you try and you analyze and it's incredibly symmetrical and it has,
1038
00:50:20,844 --> 00:50:23,964
not only is it like symmetrical, but then it has perfect handles on them.
1039
00:50:24,344 --> 00:50:27,889
And this is in like a very brittle Extremely hard material.
1040
00:50:27,889 --> 00:50:29,899
Like basically stuff they cannot replicate today.
1041
00:50:29,909 --> 00:50:32,209
Like to me, that's already evidence of amnesia, right?
1042
00:50:32,209 --> 00:50:36,129
If we find something we can't replicate, well, we must've forgotten, you know?
1043
00:50:36,129 --> 00:50:40,049
And then, I mean, there was also the more like mainstream accepted stories
1044
00:50:40,049 --> 00:50:43,509
of like, Oh, the Greeks, they had the, uh, I think it was the, maybe the
1045
00:50:43,509 --> 00:50:46,559
Romans, they invented like the steam engine and then they just shelved it.
1046
00:50:46,559 --> 00:50:47,829
And, you know, so I think it happens.
1047
00:50:48,119 --> 00:50:51,229
Like, I think the big thing I actually have been wondering,
1048
00:50:51,229 --> 00:50:53,529
like that Graham Hancock theory.
1049
00:50:54,329 --> 00:50:56,999
Even regardless of if it's true or not, but it's compelling.
1050
00:50:57,309 --> 00:51:00,499
It's now hitting the mainstream like Netflix and places like that.
1051
00:51:00,979 --> 00:51:05,209
I think it's kind of breaking the idea that, that of progressivism.
1052
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:06,329
Like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1053
00:51:06,519 --> 00:51:07,789
Things always get better.
1054
00:51:07,799 --> 00:51:10,719
Therefore, we just listen to the politicians because
1055
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:12,109
they know what we need to do.
1056
00:51:12,109 --> 00:51:15,639
We're just going to follow because who's talking about a cliff?
1057
00:51:15,639 --> 00:51:16,909
We can never fall off a cliff.
1058
00:51:17,479 --> 00:51:18,909
And all of a sudden we have COVID.
1059
00:51:18,919 --> 00:51:20,269
All of a sudden we have inflation.
1060
00:51:20,609 --> 00:51:22,129
And here's this guy saying that.
1061
00:51:22,379 --> 00:51:24,889
You know, we had an amazing culture and it went to shit.
1062
00:51:24,899 --> 00:51:27,639
Like, you know, maybe we need to rethink some things.
1063
00:51:27,809 --> 00:51:27,909
I
1064
00:51:27,909 --> 00:51:32,359
think the amnesia is you don't need to rewind the clock 8, 000 years.
1065
00:51:32,429 --> 00:51:36,859
I mean, amnesia in society happens all the time.
1066
00:51:36,859 --> 00:51:38,989
Like, uh, like Austrian theory.
1067
00:51:38,999 --> 00:51:41,499
Sorry, but like Rahim, for example, like he's the last.
1068
00:51:41,634 --> 00:51:43,134
Austrian, Austrian economy.
1069
00:51:43,914 --> 00:51:45,774
Like Austria forgot about economics.
1070
00:51:45,974 --> 00:51:46,354
Yeah.
1071
00:51:46,354 --> 00:51:52,954
And not only that, but Marxist policies, policies get voted in over and over
1072
00:51:52,954 --> 00:51:59,184
again everywhere, even though they've been like debunked for years and like,
1073
00:51:59,214 --> 00:52:00,954
does anyone remember the lockdowns?
1074
00:52:01,024 --> 00:52:04,684
It seems like there's a big dose of amnesia going on there.
1075
00:52:04,694 --> 00:52:06,624
Like it seems like people for.
1076
00:52:06,969 --> 00:52:07,479
Forget.
1077
00:52:07,479 --> 00:52:08,139
So, yeah.
1078
00:52:08,169 --> 00:52:09,099
Quickly what, yeah.
1079
00:52:09,219 --> 00:52:15,639
What led up to all of these things like, and where the, where the, uh, where
1080
00:52:15,639 --> 00:52:17,589
the enemy is and what the enemy is.
1081
00:52:17,739 --> 00:52:21,789
I think it's part of why I'm like a really big believer in, in, um,
1082
00:52:22,449 --> 00:52:27,049
um, Mental health, like education and the pursuit of mental health.
1083
00:52:27,049 --> 00:52:31,019
Cause I think a really huge driver for why people forget
1084
00:52:31,359 --> 00:52:32,899
is they just get overwhelmed.
1085
00:52:32,939 --> 00:52:36,719
They just cannot control the emotions that come up when they think about
1086
00:52:36,939 --> 00:52:40,029
what it was like, or what, you know, what was impacting their
1087
00:52:40,029 --> 00:52:41,959
life or how, how things changed.
1088
00:52:41,999 --> 00:52:45,099
And, um, and, uh, and, and oftentimes people.
1089
00:52:45,524 --> 00:52:48,404
People go to crazy lengths to avoid feeling ashamed.
1090
00:52:48,534 --> 00:52:51,754
You know, why did, you know, all the policies that Russia is doing, for
1091
00:52:51,754 --> 00:52:55,344
example, a lot of it is to protect the national honor and, you know, prevent,
1092
00:52:55,664 --> 00:53:00,634
you know, if you think about the, um, the, the humiliation that happened
1093
00:53:00,644 --> 00:53:04,164
around the first world war and like, you know, the, the reparation payments
1094
00:53:04,164 --> 00:53:09,014
and like, so it's weirdly Crazy things happened because of simple emotions.
1095
00:53:09,014 --> 00:53:12,044
Anyway, so it was a, that's a different rabbit hole, but I just No, it was very
1096
00:53:12,044 --> 00:53:17,594
interesting, like the, yeah, I, and I think that's, you know about
1097
00:53:17,594 --> 00:53:21,764
this Belgian, um, psychologist, ma Mathias Desme, I think is his name.
1098
00:53:21,764 --> 00:53:22,304
Oh, I'm not familiar.
1099
00:53:22,309 --> 00:53:22,394
No.
1100
00:53:22,424 --> 00:53:25,754
Uh, yeah, he was, he had a, a, a big rise to fame during covid.
1101
00:53:25,759 --> 00:53:30,344
He talked about mice mass psychosis and mass for, he didn't call it that because
1102
00:53:30,344 --> 00:53:34,365
it's sort of a triggery word, but mass formation, I think is the word he used.
1103
00:53:35,049 --> 00:53:41,169
And how, how humans in a flock behave a certain way and when, when something
1104
00:53:41,169 --> 00:53:47,309
becomes a virtue signaling mechanism, like following, like I'm doing my part,
1105
00:53:47,649 --> 00:53:54,234
the, the Starship Troopers thing, like, uh, when you've, um, so, so during a.
1106
00:53:55,224 --> 00:54:01,824
During the lockdowns, uh, the further into those years we got, the weirder the rules
1107
00:54:01,854 --> 00:54:05,384
got, and the more often they changed.
1108
00:54:05,534 --> 00:54:10,334
So it became a virtue mechanism to know the most recent rule and follow that.
1109
00:54:10,334 --> 00:54:11,044
Yeah, exactly.
1110
00:54:11,044 --> 00:54:12,414
And I'm playing my part, you know?
1111
00:54:13,894 --> 00:54:19,354
And how societies get out of that is like, well, humor plays a big role.
1112
00:54:19,354 --> 00:54:23,134
Like, if you ridicule people for doing stuff, then all of a sudden...
1113
00:54:23,459 --> 00:54:26,649
People seem to wake up of it and it just disappears, just like
1114
00:54:26,649 --> 00:54:28,559
the East Block here in Europe.
1115
00:54:28,739 --> 00:54:34,019
It sort of disappeared overnight, almost, in comparison to like the Roman Empire.
1116
00:54:34,029 --> 00:54:38,579
So, yeah, I think there's a lot to be learned from like
1117
00:54:38,589 --> 00:54:40,269
group psychology in that sense.
1118
00:54:40,579 --> 00:54:43,439
Yeah, I remember my parents telling me that they were like
1119
00:54:43,499 --> 00:54:45,739
celebrating, I think this is 20, hmm.
1120
00:54:46,314 --> 00:54:47,024
2020 maybe?
1121
00:54:47,034 --> 00:54:49,854
I think they were celebrating, they were definitely celebrating um,
1122
00:54:49,864 --> 00:54:53,504
New Year's Eve and one of their friends had to go home before
1123
00:54:53,504 --> 00:54:55,154
midnight because there was a curfew.
1124
00:54:56,014 --> 00:54:57,054
Like insane, right?
1125
00:54:57,054 --> 00:55:00,834
They were not allowed to go on the street before midnight, even on New Year's Eve.
1126
00:55:01,489 --> 00:55:05,319
Just crazy stuff, like how does it even make sense to have an
1127
00:55:06,019 --> 00:55:08,609
outdoor curfew, it's absurd, right?
1128
00:55:08,669 --> 00:55:09,779
Total absurdity.
1129
00:55:10,129 --> 00:55:15,439
Yeah, and I guess, I want to learn more about, yeah, mob mentality, there's
1130
00:55:15,449 --> 00:55:17,619
a little book that I remember, um.
1131
00:55:18,304 --> 00:55:18,814
Reading.
1132
00:55:18,814 --> 00:55:21,114
I don't think I read the whole thing, but it was fascinating.
1133
00:55:21,114 --> 00:55:24,534
Written by Boris Sidis or Sidis.
1134
00:55:24,644 --> 00:55:28,794
He was the father of William James Sidis and, um, and William James was
1135
00:55:28,794 --> 00:55:33,564
like, uh, one of the, the, the real famous prodigy children back in the,
1136
00:55:33,914 --> 00:55:38,089
the same time of, um, um, Uh, William James, the psychologist, actually,
1137
00:55:38,099 --> 00:55:41,559
because this William James, the prodigy, was named after the friend
1138
00:55:41,559 --> 00:55:44,029
of his father, uh, the psychologist.
1139
00:55:44,059 --> 00:55:51,129
So, anyway, so Boris Tsidis was, uh, grew up in Russia, and, uh, he was, uh, sent, I
1140
00:55:51,129 --> 00:55:55,569
believe, either to prison or to the Gulag, uh, for three years because he had...
1141
00:55:56,119 --> 00:55:58,289
uh, taught some farmers how to read and write.
1142
00:55:58,489 --> 00:56:00,049
Like, that was his crime in Russia.
1143
00:56:00,479 --> 00:56:04,869
And, uh, and so he then later was a very passionate psychologist and he
1144
00:56:04,869 --> 00:56:08,569
wrote about the psychology of the mob because he had witnessed it so often.
1145
00:56:08,999 --> 00:56:12,459
Uh, and, and just really writing about how dangerous it is, you know, when
1146
00:56:12,459 --> 00:56:14,209
people get whipped into a frenzy.
1147
00:56:14,449 --> 00:56:19,279
And then you have, you write that virtual signaling or it's almost like, and you
1148
00:56:19,319 --> 00:56:24,749
see it in cults as well, where, where it's almost like You know the environment is
1149
00:56:24,749 --> 00:56:30,909
crazy, you know that somebody is going to pay, there's going to be a punishment,
1150
00:56:31,029 --> 00:56:35,969
somebody is going to be made the example, and you want to not be at the bottom, so
1151
00:56:35,969 --> 00:56:39,869
you want to be the one running away from the bear that's a little bit farther away,
1152
00:56:39,869 --> 00:56:43,899
and so you just, in North Korea, you see it, right, where there's somebody dies
1153
00:56:43,899 --> 00:56:47,969
and everybody's trying their best to cry the hardest, because the one who cries
1154
00:56:47,989 --> 00:56:51,799
the least, even if it's already crazy, they're going to get in trouble, so yeah.
1155
00:56:52,229 --> 00:56:52,559
www.
1156
00:56:53,549 --> 00:56:54,259
Insanity.
1157
00:56:54,269 --> 00:56:54,289
Yeah.
1158
00:56:55,119 --> 00:56:55,619
Absolute
1159
00:56:55,689 --> 00:56:56,379
insanity.
1160
00:56:56,429 --> 00:56:56,959
And it was
1161
00:56:56,999 --> 00:56:59,499
so, wasn't it surreal to witness it in real time?
1162
00:56:59,539 --> 00:56:59,989
Yeah.
1163
00:57:00,099 --> 00:57:00,289
It
1164
00:57:00,299 --> 00:57:00,489
was.
1165
00:57:00,489 --> 00:57:01,649
I've never in my life seen that.
1166
00:57:01,649 --> 00:57:07,139
And like, it's a reminder that, uh, it's, it's never safe with humans.
1167
00:57:07,199 --> 00:57:12,219
Like the, we, uh, complete craziness can happen at any point, like, and
1168
00:57:12,219 --> 00:57:16,319
it's, it made you, makes you more vigilant and pick up on these little...
1169
00:57:17,899 --> 00:57:22,059
And, uh, I recently read the white pill by Michael Malice.
1170
00:57:23,959 --> 00:57:27,409
It's about the, the Soviet, the history of the Soviet Union, basically.
1171
00:57:27,839 --> 00:57:32,719
And, uh, um, in that there, there are examples of, of people who committed
1172
00:57:32,719 --> 00:57:39,529
crimes in, in, In late Soviet, late Soviet era, that knew that they
1173
00:57:39,529 --> 00:57:43,419
were innocent, but that willingly went to the gulags anyway, because
1174
00:57:43,419 --> 00:57:44,839
they wanted to defend the system.
1175
00:57:44,959 --> 00:57:51,129
And like, so, so, so, so deeply entrenched into their minds that, that the system
1176
00:57:51,129 --> 00:57:52,719
was the important thing to uphold.
1177
00:57:52,899 --> 00:57:53,239
Wait, wait, so,
1178
00:57:53,819 --> 00:57:54,649
I don't
1179
00:57:54,649 --> 00:57:54,929
follow.
1180
00:57:54,929 --> 00:57:55,589
It's like...
1181
00:57:55,789 --> 00:58:00,679
Ultimate collectivism, when you, you, you know that you're innocent, but you play
1182
00:58:00,679 --> 00:58:03,419
along anyway, because the system says so.
1183
00:58:03,919 --> 00:58:04,656
It's a lot of practice.
1184
00:58:04,656 --> 00:58:05,489
It was a series of crimes,
1185
00:58:05,489 --> 00:58:08,629
they were accused, but they didn't do it, but they just went along with it.
1186
00:58:08,659 --> 00:58:08,949
Yeah.
1187
00:58:09,209 --> 00:58:12,329
And, and, and it was, but they were accused, but could they...
1188
00:58:12,914 --> 00:58:15,184
Was it even an option to defend themselves?
1189
00:58:16,164 --> 00:58:20,884
Uh, yeah, okay, this is from memory and according to the book.
1190
00:58:20,884 --> 00:58:24,164
But there were obvious cases where they could have just said, no, look
1191
00:58:24,164 --> 00:58:25,624
at this evidence, I didn't do this.
1192
00:58:25,744 --> 00:58:29,904
But it was futile to a certain extent.
1193
00:58:29,954 --> 00:58:34,874
But still, just having a chance of not getting into the gulag would be...
1194
00:58:36,254 --> 00:58:37,074
Wow, yeah,
1195
00:58:37,074 --> 00:58:41,614
really, like, it's like the frog jumping back in the pot or something.
1196
00:58:41,614 --> 00:58:42,064
Yeah, yeah.
1197
00:58:42,624 --> 00:58:45,064
Yeah, wow, hmm.
1198
00:58:45,804 --> 00:58:50,624
So what can we do to avoid this complacency, this scenario?
1199
00:58:50,634 --> 00:58:51,144
We're doing
1200
00:58:51,144 --> 00:58:51,734
it right now.
1201
00:58:52,434 --> 00:58:55,894
I, you know, I think this is really important to, you know, just keep,
1202
00:58:55,924 --> 00:59:01,784
um, remembering the past, talking about Just universal, immutable
1203
00:59:02,404 --> 00:59:05,434
principles, trying to, trying to be vigilant there too, where you don't
1204
00:59:05,434 --> 00:59:08,954
get stuck in being complacent and just assuming, you know, always go back,
1205
00:59:09,254 --> 00:59:11,374
do the math again, go over the proofs.
1206
00:59:11,704 --> 00:59:15,634
Um, yeah, I, I believe a lot in interdisciplinarity.
1207
00:59:15,674 --> 00:59:18,894
I really believe that, you know, that, that we can build bridges between,
1208
00:59:19,154 --> 00:59:23,789
and, because in a way, Science, in the broadest sense, has gotten very
1209
00:59:23,789 --> 00:59:28,569
fragmented because of how everything is subsidized and become bureaucratic.
1210
00:59:28,569 --> 00:59:32,419
And so I think there's this great project where we can bring things back
1211
00:59:32,419 --> 00:59:35,909
together in a more unified way and, um...
1212
00:59:36,679 --> 00:59:40,949
And so that more people can become part of this conversation, like there were times
1213
00:59:40,949 --> 00:59:44,709
in history where, like I mean, even the ancient Greeks, like we, now what we find
1214
00:59:44,719 --> 00:59:48,769
back is like about 1 percent of the stuff they actually produced, with in terms of
1215
00:59:48,769 --> 00:59:53,899
plays and books and all that, and even with that, this overwhelming evidence
1216
00:59:53,959 --> 00:59:59,344
that, The percentage of intellectuals, the percentage of people who really were
1217
00:59:59,524 --> 01:00:05,684
very aware and, and engaged and, and, and just brilliant was incredibly high.
1218
01:00:05,704 --> 01:00:08,394
And these people didn't have different genetics than we do.
1219
01:00:08,774 --> 01:00:12,724
So it is possible to just have much more, a much higher percentage of the
1220
01:00:12,724 --> 01:00:17,624
population get like alive and activated and be part of that great discussion.
1221
01:00:17,994 --> 01:00:21,484
And so, yeah, it's like we're, we got to keep the flame alive.
1222
01:00:21,484 --> 01:00:21,634
Right.
1223
01:00:21,634 --> 01:00:21,884
I mean,
1224
01:00:21,894 --> 01:00:22,424
absolutely.
1225
01:00:22,879 --> 01:00:23,209
Yeah.
1226
01:00:23,249 --> 01:00:24,579
So you heard it from the man.
1227
01:00:24,609 --> 01:00:28,879
If, uh, so if you want to avoid Armageddon, don't forget to
1228
01:00:28,889 --> 01:00:31,829
like, subscribe, click the bell for notification, brush your
1229
01:00:31,849 --> 01:00:33,169
teeth and all that, you know?
1230
01:00:33,289 --> 01:00:33,909
Exactly.
1231
01:00:34,019 --> 01:00:34,389
Amen.
1232
01:01:35,408 --> 01:01:35,698
Thanks.
1233
01:01:35,698 --> 01:01:38,518
I think this, I think this is a good.
1234
01:01:38,548 --> 01:01:42,498
Just thought to maybe tie this one off, but can you tell our, our viewers
1235
01:01:42,498 --> 01:01:45,418
and listeners where they can find you and what you're up to these days
1236
01:01:45,908 --> 01:01:46,398
and that sort of thing?
1237
01:01:46,398 --> 01:01:48,868
Yeah, I would say just Google my name, Thurde Meester.
1238
01:01:48,868 --> 01:01:52,578
Um, it's a bit of a weird name, but, um, just do that and
1239
01:01:52,578 --> 01:01:53,878
you'll see my Twitter account.
1240
01:01:54,068 --> 01:01:54,948
We like weird names.
1241
01:01:54,968 --> 01:01:57,158
Oh, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1242
01:01:57,698 --> 01:01:59,908
Uh, my last name has four E's in it.
1243
01:01:59,948 --> 01:02:04,078
Anyway, uh, but so my, my company is adamantresearch, A
1244
01:02:04,078 --> 01:02:06,818
D A M A N T, adamantresearch.
1245
01:02:06,818 --> 01:02:07,168
com.
1246
01:02:07,168 --> 01:02:12,208
So if you go there, you'll see an archive of all my, uh, my reports
1247
01:02:12,208 --> 01:02:17,658
going back to 2012 and also a link to my latest, which is free, it's called
1248
01:02:17,658 --> 01:02:19,768
How to Position for the Bitcoin Boom.
1249
01:02:20,113 --> 01:02:24,663
20 pages, very dense, and it's literally what I sent to my own friends and family.
1250
01:02:24,683 --> 01:02:24,983
Yeah.
1251
01:02:25,463 --> 01:02:26,133
Fantastic.
1252
01:02:26,773 --> 01:02:29,013
Thank you very much for a very good conversation.
1253
01:02:29,433 --> 01:02:29,733
Yeah.
1254
01:02:29,733 --> 01:02:31,313
And good luck with everything.
1255
01:02:31,623 --> 01:02:32,093
Thank you.
1256
01:02:32,990 --> 01:02:34,760
So, what did you think of that episode with TOR?
1257
01:02:35,180 --> 01:02:36,930
I always enjoy digging into big topics.
1258
01:02:37,050 --> 01:02:40,400
The importance of avoiding complacency is my biggest takeaway from this one.
1259
01:02:40,460 --> 01:02:41,160
What was yours?
1260
01:02:41,520 --> 01:02:42,120
Let us know.
1261
01:02:42,332 --> 01:02:45,222
You can send us a boostergram on Fountain, leave us a comment on YouTube,
1262
01:02:45,232 --> 01:02:46,882
or get in touch on Noster or Twitter.
1263
01:02:47,282 --> 01:02:49,422
If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to like the episode
1264
01:02:49,422 --> 01:02:50,562
and subscribe to the channel.
1265
01:02:50,942 --> 01:02:54,072
Our show's sponsors are Wasabi Wallet, Orange Pill App, The
1266
01:02:54,072 --> 01:02:56,542
Bitcoin Way, Zelox, and Bitcoinbook.
1267
01:02:56,542 --> 01:02:56,862
shop.
1268
01:02:57,302 --> 01:02:58,862
Check out their details in the description.
1269
01:02:59,432 --> 01:03:00,262
That's all for now.
1270
01:03:00,652 --> 01:03:03,082
See you next time, and thanks for listening.