The System You Give Your Energy To - Jeff Booth

So I don't begrudge anybody to spend whatever time they want in any system, but what I can tell you from my own choice to move my time into Bitcoin, move more of my time, it's been the best thing that I could ever ask for.

Hi everyone, welcome back to Stefan Livera podcast brought to you by Swann dot com. Today, rejoining me is Jeff Booth. He is the author of The Price of Tomorrow, he's an entrepreneur, and he's also a founding partner of Ego Death Capital. So he's rejoining me on the show to talk about some of his work in Bitcoin advocacy, also talking about this concept of the energy you give and what system we give our energy to, some discussion about, Bitcoin evangelism and trying to explain for people how they're, they're being stolen. stolen from, as well as getting into some chat about why there seems to be this kind of coordinated attack against Bitcoin, and, what should be done about it. I hope you'll enjoy this chat with Jeff Booth.

Jeff, welcome back to the show. Yeah,

thanks Stefan. Good to be here.

So lots going on. I know you've been doing a few talks at a few conferences. I think I, I saw you around at, in, Madeira at Bitcoin Atlantis, didn't get a chance to, you know, properly catch up, but I saw you around there. I know you did a talk as well at, Bitcoin Policy Summit as well. Yep. so, lots happening. Let's actually, I'm, I'd be curious to start with, you know, w-what's going on with, Bitcoin Policy Summit and, you know, any interesting conversations you had? Like, were you able to help move people in terms of helping a few more people, you know, see Bitcoin?

the high level answer is yes, but I would also caveat that it's, it's very early. It's, the, w-we think as we talk to people kind of outside the Bitcoin space, that, how can't they s-see it? that is very true within government. It's like it's just, it's unbelievably early. Now some, now the good news in that is some are really digging in. Obviously Loomis is, digging in, but others, others too. Marsha Blackburn is really digging in, and, and, and others, that are, that are really trying to understand this asset class and under-understand how it promotes freedom and, and, and as the more and more people get there, they infect others. They, they, they bring this. So that, that movement from, I would almost say zero Bitcoin knowledge and being repelled against it to, to ten, on a scale, on a scale You can see every Bitcoiner going through the same transition, you can see every politician going through some trans-- same transition, and we're just really early on it.

Yeah, and as you say Going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole often tends to also encourage people to sort of go down the freedom rabbit hole, and I'm sure that's applied to many people. I'm curious, you know, if you have any reflections on that idea, like just that as you learn about Bitcoin, you tend to change some of your other views?

It, it unwinds everything, right? We, we come out, and this is what I talked about in Atlantis, we, our entire history books are filled with, "Here's the way things work," and the winners, or the winners, of wars write the history books. So, so it's- All of our priors never had something like Bitcoin in, in them. We, we've never had decentralization and security together that was uncompromisable by institutions, by, by governments. And so it would make sense that something that is that profound a change would be so hard to understand because people go back to their priors to, "Oh, it didn't look like this in the 1800s, here's what it looked like, because this is the book I read that this is how an economy must look, or this is how this must look." and, and Bitcoin shatters all of those. And, and if you're, if you're truly curious, if you're tr-truly thinking at first principles, you realize it doesn't actually care about all of your frameworks that you care, that you care about, it's imposing new frame-- new frameworks on all of them, and that's why, that's, that's why I would say, the hardest thing for a lot of people is after they, okay, they are curious enough to look at it Going down that and letting go of the thing you believed in, is, is a hard journey, for, when we say ego death, kind of you, you're having to force yourself down to, to a different realization, and that realization is standing kind of against the things you used to believe for whatever reason you used to believe those things, and Bitcoin imposes that, imposes that across Most, if not all, of your beliefs, because it is that profound a change. it, I've said this many times, but the emergent nature of our behavior, the emergent nature of all of our actions, arises From the system we live in, and we've never been able to live in a system like Bitcoin, so that would make sense that this would be really confusing for people as they tried to attach what their belief is to Bitcoin Rather than understand that their belief is actually caused by that emergent s-s-s-system.

So as you were pointing out, there's people who are challenging their beliefs in some way, right? That because of learning about Bitcoin, they're sort of having-- they're being forced to this, and, What I've really noticed in the last few years, and this isn't my theory, I heard this theory, but it, it sort of became more clear to me, is that most people aren't sort of reasoning by first principles, they're just sort of looking around socially reasoning based on what other people think, or they're looking at the tribe and they're thinking, in the proverbial tribe, "Who's high status? I need to copy their beliefs, I need to believe like they do, because, you know, maybe for some reason, if I don't believe like they do, I And, to some extent now we're seeing the large, you know, well-known investment companies like Fidelity and BlackRock and, and so on, and so to some extent that's giving people the quote-unquote permission, the permission slip, let's say, to seriously consider Bitcoin, as opposed to historically where maybe, oh, it's, it's a gamble or it's a, you know, it's some weird thing and they, they wouldn't really seriously consider that. So I, I'm curious, you know, how you're seeing that as well. Like, More people feel they've got the, the permission to look at Bitcoin seriously? For sure, like if you

talked about the, the kind of larger investing class, I think that, that's, that's for sure in, in, in that first world nations that now, oh, wait, with BlackRock's in, interested, then I need to take this seriously. I, I, I guess we all, like all of us, we come to our conclusions in our own way, right? It's a, it's a, and- And but I think you're, I think you're right. My, my belief is, is this, most of this is out of love and belonging. We wanna belong. If you see, if you imagine somebody that's hating the world And, and all of their group, their group is, is, loves them for that. It feels like love. And for them to leave and, and see kind of a different world, it would mean leaving behind all of the people that they think care about them. So you, you get trapped in these foundations because of love and belonging and or wanting to matter, and, and, and that goes all the way up to kind of when you said before, "Kim Kardashian," or "I'm part of this tribe." you, you don't wanna leave your tribe. People don't wanna leave your tribe because they feel like it, it would be a loss And they don't wanna leave their tribe even when the, when a different tribe or a different what it would look like would be so much better because it would feel like it's hard to, it's hard to do that. And so that all of these, I would, you'd say, other social clues Give more reason to kind of broaden this, broaden this movement. But at the highest level, I think it's about, we want to matter.

Yeah. And so I think the other component for maybe certain individuals who, you know, in the fiat world, in the, in the state system, often, politicians and people who, you know, maybe people are, you know, Bitcoiners are out there trying to get anyone on board, right? Anyone on board who we can. but, some of these people have very little time across all- These different issues, like maybe they, you know, particularly at the political level, they might only spend a small amount of time on, you know, on Bitcoin and have all these, you know, whatever medical policy and foreign affairs and whatever else So I'm curious what, what you're seeing, when you're out there, you know, obviously trying to teach people, h-how, how you can sort of make a difference when they've only got a small amount of time to seriously read about Bitcoin or learn about Bitcoin?

Yeah. So I try to start where they are rather than where I am. Like, what's the biggest thing that you're facing? What's the biggest challenge that you're facing? And then try to get them to try to solve that through the Fiat system. And, and I just a-keep asking them questions, the five questions, they just go deeper and say, "Okay, well, how do you do that then? How do you do that?" And once they get, there is no solve, now you can talk about Something that could, could solve it in a different way, a unique way that they don't, they don't see. Because until you get there, they're grasping, they actually believe that there's a solve or they've-

through,

through that system. I, w-w Major pain in their community that they needed money to solve. And so the governments are, and they're all kind of designated from those regions. Are they gonna listen to me talking about the broad base implications of everything else, or are they gonna solve the major pain right now? And, and they try to solve the major pain right now, and they make it worse. But they, they actually think, or many think they're actually solving the problem while making it, making it worse. So it just, it just clarified for me Why, why my time wasn't valuable there? Right? My time was more-- In fact, why, why we started Ego Death is my time was more valuable helping build the rails and helping, helping- Entrepreneurs build the rails to move this, to move this faster, because I realized most people wouldn't see this through an abstract concept They had to have technology that gave them more value in their lives, and that had to be easier to interoperate with and scale and everything else to be, to be able to do that. So I've m- I've intentionally moved my time Away from doing a bunch of that, I still do some when, when asked, but I find it a, a low return on my time.

Yeah, that's the big dilemma as well, right? I've, you know, I've, I think for many of us, when we first learn about Bitcoin, like when I first learned about it in 2013, I was shouting from the rooftops, all right, I was just, yeah, anyone who would, I would just, you know, be posting constantly about it, telling anyone I could about it, and, Many of those people, now some of the, I, I got through to some people, and some of those people sort of, maybe they bought Bitcoin and then sold it again, then kind of came back a few years later and they were like, "Oh, thank you, man, like, thank you for doing this." but then there were a lot of people who, you know, you just, I wasn't able to get to them, and maybe that's, you know, maybe that was on me, I wasn't influential enough, I wasn't good enough, or in some cases,

Not ready. So then you sort of come to a, almost like a triaging system. You're like, okay, I'm talking to this person, can I help this person? Or, no, okay, I'm gonna spend my time on the people who I can help. Yeah. And that's sort of my approach, I guess, evolved and shifted a little bit over the time, over those years, and, I think, nowadays I don't have a lot of, let's say, quote unquote, "normie" friends, 'cause I've sort of, I But, you know, obviously you're, you're generally meeting new people as well, so then you have to kind of do the same triage process with them. but, it's sort of like at the same time. So here's, here's the other dilemma though, right? Because it's like- Sometimes if you are really persuasive, or if you're really passionate, you can sort of break through to people, but other times you can't. Yeah. And, you know, there are times where you sort of lament, "Oh, I wish I could have got through to this person." So Stephan,

you have probably touched millions of people through other people that you've touched that then have touched other people. And so have I. Like, the-- and, and you don't even know, sometimes that is such, so subtle that they heard one thing, they don't even re-rec-rea-realize it was you or your podcast. That then got them, they heard something else, and then they heard something else, and then they became curious, and they thought it was them that under-- that gained that curiosity, that might have been you that inserted it first. You could never know that, nor should we, right? It's just how the world works as we change our beliefs, and it, and it moves across kind of time and space as we, as we do that. if you're, that's actually why you also shouldn't be mad or angry that somebody doesn't get it, 'cause it's not about them. It's like, you're, you're, you're-- if you're trying to do good in the world and doing this, then if somebody gets it or doesn't get it, or if they kind of get an insight and then later get it because of it, that's a great thing. Just keep going. and, and you see this in, in Bitcoin, the more, there's more and more people, there's a lot of people. If you just said zero, zero to ten, kind of on the scale down the rabbit hole, if you, if you used the scale like that. There's a lot of people in Bitcoin that are at one or two, and they're talking like they're a ten. Right. Right. And so, and, and, and, and in that, they would confuse a whole bunch of other people, right? Because they don't have some of the answers that you go deeper and deeper and-- I'm not even saying what level I'm at or what level you're at, but it's, but you can see this journey is, it's, it's a deep jour-- journey. It touches everything, and as you get deeper and deeper into the journey- You become changed, and then you, then you think you were always the same, you always knew this, and you didn't, right? It goes, every single one of us goes through the same, same path. And, and, and so when I watch this, when I watch it, even Bitcoiners or the general, it's just part of the journey. It's just part of the journey that, that we all go through in, in change.

Yeah, I'm with you there. one other topic I've seen you talk about recently is this idea of- The system you give energy to, you know, do you wanna just elaborate a little bit on this idea? What, why, why is it important to focus on the system you're giving energy to?

Yeah, I just, so, so I, and I touched on it be-briefly through that love and belonging. But if you're, let, let's use an example of, I, I'm on a march down the street against my government and I'm burning cars and I'm breaking windows and then I, then, then I go home and sleep and then the next day all the windows are, streets fixed, windows, fixed. Where did the money come from to do that? Right? And it's you, money came from you to be able to ex- extend that. If you're voting on one side or the other You're voting, I'm not saying don't vote, but, but if you're voting for a fiat politician, you're effectively saying, "Who gets more of the stolen money?" Which group gets more of the stolen money that comes from me? And so all of these things from this h-h-system, if you're mad at it and you're, you're spending your energy reinforcing that, and you're spending your energy with other people that are reinforcing, that, that, you're spending your most valuable time Making the system stronger over you, because the system is already insolvent. The system's already completely-- it would fail spectacularly if it just, if it were a free market So it isn't a free market at all, it's a control system. And why freedom is so connected to this, is, is it's not a, a free market It's a control system, and that control system has to usurp more and more of your energy, and you will feed it more and more of your energy. It's just a total natural thing when you see what the senators in the US just voted for on essentially spying on every citizen. Like four years ago when I wrote my book, I knew this was coming, it had to come. Because it, it, so I'm not surprised by any of it. I'm not surprised by any of the stuff that's, that's coming because technology is supposed to free our time and give us more and more, on exponential scale. remember, inflation shouldn't be measured from zero. It should be measured from the implied deflation rate. So the amount of stealing that is going on, the rate of theft in the, in, in, in your environment is going up and it's dividing people more, and that division is making the system stronger To be able to steal more. how do you get elected in that cycle throughout history? It's pretty s-simple if you look at, watch all history books, you divide your nation You steal control, you take away some of their individual rights and freedoms in name of helping them. It doesn't fix the problem, so you have to create a greater enemy outside your borders, and you go to war to reset it. If you win the war, you, you, you reset, the currency from, from zero, and you start it, and you promise we won't do it again. Bretton Woods. and then you do it again. It's the entire history of, of our world, so why would you expect anything different from that system? That's exactly what that system has to do. It just has to do it at a greater, greater scale than anybody has ever seen before, because technology is moving at a greater, greater scale on the opposite timeline. And I've just, so I, I realize everything I do from within that system makes that system stronger, and I've just tuned it out. I realize it's all coming, like all these attack vectors are coming, I know they're coming. i-if people, people, people, I would say they think, okay, Jeff doesn't, he doesn't see these because he's so optimistic. No, I see them all. I've done so much work on the, the, like all of these attack vectors on what, what's coming. it's just my energy is way better helping build the anti-attack vectors to be able to, to heal the world, and I'm not moving back. Like I'm never going back. I know what decentralized security means for humanity. you do, Stephan, you're not going back. Jack Dorsey does, Alex Gladstein does. The, the, the amount of people that, that know this now have this insight and, and are moving into a world that we're creating through our actions. Spending more time creating that world is actually accelerates this, speed of that. And so I can talk in a really positive way about the world we're creating, and I don't have to get involved in all the nonsense.

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So, I'm curious how you see that. Yeah,

so exactly as you said, so if you expected what's gonna happen in, in the world, it's gonna take longer to get to on all of these breaking points than, than we think, and, and each country that you're living in, whether it's Madeira or, or Canada or the US or a specific state, and you can expect a range of outcomes depending who's elected, what, what, are they a Bitcoiner? What is, what's happening? Those range of outcomes, you're gonna see this coming, right? So if, if Trudeau gets elected again, which I suspect is, there's no chance Then a whole bunch of people will leave Canada, 'cause they can see what's going to come, but, but I also, I, I also early on talked to, Pierre Polyov. All the time, it was foundational in, in his understanding of what was happening, before he was the leader of the opposition, and right now, if you looked at the polls, he'll win in a landslide. I can't guarantee any politician will do what they say they're going to do, but I do know he's a Bitcoiner, and I know, I know he understands the magnitude of the, the problem. And if he got elected and actually changed and kind of created a free market for Bitcoin in Canada, Canada might be turned into one of the best places to live. So I'm just not ready yet to pull the trigger on, on that, but, but I'm, I'm incur-- in, in a lot of different regions in the world, like Madeira would be an example. Good. I've been helpful in creating other places that I could go to.

Yeah, that I think that's a great answer. And ultimately, as you said, we, we can't predict, we don't know exactly which way, how it's all gonna play out. What I would say, though, and to, to the point you were making earlier, is that there are a lot of people who aren't ready yet, and in some cases, it's a systemic issue, you know, it's, in some countries, it may sadly be the case that it's just too late,

You know, something if you elected the hypothetical, you know, best person, even they couldn't turn it around because maybe there's just, there's just a machinery there, there's a system, there's a kind of, there's, you know, this voting base who are just gonna push it a certain way. I think that is, that is really an important, consideration for a lot of people.

Yeah, so, like just double-click on that. Every government, every-- it, it's all insolvent. Like there's four hundred trillion dollars of the world, of debt in the world that's completely insolvent. So all of the votes to pretend that solvent? Come at your expense and have to centralize, further. And it doesn't matter who's in charge in any one of these regions. That's what the entire global system looks like. And the faster transition to Bitcoin, which is repricing that entire system, the, the, the, if you're earlier in Bitcoin, just like if you bought Bitcoin in two thousand and eleven and, and, and held it You're front running the global population, everybody. If you bought it today, today, you're front running ninety-nine percent of the global population, and, and that'll continue as more and more people transition to the, the system, but the other system isn't solvent. It's already insolvent, and there's no-- nothing you could do from within that system to change, change that solvency. The only thing you could do is-- and this is, this was what we talked about in Madeira with the president of Madeira a couple years ago, is build an economy on bit-- Bitcoin From the bottom up, so that when currencies start breaking and Madeira is cut off or Portugal is cut off from the EU or because, that, that you're ready and you have a self-sustaining economy From the bot-bottom up. And that's the same thing that can happen in any single country today, could-- today, that's what's happening in El Salvador, that's what's, and, and more and more countries are gonna start to see it. But you don't have to wait for your country to, to do that. You can front run your country, you can front run businesses, you can start living like that Anytime, it's an open permissionless system. And so what the hope and, and what people in Bitcoin, are already seeing is they're already living in the future.

Yeah, for, for those of us who are, you know, earning and spending Bitcoin and using, or at the very minimum, even if you can't spend the Bitcoin because of capital gains, et cetera, at least if you save in Bitcoin, that's really the important question for most of us, because as you have pointed out, and, you know, many of us have been pointing out The inflationary system is stealing from us, and really, what we should have expected, right? In a world where, let's say, the internet enabled all this amazing productivity, how is it that there are certain generations and certain people who feel like they can't make ends meet, they can't even, you know, get a roof over their head because they're being stolen from that badly? So it's, it's sort of, in some ways, you could look at the system as a very sad thing, but obviously there's the positive side of, hey, if you- You use Bitcoin, you can opt out of that. how do you-- what's the best way you found to try and explain for people the way they're getting stolen from, because it's a very hidden thing, it's hard to explain?

Yeah, I, I keep saying, be-- because, I keep saying over and over again that the natural state of the free market is deflation. that's what I described in my book, right? And, and, and then when you understand, when people go, "Well," and they think about it for a second, you can see them thinking about it, and then you add You don't use things that give you less value, right? If, if, if Google charged five dollars a click tomorrow or if Riverside charged way more, tomorrow, you would use a different, a, a, a different video, program. Platform, yeah. and, and so it's a competition to provide more value, which entrepreneurs solve problems to provide more value. So that has to be deflationary. There isn't no, there isn't no maybe, it has to be deflationary. And then if you, if we invent more technology, and technology is moving exponentially, because prices fall to the marginal cost of production, it has to be exponentially deflationary. So in that world, you would, even if you did nothing, if you didn't provide any value, you would get richer every year, probably by about five percent a year today, and then getting faster and faster and faster into the future as all prices of everything fell. Remember, AI and robotics are gonna merge, and robotics will grow your food. Food will fall in, in, in price to almost zero. Energy will fall in price to almost, zero. And so all of these things are going to continue, a, a path, and when I say that relative to Bitcoin, relative to something that can't be manipulated. So, so that's the world we should live in, and the-- and, and the world that's stealing your time and stealing your energy, therefore, has to steal more and more of it all the time to stay solvent.

Yeah, and I, I'll tell you what, a-- and, I mean, obviously, I'm with you in terms of deflation should naturally, you know, we should be living in a growth-deflationary environment. The cost of our, you know, living should be coming down over time, kind of on average, obviously, assuming out, you know, natural Be coming down. But I'll tell you what, and I'm sure you understand this, but there are some-- there are going to be some very big political and market, or at least crony capitalist market hurdles to that, because a lot of people are conditioned to believe that housing should just go up, right? And of course, you're Canadian, I'm sure, you know, lots of Canadian property markets, famously the Vancouver property market, is, you know, is people, have this mindset of, "Oh, it's only going up." What's gonna happen when we move into a world where actually, yeah, maybe certain high-level city properties or very, you know, great location properties will go up, but generally the cost of housing is gonna come down, and there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna feel like they're getting screwed over because their, quote-unquote, asset that they put their life savings into is now coming down in price.

Yeah, and, and because, because if you're buying house, housing for the last hundred years, you're really short the dollar. Yeah. You know that you have an inflation rate in the dollar, and, and holding housing is shorts the dollar. I, I take on debt and I'm short the, the, the dollar because it has to be inflated away and my housing retains some of that value. but now, so then housing beca-- instead of being com- being, being a utility, housing becomes a store of value, and it increases a monetary premium, and people think, "Well, I-- the housing is my way to be able to save enough money." Because my, my currency is a terrible currency, and, and you see this all over the world, you see people doing that. But that's why Bitcoin doesn't care. My, my house has fallen in the last four years from three hundred Bitcoin to twenty-two Bitcoin, and in four years it's gonna be two Bitcoin, and it doesn't care if, i-if you wanna take Bitcoin into your currency to price things? And from, from that economic calculation, you think Bi-Bitcoin's going up because you're taking it into pieces of paper? You're welcome to do that, but Bitcoin doesn't care about that. It's repricing the w- the world. And by the way, you could do this, for, for people on your podcast that are, I know you know this, but how, how I break through this for a lot of other people who don't know it. Just in, instead of saying currency, say pieces of paper that I price things in. Right? And, and it starts to be more real, right? And so in, in Canada, it takes ninety thousand pieces of paper today to buy a Bitcoin, but if, if I go to Turkey, it takes three million pieces of paper to buy a Bitcoin, and if I go to Argentina, it takes fifty-five million pieces of paper to buy a Bitcoin. And, and then you ask yourself, "Huh, there's a whole bunch of people in Turkey that believe their pieces of paper are worth money too. So why wouldn't it look the same all over the world?" So I agree with you, most people are gonna get caught in that, and they're gonna price Bitcoin from their currency, thinking it's going up.

and it's going up forever when it isn't actually not. All prices are falling relative to it forever is a far better way to, to, to look at what's happening in Bitcoin, 'cause, 'cause you know this, but we have a nine hundred trillion dollar global ledger, right? And, and that nine hundred trillion dollar global ledger won't be nine hundred with four hundred trillion of debt, and if the four hundred trillion of debt was actually truly marked to market, then nine hundred trillion would be gone too Because that's just inflated asset prices because of the four hundred trillion of debt. But, but there's just there's a nine hundred trillion dollar global ledger that in five years won't be nine hundred trillion. It might be two quadrillion. But Bitcoin doesn't care about that either. I know people do, right? Because they're pricing from a globally manipulated ledger. But Bitcoin doesn't care, it's repricing everything. And the other side of that argument, or the other side of that thing that people miss on Bitcoin, is the relative purchasing power of Bitcoin today So if you just took nine hundred divided by twenty-one million or twenty million or whatever lost coins you think would be, it, it equates to a terminal value today of about forty-two million per Bitcoin. Right? And that, if it stays decentralized and secure, is for sure what it's worth today in relative to purchasing power, kind of played out into the future. But it'll be way higher than that because prices fall to the marginal cost of production. So it's not just higher because measured in a global ledger of two, two quadrillion, that'll be eighty-four million per Bitcoin Right? And the people think it's going up because they're not measuring the ledger, the other ledger. People should measure things in price of Bitcoin, and they'll see it's just the free market, and it's imposing a discipline. and if you don't, if, if you really care about your piece of paper, if you care about government getting bigger, government can't get bigger relative to that, so they can by creating more pieces of paper But this is gonna impose it on all governments as well, and eventually, and, and the governments that are understanding this will be in service of their, i-i-service of their citizens rather than preying on them. And so it's going, it's bound to break a whole lot of beliefs al-along the way and a whole bunch of- but that's the pattern that's doing it. It's repricing the world, not the other way around.

And it reminds me very much of either looking to history or looking into the future, depending on how you look at it, right? Because as you were giving us with that example, it's all like the German mark, right? It's all just gonna go-- It's all gonna eventually go to infinity, priced in, you know, fiat pieces of paper, as you said. and I think a lot of people commit what I call, or what is known as home country bias

I'm only gonna invest in my local country. I'm not gonna think about the rest of the world. Totally. But actually, if you actually did look at the rest of the world, you might see other countries that are further ahead of you on the timeline, as you said, the, and- Certain countries have gone through this in cycles, right? Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, you know, these kinds of countries, Zimbabwe, you know, you, everyone knows some of these countries, and there are countries who are going through it in advance of others, right? So, say Japan, say Turkey, they're kind of ahead of us in the timeline if you compare those countries to, let's say, the Western world, Australia, US, UK, et cetera. and You know, I think that's a very misunderstood thing because most people don't read history, they're not looking at, or they're not-- they might sort of look with a, a kind of sense of, "Oh, that's happening in some other country, but that wouldn't happen here," right? They get this kind of, "It wouldn't happen here, but really it can."

That's actually exactly why, you have to say Are there a whole bunch of people in that cur- in, in that currency who believe in their piece of paper? And of course there are. So why are they different than you? And, and for me, that's the click that gets people who go, "Aha, I get it. It's a rate of theft in every currency. It's just what rate of theft, and where are you on that timeline, and the entire thing's insolvent." By the way, that rate of theft can continue for a long time because every time all these other currencies fail US actually gets stronger, because it means you're strip mining those other countries, their labor and materials, their labor and raw materials become cheaper.

And even their talent and their labor, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they, they, and, and, and again, Bitcoin doesn't care about that either. It, it just con-continues to price the real market

Yeah, as you said, their labor, sorry, but yeah, ultimately it's just, it's gonna drive this kind of crazy brain drain, factor where people will say, "Hey, look, there's not much opportunity in this country, I'm gonna look elsewhere." and as you said, it's gonna go towards those countries or at least regions that we, you know, we would say, those regions that support Bitcoin, right? I think they will naturally- Be the victors or the winners in this brain drain game, and, it's gonna be brutal. Yeah,

cou-countries have always competed for labor and, and capital. This won't be any different. The labor into capital will just come from Bitcoin.

Yeah. Right. So it's interesting to see how that plays out. I know one other topic you've been, speaking on recently is this idea that freedom of speech is- Almost impossible in the current system. And o-obviously you're a big fan of Nostra, and that's a, you know, that's a big topic as well. Do you wanna just elaborate a little bit on why it is that this system- precludes freedom of speech.

Yeah, it literally can't. So the system is based on misinformation, 'cause money is information. You don't want, you don't want more money, you want what, what you believe money will buy you. some people's belief on money is, "No, I want more money because I, I wanna buy legacy for my kids." But you, you have a thought of what money is. It's not a piece of paper, right to you? It's what you want to do with it. And so if money is just information and you're creating more misinformation than money, then the only way to consolidate that is to control all information Because everybody would be confused wh-uh, within that, you'd have no proper pricing signals. They have to, you have to remove the ability for people to exit the system. You have to remove, you have to, the system is insolvent, you have to financially repress them. People don't like it when they're financially repressed, so they have to believe that there's another enemy within their borders or outside their borders that it's that other person's fault. And it's easy to get people to, to, to essentially do your- Bidding by, by controlling them and making them believe, believe that you're a hero going to save them. Elon Musk does this really well. Right? The, from a centralized system, and he has people convinced that, that he's advocating free speech when he also bans people off his platform all, all the time. And, and there's a whole-- there's a, just like any political party is doing the same, same thing, and people believe, and, and when, if I said this about Elon Musk, right? There's a whole bunch of people that will go to his defense, just like if I said it about Biden's great, Trump is bad, or Trump is great, Biden's bad. Whole bunch of people would be-- 'cause they're so convinced of their, their guy, their person is saving the world That they won't have it. But if you just structurally at a first principles un-understand that it is impossible for a centralized system to not control control who says, who says what. It's impossible, i-it's impossible. You get to, I'm gonna spend my time elsewhere, and that's why I'm spending far more time on, on, on Noster today.

Back to the show in a moment. CoinKite dot com are my favorite providers of Bitcoin hardware security products. Now, when it comes to securing our Bitcoin, as we say, it's not your keys, not your coins, and you need to learn to use some of these different tools to help create your private keys offline and then keep your Private keys offline, and that's where some of these devices like the Coldcard Mark IV or the new Coldcard Q device can come in and help you, because they can help you create your private keys offline. You write down your twelve or twenty-four word seed, and that helps you interact with the Bitcoin network in a self-sovereign way. And so you can use these devices easily with software such as Sparrow Wallet or Electrum or Spectre or Nunchuk as a few examples. Now, the really cool part is that you're keeping the private keys Offline, because you're signing in an offline way. So if you're a beginner, yes, you can just directly plug it to the computer, but you can use these devices also in an airgapped mode. So for example, the micro SD card, which is available on the Mark IV, or you can also use micro SD cards on the Coldcard Q, and the Coldcard Q also has an extra way, which is this QR code, so you can scan, and read it back that way, and do your transactions also in that fashion. So there's a range of Security, but you can just start basic with a single signature hardware wallet, and then later think about, okay, do I wanna do a passphrase? Do I wanna use bip85? Do I wanna use seed x or do I want to use multi-signature? So these are all some of the things that are available to you. The Coldcard and CoinKite team are always innovating and putting out new products. They have a range of different products. So for example, the TapSigner is a cheaper device for those people who want a specific, different kind of UX that's also there. A way for you to backup your seed words in a metal product. So there's all kinds of products there. Go to coinkite dot com to get yours and use the code livera for a discount over at coinkite dot com. This show is also brought to you by Nomad Capitalist. They are a specialist in helping you go overseas, lower your taxes legally, as well as get more freedom. And they're hosting an event coming up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 25th to 28th. I will actually be one of the speakers, Andrew. has invited me from the team, and, I'm looking forward to it. It's gonna be a great event with lots of content on the nomad side, but also a lot of content on the capitalist side. So for example, they've got Tony Fernandez, he is the CEO of AirAsia, and so you can hear a little bit of his story of growing AirAsia into a large airline within Asia. And there's also going to be Saftein Amos, many of you in the Bitcoin world know him, he's a friend of mine also, so I'm looking forward to catching up

Many great speakers there, and I think it's a high-level freedom-seeking audience, and you'll find some really great connections there. I had a great time last year, I was a speaker there last year also, so I do recommend you check it out, come and join us there in Kuala Lumpur, September 25th to 28th this year, it's gonna be at the Majestic Hotel, the website is nomadcapitalist dot com slash live. Now, as I record this, it's the 25th of April, in a few days,

Get your tickets soon, before they sell out. So that website is nomadcapitalist dot com slash live. And now back to the show. And totally fair enough, I think, the maybe the The harder part around Nostra would just be, it maybe for now it just doesn't have the same kind of reach and obviously not the same kind of network effect, but I presume, you know, that will grow over time, and I think For now, there's all these different platforms, of course, many of them have engaged in a lot of censorship, right? Facebook, which is funny, I was commenting as well, people, there seems to be this narrative online now that, oh, look how based Zuck is. Or they-- maybe they're not saying it in that, in those words, but they're saying like, oh, look, he's like training now, he's hanging out at the UFC, and he's wearing a black shirt with a gold chain, and, you know, and look, my guess is he

Hey, you know, everyone's seen that meme of him drinking the water like a robot, and he's trying to change his perception in the public, and so you can sort of see, that angle where he's trying to, you know, fix his public reputation, and, despite being a big censor, you know, very censorious during the COVID tyranny years, but of course, that's just Facebook. Then you got YouTube, you got, you know, there's censorship across all the big platforms, and, it's sort of like, where does that leave us Have big platforms with, with, with big reach that do have, you know, true freedom of speech.

Yeah. I was SIM swapped recently, and that SIM swap, and now, now my name wasn't on the account. Because my name wasn't on the account for the very reason that I'm high profile and, and, and so, so I couldn't have walked into a store, I couldn't have called To change to some swap me, I wasn't allowed to. Yeah, when my wife called the, fraud department at, at, at Bell, the supervisor said, "Oh, they have my ID walking into a store." And then she waited, she'd let him go, got him, got him. Oh, interesting, he's not on the account. let me put you on hold and everything else. So what does that tell you? It had to happen. From within Bell had to happen pretty senior from probably within, in Bell because it couldn't happen outside of the firewall, it had to happen within the firewall And, and what it, what that says is how, how much worse this is than we think, right? All of these centralized, things are honeypots And they're gonna get worse and worse and worse. They have to, they, they, they have to. and, and so that will create-- and you're, you're right about Noster today, because there's, there's not as many people there, so there's not as much going on there. It was the same, by the way, as Twitter when Twitter was young. I remember this 'cause I was early on Twitter. and but it's growing, and as more and more people understand that, it'll grow more and more and more. Is, is, the-- I would say that that, that specifically is similar to where Bitcoin is, and there were a whole bunch of people early in Bitcoin that understood This is, this is where this is going, and the more voices added and added and added, and we're still very early in Bitcoin adoption. so we're very early in Noster adoption. But the, the interesting thing about these types of protocols is they don't require centralization. You own all of your users, you own, you can say what you want. The edge of new information, is always unpopular to the central control structure. When Galileo looked up at the stars and he looked outside the system. Essentially everyone else was looking from within the system. He looked outside because he had a telescope. He knew Copernicus was right. He knew that, the, the sun didn't travel around the Earth, but he would look like a crazy person to the centralized system that had everyone believing. Because they looked up and it didn't match their pattern. That, that, that, that, he, he was right because they didn't have a telescope. So Bitcoiners right now, they have a telescope. They all have telescopes. They can see the truth, and more and more people are being granted the ability to see every day. Same thing on Noster, and as more and more people start seeing They also change their behaviors and join us, and the world, and the world, now it's gonna be chaotic, it's gonna be very chaotic as, as we go through. We should touch on one thing, we, we, that we should touch on that I see right now. And I'm surprised people are surprised at, is, and I, instead of getting kind of into conspiracy theory, here, what I would just say is If Bitcoin, couldn't be attacked, it got stronger and more decentralized and secure, and we know every government would try to attack it, 'cause they'd have to, 'cause they'd lose their control of kind of theft Or, or, if, if Bitcoin won, then you would expect every attack, and we've seen every attack, and Bitcoin gets stronger and stronger and stronger through that. If you couldn't beat that at layer one Wouldn't you have to try to control layer two?

Perhaps. I mean, we-- as an example, at the AML level, maybe that's one example where that, you know, governments could try to sort of leverage control at those points to sort of stop Users, with AML and KYC laws and things that stop them, but no, more than,

but more than that, way more than that. If you had stablecoins and you, and, and you could drive a derivative instrument on top of Bitcoin and suppress it like you used to gold, and I'm saying if you had stablecoins, like we know we do, right? That, as, as that got stronger and more people interacted with that instead of Bitcoin and Lightning, wouldn't you have to create a narrative that Lightning couldn't scale? Wouldn't you, wouldn't you have to? And from this, and this is why I'm surprised that people are surprised or confused about what's happening here, because, like- Four years ago, I knew that the, the next attack vector would, would be this. Two years ago, when we invested in a bunch of the companies we invested, in to be able to prevent this attack vector. to be able to build the rails that would be building scalability onto Bitcoin, so you didn't have to transact within that other system that could, that, that could do it. So just think, just think through deeply what What, and all of the various things you could do. Remember, there's, there's obviously people that know this protocol as now as well as we do that would also try, that would be incentive to stop it. And they can't stop it from layer one, so what would you do? And, and just go through the, what that would look like, and, and then I use Lightning every day. and, and so when people say it can't scale versus what's actually scaling and talking about what will scale, I, I, I can see right through it. I can see what, right through what's, what's happening, and I'm, and I'm, I'm, I, I guess I'm surprised people are surprised.

Yeah. Okay, so let me just ask a bit on the stablecoin question because there are, let's call it different, different forms of stablecoin, right? Obviously there's, you know, Tether that travels on various, you know, shit chains, Tron, Ethereum. There's Liquid Tether as well. I mean, there's different, you know, forms of that. And then there's the DLC style of stablecoin. There's, let's say, the stable Sats form, which is like Blink, Galloy, kind of centralized, but within that system and using a derivative There's kind of the RGB or Taproot assets style of stablecoin also. So I'm curious what you're seeing, you know, in terms of, like, the stablecoin being the, the, the way to undermine Lightning. I'm curious how you, which one you mean? So

let's, let's, let's start first where, where I said, you would expect everything to try to created a derivative instrument like, and centralized, Bitcoin like gold. 'Cause if you could keep on printing in your, in, in your version, then you could suppress price, through that. Now, let's just understand what a stablecoin is, at least tied to monetary f-- fiat instrument. It is a trade-off, a volatility? To guarantee you lose money.

Yeah. Right?

To-- it's a guarantee you lose money. That's what it, that's what it is. But it extends the life, that guarantee of, of losing money. has to buy Treasuries. So it extends the life of the thing you're losing money on, and there's a massive incentive to make sure that that works That's what, that's all I'm saying. Massive incentive, rather than, rather than lightning, lightning and things that are native, to, to Bitcoin. And if you, if you realize how big that incentive is and how big it must be To be able to keep the existing system running the way it, right, is, you can see all of what happens next through, through that So I don't think it works. I don't think all of this, this stuff for, there's, I think there's forty-six projects right now on different L2s, Cloude, nonsense, L2s that I can't even, even with deep tech understand, like, what is this? It's just trade-offs on a different L2, and there's the VC money that's pouring into this. which you could only get the VC money if the VC money thought Lightning couldn't scale, and you're the thing that we're just going to scale. So, so I'm just, I'm-- I guess what I'm surprised at is so many Bitcoiners are biting on that because they're actually making it worse. Lightning is scaling. It can't scale to eight billion people, that's why we invested in FETI, to, so that, so you could have the super highways of liquidity to- to the, to the cities, but in a way that it was what we're talking about in Bitcoin, rather than some perversion to it, right? And, and I just-- so watching this game play out, and knowing that this game was gonna play out for a long time, it's just fascinating to me. I'm surprised people are surprised.

Yeah, it's interesting, and I think the point you're also getting to, and maybe this is where some of the debate is happening, and but maybe you could argue that that's the, the way to try and stall progress, is there are people who, let's say, bring up, let's say, the purism versus pragmatism kind of debate, right? Because they'll say, "Oh, look," a-and here as an example, you've got like the big-blocker, big-casher types of people who are saying, "Oh, look, look at this re Post out and say, "Oh, look, it's, you know, whatever, two hundred dollars to transact on Bitcoin, therefore Lightning has failed, and this is your narrative to try to stop Bitcoin, and we should have raised the block size." Like that's, that's their argument, obviously. And, you know, that's maybe one angle where they'll try to- Let's say throw a few daggers at the, Bitcoin people by saying, "Oh, look, see, your system doesn't scale, it's not accessible." but at the same time, you know, you have some of these other ways of transacting with Lightning. Now, I, I guess part of what they're trying to do is they're trying to pin you on this idea of, "Oh, I thought you were about be your own bank, not your keys, not your coins, and now you're pushing people into custodial systems." That's not the true, you

So, so, and I think that's, this, by the way, we could spend hours on just this topic, but let's, let's, let's, let's spend a little bit more time on this. Of course, that's gonna be the market, because there's an incentive, a massive incentive to, to get people to, to centralize Bitcoin, right? To co-- the power, power. And Bitcoin resisted that and stayed decentralized and secure. When people, when people say that it has no utility, and, and the utility of- Decentralized and security, preventing all of the, the, the manipulation of money, is the thing that it's, that it's repricing the world? I'm fascinated that people say it has no utility and it's repricing the world. So, it, it has the-- in other words, it has the greatest utility on the planet just in that. And then in other layers, it's building more, more utility. So whether it's, whether it's Lightning, whether it's Liquid, but you know what Roy is doing, you have a non-custodial solution Building, so it, it, it, it is exactly the what Bitcoiners have always wanted in Lightning, in an on-custodial solution in Bitcoin and offering this, the scalability. Now, I understand why that would get attacked, and I also understand that why Bitcoiners trying to build kind of- On top of Lightning at first, might have sacrificed scalability by building every single person had to run their own Lightning channel, and that would, what that would look like in a road network is a bunch of one-lane back way, one-lane, gravel back road, roads. That would have channel locks, right? And then if you were creating that, if the-- because, and if you were creating that and you failed in the market because of it, you might believe Lightning couldn't scale But you know, I know Roy saw that years ago, and so he built a scalable solution with an SDK and an LSP in a non-custodial format that scales, not infinitely, but like in a staggering form to that type of solution. It is now growing very fast. and what is the cost, what is the cost of that solution? Because LSPs, but the, those LSPs, because they're handling so many transactions, they'll be more efficient, it'll centralize somewhat. But the free market will keep it, and then the fees will be better on those. And then if Roy is, is sharing fees with users of non-custom, and you could hold your own Bitcoin and, into that channel and, and gain some of the fees, you could see an aggregation and some centralization on there. But that will be kept in check by another company like what he's doing, and another company, and another company, and the free market holding. And if he took too much fees, he wouldn't be number one anymore, somebody else would. So that provides an massive scaling solution. to, to Bitcoin that isn't interoperable with the base layer by making the right trade-offs, it was interoperable every ten minutes with the base layer that scale-scaling that's, that is already working You can just plug into the SDK and, and do this. And yes, it still can't scale to eight billion people, and that's where Fedemints come in and to be able to, to scale that. So I'm just, it's interesting to watch kind of where we are right now, knowing we would be here? And, and taking steps to make sure that, that Bitcoin would win when we were here a long time ago, and watching, watching all the confusion about being exactly where you knew we'd be. Yeah,

as you said, I think it comes down to, a-and I wanna make a quick point, as you mentioned, yes, I think most people uncontroversially accept that, look, Lightning isn't gonna scale to eight billion today. That's just not, that's not feasible, it's not practical. But also, sometimes it comes off a little bit of a concern troll. Right, because we have so much headroom right now that people could use but aren't, right? Because guess what, they've got a shitcoin to sell you or they've got a, some other, you know, fake L2 to sell you that, you know, it's part of their, it's, it's their incentive to sort of fud lightning or fud Bitcoin so they can promote either their big block thing or their shitcoin or their L2, you know? So there's kind of- That, that's a little bit-

That's exactly why, yeah. That

Many are deep Bitcoiners, it's so important for them to understand most of this is fud. Like, the majority of this is fud, which would make perfect sense if you're trying to sell your other coin or, or if you're a state actor that you need lightning to fail So that you can suppress it. And, and so jumping in and, and believing that, and, and, and, and kind of making that worse is just making it worse. Use, just use Lightning. Just, just, just, use Lightning or Lightning slash Liquid or like these rails are going to, are, are scaling and they're already scaling and they already have an early network effect that's scaling faster and faster and faster. So if you're the opposite, if you're the opposite Right. You have to stop that. You're thinking this

is the strategic moment now to try to kill it, kill it while it's in the cradle. Exactly. You

have to-- That's what

they're trying to do.

Exactly. You failed on doing that in Bitcoin in the, in, in the early two thousand tens. You failed to, to do that. You didn't see it. And now you know the game, and you have to stop it now. You have to, and, and so it's, it, it, it, it's, it's crazy to me to watch this, because we already have the scaling tech that is scaling And, and, and to watch this, the, it's, it's just, it's just interesting.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think you're right, like it's remarkable how, sometimes the- The, the forces can ally in strange, coincidental ways almost, to, sort of fud lightning, fud Bitcoin to say, "Ah, see, you failed or you, you made the wrong decision or, you know, Bitcoin was hijacked in twenty seventeen," quote unquote. Obviously, I think Bitcoin rejected a hijacking attempt in twenty seventeen. Exactly. but that's why I've also been very vocal recently to sort of- Provide a counter narrative, right? Because I, sometimes I think if you leave it unchecked, it might look like, "Oh, hey, the Bitcoiners don't have an answer," so maybe these B-cashers or maybe these shitcoiners have, have a point, you know? Whereas if you sort of make sure the answer is there, because people have memory of a goldfish, right? So they, they, they won't-- Totally. You know, they won't remember that those arguments were had in twenty seventeen or those arguments were had, you know, years and years ago, they'll Boom, the media may run away with that because that, it, it, like I said, it looks like the Bitcoiners don't have an answer, quote unquote.

Yeah, there's an answer for this. There's, there's an answer to scaling right now, and, and that network effect has to be stopped. If you're going to try to, to, to collapse it. And so th-all of these things through that lens make perfect sense.

Yeah. So I think, you know, it comes down to just trying to, trying to speak the truth, right? Like I'm, I, I don't try to lie about Lightning and say it's a silver bullet. It's not a silver bullet, but I think it is very useful. I've use- I use it daily, you know? I use it regularly. Same here. Everyday.

and so, yeah, To, it, it just seems so like out of the blue, all of a sudden there's all this kind of fight about it, but it's important to remember that. so, yeah, I guess, where, where should we leave this then? So what's the, the takeaway for people, for listeners? any, any closing thoughts for people?

Yeah, I would just say the same thing I said before. What I find is when people are aware that their time matters And they spend it on the onus system, and they spend more of it on the onus system, their time and energy expand. That's wh- w-w-why I keep saying over and over again is I was a hypocrite In like three years ago, I was talking about Bitcoin, I was, I held it for a bunch, a bunch of time, essentially, but essentially all of my energy was in the existing fiat system, boards and, and, and other, and other things, companies, that, that was helping. And, and, and I-- and what you could say by that is I had a hedge against the fiat system collapsing while I spent most of my energy in it trying to make more money. and realizing that, that I could see exactly where all of these systems would go and could for, for a long time, and realizing that even knowing all of that I was a hypocrite. It was hard. It was really-- so, so I don't begrudge anybody to spend whatever time they want in any system, but what I can tell you from my own choice to move my time into Bitcoin, move more of my time, it's been, it's been the best thing that I could ever ask for. Because when you're around these entrepreneurs, when you're around people building on truth, and, and, and what you see being able to, coming down the road, I just, I can't believe I get to do it. And I wouldn't have got to do it unless I saw my own actions were, were, were actually making the system that it was going to fail, stronger, over me. So, so now each one of us, and why I try to say, if I could make that mistake? Right? And I know all this, then we probably all make that mistake, and everybody at some point go, goes through that. And so whatever you decide, whatever you decide to do, whether it's a podcast, a meetup group, spending, just incrementally try to move more of your time into the system, you'll be happier for it.

I couldn't agree more. And obviously, I, you know, I do a Bitcoin podcast, I couldn't agree more with you there, Jeff. I think, as you said, it's about the system you give your energy to. Great way to finish up. listeners, make sure you check out Jeff's book if you haven't already. It's called The Price of Tomorrow. He's also, a GP, a founding partner of Ego Death Capital. So I'll put the links for Jeff in the show notes. Jeff, thank you for joining me today. It's awesome.

Thanks,

Stefan. I hope you enjoyed the chat. Make sure you press like and share if you enjoyed this chat, and I hope to see you in the citadels.