{ "episodeId": "SLP237", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "saifedean_ammous": { "name": "Saifedean Ammous", "role": "guest", "tag": "SAIFEDEAN" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:10", "start": 9.51, "text": "Hi, you're listening to the Stephan Livera podcast. Today, for episode two hundred and thirty-seven, Saifedean Ammous, the author of The Bitcoin Standard and a regular guest on my show, rejoins me to talk about his upcoming book, The Fiat Standard. So we talk a little bit more into detail around how The Fiat Standard started and the propaganda that they use to maintain it. This show brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Bitcoin has emerged as a major player on the global stage. It has been significantly de-risked over the past year with major investors, institutions, and companies making big investments. At this point, everyone should probably own at least a little. 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Saifedean, great to chat with you again." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "03:08", "start": 187.77, "text": "Always fun chatting to you, Stefan." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:10", "start": 190.13, "text": "So Saif, I, had the pleasure of, looking at some of your new work. I pre-ordered it, but, firstly, just tell us a little bit about it. What is the fiat standard? What are you trying to achieve here?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "03:22", "start": 201.56, "text": "the Fiat standard was, born out of the, questions that were left unanswered in the Bitcoin standard. so the Bitcoin standard explained how, Bitcoin- Is the hardest money ever invented, and in terms of its sustainability across time, it beats anything else that we ever had because it, It has the highest stock to flow ratio, and gave plenty examples of how this generally means that, you know, this leads to number go up technology, which unfortunately I hadn't had the term when I wrote the book, It, it would have saved me a lot, if I could have just explained the NGU technology. But, because of the increase in the value of the harder money, eventually it ends up dominating the other monies and driving them out of the market. So, given that, that is kind of the implication of the Bitcoin standard, it would be interesting to imagine how such a process could unfold. How can the, current monetary system be overthrown. And so to do that, this book begins, by studying the fiat monetary system from first principles, really, in a similar way to how I studied and explained the Bitcoin standard in, twenty, seventeen, published twenty eighteen. You know, I looked at the thing and I tried to make sense of the economic, properties of it and tried to explain them with, reference to debates in academic economics. and so I thought You know, Bitcoin is a simpler, neater, system, but, this kind of-- it's a more advanced system. It's a system that performs the functions of, money and settlement in a far neater, simplified way that allows us to really discern the essential elements of, these functions, and then we can apply that lens to looking at fiat and, try and understand how fiat functions. And I, as I started to think in these terms I started to realize really this is, this is quite a useful way of understanding how fiat functions. In a similar way, you know, we-- you and I went through a period where we, We were alt curious and we looked into alt coins and read, some of their stupid white papers. And, you know, when you go through this exercise of looking at an entire monetary system and trying to understand how it goes, you know, where is the mining happening? How are the, rewards distributed and, how are the transaction fees paid and so on? You, you, you start to form a picture of the essentials of how this thing works. And so, applying that framework to fiat Would be a useful way of beginning to assess how fiat works, and then, using that as a, springboard really to explain what happens as, Bitcoin continues to grow and fiat continues to do what it has been doing, forever." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:33", "start": 393.14, "text": "So we're trying to look at, look back at the fiat system and understand how we got into the position that we are in today, because I'm sure in- Many cases, people who were transacting, you know, with gold directly never intended for it to become so captured. But how did it, how did we end up in, this kind of situation?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "06:57", "start": 416.82, "text": "I think looking at, fiat in, in terms of trying to understand the problem it solves and trying to explain how it behaves in the way that it behaves, I think in the same way that with Bitcoin, I thought that scalability across time was the most interesting aspect, and, and the most fruitful- Avenue to explore to understand how this thing works. I think with Fiat really the, killer app behind it is scalability across space, the ability of Fiat, money essentially to settle trade across space at a much faster rate than all the alternatives that existed at that time, because all the alternatives effectively were, based on, physical money, you know, actual, metals that you had to lug around and move around and put on boats, and sometimes the boats would sink, while crossing the, the Atlantic or the Mediterranean or whatever, you know, by substituting the Credit of government, which is what fiat money does. Effectively, what fiat money does is that instead of having gold as the native token of the payment system that is international, you end up having the credit of the sovereign serving as the token. And so the token supply is essentially the supply of whoever can draw credit on the sovereign, whoever can issue credit backed by the sovereign essentially. And so anybody who creates credit gets to essentially create, new fiat tokens. And I think, you know, when you think about it this way, it starts to make a lot of sense." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:37", "start": 517.26, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And I think that really aligns well to what you were saying, aligns well with the way Karl Menger explains, you know, the origins of money. He's talking about salability through time and space. And so really what was happening is some of this capture of the system happened because people wanted something salable through space and more easily. But then what happens is people end up using custodians, they end up using, these third parties, and there essentially is a lot of trust placed in that system. And so essentially, it seems as though, as the system requires more trust in it, and that's where things can get manipulated in terms of the price and the ratios, you know, the price of gold or the reserve ratios required or the way, you can extend And credit in such a system. So can you tell us a little bit about the importance of trust in that system and, you know, perhaps the mistakes that were made along the way?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "09:38", "start": 578.46, "text": "Yeah, I think, you know, I, if, if you read the Bitcoin Standard, I think you and I, the way that we think generally, we see this move from gold to fiat as just being a completely horrible mistake. And I think the focus there, i-in that view, which I think is highly justified, is that you look at the salability across time of- Gold, you know, you look at the stock to flow of gold, and you see that it offered us, us, a safe haven, it offered everybody a neutral medium of saving and a political money that was international, it was available for anybody, you know, you could start saving from, the day you're born and keep saving until you die, and the same gold coins can continue to hold value throughout your life, and you could take them anywhere in the world. It-- this was, a-- and, you know, because it had a very high stock to flow ratio, substituting" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "10:29", "start": 629.06, "text": "A, a very high cost to society and civilization, which, you know, I'm sure you and your listeners are, very well familiar with. But I think in, in a sense, you would like it if those, governments and central banks ran these systems based on gold, but if you start thinking about it from engineering terms, it's just You know, if you have gold, you are effectively having to trust in these people anyway. The gold has no-- Once you see Bitcoin, you see how Bitcoin functions, and, you know, you can run your own node and you can run the numbers. once you see how this system works, you start to really think-- You, you can see where the shortcoming of gold is from the fact that just moving gold around, salability across space in gold is Pretty inadequate for the nineteenth and twentieth century. Well, for the nineteenth, it could keep up, I guess, but by the twentieth is when it really couldn't keep up. And, in, in that sense, you know, whether it was the Bank of England or the US Federal Reserve, they did offer superior sa-sa-salability across space. I think we kind of have to grudgingly admit this, that fiat just allows you to send money across the world in a way that becomes much more efficient than- Than having to lug gold pieces around because, you know, lugging gold around is expensive and risky. And if you just hand over the entire system to the government, where you rely on the trust of the government, then the government runs its own accounts and it does its own magic, and, you know, your money gets from point A to point B. But, you know, occasionally it blows up and it's usually bleeding value, but, you know, you can't have everything in life. Yeah. And I guess, you know, obviously there was no real free market competition, like it wasn't, we, we couldn't build a, a, a free market alternative around gold because the nature of its centralization means that you have to be running along with the legal and political, and judicial institutions of the co-- of the country in which you're operating the system. So I think it is really the, the, the salability across, space that is, what gives fiat its, i-it's advantage, and it's what led to the compromise of the monetary supply. And you see the, the story of how, it, it's, you know, slowly but surely they went off gold, and then even though the price of gold could rise, it still couldn't displace national currencies because you just couldn't build a monetary system around gold. And so everybody is stuck speculating on national currencies. And trying to figure out which one of them is going to be the least, worst." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:08", "start": 787.71, "text": "Yeah, and, also one point that stuck out to me in chapter two is you mention here about how essentially the government will manipulate the price of gold in terms of, you know, that's one of the things that they would try to do. And so one idea that comes up here is the devaluation of the pound to allow the bank's reserves to back the currency. And you, you point out here that this would have been unspeakably unpopular. Now, I guess the question then is, do you think people's attitudes towards these things have shifted these days, and perhaps were they more cognizant of these matters back then?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "13:46", "start": 825.78, "text": "Yeah, it's quite interesting. I think about Fiat in first principles terms, you know, I, I, I thought the whole book is almost, modeled after the Bitcoin standard, and then I'm trying to locate parallels for each. And so- I, I went back to the, to, to nineteen fourteen, the beginning of the war, looking at how fiat came about, you know, how we moved from gold. And you see, back then, I think this is a really important fact, that there was no Satoshi, and there was no designer, and there was no idea about where they were headed with this design, you know, there was no vision in nineteen, fourteen and fifteen, as these countries came off the gold standard, there was no end goal in anybody's mind that in nineteen seventy-three there would be no- No link whatsoever between gold and money. In the mind of everybody, the question was, you know, when we return to gold, how do we return to gold? And it was well understood that, you know, the return to gold was, it had to happen. You know, the sterling pound was a matter of national pride in England, and they'd been on this rate of four pounds and twenty-five cents, or was it sixty-five? Forget the exact rate, for one ounce of gold. They'd been at that since Isaac Newton himself had set that rate, so it's been around for two hundred years. It was only interrupted during the Napoleonic War, but then they returned back to the original price. So during the First World War, it was initially well understood that, you know, we, we're going back on the gold standard, and yet they managed to drag this on for fifty, sixty years and never went back on the gold standard. And, we've moved on to, to this, the, the system that really emerged politically out of, the politics of World War One and World War Two and, and not through design." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:35", "start": 935.14, "text": "Right. And I think another really interesting point that I saw from Chapter Two is there's discussion around this idea of exporting inflation. Right. So there's this idea that other countries are using either the US dollar or UK, sterling, and in some sense, the US and the UK can benefit from this because they can unload some of their, you know, they've got more bank hol- This, right?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "16:02", "start": 961.73, "text": "Exactly, exactly. This is, this I, I, the digging in, in chapter two, I, I've really come to realize the importance of something that is called the gold exchange standard. And, this was a system where the UK had, or Great Britain had implemented with its colonies in the late nineteenth centuries, where with some of its colonies, who had, whose central banks essentially kept their reserves in London in the form of, English pounds. And so, the Bank of England, made a great trade on, selling these, colonies. The claims on gold, which effectively these colonies weren't going to cash out, very frequently because they needed them in, in the Bank of England's payment network, you know, they needed them on the Bank of England platform because they were using this to settle their accounts with all the other central banks for buying stuff, you know, this was their, foreign account essentially. And so it was kept in London, and so the Bank of England didn't really have to fulfill, withdrawals for this very frequently. And at the break, at the outbreak of World War One, they had only thirty-one percent reserves. Of gold to back up the, English pounds that were outstanding for the countries that were on the gold exchange standard. So that ultimately was the, driver of the problems of the Bank of England, and that's why they had to, d-d-not officially, they didn't officially go off the gold standard because, you know, they wanted to maintain their, position as the financial center, and they kept on, insisting that that wasn't going to happen. But the problem started because of this, and the solution, you know, in a typical, fashion to, to, you know, to, to fashion the solution out of the problem. what they did was they effectively, sought to export this model to the rest of the world after World War One by, implementing all these new international, arrangements whereby other countries needed to hold English, sterling pounds in order to settle their accounts. And so, there was the Treaty of Genoa in nineteen twenty-two Where the, the US and the UK basically dumped their bags of, mainly sterling. The US did a little bit of dumping, but it was really the UK that had the most bags because they, they had gone off the, they had gone off the gold standard and, in nineteen fourteen, the US didn't go off the gold standard until nineteen seventeen. So for the first three years of the war, the UK and the rest of Europe were Bleeding gold to the US, and, the US only really left the gold standard in 1917, so still had quite more gold and was in much better shape than Britain, and the US was able to go back to the gold standard in 1922, but, the UK wasn't. so then this became popular, the gold exchange standard, just get all these countries to hold pound sterling, and, you know, usually it came along with talk about financial stability and international cooperation, and, you know, we're gonna need you to do your part Holding our bags for us while we print more sterling. And then, you know, this became more and more popular, and then this was basically what they did with the Bretton Woods Agreement, where the US copied the model and took it over from the Brits and started dumping their dollar bags on the rest of the world. It's the same thing, it's the gold exchange standard, where all those countries don't get to use the gold themselves, they get to use the pound or the dollar, which are backed by gold, and they get to have a promise that, you know, okay Paper is redeemable as long as you don't try and redeem it in any significant quantities." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:10", "start": 1210.39, "text": "Right. And, over time they, they start to kind of shut the windows in which you are, are able to claim it back. So, you know, at the start it's kind of, you know, open generally, but then later it becomes more like, \"Oh, no, it's only if you're a, you know, commercial bank.\" And then later it's only if you're a central bank that you're allowed to try and claim back," }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "20:29", "start": 1228.72, "text": "right? Yeah." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "20:35", "start": 1235.2, "text": "1971, as always." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:37", "start": 1236.93, "text": "Yeah, it's very unfortunate. And so, I guess, it, it, it takes some time as well for, for that kind of process to happen. And so, I guess it's a process of capture. And so, the better that your monetary good can kind of resist it, well, the better you are in terms of as, as a society and, you know, stopping kind of a, a cultural and societal degeneration, in so-- in certain respects. It's all- Also, important to just talk a little bit about the politics of like revaluations, right? So there's a sense of when the government or the central bank and they're kind of negotiating and deciding, okay, I guess there's a sense of like, oh, okay, these, you know, you come into the table and you've got this much gold, and so that is kind of like an indicator of how much power or relative strength you have versus the other, quote unquote, players at the table. And so I guess there's like a bit of a power dynamic game there based on- How much gold you have, but that dynamic has obviously shifted in today's world that we could argue maybe gold isn't as, it's not seen as that important, even though central banks of today still hold, some of them still hold gold, right?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "21:54", "start": 1314.07, "text": "Yeah, but I think, you know, ownership of gold is pretty important because obviously central banks still own it, and it's still the one monetary asset that is free from any encumbrance. Well, up until Bitcoin came along, it was the only monetary asset that had that. So it's still kind of a big deal, obviously. But I think, To be fair, I think it's, it's really more about who is able to command a, an international, settlement network. Really, that's ultimately what it comes down to. And I think if you, if you're able to secure physically an international settlement network, if you're able to secure a settlement and, and banking network that occurs that, that allows people to transact across borders. If you have, the security over that, then, ultimately maybe it doesn't even matter if you run it on, gold tokens or if you run it on, fiat tokens." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "22:52", "start": 1371.68, "text": "I guess, or I, I, you know, I, I sh- it's not accurate to say that. It doesn't, it, it does matter because ultimately, if you're running it on your own tokens, you know, we see what happens. It, it, it has to eventually become politically motivated. Eventually, it gets captured, and it's going to inevitably lead to all the problems that, come with political capture of money, that have always come with political capture of money. Whereas if you had it linked to a hard asset, it would be very, different. So I think, you know, one, one, one problem this shows us in the fiat standard is re-" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "23:36", "start": 1416.43, "text": "It, it, it, it unsolves the problem of money in a sense, because it still keeps, it, it, it prevents us from having this one monetary medium that everybody uses, this one universal medium, which is what we had with gold. And at the early twentieth century, you know, gold had pretty much already demonetized silver at that point, so it really was only gold, and so we had this problem finally solved where everybody, everywhere in the world was using one thing as money, and then fiat comes along and it produces all these many other, tokens, and then there's gold that can't be completely demonetized. And if you're looking for scalability across space, if you wanna spend money in the, you know, in, in the town next door, in the country next to you, and in the, the other continents of the world, then you're going to need a varie-- some combination of various fiats. But if you want to, save money for the future, if you want scalability across time, if you're thinking about something that you wanna keep for the future, then you end up having to, think about gold. And so you have to hold some gold. And so this really unsolves the problem of money, because now you have to, you have a much more sophisticated and complicated and error-prone calculation of how much of my money should I allocate for salability across time, should I prioritize for the future, and how much of my money should I prioritize for- The, present for scalability across space by putting it in fiat. And so you end up, and, and of course, you know, if you live outside the US, then most likely you have to keep more than one currency in mind as well. So you end up with people having to think about gold and their local fiat currency and the dollar, and it just gives everybody much more mental, arithmetic to perform about money, and it makes the process of saving and the process of having a cash balance much more sophisticated and complicated than really it should be, because if you had one form of money, it would be the one form of money that had the best scalability across space and time, and then you could just, you know, have that stash there for all your- Interspatial and intertemporal needs." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:57", "start": 1557.42, "text": "Yeah, that's a really nice way of putting it, actually. The combination there of the time and space. Back to the show in a moment after a word for the sponsors of the show. 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This is a great way to grow your savings and earn returns on your investment. So if you have any stablecoins lying around, create your offers and earn interest by lending on Lend at HodlHodl, or if you're a Bitcoiner and you need some liquidity, you can borrow stablecoins and keep on hodling. With HodlHodl's Lend platform, you set your own terms and you put up offers depending on how long you wanna borrow or lend and interest rates. Go and check it out: Lend.hodlholdl.com. Moving to chapter three then, so you've got this, idea of the underlying technology behind fiat, and so can you tell us a little bit about what the fiat system looks like?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "27:34", "start": 1653.52, "text": "Yeah, I try to look at fiat as a digital currency because it is a digital currency, let's remember. It's, something like ninety percent of all fiat tokens are digital. It's only about ten percent of them that get printed out on their, primitive opendimes, which are made out of paper. so I guess, i-i-i-it's still a digital currency, and if you start thinking about it in that sense, it's, It's, it's, it's easier to make sense of how the network works. So if you think about the node in Bitcoin, what is the equivalent of a node in the fiat system? There's really only one full node in the fiat system. There's one sovereign fiat node in, on the entire fiat system, and it's the US Federal Reserve. And that is the only node that is able to, Decide definitively on the correct," }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "28:25", "start": 1705.07, "text": "record of transactions and on the balances. It can revoke anybody's balance and can, add new points to anybody's, balance anywhere, you know, they, they can shut off entire countries and they can, take money from any account and they can cancel any transactions and so on. So it's really the Federal Reserve that's the one central node, and then there are, you know, the other nodes that are There are something you could say that, similar to, SPV nodes, which are the central banks, which aren't really full nodes because they can't really truly decide on the They can't decide the monetary supply of the token, that is on the network. They can't decide the native token monetary supply, and they can't decide, on the, on the record of transactions. But they can, you know, verify payments and clear payments for, for people within their country. And then you have the mining nodes, which are essentially any financial institution or any institution that can issue credit that can, borrow backed by the US government. These institutions are able to mine. They can't decide on the record of transactions, but they can mine. They're not full nodes, but they are mining nodes because they make new money. And I think that's, that's really, the, the key analytical tool of this book is when you start thinking about what it means when you substitute the process of mining in Bitcoin. With the process of lending. In Bitcoin, you do proof of work in order to make new tokens, in order to make new coins, new satoshis, you need to do proof of work. In fiat, you need to lend, you need to make a loan in order to make new coins." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:24", "start": 1823.81, "text": "So with that, it's really a massive power being given to those special privileged few who are able to lend out and essentially create new money. Now, the government imposes all sorts of, you know, conditions and regulations and so on on those, banks and those financial institutions that are able to create new credit, but it is a massive power for them, and, there's, there's kind of a whole convoluted operation. Around this, right? Because, it's not just, like they, they, they sort of mask it with these different terms and, kind of processes around that. So, how would you sort of talk about that, that, kind of ob-obscuring of the what's really going on?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "31:12", "start": 1872.5, "text": "I mean, I think the, the, The reality is that it's just, it, it, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of a decentralized system if you think about it, and, it, it, it, it, it emerges as a sort of, You know, as, as the government takes on the provision of the currency, as the government guarantees the central bank's monopolies, monopoly and the banking monopoly, the government effectively becomes the guarantor of the banking system, and that then means that the banking system's creation of credit allows for, Creation of new money. And so, it, it, it, it, it'll, it means that there's really, it, it, it's, it's, it's not very easy to figure out just how much money there is. The money supply isn't very clear because you never really know how much credit is being created, and you never really know, and, and of course, there's the issue of the maturity of different types of monies and what can count the money and what can't count the money, so the supply is completely" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "32:22", "start": 1942.38, "text": "obscure for most people, it's very hard to, to come up with a clear answer about what the supply is, and there are different definitions. And, The, I'm sorry, what, what was the- Yeah, so" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:35", "start": 1954.51, "text": "I think, one, one other point, that's, also interesting to discuss is, what's economic survival based on? And, in, in, in this chapter, you're talking about it's, it's almost based on getting into larger debt, because you wanna get present goods for future liabilities, right? Exactly." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "32:52", "start": 1971.71, "text": "Yes. This is, I think, the key, the, the way that it just ends up, which is why I really, the more that I read" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "33:02", "start": 1982.09, "text": "y-you see the technological underpinnings and the, technological, realities that create the incentives for these things to happen, and it makes it really look far less nefarious. It's not like," }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "33:17", "start": 1997.36, "text": "i-i-there, there are s-serious incentives for doing this because of the way that the system works. Once you have this guarantee of debt, it, it's, it- It, it just becomes more profitable for you to get into debt because every time you get into debt for something, you're able to, you're allowing the, person who's lending you, the financial institution that is lending you, you're allowing them to mine new tokens. And so, think about it this way, you can, when you're buying a house, you have a choice between either just buy a house or buy a house and mine new fiat tokens. You know, imagine if that happened with Bitcoin, you're, you can just buy, Bitcoin, buy a house with Bitcoin, or you can buy the house with somebody else' Else's Bitcoin, and by buying it with somebody else's Bitcoin, they get to mine new Bitcoin, they bring new Bitcoin about. Which one do you think is going to be cheaper? I think obviously the, the second one is going to be cheaper in real terms, because the lender has an incentive to make it cheaper for you, because they would like it, they would like you to do that, because if you don't do that and you buy the house in cash, it's, they don't get to make new tokens." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:34", "start": 2073.7, "text": "Yeah, it's a very, very dark system that we've, found ourselves in. and, there's a whole host of other things that kind of keep us in this world as well. So it's things like, you know, the fact that we have to use the fiat coin for tax payment, right?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "34:53", "start": 2093.02, "text": "Yeah, you've got to stay in it. It's a monopoly, it's a single system that is a monopoly system, and I think it's, you know, it's, it's a consequence of the fact that it is a monopoly that it ends up becoming, so dysfunctional. But, it's just the reality of the incentives that everybody s-faces. And in a sense, you know, you could think about it as being, A conspiracy in some way, but really the more you think about it, just being as, as, the more you think about the technological incentives there, you see why it makes sense from an economic perspec-perspective and why it just in this kind of system, it makes sense to get into more debt. And in this kind of system, the people who succeed the most, the companies who succeed the most, are the ones that are able to take on the most debt while skirting the line of Profitability and not sinking into bankruptcy. That's really the key. You need to just keep on, run, you know, running up a bigger loan, and going from one loan to the other, and the key to do that is to have enough cash flow to continue to, make your payments, so continue to make sure that your credit worthiness increases, and so that'll allow you to grow in size. And, you know, this is, this is just how the system ends up working, and you can, you can see how it just makes Sense once you've made it so that it is a financial system that is guaranteed by the government, it's just going to end up being this way, even though it's motivated by really what sounds like such a good idea, you know, let's just guarantee the banking system and prevent it from, collapsing because, you know, you wouldn't want people to lose their savings, savings are good, let's guarantee savings. Well, you end up actually just, destroying savings and plunging everybody into debt." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:46", "start": 2206.37, "text": "yeah. With the kind of access Access to credit, obviously, a big, big beneficiary is the government itself. It can become so much larger, and, as you point out, the central bank and the government, they have this whole song and dance, but in reality, governments are very much funded through government bonds, and guess what? Central banks are the ma-- main market maker in government bonds, right? So it just, I think this is one of those points where people who aren't, who aren't as, into the Austrian economics of it and/or like reading, kind of understanding like what's going on Going on, how is the government funding itself? They, they don't see this idea that, you know, fiat as a standard is what's enabled governments to be so large, wouldn't you say?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "37:29", "start": 2248.8, "text": "Absolutely. Government can just interfere at any market, in any good, anywhere, and, tip the balances in any way it wants because it can just allocate an infinite amount of tokens as long as the currency doesn't collapse. Of course, the currency can collapse often, and it does collapse, but you know, until then They can decide to set, you know, to, to, to go in and buy from this producer, not buy from that producer. They can decide what happens to, you know, they can decide to allocate credits to one kind of producers, not the other, and that will completely, shape the, the shape of the, market. It's, it's an enormous amount of power that they are able to allocate, and it's, it's, it's massively distortionary of the market process, and that's the thing that I've- Focus on in the second part of the book, Fiat Life, trying to think of the, you know, downstream economic, social, political, and cultural effects of this kind of system, wherein, a, you're losing the hardness of money, so money is now much easier than, gold, and you know, of course, with varying degrees across the world, but still easier than gold, no doubt about it. And, on the other hand, you're also having this massive distortion effect on markets where one monopoly entity can just come in and allocate infinite amounts of cash at any, producer or consumer in the, market." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:01", "start": 2340.92, "text": "I also really enjoyed one of the thought experiments you proposed here. So you say, \"Imagine what would happen to a country that adopted a fiat standard before accumulating significant industrial capital? This is the developing world of today. Why is that?\"" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "39:16", "start": 2355.81, "text": "Yeah, I think, Having studied this history, I really think the, the start of World War One marked the, and the abandonment of the gold standard marked really a very pivotal point in history, because if your country had adopted industrialization and the gold standard, which usually came hand in hand, you know, by the time you had a gold standard you, you needed a gold standard because you had developed enough of a division of labor that you were importing and exporting so much that your producers could, you know, needed something like a gold standard. So once a country had had a gold standard and become industrialized, that country would have developed the basic industrial base, and had sound money, and then after World War One happened if, if your country hadn't done that by then, which is essentially these countries became the developing world, more or less, because these countries hadn't developed, hadn't developed enough industrial capacity and hadn't imported enough of the modern technology of the industrial revolution by the early twentieth century, and were still agrarian economies. And after 1914, there'd be no more gold standards for them to trade with the rest of the world, and world trade would just get messed up. So they never managed to get to that level of industrialization, and that was a massive impediment, I think, in their development." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:48", "start": 2448.49, "text": "Yeah, that's a really, Interesting point to think about and, and I think, I" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "40:53", "start": 2453.07, "text": "should, if, if I can just add, I think it's, this is from Hayek, I think it was Hayek who mentioned this in some form, and I quote him in the book, in his book, Monetary Nationalism and International Stability. I think he just, essentially he, he, he mentions these countries that had, Never developed the gold standard, and then when the developed world went off the gold standard, these countries were, I think, their development was, was massively compromised by the fact that they didn't have, a global trading system from which to be able to import the capital they needed, and, all of these, things carried on for a while." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:36", "start": 2496.34, "text": "Right, yeah. And, so it, it, it just kind of spells out the importance of the overarching, like, need for, capital accumulation and like a proper structure for society to actually become prosperous. And that if you don't get the right pieces and the right ingredients, if you don't get those, then it, it can, it can really stop a country from, prospering like many of the other Western world nations have." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "42:05", "start": 2525.28, "text": "Absolutely. It's, it's, it's really, it's, it's, it's, detrimental completely if you're not able to have a sound money. If you think about it, the countries that, didn't develop industrially by the early twentieth century, they spent the rest of the twentieth century, most of them, going through one financial crisis and one hyperinflation and high inflation and, or, you know, all of these coming one after the other to the other, all throughout the last, century or so, it's, i-i-you know, these countries that didn't develop this monetary tradition of, sound money and didn't adopt industrialization. Just, by, you know, by the nineteen forties and fifties and sixties, when they were trying to industrialize, the world was so massively protected, and protectionism had increased so much, and protectionism started to increase after World War One, precisely because of the monetary problems caused by going off the gold standard. There, there was very little, problem with trade before World War One, because when they were on the gold standard, you know, nobody had balance of payments problems. If people bought a lot of things from abroad, they lost gold and the other country made more gold, and life carried on. You know, you had more stuff, they had more gold, or the other way around. And if you wanted more gold, you know, stop buying stuff. If you want more stuff, stop hoarding gold. It was a simple economic decision that everybody had. But once the currencies became, Disconnected from gold, the, and prices domestically start to vary, and governments trying to keep the currencies, nominally at the same interest rates, you would get a difference in real prices across countries, which would lead to large movements of capital and goods and, trade, changes. So suddenly, you know, the, the Pound was overvalued after World War One, for instance, and because the pound is overvalued, the British aren't trying to, get their gold out of, Britain as much as they can, because it would be profitable for them to just sell it in the US and get, And get dollars for it, and then exchange the dollars in London. And so, and then the same thing happens with trade. The country that has an undervalued currency finds its, goods becoming more and more attractive for foreigners, and so starts exporting more. And the country with an overvalued currency doesn't export, and so that creates problems for its producers. And so, you know, the whole thing leads to problems in trading that leads to, tariffs and, all these, restrictions on trade, which then really hampered the ability of the, developing world to catch up because they hadn't grown, they didn't have a gold standard and they didn't have access to world markets, and world markets weren't open as they used to be. And so the, I think, you know, the, the transfer of technology that we- Would have had if we had stayed on the gold standard after 1914 would have been, much, much, much larger. I think, you know, the countries of the world, the, you know, the countries that hadn't industrialized by the twentieth century, the developing world Would have been in a much better shape if the gold standard had continued and they were able to buy and sell, because that's industrialization was spreading all around the world and the engines were going everywhere and electricity was going up everywhere and, yeah. World War One comes along and the gold standard falls and the whole thing goes to shit." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:01", "start": 2761.1, "text": "Unfortunate. And, well, I guess there's, there's some hope there though, at least this time around with Bitcoin that, potentially, it allows people to have that single exchange, that single money around the world that they can start exchanging. And I, you know, I have seen news articles talking about, you know, people in, people in Africa buying goods from people in China using, paying with Bitcoin and things like that. So it- It's kind of, we're starting the process of healing. The world is healing, Saifedean." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "46:31", "start": 2790.66, "text": "The world is healing fiat as the real virus. Absolutely. Bitcoin is the vaccine we need." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:39", "start": 2799.12, "text": "and I think another really, interesting topic as well that you, you touch on in chapter three is it's, it's like some of the propaganda that they use to keep us in the system, right? So they have these economic, quote-unquote, facts, such as this idea that Government bonds are risk-free because the government can just print more of it, right? And it's, it's like, where do we, how did we get into this world that, you know, the government isn't allowed to print money, but you and me, no, you, you and I aren't allowed to print money." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "47:08", "start": 2828.2, "text": "Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, the, the, the-- There's been a history for this, obviously. It's, it's been going on for a long time, and it's amazing how there's always this belief that All the previous other governments, they destroyed their currencies, but, you know, thankfully, they, are not us, and we are lucky enough to be under our government, which is the good one that won't destroy its currency. And it's quite amazing, I think, you know, even, even in places like Lebanon, people just continue to maintain faith in this. I remember I was speaking to a group from Lebanon, A few months ago, when the currency had, you know, the, the, lira had lost, I think something like sixty, seventy percent at that time of its value against the US dollar in just six or seven months or something like that. And, you know, after presenting Bitcoin and the case for Bitcoin and the supply and all of that stuff, one of the first questions I got was, \"Well, without a central bank, what guarantees the value of Bitcoin?\" If from somebody living in Lebanon who just saw their central bank guaranteed currency lose something like sixty percent of its value, they still think of the central bank as being the reason that their currency is guaranteed to have value. Like they think without the central bank, we wouldn't be able to have money and the money wouldn't be able to have value. And, you know, the central bank messed up now and, you know Reasons happened and now the currency has, slipped up, but, you know, things like that can happen to the best of us. but, you know, they'll maintain it now at the new exchange rate. And then you- Surely this time" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:58", "start": 2937.84, "text": "it won't fail." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "48:59", "start": 2939.26, "text": "Surely this time it won't. And then, you know, two weeks later, it drops another fifty percent, and you just update the number in their head where the, the line in the sand is going to get drawn, and they just continue to believe in it. And I remember I remember teaching macroeconomics in Lebanon and, coming across these lines in the macroeconomics textbook about government bonds being, risk-free, and, you know, I would laugh in class and I would tell the students, you know, this isn't true. There's no way that you can make something risk-free, let alone the bonds, the bonds of your government. the, the government that had managed to, to destroy a, a power grid, a, a, a, a, and, uninvent electricity, yee, it's not risk-free, definitely not risk-free lending. but it's, it, it's amazing, it's, it's a mental construct that just has to emerge around fiat money where this, The, the, the, you know, the government propaganda creates this idea that this thing is risk-free and everybody believes in it, and then, you know, it continues to work until of course it doesn't work, but, it, it, there was never really a good reason to suspect it works. And fortunately with Bitcoin, there's never really a good reason to, have to deal with it or have to believe it, because now we have an option to exit from it, and that's the beautiful thing about Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:21", "start": 3021.37, "text": "Yeah. and also in terms of the way they wage the propaganda warfare, so it seems that essentially universities and a lot of the economics jobs get, in some sense, captured, because many of the economics jobs are actually in a central bank, and you're not gonna find many Austrians who work in a central bank, right? And you're not gonna find, a lot of the people who can kind of suc- succeed Need in those kinds of environments telling the truth?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "50:49", "start": 3049.25, "text": "No, absolutely not. It's, it's something that's, you know, it's, i-i-in academia, you don't, make progress in your career by figuring out why You shouldn't get paid. you don't make progress by figuring out why, anybody in government shouldn't get paid. You make your progress by figuring out reasons for people to get paid. And so there's always reasons to be afraid and panicky and hysterical about things that can be alleviated by government spending. And, there are always jobs to be had for people who, will wear a suit and look serious while they explain why money needs to keep continuing to be- Printed. That's just how it works. So, this is ultimately what has happened with academia now, you know, and, Professor Larry White has done research on this. I think he found, can't remember the exact number, but it'll be in the book, it's somewhere around seventy or eighty or somewhere between seventy and ninety, I can't remember the exact number. Seventeen ninety percent of all research, done in monetary economics journals has got, the funding of the Federal Reserve somewhere, you know, and one of the authors has- gotten, Fed Bucks directly, you know, from the Fed." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "52:12", "start": 3131.52, "text": "that, that, you know, fresh cantillon, digital token straight in their bank account you know, virgin coins." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:21", "start": 3141.42, "text": "I wonder what the premium is on those. but, yeah, and, it's just such a funny thing, and like, I mean, there's a range of ideas involved. So one of them is obviously this idea of, \"Oh, government bonds are risk-free,\" and then another one is this idea that, \"Oh, national debt isn't an issue because, don't worry, Saifedean, we owe it to ourselves, right?\"" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "52:42", "start": 3162.21, "text": "Yes, it's all we, you know, there's that magical construct called \"we,\" which justifies anything. It's amazing. It's, you know, I mean, I think accountants, should cringe when they hear this \"we,\" because, you know, these are different accounting entities, and you can't just put them all together and say, \"Well, we all have balance sheets, and they all have numbers, and so we're all one and the same.\" Because that \"we\" is made up for some people who are going to spend today and some people who And that's just not the same people. The, the people getting to spend today are the economists with a fake job that tells you that, debt is good for your children, and the people that are paying his salary are your children. And they, you know, probably they could think of better things to do with their money than pay an economist to tell the world thirty years ago that debt isn't gonna be a problem for them." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:37", "start": 3217.37, "text": "Yeah, right. And anyone with common sense can see that essentially high- Debt in the government means that either your children or your grandchildren are gonna be paying for that at some, in some way. They're either paying, you know, explicitly or they're just paying in the, in the sense of lost economic growth and prosperity. But the thing is, a lot of these economists, and you know, just like, our friend Paul Krugman, and the Paul Krugmans of the world, will come out and tell us, \"Oh, no, see, you're assessing it just like a household, but see, the government is different. It's" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "54:12", "start": 3251.79, "text": "These people, the, you know, they get paid from it, so they, they have every interest in believing it. But, it, it, it, it, it bears no relation to reality. But, that's not the way that it works. Ultimately, there are resources that need to be spent, and somebody needs to consume them, and somebody's going to have to provide them. And all the emotional bullshit in the world can't hide behind, that. That's the scam of fiat. It's essentially, basically everybody's being enslaved to their future Nobody is enslaving their future self, I should say. You're putting your future self in debt for yourself, for you to be able to spend tomorrow, and everybody is stuck in that and, and, and kind of, you know, the sad thing about it, well, it's not very sad, but, you know, the, the, you have to stay on this treadmill, even as you start getting more money. Like, it's not like the rich people can just-- I mean, they can obviously, but if they just opt out of the system, you know, they'd be Essentially beat inflation. So everybody has an incentive to stay on the treadmill, everybody has an incentive to stay indebted, everybody has an incentive to continue to, Live with a, you know, w-w-with a close, c-c-relatively close margin to economic problems and economic hardships and massive instability, massive financial instability in their life, because, you know, you're always running, everything's running on debt, everything is fragile, a couple of missed paychecks and, business goes bad and, you know, you lose the business. So, this kind of stress takes its toll on people, and the way that the fiat system works is that the only way that you can opt out of this, no- No matter how much money you have, is through, giving up on significant money. If you don't get into debt, you're just, you're being the sucker of the inflation game. You're the one who's Financing everybody else's, mining" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:05", "start": 3364.81, "text": "basically. Yeah, it seems very much that, you know, even if you look online at, you know, the people who are teaching other people how to create wealth and so on, it's all about how to best maneuver through the debt system of like, how to maneuver so that you can, you know, get into debt and flip houses or do some other kind of scheme that involves, you know, using, the financial system in this kind of, aggressive way." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "56:29", "start": 3389.25, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. And I think if you look at it all over you start realizing, you know, that for, for small businesses or for large businesses, one of the most important components of success is knowing how to manage debt, basically, and managing debt successfully by, particularly for large businesses, basically, debt arbitrage, interest rate arbitrage. Like this is, this is what large companies do Many large companies are essentially hedge funds today, you know, you think about what IBM does, IBM is a hedge fund. They are big enough that they can get cheaper credit than pretty much anyone, and they invest very far and very wide, and, you know, that's ultimately m-more of their business, I think, at this point than anything else. And so really managing debt and managing the process of creating debt and borrowing and lending, is, is the key to success, which I think is quite wasteful, because, you know, if you have Had an advanced monetary system like Bitcoin and just had computers doing the slave work, then we wouldn't have to all be, mining every day by getting into debt and worrying about our finances and worrying about missing, two paychecks and, becoming homeless and so on. You know, w- you wouldn't have this insecurity with your house, with your job, with your all, with all of this fragility because you're having to mine. You'll just have computers doing the mining. Sounds like such an in-infinately more advanced and better system." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:54", "start": 3473.84, "text": "Yeah, yeah, for sure. I guess that also, I guess I'm also thinking now of what people are doing in, in response to, you know, creation of Bitcoin and the existence of the fiat system and, almost some of the recent news we've seen, with MicroStrategy, this idea of trying to issue debt to buy Bitcoin, and obviously our friend Pierre Rochard, who spoke about this and wrote about this in twenty fourteen, I think in some ways it's almost like a, a real A validation of that strategy, that because as you were saying, it's about managing your debt, but now in this world where we have, where, you know, the world is slowly, we think, monetizing into Bitcoin, it's almost like a, a validation of that idea, wouldn't you say?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "58:33", "start": 3513.1, "text": "Absolutely, it's incredible, to watch it happen in front of us, exactly as foretold by, glorious leader Pierre Rochard." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:42", "start": 3521.95, "text": "yeah. Yeah, and, also related to that as well is I think it's that people are looking for an Interest rates are coming so low, and we know that, for example, governments don't wanna let interest rates rise because that would raise their debt cost and their debt servicing. So it's kind of like, this is now the new way to exploit the system." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "59:02", "start": 3541.96, "text": "Absolutely. And really the way that I think about it, you know, when, when, when you think about the fiat standard, when I study that, like the conclusion is, yeah, try and find a way to get into as much debt as you can, try and get as much Bitcoin as you can. That's really the, the, the Bitcoin is a hard asset, they can't make more of it, but they can make more fiat. And so if you're, if you're, if, if you're playing the fiat game, if you're able to get debt, you're able to get ahead with it, unfortunately. But, you know, if you're able to secure with Bitcoin, the incredible thing is that, you know, now we have the entrepreneurial opportunity to bootstrap the alternative to the debt-based system, instead of having to continue to monetize debt and continue to live in this world where everybody has to get- Get into debt and, everybody has to mine debt in order to, continue to function economically. You can start monetizing a hard asset, and you monetize this hard asset by holding Bitcoin, and effectively you're rewarded for this, entrepreneurial bet on Bitcoin through, the significant amount of NGU technology that is, Happening, you know, the, the rise in the price of Bitcoin is the entrepreneurial, call being successful. This thing is rising, and it shows that the value is going up. And so the value of this monetary system is increasing. So as this continues to go up, we haven't-- we, we have, we have the alternative to that, and that's, that's, I think the, the lesson. I think in the long run, and we've discussed this, I think, on the show before, I think one plausible attack vector in, You could think about is possibly that they would-- th-there'd be some kind of separation where you can't buy Bitcoin if you, get into fiat debt or vice versa. I think this might be one way in which they begin to, fight back to try and prevent this kind of thing, but otherwise, it's really exciting to watch this going on, as long as it can, because, you know, Speed to Michael Saylor as he continues to," }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "01:01:10", "start": 3670.4, "text": "see just how much of the fiat, of Wall Street he can get into the soundness of Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:17", "start": 3677.44, "text": "Well, yeah, and as you point out, this kind of strategy isn't available to everybody, right? Because not everybody can borrow at cheap interest rates, for this purpose, right? Perhaps for the typical individual, they can get a loan for something like a house at a relatively low rate, but not- Not necessarily, to get Bitcoin at this kind of rate, but of course, people will find ways and, you know, well, there'll probably be people doing this kind of thing, but obviously, of course, you know, it has to be done in a, as you're mentioning, it's about being, kind of responsible in how people are doing it as well, because the, there certainly are a lot of cases of people who go into debt and try these kinds of high leverage kinds of strategies and end up getting wrecked. So obviously, yeah, that's Certainly, a risk also. So yeah," }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "01:02:07", "start": 3727.62, "text": "don't, don't try this at home and, you know, consult your local, debt doctor and your local bank on what kind of debt slavery is correct for you." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:20", "start": 3740.52, "text": "So, Saif, tell us a little bit about what's ha- what's the plan coming forward with the fiat standard and, w-w-what's the way it's going to get released?" }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "01:02:28", "start": 3748.72, "text": "Yeah, so, right now I'm, publishing the chapters of the fiat standard. I've written most of the book and I'm finishing them, finishing up the chapters two weeks at a time. So there's about twenty, twenty-two chapters in the book. I'm, currently, I've sent out week one and tomorrow I'm sending out And you'll be getting, one of these, chapters of Fiat Standard once every two weeks, and also you'll get Principles of Economics, also once every two weeks, my textbook which I'm also working on and finalizing, and I'm making, one chapter available, every two weeks as well. So you'll be getting one chapter every week basically, one from each, each week from a different book, and also you can have, full access to all my courses. four economics courses that I've done, Econ-- Principles of Economics one and two, and the Bitcoin Standard course, and the course on, essentially what became fiat standard. So for all these four courses, you can have full access to them by signing up on my website, saifedean dot com." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:31", "start": 3811.88, "text": "Fantastic. Well, listeners, I would just encourage you also, I, I purchased it and I've got, I'm getting the early versions as well, so listeners, make sure you support Saifedean as he is, helping, break the We're gonna have a, a free market style of online education delivered in a way that is quite cost effective, I think, and, much more liberating, and I think this is the kind of world that we would like to, have, where people can, do their, businesses and services online, and I, and I'm, looking forward to seeing the next, chapters of the Fiat Standard as they become available. so Saifedean, thank you very much for joining me on the show today." }, { "speaker": "saifedean_ammous", "time": "01:04:12", "start": 3852.91, "text": "Thank you so much for" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:04:15", "start": 3855.07, "text": "A quick note before we finish up, I also have a side project called ministry of nodes dot com dot au, so that's with my friend Katar, that is a Bitcoin education website, and so we're offering free guides there, we've got free YouTube guides, which some of you might have seen. We're also offering some products like paid video guides, and also we offer consulting. So if you are unsure of how to get started or how to hold your own keys and run your own Bitcoin node or use Lightning and things like that, we can coach you on some of that stuff, and it's offered A value for value model, basically you pay what you think it was worth. So go to ministryofnotes dot com dot au for that. And if you're looking for the show notes, go to stephanlivera dot com. Thanks, and I will see you in the citadels." } ] }