{ "episodeId": "SLP240", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove": { "name": "Jimmy Song & Robert Breedlove", "role": "guest", "tag": "JIMMY" }, "guest_2": { "name": "Guest 2", "role": "guest", "tag": "GUEST" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 8.29, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today, for episode two hundred and forty, my guests are Jimmy Song and Robert Breedlove, who are rejoining me to talk about their new book, Thank God for Bitcoin. This show brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Bitcoin has been significantly de-risked over the last year with major investors, institutions, and companies. Companies making big investments. At this point, everyone should probably own at least a little. 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So this is a way to grow your savings and earn attractive returns on your investment. So if you have stablecoins lying around, create your offers and earn interest by lending on Lend at HodlHodl, or if you're a Bitcoiner and need some liquidity, you can borrow stablecoins and keep hodling. Check out my recent episode with Max Caden to talk, where we talk about the process and the risks and the opportunities of this platform. So with HoddleHoddle's Lend platform, you set your own terms and put up offers depending on how long you want to borrow or lend and interest rates. Go check it out, lend.hoddlehoddle.com Jimmy and Robert, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. So guys, I've seen, I've had a chance to read your new book, and I really enjoyed it. so perhaps you guys just wanna start off with a little bit on, how you got the idea to write this book." }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "03:06", "start": 186.49, "text": "It actually started as something like a little bit of a Bible study slash book club, and it started between me and George McHale, and basically we, we got together, we started Studying some Bible passages, trying to relate it back to Bitcoin, and eventually we got to the point where we, we had gone through a bunch of Bible passages and we felt like there was something useful there, but we needed, we, you know, we wanted it to be a little more systematic and open it up to some more people. so at that point, we invited, a bunch more people and we started, studying, more books. the two books in particular that we looked at were, Jurgen Guido Hulsman's And we went through both of those books, you know, Robert was in, in that group obviously, and, all the co-authors were. And at the end, we were kind of dissatisfied with both books because they were just so depressing in how they ended, which was essentially we need to get enough of a political movement in order to go back to the gold standard, which everyone knows is not, not going to happen. So we decided to write our own book, that focuses more on Bitcoin while still sort of like educating On, i-in terms of the moral aspect of money, which both books, we thought did pretty well. Robert," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:24", "start": 263.96, "text": "how about, from your perspective?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "04:26", "start": 266.23, "text": "Yeah, I was fortunate to get connected to the Bible and Bitcoin study group. I think Stephen Cole introduced me, actually. So thanks, Stephen. and we, yeah, we went through, I'd already read both books, but it was really, it was a lot of fun to go through it with a group and just hear everyone's perspective. And I think we just developed kind of a, a, an energy or something- We looked forward to it every week, and then, you know, the Jimmy's point after getting through both books, which are both excellent books, by the way, they just have terrible conclusions. They're just like, \"Here's everything that's wrong with money pragmatically and morally, but the solution is let's figure out how to make gold work, even though gold's failed repeatedly.\" So we're very dissatisfied with the conclusion, and I think Jimmy just threw out the idea, like, \"You know, we could try to write our own book. If you guys want to give that a shot And we just dove in. Jimmy brought some experience from Little Bitcoin Book, how they had collaborated on that, so he brought some, some structure and framework as to how we actually start the process and It's been an awesome experience, a bit of controlled chaos, you know, we have eight total co-authors, so the editing and writing, there's just a lot of, a lot of chefs in the kitchen, I guess you would say, but I think the end product speaks for itself, you know, I would like to think the book is very accessible. we tried to write it with kind of a C.S. Lewis type voice, so it's very simplistic but, but potent in its message. And, and we cover kind of soup to nuts, you know, creation, corruption, and redemption of money. and I hope that our conclusion is, is much better than the other two books." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:08", "start": 367.5, "text": "Of course. And so can you tell us a little bit about who the target audience is for this book? Is it, who's the typical person who it would be a good, you know, person to recommend this book?" }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "06:21", "start": 380.61, "text": "Yeah, so we actually went through this as part of the book writing exercises, you know, like go through who our target audience is, and all of us wrote a detailed profile of who we were targeting it for. I can't speak to Robert's target, but mine was sort of like a suburban mom that goes to church and maybe leads a Bible study that doesn't know very much about Bitcoin. That's who I was writing for the entire time. and I know several women that are like that, so it, it was, yeah, to get into sort of that mindset. But generally, I, it's, it's for Christians, it's for people who've really only heard the bad, you know, like bad things about Bitcoin. So from a moral perspective, they have sort of a negative view towards it, you know, thinking that it's only good for drugs or money laundering or something like that. and instead, sort of present a new aspect of it, all, all of the things about sound money and all of the different incentives that go into- To it, at least that, that was mine. I, I'm sure Robert has a different, you know, like, or, not a different perspective, but, you know, one that's similar, but, yeah, it, it'd be interesting to hear from him too." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "07:33", "start": 453.2, "text": "Yeah, we, it, it was a, that was a great exercise actually. To get us into the mind of our target audience, such that we wrote the book in a way that really catered to them. And that, that was, again, Jimmy suggested that, which I thought was excellent. my individual was, he was a recent college graduate, he had been raised Christian, but his intellectual wandering sort of took him off the path, I guess you could say. and so he was sort of partly curious about spirituality, religion, Christianity, and also partly curious about Bitcoin. He'd heard about it, but didn't know a lot about it. and I think the, the book sort of- Caters to both, right? You could be a, someone just generally curious about Bitcoin and money, and you would learn a lot from this book. I think it's, again, very accessible, very, very easy to digest, and in the process, you would also see how it ties back to some Christian and spiritual principles. Or you could be a, a, a devout Christian, I think, and really, you know, not know much about Bitcoin, and, and probably anchor your understanding of Bitcoin in your, your deeper understanding of Christianity. So I think it, it, it came off Well, you know, it's not so, we're not so m-mired in the jargon of either, either Bitcoin or Christianity that it's not accessible, by kind of a general audience. And I think I would like to just see this getting into, you know- Study groups, you know, we're talking about, they're possibly doing maybe a, a Bible study workbook to go along with this for maybe Bible study groups or possibly in just general, like as we started, just a general kind of a book club. I think this book could be a great first read for people that don't understand Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:18", "start": 558.18, "text": "I think so as well from my reading of the book as well, because it has a lot of really nice, simple explanations of many of the things that, you know, all three of us have been talking about for years, really, but put into really a nice way that, a new person to Bitcoin can try to understand these things. And obviously, it makes the most sense to recommend this book to a Christian, but I think non- Christians can also appreciate the value of this book as well, and I think, you touch on some really interesting themes in the book as well, that, for example, money can be used to exploit people, and yet, you know, that's the problem with, you know, the way money evolved as we use it, you know, today, and obviously now with Bitcoin, it's gonna change some of that, and so you talk about some of the, the consequences. one interesting theme I'd love to touch on, that you mention in the book is this idea There can be no reaping. What are you getting at with that idea?" }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "10:15", "start": 615.23, "text": "Yeah, so for me, that, that whole concept is talking about how, the natural process is that you put in some amount of work and you get something out, right? Like, of course, the work could be kind of futile and not, not produce anything, but that's sort of the market process where, if you're sowing in the right place and cultivating it correctly, then there's like sort of a just reward for it. But with the fiat money system, with- you know, the dollar and many others. What you end up getting is something that's the opposite, where you, you have this ability to essentially renseek, not really, you know, sow anything, but still reap a lot of the benefits. And, and that for us, w-was a, has a real spiritual aspect to it, and we, we point that out in chapter one that we have this ability to create because we're made in God's image, and as a result- Of that, we can kind of create order out of chaos, and we can, we can make something, that wasn't there before, and we can, and that, that's part of, you know, what's satisfying about being human, right? Like, i-i-is this ability to create order out of chaos, to produce something, whereas, you know, so much of the modern world is just sort of rent-seeking and not really, creating anything, not really sowing, but just sort of reaping benefits from everybody else, To me was like a pivotal part of, you know, the function of money is that it, it has this incentive, the fiat monetary system has this incentive where the people that are sowing are, are not reaping all of the rewards that they're due. Instead, it's all of these bureaucrats and government officials and many other people that sort of skim off the top, you know, just a little bit from everybody, but cumulatively they end up, Much richer than they really at, in, in proportion to what they actually valued that they added. So it, it ends up skewing the system quite a bit, and that's, that's what we were trying to-- at least on, on my end, that's, that's how I was thinking of it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:29", "start": 748.71, "text": "And for you, Robert?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "12:30", "start": 749.89, "text": "Yeah, actually, I like the sowing and reaping analogy a lot, because I think that is the kernel of economics, right? It is that we can-- what makes humans unique is that we can delay gratification and save for the future, right? Just the classic, example in Saeed's book of catching less fish today to build a fishing pole to catch more and better fish tomorrow. This is a, a unique ability that humans have, That allow us to cooperate and trade with one another at scale, such that we can become more than the sum of our, our parts. And that's, you know, if by sowing, basically planning for the future, operating on a longer ti-time horizon or with a lower time preference, this allows us to become collectively more productive, right? Which is the whole game of macroeconomics. And another way to think about that is, the more productive we become, we're actually becoming more transcendent of time, right? We, we, we can accomplish- Greater results with the same or less efforts over time. And the net output of that, of this, this honest sowing and reaping process when everyone's engaging in this together, is we generate, you know, truthful prices in the marketplace. the prices in theory would be declining over time because we're becoming more productive, useful innovations are being generated by the market, and I, I would argue it also instills virtue, right? Because we, we, we learn to behave honestly and forthrightly with one another, such that we can best satisfy the wants. Of, of each other, right? That's what the market rewards. And I've always thought that was very, like, even in a secular sense, by, when you become more productive and you're more transcendent of time, this to me points towards work as a noble pursuit, because we're actually more closely approaching the timelessness of God, right? Whatever, whatever God means to you, God is eternal, right? So, so transcendent of time. And through work, it's as if that is the only avenue through which mankind or human beings can- more closely approach this eternity of God." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:32", "start": 871.79, "text": "Excellent. And in the book, you also really spell out almost like a kind of an easier version of the ethics of money production, where you're kind of telling a little bit of that story of what happened with things like fractional reserve banking and the suspension of convertibility. So can you tell us a little bit about how you went about explaining that process in the book?" }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "14:55", "start": 894.7, "text": "Well, the suspending convertibility and like just all, all of the sort of history of money is, is something that's actually really interesting, right? And, and, like relating it back to sort of the biblical references to money was actually really fun. And, as a Christian, I had never really made those connections until I studied it a lot more, using books like, \"Epics of Money Production and Honest Money.\" like for example, the fact that- Most of the Old Testament, there weren't any coins, so they, they always had to measure the weight of whatever, you know, gold piece or silver piece that you brought, and that, that was a critical part of every transaction was the actual weighing and then the negotiation and, you know, how much am I gonna get for this and, and so on. and of course that, that opened a lot of room for cheating each other and so on. And, like later as, as the history, continued, like we, we tried- To explain why it got to the point that it has and why the incentives are so skewed, I kind of wish, we had stumbled upon this, this way of framing it ear- while we were writing the book, but I came upon one that I thought was really fantastic, which is that money that adds more moral hazards is a worse money than one that doesn't, you know, with, with something like Boolean, it, it, it has moral, you know, Implications, right? Because they're, they're moral hazards for the person, for the merchant because they're both doing the weighing of the boolean and also, you know, giving you their goods. So there's a moral hazard there 'cause they can take some of your stuff, for with it, without providing, you know, so- commensurate value on their end. And the thing is, with each, quote unquote, innovation, that moral hazard got bigger and bigger and confined to fewer and fewer people, and that, that's essentially- I wish we had used those words, but that's essentially what we're describing in, in the, in the history chapter about why governments went around this and suspending convertibility was another step towards more, you know, creating a bigger moral hazard for themselves essentially so that they can steal from everybody else." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:15", "start": 1034.6, "text": "Yeah, and I found it really an interesting explanation as well of how you spell out how the banks are essentially getting something for nothing. Robert, do you want to, touch on your thoughts there?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "17:26", "start": 1045.71, "text": "Yeah, I, from a very first principle standpoint, again, if a tool is just something that is intended to increase our productivity, we could look at money as a tool for calculating, negotiating, and executing trades more quickly. And another way to say that is that money just lets us lower transaction costs, right? So we can trade with more liquidity and with less friction, essentially. And historically, gold was the best money for doing that over time. Right? It was the, the, the commodity, let's say the, the monetary metal most resistant to supply manipulation over time, so it best-- it most resisted supply inflation over time, giving it, the greatest store value function, but it was limited in terms of transacting over space because gold's heavy and, and difficult to move. So it was basically-- it seems to me like it was a, a further attempt to increase the usefulness of gold as money. That's why we abstracted it into coinage and later paper notes and later electronic entries. Is that we're actually trying to further decrease the transaction costs associated with gold to make it more useful as a money for calculating, negotiating, executing trades. But of course, this introduced that attack vector, which is that the intermediary or the custodian or the issuer of those banknotes or coins that we had to trust all of a sudden gained absolute power effectively, and they gained the power to do things like suspending convertibility, right? If they were issuing gold-backed paper, they could just sev- For the redeemability of that paper when times were bad or they couldn't afford it. So this just corrupts the entire system because what it does is it, it introduces this gap between trade and settlement. So we have, you know, people trading dollars in the market, but often, right, say high-frequency trades, but low-frequency settlement. So they're not actually redeeming it for gold, as often. And between those two events, between trade and settlement, all the games, and manipulation Corruptions and corruption of traditional finance occur. So, you know, and I would just put suspension of convertibility in that, in that bucket. And that's where, there's another way to think of Bitcoin is very important, is that it's collapsed trade and settlement into a single event, right? We can settle with finality nearly instantly, pretty much anywhere in the world, which points towards Bitcoin's, you know, incorruptible character, if you will, as money." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:49", "start": 1189.13, "text": "Yeah, and also, in the book, you have a nice explanation of Cantillon effects, and I think it's really a tough point to get for the typical person who's not kind of deeply into this world like we are. So can you, how do you go about, teaching Cantillon effects in the book? Robert, you wanna take this one?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "20:12", "start": 1211.71, "text": "yeah, sure. I think we touch on it relatively early on. I, I want to say that we describe it as a distributive effect of money, but essentially when you've-- when we have a monopolist that's gained control over the money supply, again, it's, it's introduced this political attack vector, right? Where they can just do things like suspend convertibility or they can also arbitrarily increase its supply. And when they do that, they are diluting the value of other holders and politically selecting winners and losers, if you will, right? The winners being the first recipients of the, of the newly printed money, the losers being, the last recipients who are, who are taxed via inflation. And, I think we talked a little bit about Richard Cantillon, if I, if I recall, maybe we just referenced him in a footnote, I'm not one hundred percent sure on that, but I think we, we definitely make it a point for the reader that this is something they really need to look into and understand because that is the mechanism, right Which were all being, you know, I would say invisibly or less visibly robbed, right, just through, through price increases, these artificial price increases over time. So yeah, that's what I would say about that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:22", "start": 1282.02, "text": "Yeah, and also I find it interesting as well that if we think from a cost of capital perspective, the cheap capital costs aren't available to us pleb masses, right? They are only available to the politically connected cantillon insiders." }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "21:39", "start": 1298.91, "text": "Right, and, like- The way Safedim would put this is that there's no opportunity cost of capital for sufficiently rich people. If you have a high enough credit score or have enough credit with the market or something like that, the, the-- you don't have to compete for capital, they just print it whenever you need it, which is, essentially like a way for you to get even more money, and not really, you know, the, the people lending to you aren't risking very much, because, you know, they- They'll get bailed out or, you know, the-- I mean, this is why you're able to get loans at like half a percent or one percent or something like that as a large company. That cost of capital, continues going down in any sort of, fiat money system because, you know, you, you don't have to compete for it at all. if, if there were only thirty companies and there was only a fixed amount of capital, then, you know, like the interest rate would vary, not based on, you know, the central Whatever the central bank says, it would be based on, you know, the who, whoever is lending versus whoever is borrowing. Like they, they would set the market price and it would probably go up and down depending on the, conditions, that, of the economy at the time and so on. but can-can'talón effects, like one, one of the things that it does is it just continues lowering interest rates, ess-ess-essentially, until you kind of explode into- Some sort of hyperinflation, and that's, that's one of the dangers that we point out in the book is that it's almost always sort of gradual for a long time, and then all of a sudden everything collapses, and that's not a reality that a lot of people are really prepared for." }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "23:27", "start": 1406.58, "text": "Yeah, I would add to that, the debt-based money systems themselves are inherently predatory, right? Because those that already have the capital to lend, are doing it at interest to those that need to borrow, and when you can- Constantly bail out, right? The, the top that's doing the lending is basically setting the rules in their own favor, so they're, they're, they're profiting from this lending activities, but then if there are ever losses due to a, a fluctuation, say in the business cycle, they're getting bailed out by those same, that the same taxpayers or those lower down the economic hierarchy. So this, it has the effect of widening the wealth gap, and I think we, we argue that pretty strongly in the book. it also centralizes control over capital over time, which And it's kind of like proof of stake in a way, right? You're just-- the bigger bag creates more of the value, right? And it's inherently an unstable structure. So it also, it's just distorting the incentives towards get too big to fail or die trying, which, you know, I think we see that, rampantly in the financial system today. And I would argue that's why usury is looked down upon in the Bible, right? It's not-- and on a hard money standard, when you choose to loan to someone, there should be almost this- Inbuilt interest rate, right? The money, hard money should be kind of appreciating roughly in tandem with, with, general economic productivity. But when you start putting usury on top of that, and even worse, centrally managing and, and controlling the money supply and interest rate, it just, it widens the wealth gap even faster and leads to social collapse." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:04", "start": 1503.98, "text": "And I think one thing, outsiders or people outside the Bitcoin world sometimes they criticize Bitcoin advocates, well, like us, and they say, \"Oh, you guys are so focused on central bank money printing, but actually a lot of the money is made by the private commercial banks.\" and I think even in this book, you actually do articulate that also. So could you just spell out a little bit of your view there on how it is that actually some of the money creation happens in the private banks?" }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "25:33", "start": 1533.4, "text": "Yeah, so the way it works is that every loan, pretty much in the economy, with a few exceptions, comes from money that doesn't exist. So every time, if, if you're getting a loan for a mortgage, and this is an example from the book, you know, i-if you had to do that in the real market, there's not going to be anyone that's going to lend you four hundred thousand dollars at a three percent interest rate over a term of thirty years. They're, they're not going to want to, you know, have a term that long. to want to lend you out at an interest rate that low, and they're also going to do a lot, you know, they're not gonna want to take that sort of credit risk, es-especially over that long of a period of time. Yet, that happens almost every day, and that's because all of that money is newly printed, and of course, Fannie and Freddie like ensure those, mortgages against collapse and things like that. So what you end up getting are all of these, loans that are like- Sort of coming in, like out of nowhere, and the, this, this happens at every level from, you know, your credit card or mortgage to, bank floating bonds or, you know, getting a commercial bank loan or, the Federal Reserve, creating, buying treasuries up from the government at every level. So one of the things we point out in the book is that we're all kind of complicit in this. It's, it's not just the central bank that is, you know, printing oodles of money and we have no culp stability in it. every time we borrow money, you know, like we benefit, because we're getting access to money right away, the bank benefits because they're earning interest, but there's a whole host of un- unseen, effects, second order effects, if you will, where, where, you know, everyone is being diluted just by a little bit, and it's, it's kind of a moral hazard because the bank is motivated to do it, you're motivated to do it, so everyone sort of gets up to their Eyeballs in debt, but you're diluting the, all of civilization in order to do it. You're essentially debasing human savings, which is a way of debasing human time, which we argue is a way of, sort of enslaving all of us in, in a sort of modern take on usury. but that, that's what's happening is that we, because of this debt-based system, you know, we, we end up having to, we're, we're all sort of like culpable in all of the- This, new money printing where just sort of like stealing from each other back and forth, though clearly the richer you are, the more you're able to steal, and the poorer you are, the less you're able to steal." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:14", "start": 1694.24, "text": "Yeah, and also, another really interesting theme from the book is around the impact of fiat money on the church itself. So perhaps Robert, do you want to spell out a little bit of what you're speaking, what, what are you talking about there?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "28:32", "start": 1712.29, "text": "Yeah, I'll try to speak to the last question first. The, the other thing about the, the, the argument that we're too focused on central banks versus, say regional or state banks, it fails to understand that all of the rules governing non-central banks are still centrally planned, right? We're talking about reserve ratios, lending requirements, the federal funds rate at which they borrow, the, the, the original monetary base on which they fractionate on top of, capital controls, et cetera, et cetera. So it all- Everything stems from the bureaucratic decision making at the central bank level, even though some of the money creation is done at second, third, and fourth order tier banks. So I don't think that's an argument that necessarily holds. Like, the rules of the game are still, centrally and arbitrarily established and twisted to the benefit of central bank shareholders at the expense of all other market actors. And it's, it's getting worse, right? 'Cause like today we have the Fed, which used-- its mandate used to work. Acquire it to go through some of these channels, such as like loaning to buying treasury debt to, to inject money into the economy, and then the treasury would sort of distribute the cash. But today, the Fed has SPVs buying corporate bonds directly, for instance, right? So they're now directly, you know, non-elected bureaucrats are directly selecting winners and losers in the quote-unquote free market, which is less and less of a free market, with every action like this. And to Jimmy's earlier point, and we, we- Picked this up in Gary North's book, Honest Money, that it's-- we can't just point at central banks and say, \"Oh, these guys are evil.\" It's actually this, this entire-- it's a systemic issue where we've built a system that preys on our own proclivity. Everyone wants something for nothing, right? So people think they're benefiting from inflation when they see their house, their house, prices going up, equity portfolios going up, et cetera, et cetera, but this is in truth just the, the dollar depreciating. against these portfolios, and then central banks and their shareholders get this perpetual mechanism of wealth confiscation, right? They just anytime they wanna juice their own revenue, they can basically just press print. So it's, we've, we've moved away from sowing and reaping completely, right? We're trying to just reap and never sow. So there's this, you know, we would say a sinful nature of man trying to, to just reap and not sow that's got us into this mess. And I think, you know, Bitcoin and its, with its rootedness and proof of work sort of takes us the complete opposite direction and back towards something, that's more biblically sound. And I would say on how money's affected the church, this was actually not one specialized in, but I would say in general, all man-made institutions to this point have been subject to corruption, right? They, they may start with good intentions, like, which some could argue that even the central bank was started with good intentions. I, I don't agree with that argument, but some could say, \"Oh, we, we need stable prices and low unemployment, such that we can have whatever a stable, stability in our growing economy.\" But over time, the agendas of the- Those that get into the seat of power gradually reshape its rules and, and the, the flows of capital through the institution in a way that benefits their own personal agendas at the expense of, of other stakeholders. And I think the church is no different. It's just been twisted over time by man. And to me, again, this points towards the importance of Bitcoin as, as possibly the first social institution we've ever had that refuses to suffer corruption. Right? There's nothing anyone can do to change twenty-one million. And as long as everyone's following their own self-interest. So as we, we argue in the book that Bitcoin in a way is a system of converting individual, the pursuit of individual self-interest into the generation of the collective self-interest." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:28", "start": 1947.89, "text": "Yeah. Excellent. Jimmy, anything to add there?" }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "32:31", "start": 1950.71, "text": "Yeah, I, I mean, as far as how all this loose money policy affects the church, it's, I mean, we, we go into a lot of how it's affected individuals, and, and the same thing is true for the church. there, there's a tendency to be a lot more materialistic, a lot more, consumption based. bringing consumption forward is, i-is essentially what debt does. Is instead of saving up for something, you end up spending Spending it all and then being in slave for the ne- next X years in order to pay that off. I, I think it's fairly clear from my reading of the Bible, at least, that, you know, like sort of working to save and then, you know, getting something is a lot healthier spiritually than getting it all at once and then paying it off over a long period of time. I mean, you can ask any parent what, what they want to do with their kids, and almost all of them will tell you, like, it's how- healthier for them, it's better for them, if they have to work for what they wanna get instead of getting it all at once and then sort of feeling embittered that they, they have to, you know, work, work off, something that they already consumed. So churches, I think, essentially have, you know, gone down the same rabbit hole. one of, one of the things that we point out is that so many of them are in a lot of debt, largely due to these large buildings that they make." }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "33:57", "start": 2037.35, "text": "I, I Spend, you know, many millions of dollars building a, a wonderful campus, but then they have to pay it o-uh, pay it off over the next thirty years. And oftentimes, like, you know, these congregations will shrink, and then you get into sort of like a, a, a deflation or like, sort of like a church deflation or deflationary cycle where you get less congregants, and, you know, the facilities like, you know, start rotting or something like that, and then you get even less congregants, and Churches that go through something similar where they enter into a death spiral and then they, they end up dying. It's sort of that, you know, it's, it's not very different than what happens, with companies or anything else that take on too much debt or, you know, try to do things too much. you know, we see this in the VC world all the time where, you know, VC will just sort of like make these startups like grow as quickly as possible, and a lot of them just like burn out, right? Like they can't They grow too quickly or they, don't have enough revenue to, sustain their level of growth and things like that, and they die off. and that, that happens like so often, not just in companies, but also in churches, and it, it ends up affecting like the way churches run, a-including taking on even more debt or like using their facilities to, you know, rent it out for preschools or for whatever. I mean I'm not saying that these are bad things necessarily, but oftentimes, like, like they become sort of like a servant to the bank that they owe money to, and that, like, you know, paying back this debt, becomes more important than what their mission or what their stated mission is, which is to serve God. And it, it's kind of like, okay, that's, that's what happens when you bring consumption forward, is that you have another, master that kind of rules over you. And that- That's the unfortunate reality of many churches today." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:01", "start": 2161.19, "text": "Back to the show in a moment after this message for the sponsors of the show, Unchained Capital are building Bitcoin native financial services and they are building on the foundation of multi-signature. So if you want to create a two of three multi-signature vault, they offer this as a service, they can help guide you through this. And so if you just go to the website, you can actually set one up for free with no setup or storage fees if you build it on your own. But if you need help, they offer the Vault Console. service where they will ship you some hardware wallets, answer your questions, and deposit a thousand dollars of Bitcoin in your vault. Now, this normally costs fifteen hundred dollars, but use my code Livera and you'll get fifty dollars off. Unchained Capital also offer an OTC desk for purchases fifty thousand dollars or higher, and you can buy straight into your vault. This is a great choice for those of you looking for a Bitcoin retirement account, or if you're a company looking to move Bitcoin to treasury. They offer advanced business accounts and all sorts of features that come along with this. Also, Unchained Capital are great for orange-pilling your friends. You can send them to the blog page where they've got Parker Lewis's incredible series and a range of other materials there. Go to unchaineddashcapital dot com. Are you thinking about your backups? Cyphersafe dot io are producing the CypherWheel product. So if you've invested in a Bitcoin hardware wallet or even as part of a multi-signature quorum, you get that little piece of paper with your bip thirty-nine seed, the twelve or twenty-four words. Well, have you backed it up in a way that's fireproof, waterproof The Cypher wheel comes in a wheel shape and it's a metal backup seed product, and you can slide in the tiles, four tiles or four letters for each word, and there's a padlock tamper-evident seal so you know if it's been opened. Make sure that you or your loved ones have access to your bitcoins if an accident occurs. You can go and order at cyphersafe dot io and use the code livera for a discount. Back to the show. Yeah, it's interesting how, it, it changes us in ways and can make us slaves to our lenders in some loose sense. Robert, anything to add there?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "38:01", "start": 2280.68, "text": "Yeah, I think that's an excellent point, and there's a quote by Carl Schmitt that says, \"Sovereign is he who decides the exception.\" And it's as if when we become borrowers instead of savers, we're actually sacrificing our ability to decide exception for ourselves to the lender, right? When things get bad, they have a claim on our assets or on our savings, whereas if we have savings and things get bad, we have a buffer. That uncertainty, right? We have money that can allow us to weather a few months of no income or allow us to go into the marketplace and be opportunistic, buy assets at a discount, et cetera, et cetera. So this whole system of central banking that, that suppresses interest rates, it's, it's an, it's, you know, the interest rate is the, the, the price of time, right? It's, I give you money today, you give me money plus interest tomorrow. That, that interest rate is the cost of time itself, and when we- If we try and artificially suppress it, we're incentivizing people to reap and then sow, right? Which is-- that is the fundamental problem. We're, we're inverting reaping and sowing. We're inverting, delayed gratification into instantaneous gratification, and that just doesn't work, that like fundamentally doesn't work, because who-- if everyone's doing that, who's gonna create the assets and services that are, that are providing this immediate gratification? If no one's working to provide it, everyone's reaping immediately and not sowing. And it just makes sense that the economic system itself suffers and shrinks. And in that way, we can-- I like to call debt, it's basically a tool of intergenerational dispossession. So not only are we stealing from the poor in the present, we're also stealing from the future, right? We're consuming things today that we haven't created savings for, that will-- the economic reality demands a sacrifice be made at some point. So it just, you know, it doesn't work practically, it doesn't work morally. And it's fragilizing to the entire system, because when these economic shocks do hit, you know, it forces the collateral that's been borrowed against to be liquidated, whereas, again, if you have savings, you have a buffer against these economic uncertainties. and it's, you know, I think this is in our opening passage from Ross, from Russell, that fiat is basically a house built on sand, where Bitcoin is more like a house built on stone, which is a reference to a biblical parable. And I think if we're gonna progress as a- Civilization, we have to build the damn thing on stone, and today we're, we're just built on sand everywhere." }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "40:38", "start": 2438.01, "text": "Yeah, that, that fragility is the main, thing. I think that's so dangerous, is that when, when you get into debt, you're essentially sort of like taking on leverage, and th-this is in all aspects of the entire economy, is that, when everyone that's getting into debt, and, I, I think we can all agree that pretty most- Things, are up to their eyeballs in debt. We can see that at the consumer level, at the company level, at the government level. Everyone is in tons and tons of debt. But that, like, bringing consumption forward essentially fragilizes you, and this is no different for the church, and that's the unfortunate effect, for, you know, I mean, for something that's lasted like two thousand years, right? Like, there, there's so many churches, you know, cathedrals that were built like over a thousand thousand years ago that are still standing. A lot of the current churches, you know, they, they don't even last like thirty years, they break down because, you know, they took on too much debt, they leveraged themselves, and then when a systemic shock hits, they, they go out and die. So, you know, in, in that way, it's, it's very sort of, against what I think churches should be or what God commands, which is, you know, to wait for heaven, right? Like to, to save up and, and, Building on the solid rock instead of building on shifting sand like, like Robert was mentioning." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:08", "start": 2528.35, "text": "Also from a religious and Christian perspective, some people might be thinking more, \"Oh, but hang on, all this talk about money and materialism, how does Bitcoin help us take a new perspective and have a different attitude on money?\"" }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "42:25", "start": 2545.48, "text": "Well, I, I don't know, if, if it'll be the same for everybody, but what I've noticed with Bitcoiners is that they, they have a much more expansive view of money or, or sort of like, you know, putting money in its right place. There, there's a tendency to like make it too high or too low. and by too high, it's sort of like worshipping it and it's like the only thing you care about and everyone is homo economicus, economicus. I, I can't say it in Latin, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Homo economicus. or like treat it as sort of like beneath you, right? Like, this is the person that says, \"Oh, money's not important at all to me,\" and, you know, like I, I despise money or whatever. Neither of those is really healthy, right? Like, it's, it-- one is sort of like worshiping it and it becomes like this all-consuming greed, and that's not good. And nor is like sort of treating it as beneath you. I, I think the right level of, Caring about it is, is what the Bible teaches anyway, and I, I think that's, that's what we're all supposed to do." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:33", "start": 2612.76, "text": "Robert, what's your view on how we should think of money and conceive of money?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "43:38", "start": 2617.61, "text": "Yeah, I like the earlier reference to cathedral building, because that exemplifies the type of constructions we create on a low time preference, on a hard money standard. Right? We had, these things took, in some cases, two, three hundred years to construct. So you had individual bricklayers going to work every day, you know, knowing they would never see this thing complete, but just fully engaged in this activity that would benefit, the world beyond their own Own life, right? So they had this, you know, through either hard money or through their religious discipline, they had this extremely low time preference to the point where they're taking essentially selfless action over time, and often, by the way, at very high tax burdens, right? Those same workers were often paying pretty sig-si-significant taxes to construct, these religious monoliths, and that's just, I think that points towards how hard money changes our relationship with money, is that y-y-even if you just look at Bitcoin Right? Those that are deeply immersed in Bitcoin, I would say in, in terms of both their intellectual understanding and their financial, positioning, they don't like-- like Bitcoiners don't like to spend, right? We-- it's really hard to part with your Sats just by virtue of them appreciating at, say, an average-- I don't know the number, twenty percent annualized return. It makes it really dissuading to you to want to spend a money that's appreciating so rapidly year over year, and it, it is very- Very encouraging of saving, right? You want to save this money, you want to sell your chairs, as Pierre might say to get more. So you become much more savings focused just by the very simple, incentives encoded into the money itself. And then again, savings are-- is the pool from which investments come, right? so we get back to building- Longer term, more sophisticated projects like cathedrals and whatnot versus the, the fiat, you know, architecture and, and whatnot we see today. So I think Bitcoin, it just teaches you-- I think Jimmy makes a great point that there, there's people that are either just totally obsessed with money or there's the opposite end of the, the spectrum, which are these, I guess you could say, like neo-bohemians that are just like, \"I don't care about money, I don't need money.\" But it's just not, neither one of those is true. Right? It's like, like a calendar or anything else, we need it. It's, it's useful for coordinating human action. and I think learning and studying what Bitcoin is and, and discovering the true nature of money, as a result, just helps you place it properly in your own, your own hierarchy of values, right? Versus putting it way at the top or way at the bottom. It's somewhere, it's, it's very important and very fundamental, but, but somewhere in the middle, I think. So yeah, Bitcoin's just kind of honest Money helping us get money back in its right place in our, in our value system." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:40", "start": 2799.54, "text": "So upgrading from a bad money that corrupts aspects of our lives, our characters, the ways we treat, the way we treat other people. How do you think Bitcoin will change the way we treat other people?" }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "46:55", "start": 2814.73, "text": "Well, first of all, I think, you, you tend to value them a lot more, you know, like I, I know that, for a lot of people in business especially, like there is a tendency to just sort of like get ahead almost at all costs, and this is sort of like worshiping money, right? Like putting it at such a high place that they're, that you're willing to forego all sorts of ethics in order to do so. You, you only need to look at, you know, any, anything political So, ends up, being dominated by sort of sociopaths and it incentivizes that sort of behavior of sort of, this Nietzschean sort of, focus on, getting what you want instead of, you know, figuring out what, what the right thing to do is or, you know, treating each other a little better and so on. so the, and the reason for that is because, fiat money is, you know, like it, it expands continually. but because, you know, there are so many rent seekers, what you get is sort of like a static pie that just, you know, like the percentages change, and your, your focus becomes sort of getting your share of the pie, right? Like it's, okay, where do I make sure that I have, you know, a good job that can continually give, continuously give me money so, you know, I'm not screwed over or something like that. It's about, you know, getting your share of the pie rather than creating A good or service, which tends to be with a sounder money. So with Bitcoin, instead, you know, the, the money is scarce, so we're, we're more free to create, there, there are less rent-seeking opportunities. So you actually have to go and create something good or, a good or service that people want, in order to, you know, thrive or sur- even survive in the economy. So i-i-in a way, like by having sound money You, you, you're forced to serve the consumer, and, and for me, that-- this is part of loving one another, right? i-it's, it's not about sort of like pushing other people down so you can, you can get your slice of the pie and protecting that slice of the pie at all costs. It's much more about, okay, what do people need, right? This is the, you know, essential question that every entrepreneur has to ask is, what do people need? And, you know, like that I can fill for them. That, you know, that they would find valuable and, you know, give me some money for. that to me is much more aligned with Christianity than this, you know, like bureaucratic mess where, you know, you, you get to be a rubber stamper for some permit or regulation in exchange for some money. That, that, that's sort of like a fiat mentality. I think, a sound money Bitcoin mentality is much more, one where you're adding value and that, that ultimately- causes you to treat other people a lot better as people that, you know, you're, you're more sensitive to their needs because it's in your own best interest. It's, it's, it ends up h-helping you find good opportunities in the marketplace and so on." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:08", "start": 3008.48, "text": "Robert, anything to add?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "50:10", "start": 3010.4, "text": "Yeah, the, what we would call rent seekers, we could call them gatekeepers, I would call them even just parasites, frankly. They are just tapping into these flows of value between people, and by, I guess, providing the channel, they're siphoning a rent or a tax. And this may be necessary, right, in, in humanity's early development, because we, we, we need certain standards or protocols to facilitate trust over time and space. But over time, the idea, at least economically, would be to, to gradually reduce our dependence on gatekeepers and rent seekers or, or these, these parasites, because in the long run, they're, they're taxing to socioeconomic sustainability, right? It's just you'd, you don't want to-- you're much less inclined to transact in a system where there's always a, a three percent tax or an unpredictable tax rate, even. So, and the-- there, there becomes this, because they tend to be monopolists, there comes to be this- natural devaluation of human life, right, of, of, of human time and energy, where they just want to keep the host alive, to use the parasite analogy, they just want to be able to, to suck lifeblood out of the productive economy. And this is just, you know, as we've, we've touched on, it's really bad morally, it's just an immoral business practice. And I think, you know, again, where, and that leads you into these things like, low and negative interest rates, which are trying to devalue time. So again, we look Life as a product of time and energy, they're, they're discounting it, right? And not just in the marketplace, but also morally. And so I think by Bitcoin reassigning the proper value to time and energy, we're, we're properly-- it's introducing, reintroducing the incentives to properly value one another. So we actually gain, kind of as we lower our time preference, we gain a deeper respect, I think, for, for human life and, and time and energy. And this gets into what I consider to be the kind of the religious quality Of Bitcoin, where we have, you know, energy that begets life, and we could say Bitcoin is kind of this first form of at least striving to be immortalized energy, right? A place we can park our time and energy that could, you know, in theory, live forever. So in that way, Bitcoin is kind of the struggle for immortal life. It doesn't mean you live forever, but it means you have a place to put your values and preferences and energy and ideas in a, a vehicle that will, in theory, live forever. So we get this ability to project our wills and values beyond our own individual lives, and all of that, you know, all the incentives surrounding that and all of the, the abilities that Bitcoin gives us, I think just really puts a lot of downward pressure on our time preference. And when you become, again, lower time preference is kind of a broader time horizon, I think that makes you naturally become more selfless. You just start to see yourself as one small piece in this grander cosmic game, and I think that's where the love comes from. Because love is selfless action, more or less, right? You're taking action on behalf of someone else, and I think just by virtue of Bitcoin making us more selfless, it's more conducive to a loving civilization." }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "53:23", "start": 3202.59, "text": "I would also add that, like, essentially what Robert's talking about there is fiat sort of causes this, narcissism, if you will, you, where, where you only care about yourself, and it, it almost forces you into that sort of mode because you have no other choice, right? Like, I mean, there are certainly entrepreneurs still, but the, the more you get sort of authoritarian control, especially like in today's day and age with, with all the lockdowns And things like that, and the government telling you what you can or cannot do, and they essentially compensate you for following their rules. yeah, it, it makes you very narcissistic, it makes you only focus on yourself and, you know, not, not care about what other people are going through. And, but, you know, what, what, once you start becoming more entrepreneurial and stuff, you, you start caring about other people, and even across generations, and, you know, your legacy. See and what, you know, what's gonna happen. It, it doesn't just expand in terms of, you know, your perspective like outward, in terms of the world, but also across time. So, you know, your, your view just becomes more expansive in many different dimensions, and that in turn causes you to think about it more, makes you sort of a, a, a more just person that is able to see things, from a greater perspective. Instead of a very narrow perspective of just yourself." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:55", "start": 3295.35, "text": "Yeah, I really liked that aspect of the book, and that's part of where it finishes up with this idea of taking on a grander, greater perspective, and it's not just about ourselves, it's about our, where we fit in, into the broader piece of society, and, I, I found that quite a good part of the book. And so for me, as, as you guys prob-probably know, and many of my listeners know, I often talk about the ethics of money production, it's one of my favorite books, but unfortunately, I think the book was written just before Bitcoin, maybe just released, like just after Bitcoin, so it doesn't include any discussion on Bitcoin. And so this is a great, kind of an updated, if you will, but a short version, the book is, only a hundred pages, so quite a Probably a good spot, good point to wrap up here. So guys, where can listeners, find the book and, where, who are the right sort of people they should be gifting it to, over this time period?" }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "55:53", "start": 3352.86, "text": "you can find the book on Amazon, it's available for the Kindle and on paperback, and we're working on the audio book, right now, and actually George is busy recording it as we speak. But yeah, it'll be available on audio book as well. we're, we're thinking about doing some sort of a podcast series that's sort of like evergreen, that's related to the book, just sort of like discussions. as Robert mentioned, we're also thinking about having some sort of like Bible study study questions as well for church groups that may want to study it. I would say the, the people that we are targeting are Christians, but, much like, your Guido Holsman's Ethics of Money Production, you know, it, it, it is a lot more sort of like, about, the economics as much as anything. You know, Ethics of Money Production has a lot of discussion of like church history and things like that, but it, it's still appealing to a lot of people that maybe aren't familiar with that because they, they still The ethics of, of what's happening. and we, we tried to provide that in our book so it might be appropriate for them. Really, it's, it's a moral argument for Bitcoin, and I would say that, you know, if you're interested in that moral argument instead of just sort of like the investment case or the self-sovereignty case or the privacy case or something like that, all of those things are important, but the-- for, for me, the moral case is what sort of gives it that extra oomph or that extra motivation for people to really understand it at a deeper level, because if there's a moral case to be made, it's, it's no longer just about the money or just about your own benefit, it is, something greater and some, something that's more expansive like we were talking about." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:37", "start": 3457.25, "text": "Excellent. And Robert, any closing thoughts from your side?" }, { "speaker": "guest_2", "time": "57:40", "start": 3460.41, "text": "Yeah, I agree everything Jimmy just said, spot on. I would add that even if you stripped out all of the Bitcoin from the book, I think we also made a really strong argument against central banking. it is, it's just an unjustifiable, immoral system that causes terrible consequences. So even if I think anyone that would pick up the book would at least have some curiosity about Bitcoin, but even if you didn't believe in Bitcoin at all I think you could still learn a lot about the existing system from our book. Yeah, book's available on Amazon. I, I'll be updating it, about it on my Twitter page. And I'd just like to thank our co-authors. So it's Jimmy and myself, I also had George, Gabe, MJ, Lyle, Derek, and Julia. It's been a lot of work that went into this book, but I think, I, I feel really good about what, what the, the, the end product was. So I hope the audience enjoys it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:32", "start": 3512.08, "text": "Excellent. Well, thank" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:37", "start": 3516.89, "text": "Thanks, Jimmy and Robert." }, { "speaker": "jimmy_song_robert_breedlove", "time": "58:39", "start": 3518.71, "text": "Thank you. Thanks, Stefan." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:41", "start": 3520.97, "text": "Get the show notes at stephanlivera.com, and I will see you in the Citadel." } ] }