{ "episodeId": "SLP330", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "laserhodl": { "name": "Laserhodl", "role": "guest", "tag": "LASERHODL" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 8.41, "text": "Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin. Today for episode three hundred and thirty, my guest is Laserhodl. Now, Laserhodl has been assessing the great reset and has some interesting perspectives to share about what's really going on with all the hysteria. So for this special episode that is not going on YouTube, we're talking about what's going on with the reset. The social credit systems that are being pushed onto the world, as well as freedom tech and opting out of the commie tech stack. What are the ways that we can get outside the blast zone and let the fiat system self-destruct while we are preserving our freedoms with freedom technologies, obviously including Bitcoin. This show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin, and now you already know that Swan is a great place to sign up and learn about Bitcoin, purchase it, and set up your Bitcoin savings plan, but now Swan is bringing back gifting. Bitcoin. So especially as the Christmas and New Year's ti-time is coming up, it's a great time you can give the gift of Bitcoin to your loved ones along with Swan's world-class education and customer service. So you can create a custom message, your recipient gets an email, they can claim it in seven days, they create their Swan account and convert the USD value into Bitcoin. So go to swanbitcoin.com/gift to give the gift of Bitcoin this holidays. And if you're looking to secure your coins, my favorite is the Coldcard hardware wallet. You can get this at coinkite.com They are a long standing player in the industry. They are focusing on hardware security with the cold card. It's a very versatile device. You can use it in single signature mode, you can add a JRS pin, you can have a \"brick me\" pin, which will automatically wipe the device, you can add a passphrase, you can use features like SeedXor to split your seed into multiple pieces, and you can use it easily with wallets like Specter Desktop, Sparrow, or Electrum. So you can sign up at coinkite dot com and you can purchase the cold card, and they And other equipment there like the OpenDime or the Metal Seed backup products. That's coinkite dot com, use the code Livera. Are you looking to get started with Bitcoin mining? Compassmining dot io can help here. You can select an ASIC machine from the Compass marketplace, and there are some that are new and some that are second hand, and so you are able to then sell machines back to the marketplace or potentially purchase a machine and have that online sooner. And that might be cheaper than the straight up new machines. Now with Compass Mining, you can send that to a facility and have that plugged in and turned on, you pay the hosting, you select the mining pool, and you then start receiving Sats. Also, Compass Mining are putting out a bunch of great content. They've got podcasts, they've got newsletters, they've got blog posts as well, so go and check them out, it's compassmining.io. And now on to the show with Laserhodl. Laser, welcome to the show. Stephan, it's a joy to be here. You've been, definitely putting out some interesting analysis and thoughts around what's going on in the world of the, the Great Reset and perhaps the Great Reset, which is, the, the fight back, and, would love to hear a little bit about, obviously don't dox anything, but, just would love to hear a little bit about how you got Your focus on, what you're thinking about and talking about." }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "03:24", "start": 203.84, "text": "Yeah, sure. Let's see where to start. Okay, so by craft, I'm a software engineer. I had a reasonable career, a little over fifteen years in software, big tech, West Coast, Silicon Valley stuff, and in twenty twenty, when this pandemic broke out, I was in the, the same sort of cohort of people that were being fed images out of China, these sort of images of people keeling over, collapsing. on, onto the floor. And so I fell for the kind of, that first wave of propaganda, and I thought, \"Oh man, no one is reacting to this, right? So no one is prepared in any way.\" So I started to sound alarms with folks around me like, \"Are you seeing this, right?\" And, and it, it was disturbing to me 'cause it felt like no one was looking at it. And of course, now we know that a lot of that was prepared materials, put out there to do exactly what it did, which is, get this hysteria cycle started. And so, I, I was glued to the coronavirus scenario since it started, and when it sort of peaked in March 2020 is when I kind of realized what was occurring here. I realized what was happening on this earth, what was happening to us, was actually a lot bigger than we realized, and, and it, and it wasn't about a pandemic. It all, and this was about two years after I started purchasing Bitcoin, and the experience was such a, a sort of revelation, it kind of like, it shattered my worldview, so strongly that I, ended up really flipping my whole life upside down, and it changed the way I think so profoundly that I, I felt compelled to start talking about it, sharing with plebs, the journey that I've been on and, and recommendations for how to navigate what I believe that we're actually going to Through, which is a new form of world" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:18", "start": 318.26, "text": "war, like a world war three. So it's like we're going through this information battle, propaganda battle, and essentially the enemy has become our own government, so not our own, but really they, they, these other people, and, and sadly a lot of the people who we share the earth with seem to believe in the government, and also I see a lot of the issues are around the media being either dishonest by biased and incompetent. It's some combination of those, because they've fundamentally not challenged back the so-called political leaders who say, \"Oh, look, trust the science,\" and they don't actually ask any of those questions about things that we know, things like, hey, natural immunity, which we've known about for, you know, how many hundred years, maybe thousands of years. And it just seems really crazy that we've gotten to this place where they've really engaged in a weird form of mind control, wouldn't you say?" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "06:15", "start": 375.34, "text": "Certainly we know that natural immunity is real, and, and the way that we know that it's real is that, seasonal viruses have to adapt by evolving faster than, our natural immunity. So the, the fact that the seasonal virus adapts to our own immunity is proof that our immunity is robust enough to put pressure on the viruses. So we, we know that natural immunity is real, and it's superior to what you can get from man-made medicine. and, and so- Yeah, that's a huge red flag that we could go this far, two years, and that sort of important fact is blatantly suppressed, pushed under the rug. We know that countries like India and Japan had massive success with ivermectin, and you have to use Bitcoin to get around medical totalitarianism in order to import ivermectin in the States, at least. And so I've helped, been helping, Pledges do that, and, you know, that, that alone, that therapeutic is powerful enough to end- This, you know, pandemic, if there is one, even, right? Like, you know, how much of it is really hysteria? But I, I think like, as tempting as it is to get stuck in the, the, the conversation about Influenza, stuck in the conversation about, you know, seasonal viruses, stuck in the conversation about, \"Is this a pandemic?\" When I zoomed out, I realized, to me, this looks more like an orchestrated, campaign that is meant to basically keep us, on house arrest so that the fiat experiment can be torn down and, and extended, rebooted, reset. And so to put that another way, I think that, the, the central bank Basically have been, since early two thousands, been running the world monetary system on life support. I think that we got a hint of it, in two thousand and eight, and they've managed to kick the can down the road, and, this is kind of it. They don't think that they can keep this going much longer. And so, given the choice between hyperinflation, and, and sort of forced austerity, you know, that would cause cause mass revolt across the world, people would flip over the table, they would topple their own governments, and so the states in a, in a really tricky place, they have to choose between that and a war, and, and a war is a very good replacement for that, because what it does is it replaces the outrage and the fury that, that, the people would direct towards, their central banks and towards their governments, it replaces that with like a shared collective conflict, something that we're- All in together, and so, you know, you end up with a, a sort of civic duty and, and a gratefulness that you made it through the conflict. And so, whatever the cost, whatever the measures were, are permissible because it's, you know, it sort of, it can't be helped, right? And that's kind of what I think we're seeing. I, I think we're, we're, we're seeing everything in the last two years is the answer to the question, how can we tear this system down? How can we reset the balance sheets of nation states? Reboot this system, upgrade it, upgrade the state, and start over again." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:33", "start": 573.2, "text": "So I think we both agree that there's a lot of issues. Maybe we have slight different interpretations of how and why it's going down though. I'm curious to get your view on this because there might be another way to think of it. It might be more like, it's like a conspiracy without conspirators, right? It's not like there's some guy pulling the strings. It's more like over time, we've just had this trend towards more socialistic ways of thinking. We don't have strong respect for Private property rights and strong respect for each other's bodily autonomy, and it's like people are just jumping on and seizing the opportunity when it comes, whether you are a creator of a vaccine, whether you are a politician who got it wrong and now you're doubling down to avoid that, or whether you are a UK politician getting busted for having parties during Christmas at a time when the rest of the population is locked down, and now they're trying to sort of distract everyone by saying, \"No, we need to do a vaccine mandate now, right?\" First, your view on that idea, is it just more like every party and player in this web of, of an ecosystem has their own incentive to sort of push things in a certain way, and those of us who are pushing in the direction of freedom and private property rights and respect for each other's bodily autonomy, we just are outnumbered and outgunned, sadly. What's your view?" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "10:52", "start": 652.42, "text": "I, I think all of that is true, and, and none of us are immune from incentives, and but if there are in- Incentives, then there's coordination. And, you know, we live in a hierarchical society. You can't escape that. The Cantillon effect tells us that the closer you are to the money printer, the more influence, the more power you have. You have it because you can excavate capital through money printing. You can produce money. And so that's the, the key influence, the key incentive is, is, you know, gaining audience to these, cantillionaires who basically can produce the money of nations, right? And, and, and so- No one's immune from that. If, if there is incentives, then there's also coordination. There's a hierarchy of privilege as it relates to the Cantillon effect, and that means there's a top Okay. So at the top of the hierarchy, there are people who command great power to produce, extract the purchasing power of the citizens of the world, and they can direct that purchasing power. They can't orchestrate everything, no one can. We live in a, a, a vast, complex system, but they can create feedback loops, and feedback loops are extremely powerful. So the combination of narratives and feedback loops can drive and- Steer society. And so I think what we're seeing is, a combination of carefully planned, unrestricted modern warfare through basically like a government dramatization through a pandemic that's been long in the making, paired with a very good media blitz, and the folks in the media don't have to be in on it, neither do the politicians, they only have to be, vulnerable to the incentive of money. And that's, you know, that's a very true thing, right? And, and so, you know, if, if you needed to reset the fiat monetary system, if you needed to tear it down carefully, a pandemic would be a very good way to do it, because you basically could engineer down the velocity of money, put people on more or less a house arrest scenario, while you tore down the key parts of the monetary system, you could adjust their attitude such that anger's replaced with fear, that puts the- them in a holding pattern so that you can actually take this thing down gracefully. but for that to be true, I would expect us to be seeing, the new system coming up. And so then the, the question I would ask is, are you seeing the emergence of the next monetary system? Simultaneously, while, while we're living through the last two years, are you seeing the signals that suggest more and more, here comes the new monetary system?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:34", "start": 813.98, "text": "Right, and it seems that the- What's called CBDCs, Central Bank Digital Currencies, or perhaps we should call them more accurately surveillance coins or control coins, that seems to be very much the push coming from various central banks around the world. I know even the RBA, recently, Reserve Bank of Australia, recently commented about this. There are other, you know, the EU, Christine Lagarde and other people are talking about these kinds of ideas as well. So that's definitely a big vector for social control, isn't it?" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "14:06", "start": 845.65, "text": "Well, yeah, if," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:06", "start": 846.35, "text": "if" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "14:07", "start": 846.77, "text": "I- I, I kind of, I look to the, the latest and greatest in sort of statecraft and central banking and, and banking, monetary technology, and, and a good place to look is China. China isn't advanced, broadly across the country, but they've ran experiments in their, in their, population centers, and they've been experimenting with, What, what I describe is kind of, it's, it's like a social scoring technocracy, and what I mean by that is, on the front end of their governance model is a kind of, communism, a, a social scoring communism, which is to say, the things that you do, the way that you live in society, they monitor that, so they monitor you when you're on your computer and when you use the internet, and then they monitor you as you, you know, move through space in the city. And they rank your actions, and those feed into, as inputs into a social scoring algorithm, and that social scoring algorithm determines your privilege, in society, things like, your mobility, so how, you know, how, freely you're able to move through society, things like, your perks, your benefits, and so they're, they're developing a type of, social scoring governance model, they even, do things like, so for, for good model behavior, they actually like, promote the citizens on billboards and, and say like, \"This is what we wanna see,\" and for, a bad model behavior, they make examples of those people and, and, and so, that's kind of What China had in the mix, and that was the front end, on the back end, China did something clever. They learned from previous communist, models that collapsed, and they realized, you know, as a state, we can't take over all industry, right? We need to actually partner with industry. and so on the back end, it's, it's, it's like a, high tech fascism Where they've partnered with the industry, and so this, this hybrid model of, of a social scoring communism married with a high tech fascism is, looks a lot like what the West is, you know, they're seeing that and they're saying, \"We don't wanna get behind in terms of statecraft, we need a way to Trojan horse this into the West, we know it's going to be a very-- Well, let, let's just put it this way, it flies in the face of- of social democracies, it flies in the face of republics like the United States who have, constitutions. So it, it basically goes against most Western values. And so, if you're this state and, and you need a way and, and you want to upgrade your model To com-stay, you know, from their point of view, it might be to stay competitive, right? We wanna stay competitive with where governance is going. You have a real problem there. And so something like a relentless pandemic is a very good vehicle for upgrading the state to a social scoring technocracy. And so the thing I would say is, through the last two years, here's what I would expect to see. I would, I would expect to see like a lockdown, house arrest scenario, and then, I would expect to see, something like- like a movement passes, like what you see with China. So, so, movement isn't dictated, it's not a right, it's, it's based on your score. So you need to normalize like a movement pass thing. I would expect to see like gates, like checkpoint at like public transportation, so like b-buses and trains. I would expect to see like a, like a scoring experiment where you're rating citizens from the government's point of view, and I would expect to see like some creeping control over the internet. And, and, and so I said, \"Have I seen those things in the last, you know, eighteen months? \" And, oh, also, you know, I would expect to see like the erection of some type of, you know, new punishment slash prison system that, that, that was tied to the social scoring system, and, and that's a really key part of what they do in China, it's that, if you are, consistently don't play the game, if, if you slide too far down that social scoring system, they'll reeducate you And eventually disappear you, right? And so that's the, the game, the mini game they created for society. And so I, I zoom out and I say, \"Stephan, do we see these things appearing in the West?\" Do we see movement passes being, being normalized? This idea that after 9/11 you needed a passport to go between countries that got normalized. So that, that became a, a, you know, that you had to ask per-permission from the state to actually travel between countries, you know, they were able to Arbitrarily say who can and can't travel. Has that moved to be in your town, right? Can you travel freely in your town? And, and it seems like, COVID has been a perfect Trojan horse to normalize the idea that you're gonna carry around some type of pass, and they're gonna tell you if you're okay to be traveling or not. And right now, it's for, virus safety, but it's not that much of a long shot to see that as a policy mechanism. Being used, for environmental justice and so, so these type of things, it's not, you know, eighteen months if we were talking about this, you would, you would stop me right there and you would say that seems absurd. But it, it doesn't seem so crazy right now, this idea that they might extend, movement licenses as a, and, and that's basically became, become a policy tool at this point. And so that can be used for whatever political reasons, and so I think we have seen broadly across the, the West, movement, licenses being normalized through, vaccine passports. And, and this is, this answers the question, why, Natural immunity has been dashed aside because it's not actually about vaccines. Because if, if, if natural immunity be, were to be entertained or, or respected or acknowledged, then these passports don't mean anything. And, and of course that, that's understood, right? Of course that's understood. You can't upgrade the West to a social scoring technocracy, this sort of autonomous governance model without the concept of movement licenses. You-- that is absolutely fundamental. And so, that explains- Why ivermectin's being suppressed explains why natural immunity is just being flat out denied in every Western democracy. There's a synchronicity there that's unsettling. Why are they all doing it? Why doesn't not one, Western dem-democracy sort of defend or, or acknowledge, natural immunity?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:56", "start": 1255.88, "text": "Now, I'm broadly with you, right? I think we've seen some incredible synchronicity, as you say, across various governments in their response to the so-called, you know, to hysteria nineteen, right? Now, one thing though is that there are certain countries out there where, for example, you can buy ibuprofen over the counter, right? And so I, I recall earlier this year, I was in Colombia, and you could just go to the pharmacy and just buy ibuprofen over the counter. It was just, it was surreal to me, given I knew how much more difficult it Ivermectin in other, in some of the Western world countries. And, as an example, you know, even in Sri Lanka, where I am right now, it's actually not that hard to get ivermectin. So it's like a weird thing, but at the same time, here's the thing, right? So on one side, you've got this synchronicity going because everyone's playing copycat, right? Like people in the UK are copying what happens in Australia or Canada is copying what, you know, it's, it's-- they're all copying off each other, they're seeing ideas, and then the politicians potentially just rip that idea and say, \"Hey, we're just gonna implement that for my people over here.\" But then at the same time, there are certain countries out there who are- Pushing against in some way. So for example, El Salvador recently said no vaccine or test, or, requirements to get into the country, as an example. So I'm curious how you see that, like, why is it that we're seeing this synchronicity amongst certain countries, but then other countries are sort of fighting it, or at least not going along with the party line? Yeah, so it's complex. I think," }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "22:26", "start": 1346.41, "text": "you know, so there, there's movement passes being normalized through vaccine passports. You see, in Australia, you can't get on On, public transportation without presenting it. You see Australia saying they're going to regulate the internet tighter going forward. so, you know, you start to see the makings of it. You see in Israel that they are basically saying, \"Okay, now we're tracking citizens with GPS and we're, we're assigning them a score, one through ten, and we can swarm on them.\" So they're normalizing scores for citizens, and this sort of, omnipresent surveillance as well, right? This idea that the state will keep track of View, and that's gonna relate to your score and, and, and, and so there's the, the sort of enthusiastic compliers, there's the cohort of these countries that are like, you know We're gonna go as far as we need to with this. And of course, in Australia, you have these politically correct, I don't know what you wanna call them, quarantine centers, con-- you know, maybe they're hyper-PC concentration camps. I don't know. I mean, it, it looks a lot like you have to go and you're not able to leave. So I'm not sure what you call that, but you can keep your phone. So that, that's, you know, I don't know what to make of that, but that's, that's certainly" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "23:44", "start": 1423.65, "text": "Aligns up with, COVID as, as, as essentially an arbitrary, you know, new, justice system, if you will. It's, it's almost arbitrary pre-crime, right? The narrative becomes law, if you don't follow the narrative, now we have these new punitive centers to, to re-educate you. So yes, you have the enthusiastic compliers, but then there's different cohorts that don't fit in with that. So Sweden didn't really do much, and a handful of- The Nordic countries didn't really go along with any of the vaccine imperialism. They kind of just said, \"Eh, it's at your own discretion.\" and now they've flipped scripts here in the fourth quarter, you know, all of a sudden Sweden's now saying, \"Okay, we're going along with it all.\" And so what happened? I- That one- It was confusing to me. I zoomed out and I looked and I saw that Sweden actually is extremely progressive. A lot of the Nordic countries are progressive. They're, they're-- I think you could call them like fairly far left. and, they've long been on board with the idea of digital identity and, central bank digital currencies. So part of me wonders if what we're seeing in the Nordic countries is a cohort where, they're already on board with the, the underlying, upcoming monetary system, and so they don't necessarily need to be dragged through the dirt, 'cause they don't need as radical of a transformation. they're already left leaning, ideologically, they're already prime for a system like this. So I, I think that explains the Nordic countries. LADAM is a really interesting one because, you know, in, in the south of LADAM, ivermectin was heavily used and, the numbers are really shocking in terms of, you know, it, it seems to have- Helped them avoid most of the, the, the, the sort of health scare and the pandemic scare in terms of data. but at the same time, you see a lot of, you see mixed results acr-across the states down there in terms of compliance to this vaccine imperialism. and then of course, in El Salvador, you have Vuceli, who, who basically went from a year ago saying, \"Everyone will be vaccinated. This is the path. This is where we're going,\" to Now saying we don't, you don't need it for travel, you can come without being vaccinated, and it's your choice. We're gonna leave it up to individuals to choose, but we'll still provide it, right? And you still see folks with masks there. And so, I think what we're seeing is, okay, so this- This pandemic is basically the synthetic battleground that they're using to reset the monetary system, and every state has to place themselves across the risk gradient in terms of how they wanna play it. So it's, it's probably not a super wise idea just to say, \"No, we completely disregard it. There's nothing you can do about that. We're not going along.\" If you look to Africa, you'll see a whole pile of premiers that were assassinated from this- Basically not playing along early. in Japan, they, they said, \"Okay, you know, they did some nice lip service, but then locally, they didn't really comply very closely, and they even doled out ivermectin, they, they, you know, stopped a couple vaccines.\" And, it was two weeks from the time I saw that the, the premier, the PM of Japan said, \"He's not gonna run for another election.\" Right? So I don't know if you got the call basically saying, \"This is happening, here's what it is.\" So I, I think what you're seeing is every office of government across the world is having to strategically place themselves on the risk gradient in terms of To what degree do they wanna play ball, with monetary reset? To what degree do they wanna comply with vaccine imperialism? Can they bear the cost of not complying? And, are they prepared to break away? And I think El Salvador is a shining, beacon of hope because if you look at history, these small countries, there's no other game in town. When it's time to reset the monetary system, you play along, you hope that you're still plugged into the system. After you're not cut off, they don't throw anything, devastating your way, and that's really your only choice. There's no other game in town, so you, you know, you hope that, you know, you, you still have good relations with whoever ends up being the reserve currency, you know, you hope you're plugged into the world monetary system. And now we have Bitcoin, we've never had this before, and so we're witnessing it. What happens when these governments have a choice? They're basically being told, that they need to capitulate their citizens Submit to this new, social scoring technocracy of basically, omnipresent surveillance that, that, feed, social scoring algorithms and then social scoring gates that, that live in physical and digital space that gate, that basically carry out the permission system for what your privileges are. That's what these countries are being asked to buy into. And if you wanna break away from that, you need an answer. and I think that El Salvador is an example that- Well, maybe Bitcoin is the answer. a-and so what they're doing is really tricky, right? Because, you know, the book of business for central banks and the IMF is a kind of monetary colonialization, right? So they get these tiny countries addicted to really, to, to debt, and they turn them into debt slaves, and, and, then when they need something, they need to reset the monetary system, they need to upgrade statecraft to the world, it puts these governments in a terrible position. and so you're left saying, \"Do I have to actually sell out my people's sovereignty to this world order? Or can I push back and say, 'No, I'm gonna protect my people,' and, and without something like a Bitcoin, well, I'm not sure what you would do?\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:49", "start": 1788.97, "text": "Right, yeah, and I think it's also interesting to see the shift in prevailing attitudes, right? Like it's in March of twenty twenty, most lo-- a lot of people were panicking, and then that may have spurred even more authoritarianism by the politicians, but then it's almost like maybe there's a feedback loop because, because they started doing lockdowns, they started to drive it into the pol-- into the minds of the public, \"Hey, this is serious,\" quote unquote, and so then the public, beca- in the- They're panic now start demanding more panicker policies from their politicians and kind of go along with what these unelected bureaucrats, saying, the health, you know, technocrats of the world. So my question then is, of course, I'm all about Bitcoin, I think Bitcoin is a big part of the answer. Do you think there's also hope in educating and convincing the masses, or at least th- those who can be convinced, right? Like, you might have that kind of twenty or thirty percent over on the side who are just lost, but perhaps people in the middle and people who are more freedom-loving can be spoken to and educated about actually the real level of risk, around hysteria and that versus the risks of all the authoritarianism Cronism that is coming here and is coming. Well, I don't subscribe to the idea that there's a" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "31:07", "start": 1867.17, "text": "small cabal of, of individuals that are orchestrating this and, and that against the world's interests. I think that governments are a, a fairly good reflection of the culture of the world, and I think there's been a, a trend towards, like, I call it like a safe space maximalism. It's basically, demanding that, the, the shared- societal space be made safe at, at any cost, and, and not only safe from like a physical, harm, but also safe from like, offense, like offensive ideas and, and anything that would be labeled like a, a bigotry. And so, it's almost like a, like a, a postmodern, safe space maximalism where instead of raising folks to, to have thick skin and, and, and so that they can contend with a, a tough and unforgiving world, we're demanding that governments wrap every- Everything in bubble wrap, right? As a people, we've become, almost like, like a, like emotional hemophiliacs, right? Like any little thing, will hurt our feelings and make us bleed. and I think that culturally, I think that that's probably where we are. So, so I, I don't, you know, I think that we, our culture manifests in the state, and, and, and that can create a feedback loop where if there's a broad fear of danger, that you essentially demand Over and over to tighten the grip on us until we're safe. And, and I, I'm not sure that-- I go back and forth. I, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm a big fan of, of cycle theory. So if, if you zoom out and you look, you see that a lot of this is coinciding with, with cycles, big and small. when, when you zoom in, there's, there's a debt cycle that's turning over, a small debt cycle, but also the large debt cycle that Ray Dalio speaks of." }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "33:02", "start": 1982.38, "text": "It can't work anymore, nation states won't be able to service the debt any longer, so the books are broken, they need to be, cleared, and, and they need to restart this, system over, and, and I'm guessing part of what's going on is they see that as an opportunity to upgrade it and restart it, right? They don't wanna restart it to the old system, they, they see that they have, CBDCs, ready to go, they see that there's been great advancements with computers and, and sort of things, and so they see there's an opportunity to sort of, instrument society such that you can keep track of the citizenry, and you can, you know, you could, I could steelman it, and you could say in order to service your civilians, 'cause they're demanding a safe space, right? So you could say it's in order to provide that, you know, the West looks at China and they see that China has great control over the internet, and, and you could argue that, that's maybe to protect their citizens from, you know, so that they can carefully And, and, and provide that maximal safe space, right? So you can make that argument, and, and that's probably what they think. I mean, I, I think most people believe they're, they are good actors, right? So they, they, they believe in the problems they're solving, and I don't think there's a cabal. I think it's probably more something like, like a cartel, probably like a, like a hundred fifty, families that, are the majority shareholders of central banks that tasked themselves with shaping and, and steering the highest order societal narratives that we all kind of live by, our truths, and they work along the lines of these cycles. So as they see that the, the debt cycles coming close, they go, \"Okay, we need an answer for that, 'cause we're gonna have to reset the whole system.\" So they start Think thinking it, they start war gaming it, they start thinking of, okay, so how are we gonna pull this off? I don't think that, you know, nuclear war could work. I think, you know, too many countries have n-nuclear at this point. The collateral damage is so, expensive. If you think about the central banks as a business, you don't really want to wreak that much collateral damage across your balance sheet. So, something cleaner would be a lot more ideal. So I think for the last, you know, couple decades, they Like, okay, how are we gonna tear down the last debt cycle in a way that would be palatable is the wrong word, but possible is probably the better word, let's say. Feasible, let's say. Feasible, like how, how could we actually do it and what are we gonna upgrade it to, right? 'Cause we're not gonna start the same thing over, we need to take advantage of the state of the art of governance and technology that's out there. So, I think the- That's kind of what I, ha-ha, what, what I see happening. But the thing is, is, is that doesn't mean that they're acting against, like, that they don't believe what they're doing. I think like society is largely, turned into a culture of say, space maximalism and, and is demanding this, of their statesmen. And so I think from their point of view, they're like, \"This is the way, right? \" You know? And, but that isn't to say there isn't a growing faction of freedom are terrified right now. They see that, we are on the, the edge of an inflection point that we might not be able to come back from in terms of permanent loss of autonomy of the individual from being able to say what goes in your body, being able to reject forced medicine, from being able to travel freely, even in the small sense, like in your town, right? So, of, of being able to go online and communicate with your friends Friends and loved ones in a way where that, you know, in a way where you have privacy, right? Where that isn't going to feed into your social score and affect your quality of life or if you're, reeducated, for example. The, the permanent loss of the ability to ever topple your government if it, becomes, if it crosses the line in terms of what is good for humanity or not, the, the permanent loss of that. So you have these people who, the permanent loss of the ability to save And store wealth in your family so that you could actually build a family that survives multiple generations and stands for something that you decide what it stands for. So, I, I think I, I paint kind of like a bleak picture, but I, I'm not bleak, I'm, I'm actually extremely hopeful and I'm generally like a white pilled person because, well, I, I think like freedom maximalists, I, I don't think we show up to the party till late in the game, and I think the, the folks on the other end, the majority of citizens who are, This is the way. I don't think they really stand a chance when people who actually care about freedom finally stand up and say, \"You know what? We're not having it anymore.\" And, and of course, I mean through peaceful means, 'cause I think peaceful means are the best way, to preserve freedom and, and it's, it's all about like defense, like gazing for, for outsized defense. And so like, Bitcoin is just a beautiful example of a technology that lets you say no in a very elegant way and a very safe, Peaceful way, you can basically say, \"You know what? My family's life savings isn't going to be used to bail out the world. you're not going to excavate our time, you're not going to send my dad and my uncles back to work. You know, you're not going to take away my retirement. you're not going to do all this under the guise of keeping people safe so that you can reset the monetary system.\" And, and so it lets you say no, and it lets you take charge of your own house. Holds direction. And I started to see these two things. I held the Great Reset in one hand, and I held the Bitcoin in the other hand, and I realized, like, maybe Bitcoin is teaching us. Like, maybe it's teaching us to become so expensive to tyranny that they lose." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:56", "start": 2336.42, "text": "I think that's a big part of the answer. So of course, I'm all about Bitcoin. I think it is the most important technology for anyone who's concerned with freedom or liberty, but it's probably not the only one. I, I think it's, you know, it's open source. Software, open source hardware, ideally, that will help us in terms of giving those people who want freedom the ability to keep some of that freedom, at least in, in a time when the rest of the world is losing their minds and going crazy about hysteria and about, you know, who knows what's next, whether it's climate lockdowns and so on. But in terms of Bitcoin and technology, what are the key technologies in your mind that the freedom lovers should be using?" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "39:40", "start": 2379.57, "text": "I think like the, the hysteria loop, the purpose is, and it'll probably go on the rest of this decade. I, I, I suspect that it might peak around twenty twenty-five, but the, the basic gist is they wanna keep you on your knees so that communism can be made to look like salvation, right? So that you can say, \"You know what? I give up. Give me communism. Give me whatever it is you planned so I can be done with this.\" And they wanna drain you of your energy and spirit, so that you just capitulate. and, Is, you know, you should behave as if your kids are gonna be reliving twenty twenty permanently, unless you make your household expensive to tyranny. And so Bitcoin is the first step, I mean For me, we, we put everything in the Bitcoin, and we've been holding, it for several years, and, and I, I can't tell you the, you know, how well we sleep knowing that our time is protected. And, and, you know, I got a lot of flack from friends and family a couple years ago when I started doing this, when I went to that degree in, they said, \"You know, Bitcoin every...\" You know, they looked at the data and they said, \"Okay, every four years, you know, it could go down eighty percent And I said, \"Well, I mean, sure, you could have, you know, a little bit of a gut check in one year, but if you zoom out, it averages over two hundred percent a year. And so, you know, do your time, and once you're above water, you're feeling pretty good, and to the degree where even if-- you know, to the point where even if you, the prospects of an eighty percent are not the end of the world, eighty percent down, that doesn't really bother me any. And now when I talk to them, it's Increase by nearly forty percent in the last eighteen months, right? So now they're saying, and they know from history, they know from like looking at Weimar, there's an inflection point. When you pass it, you can't print less, right? Because the, the purchasing power of the money is, is, is disintegrating, so you need to print more and more in order to create the same purchasing power to prevent the, the government from collapsing, to prevent it all from collapsing, the whole system. So, so now it's like an easier proposition to say, \"Oh, maybe Maybe that eighty per-- that eighty percent every four years isn't as bad as, you know, losing half your purchasing power every year. I'd rather, I'd rather gain an average of two hundred percent every year than lose half guaranteed every year. So, you know, Bitcoin is, is certainly, the base layer for making yourself expensive to tyranny. You could protect your time, your kids' time. You have, you know, you know you can store wealth for thousands of years, so immediately you can check the box of, \"Can I build a, a household?\" The ages. It's like, okay, done. That's really, really critical for hope, right? 'Cause that gives you a lot of hope that you could say, \"Oh man, I can, you know, I'm making the, the Livera household and, you know, what's my family crest? And what, you know, what, what are we gonna be doing? You know, what is our story? \" You can actually start thinking about that, and Bitcoin, you know, takes your mind in that direction. But it's, it's not enough, you know? Bitcoin kind order of business is just becoming expensive to tyranny, and, and, and just looking at your life and say, \"Well, where am I very affordable to tyranny?\" Right? And I talked a lot about like physically, and there's a lot of common sense stuff, right? A lot of the, the plan governments have, i-it revolves around like putting people into, they're calling them smart cities, because that's where they can deploy in a cost-effective way these omnipresent surveillance and social scoring systems, right? They can get you in there There and, also if you're trying to, to move to more of like a freemium model where, you know, pods are free and, so-soy food is free, well, you know, you can't have people spread out, they need to be compacted so that you can make that work. And so, like, the, the obvious thing is, you know, probably, there's some obvious physical things like probably don't be in the city, like if you're in a town that, that you don't see and feel the pandemic" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "43:51", "start": 2631.1, "text": "It's like a very good proxy for freedom. Like if you see a lot of COVID everywhere, that's probably a good signal that you're not in the right place, and the less you see it, the more freedom you have. But that's not where it begins and ends. really, this is a, a different, like, world war in the sense that it's not boots on the ground Right? A lot of it, you know, they're coming through digitally, right? So the, the, they can reach out to you digitally, and the system of government-- governance that they're, that they're aiming for is a digital autonomous governance, right? Where, where, where basically, it's a statecraft where you employ a bunch of engineers that manage, social scoring algorithms, and then once you get social scoring gates installed physically, and digitally, so in terms of being able to log onto the internet and it- Kind of does the rest because the incentives are so strong that you can basically control how people act. And so a lot of what you need to do to become expensive to tyranny is simply opt out. And this is tongue in cheek, I've been calling it like the commie stack, opt out of the commie stack. I know that's, you know, a little, flagrant, but what I mean by that is, so remember when I talked about what China learned about the collapse of previous communist systems is they had to partner with industry. They needed a high, a high And what you can see in the West is that, you know, if you're not on Main Street, if you're on Wall Street or big tech, you're thrilled with the pandemic because You know, the reason that you're excited, not only because money printing is, is pumping up your assets, you know, it's keeping you afloat and making you wealthier, through time theft, but also, you're being courted by the state in order to partner on the next form of governance. And so you're really excited because you're gonna work on, you know, the digital identity that people will scan their face to log into the internet with, right? You're gonna work on the social scoring algorithms, that will decide how much freedom people have or Or if they, you know, or if the government needs to go pick 'em up, right? So, you know, these companies are, they're looking at getting awarded forever monopolies, which is, you know, every cronyist dream is to, they don't have to compete anymore, they have permanent access to, customers. And so my, my general view is like Google, is, is they kind of discarded their \"Do Not Be Evil\" slogan and, and now you kind of know why, right? You, you can see that they're essentially a, a component Of the state in terms of the way that they feed, the, the, their corporate surveillance into the state, through Gmail, through Google, the way that they censor, the way that they, do everything that they can to craft a profile about you, know who you are, and then that can be directly fed into social scoring systems. So a Google, I would say, is like, it's not a good idea to sacrifice your digital sovereignty by projecting your person into Google, by telling- I think that's really not a wise move for families who want to keep or improve sovereignty in the future, and I think that, that really matters. that is one of the key ways that China knows what people are doing, what they're thinking. It's through their big tech, Google equivalent. And so Google is thrilled at a chance to get a forever monopoly doing that. and so, you know, just basic stuff, maybe move to like a smaller search engine like a DuckDuckGo. Someone who thinks that, you know, who, who- proclaims to care about privacy, maybe move your email to like a ProtonMail instead of a Gmail. Just a disclaimer, email cannot be secured, that protocol is beyond repair, the actual emails get vacuumed off the internet backbone directly, so there's, there's not a darn thing any email provider can do that would give you privacy from the state. However, you can neuter, you can neuter corporate surveillance, right? You can cut Google out, you can cut the ad networks out, you can cut all the people that are- Monetize, monetizing your behavior and building a profile of who you are, and that's worth it. For like actual communications with people, like, you know, not just logging into accounts and doing, commerce, which I, you, you can't escape email from, when you're actually communicating with like friends and, and people you like and family, move that to end-to-end encrypted chat apps, and there's lots of really good options for like my friends and family people, I already have their phone numbers and they have mine. I, it's very- Very easy to, upsell them to Signal, right? 'Cause you already have each other's number, you can actually receive your, your standard unsecured text messages directly in Signal, and you could just shoot them an invite, say, \"Hey, let's continue this conversation in Signal.\" I, I had my grandma on it, I have my, my family on it. It's very easy. So for in-person contacts, I like Signal. For all my Bitcoin-nim friends, I use the Matrix protocol. It's decentralized, it's end-to-end encrypted, you" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "48:53", "start": 2932.63, "text": "and, has really good verification tools where you can sign, sign each other's public keys and, and, and, and prevent, imposters from popping up. So it's a really good place to like sort of take your Bitcoin, contacts and develop relationships, congregate in a way that is unstoppable, it can't be censored, it's completely private, there's no one, no one's in the middle reading your messages, and so it's a really good technology that we should be using. And so I've talked about two things like, certain- Email and, and kind of like chatting, but it goes further than that. On Twitter, I, I often tweet about my dad. I say, \"If my dad can do X, then so can you,\" because I've been helping him opt out as well, because, he's a conservative guy, he cares about freedom, and I don't want him being persecuted because he's just trying to stay plugged in, trying to find out if there's hope, right? Trying to find out how we navigate this thing as a family. So I took him, helped him get from Windows to Linux Mint He was blown away how simple it was. You throw Linux Mint on a USB drive, you can boot it from a ten year old computer, and, people are blown away when they see the progress of Linux in the last decade. It's, it's very usable, it's very comparable. I like Linux Mint for the lat-- the, you know, the boomer generation. I think they take to it real quickly. I like Zorin OS personally. a lot of people love Pop OS. You know, it's-- you have a laptop, you have a desktop," }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "50:22", "start": 3021.65, "text": "Probably still using Windows. listen, these are the companies that are turning your, you know, cell phone device into a vaccine passport, right? These are the companies that are getting in trouble for eavesdropping on you through Alexa and, you know, in, in every single way about it, and these companies w- are want to partner with the state to launch this social scoring system. So, you know, if you want to opt out, then I would say it's not as crazy as you think, just to flash your operating system. to Linux, it, you know, it feels like a, like a modern Windows, and you can even configure them to feel like a, a Apple. So I've, I've been doing that for all my friends and family, helping with that. phones are, is a little harder, but not as crazy as you think. you can flash an Android phone into a Graphene OS phone, which is just degoogling. It just rips off all the spyware, all the surveillance. It's still an Android phone, you can still have Android apps. So, Calyx OS is really popular within the Bitcoin space, so I, I, I would say they're, they're fairly comparable. They, they take Android, which is open source, and they gank out all the Google bits in it. So you don't need a Google account, you can just download apps, anonymously through Aurora, Aurora Store or, Fdroid, and you don't have to be plugged in. And I can tell you from migrating to this and when I migrated my family to this, it's not as hard as you think. The amount of, the amount of ease and relief I feel being on these platforms is tantamount to the amount of relief I felt moving my monetary energy into Bitcoin. I basically feel like, I've realized that most of this information war is taking place on big tech, and it, you know, yeah, you can move to the countryside and opt out of it in your town, but you have to move to the countryside digitally, if you wanna opt out to where it's actually occurring." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:22", "start": 3141.8, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. Now over time, as your stack rises in purchasing power, you need to start thinking about multi-signature and security and removing single points of failure. Unchained Capital are making it easy to do this. You can bring two hardware wallets to the website, you can set it up for free and create a multi-signature vault. Now in doing so, this can give you a little bit more peace of mind when you're sleeping at night knowing you could have made a mistake and still not lose your coins. Now they've also got a concierge onboarding program, so if Before they can help you, you go purchase the program, they ship you hardware wallets, they do a call with you and set you up, and deposit a thousand dollars of Bitcoin in your vault. So go to Unchained dot com, select the Concierge onboarding program, and use code Livera for a discount there. Brains are a Bitcoin mining company, and they are solid in terms of their ethos and values around Bitcoin. They were the first to support the Taproot soft fork, and so they offer Brains OS Plus. This is firmware for your ASIC machine. You can use the auto-tuning For your buck, so that's a great feature. Go and check out if their firmware supports your mining hardware. They also run Slushpool, which was the first Bitcoin mining pool. Now, Slushpool has mined over one point two five million Bitcoin, and they are also the co-creators of Stratum v two, the next generation pooled mining protocol. So this will help in terms of the Bitcoin network, Improving the adoption of Stratum v2. So they are also hiring, so if you are a Rust developer, systems programmer, or hardware architect, go and check out their website, the careers page. The website is brains dot com, that's b r a i i n s dot com. And finally, Bitcoin DeFi with Lend at Laserhodl. This is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin backed lending platform using Bitcoin's multi-signature technology, and you can lend or borrow stablecoins globally and anonymously using Bitcoin as collateral. There's no KYC required. So with this product, you no longer have to sell your Bitcoin to get some short-term liquidity. You can borrow stablecoins against your Bitcoin, and you still hold one of three keys in that multi-signature escrow throughout the whole deal. While stablecoin holders on the other hand can earn some extra interest, you can lend out your stablecoins, and you define the terms and the APR for those deals. Go and sign up, it's lend.hodlholdl.com, that's l-e-n-d.h-o-d-l-h-o-d-l.com Back to the show with Laser. Yeah, I think that's-- there's a lot of interesting points in there, and certainly the Calyx OS is a very popular one amongst Bitcoiners, privacy-focused Bitcoiners who want to use an alternative system on their phone and still have kind of some access to Google apps, but without actually doxing everything to Google. and then Graphene is probably one more step further where it's even more removed from Google. So with all these things, it's not like- You can perfectly opt out, and there will be trade-offs with these as well. So when things go wrong, or if you need to recover, or if you're self-hosting, well, now you're having to learn to run the server aspect of it, and if something happens there, well, you need to spin that back up. These are all things that will take time to learn and do, but, broadly supportive, of course." }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "55:34", "start": 3333.89, "text": "there's a progression there. Like, so, so for example, my wife and I, we were completely addicted to Google Drive. We And, some bitcoiners were like, \"Check out Nextcloud, right? You can self-host it on your Umbral, you get a private file cloud.\" And I'm like, \"Oh, that's awesome.\" And then I started to think about data loss, and I'm like, \"They don't really have a, a good story about what you do for redundancy and backups.\" And Google obviously has a great story, you never think about it, they've solved it. And I'm like, \"Okay, is there anything in between?\" And I found, Sync dot com." }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "56:14", "start": 3373.98, "text": "End-to-end encrypts your files in such a way where it's being encrypted on your computer. If you lose the password, they can't decrypt, the, the, the data, the, the portion of the code that they-- for the client is open source, so you can verify it. So there's an in-between place, I think this progression, like, okay, okay, so it's true there's a self-hosting movement that's happening, but it's very nascent. The idea there is that this sort of, this data center is emerging in the homes of Bitcoiners, Powerful, you know, every week, every month, and, and, and the idea is, is eventually, you'll self-host everything critical, all the data that is critical to your life, and there'll be apps that can read, you know, you scan a QR code at home, and boom, you're plugged into your server. But that's nascent, I mean, it's, it's really for, for tinkers at, at this point. So you have to be committed to, to writing out the rough points early on. But there's an in-between place which is" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "57:14", "start": 3434.38, "text": "so for Drive, I use Sync dot com. let's see, I used to use like Notion 'cause my wife and I loved having like a shared note-taking app. We were like, \"Oh man, that's great.\" and then we ended up moving to Standardo-- Standard Notes. so Standard Notes is, it, it, it gives you a notepad, it's in the cloud, but it's client-side encrypted, same way. And so when you get to this in-between place, one thing that happens is you end" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "57:44", "start": 3463.88, "text": "Keys on Bitcoin, you lose access to your data. and so, you know, I recommend something like a Bitwarden. Bitwarden is a password manager that you can use with, with your wife. You can set up a family office in it, and, you can set up like multi-factor. So like, you have a password to open your password manager, and maybe you have like a UB key, maybe you have like five UB, UB keys for your house, and you register them on both your wife and your account, right? This type of thing." }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "58:14", "start": 3493.92, "text": "Have one in your safe, maybe, and then maybe you give one, to, to a trusted contact with like a backup kit. You know, maybe someone even holds your, one of your, you know, your backup, seed, steels for your, your multi-sig, right? And you're like, \"Oh, here's a backup kit for me if I ever have an emergency.\" So you can secure, a password manager in the cloud like a Bitwarden, and that'll prevent you from losing these critical keys for your end-to-end encrypted services. if you use Matrix or the Element client for chatting on Matrix, same thing, like you have a, an encryption key that you, you wanna secure. And so Bitwarden's interesting because, it's open source, and you can take it with you, you can self-host. So just knowing, like, oh, I, I can take this, I'm not gonna get locked out Right? As the self-hosting revolution emerges, I'm good to go, I'll be able to migrate to it, right? And when those tools are ready, and I'm ready to learn, I can go there. Get to that in-between place, that freedom-respecting place. once you secure a password manager within your family, you'd be shocked, everything else gets much easier. Bitwarden lets you do multi-factor auth inside of it, so every time, like, let's say, you sign up to something critical like, like a River, you don You don't want it just username password, you want it enable multi-factor, so you want it, you know, scan that QR and it'll give you that rotating, six digit, numerical code that you punch in just to ensure, that, that not only do you have the username and password, but you have access to the multi-factor device. If you plug all those into, like, a Bitwarden, it's really interesting, right? 'Cause now you have your UBI key that you physically log into your Bitwarden with. And then inside the bitwarden has your multi-factor that's portable, it doesn't matter if you lose your phone, right? So you're no longer beholden to a single device. so this, you, you know, start imagining how you would build your family office in such a way that you can stand on your own two feet, you're not, you know, you're not projecting yourself into the computational state that is basically, they're in a position where they're having to answer the question, okay, so a large percentage of the population Is we don't believe is going to be able to adapt to this revolution, to the, to the rate of technological increase, right? So you see AI, you see machine learning, you see robotics increasing at this rate where the people that steer society are genuinely worried that we're not going to be able to, that there's gonna be a job crisis, right? And, and so they're answering the question like, how do we transition this large percentage of society to something that's possible, that's sustainable? And so this is where this kind of communism starts looking interesting, right? 'Cause it's like, we need to feed them, we need to house them, we can put them in cities, but how do we, you know, if they're just in the liabilities column, that is very-- that is a poor business. It's not a, a good way to run society either, right? So it's just this cost on soci-society that's not very good. And so then from a business point of view, you would say, \"Well, is there a way we can put them in the Make them these premium assets, and I think, you know, you can look, I think what, what we're seeing is that the government is looking to big tech and seeing that big tech has been able to make that work, take like a Facebook, you don't pay for Facebook. Fa- Facebook is outrageously profitable, and that's mostly because you are the product, right? So Facebook has learned if, if you run a freemium model, you need to aggressively monetize the users. and so I, I think that's similar to what the governments are looking at. I think they're saying, okay, the users are gonna be freemium, the high tech fascism partners, the industry, that's who we will monetize them to. So we're gonna have to aggressively monetize the users to them. And so you say, okay, what are the growth stories that are merging as part of this next monetary, system? And, and well, you see, they're going to train," }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:02:24", "start": 3744.88, "text": "Algorithmic governance, that's very clear. You see the social scoring mechanism. You see, you know, Bill Gates buying up farmland and basically making a push on, on soy food, you know, on pod food. This idea he wants these high-margin synthetics to replace, our ancestral natural diets, right? So you're not eating ribeye and steak, you're eating impossible ribeye, you know? You name it. So there's another industry. You also have this- industry of transhumanism. This idea that, you know, you hear this, narrative coming that like, \"Thank God for mRNA, thank God it's finally on the scene, because, think of all the advancements! \" We're going to have because of, of gene technology, right? So this is a big narrative that they're trying to, make the last two years, you know, okay, I know that we signed away your rights, and I know that we're, we're experimenting on the world population under the guise of, you know, a seasonal flu that is, by the numbers, not much more, deadly than the seasonal flu. So I know we've completely eliminated the norm of having to go through trials, and they're celebrating that as now- Now think of all the advancements we're going to make. Do you think that they believe that they're going to be able to keep running experiments in mass on the world population? you know, I, I would wager that they probably don't wanna go back to running trials, that they think this really is the new normal, this is how they're gonna be able to operate. and so, you know, you, this picture starts to emerge of now instead of this useless feeder, you're this liability, you're this extremely valuable su- Human asset that is worth supporting in the basic ways, because you can be used to advance gene technology, you can be used to advance autonomous governance, you could be used to advance technology and synthetic food, you can be used to-- so, so you, you are valuable as, as a human, whether you have a job or not, and I think that's what they've realized, that's how they can rationalize this social scoring, technocracy. Now, again, look to China, it's two tiered. There are the peoples that still engineer the People that are in think work, creative work, and, and they would still live in a capitalistic society, right? And, and that's what it, you know, I, I don't think we'll see, I, I, you know, I think that's kind of where we're aimed at now. It's, it's, you know, if you can, you're either going to get sucked into this, if you're not working right now is probably a good indicator of whether you'll be in the top tier or not. If you're taking, if you're taking, The system. So I think that's the shape of it, and, and, you know, the, the basic, the basic advice I've been given, given is, given is, yes, there's the obvious stuff, you can, you can leave the city, you know, you can, you can physically opt out, go to somewhere where there's not COVID, but there's the less obvious stuff, it's all the digital stuff, and, and that's really critical, and as someone who's gone through it, I can tell you, I know that I'm very expensive to tyranny" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:38", "start": 3938.76, "text": "Yeah, I think there's a lot of interesting insights there for people, whether that's the self-hosting stuff, and obviously my friend Katan is big on that, so, listeners go and, you know, follow Katan and, Divertor as well. I did an episode with Divertor and Katan about some of these related aspects of self-hosting and you're securing your network, obviously making yourself more difficult to tyranny, as you said, Laser. And I think there are multiple tools that we should all be using at our disposal. I think it's, it's Obviously it stacks that, obviously is step one, and then obviously look for ways to give yourself more freedom, whether that's physically moving to places or looking for ways to, say, legally reduce your tax payable so that you're, in, in essence, giving less off to the state, and so they will have less, ability to use that money against you essentially. And so I think that's where Bitcoin people can really make a difference as well as I think doing what you can to help other people who are willing to be helped, right? So people who are willing to be helped, you know, you can't get everyone, but the more remnant types, you sh- we should be out there trying to help them opt out in their own ways as well, whether that's Bitcoin-wise, whether that's self-sovereign tech-stack-wise. I think these are all ways to do that. Now, there are some elements where we still have to use the major platforms. So for example, I'm still on Twitter, right? I still-- you're As an example, to try to reach people, but it's, it's sort of like trying to use the tools, i-in a sense, the tools of our enemies against them and at least use them to still have reach while we still can before we all get cancelled eventually. I think it's, it's a matter of time, but, you know, that's, that's how I'm seeing it around trying to put out good information. Of course, this episode won't be going on YouTube because I think it's too likely to get cancelled, but in general, I'm staying on the Put on the platform. So that's how I'm seeing it. I think it's, it's a combination of using things that are out there already because already money and time and investment has been put into those, and there's a network effect around those. Of course, Bitcoin doesn't stand network effects. And so I think those are a few points that I would, I guess, summarize what you were saying as well, and at least put my own flavor and my own thinking onto that also. Yeah. Like" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:08:03", "start": 4083.06, "text": "in general, it's, it's like a rule of thumb is that in the, in the Privacy is probably the right way to think of it, and, and the, the sooner you get started on that, the better position you'll be in, if things escalate and get, you know, even weirder than they are right now. They're already, you know, I, I couldn't have imagined, that we're, that we would see what we're seeing right now, and, and, and, so it's, it's don't be naive and don't be complacent, you, you want to move down the risk gradient," }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:08:37", "start": 4117.68, "text": "physically not only with your money, but, digitally as well. And, and, y-y-you know, keep an eye on the self-hosting revolution. you know, I know that, like many folks use Umbral, and they're aiming at like a, a server platform now, so a home server platform. And, and, there's Run Citadel, which is a, a, a free and open source fork of Umbral, is another one to, to gander at. And you have like Start9 doing a home server" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:09:08", "start": 4148.3, "text": "You know, you know, you know host, yeah. There it is, there it is. So, keep an eye on these folks. you know, you don't have to go all the way there. There's privacy respecting, services. I, I, I've been calling this, you know, roll your own sovereign stack. Don't wait. You know, there's a bunch of, you know, x21 has his sovereign stack, he retweeted mine, he's like, \"Here's the stack that I use when, when I'm not plugged into big" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:09:38", "start": 4178.3, "text": "In terms of, self-hosting everything. So like, choose where you're gonna be, but like, you know, definitely kind of move down the risk gradient. I highly recommend that. And then of course, like, the network effects of certain platforms are extremely pervasive. Twitter, YouTube, like, the cost of leaving that is, is astronomical because then your reach goes to zero, right? So, so, I don't mean don't use, Twitter, for example, like I use Twitter, right? Because the reach is really good. now, do-- what I do is I, I take the NIMs that I take a liking to, and I add them into, communities on Matrix, so I know that we can-- we basically have a back room that's unstoppable that we can congregate, through the, you know, that we have guaranteed continuity through this whole, you know, government dramatization that we're li-- living through. And so that's quite useful because, as, you know, For, for each tech platform, you can see the degree that they're playing ball, that they're being pulled in this direction on censorship, and censorship is where it starts. I mean, if you look at China, you'll see that, you end up with a type of like a, like a pre-crime. So, you know, what happens is folks who don't play along with the narrative, they get persecuted, and, and, and not in a, case-by-case basis, they get algorithmically persecuted, right? So they've systemized it, Statecraft. And so, I just don't wanna be in these, i-i-so it's just a matter of like looking at each platform and knowing when the ship has sailed on it, with doing a cost-benefit analysis and understanding, are you getting enough out of it to warrant the cost? And so like at Google, I would submit that you're not getting enough out of Gmail to warrant the cost, move to ProtonMail. It doesn't fix email, but at least you're not feeding corporate surveillance, right? your iPhone, like, yeah, it's nice, Like you'd be surprised, and you're not gonna have a, a vaccine passport show up on your phone, right? So, you know, that's, that's not a bad idea. like Facebook, the ship has probably sailed on that, right? Like you brought, you know, a lot of people's families and friends have moved to like private chat rooms. That is a popular medium. You could do it. You can move your boomer parents and you can move your grandparents to chat rooms. I've seen it done. it's really nice." }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:12:07", "start": 4327.36, "text": "Relief when they moved to like the chat model as opposed to Facebook. So you really can do it, you can make a signal room, like it's, it's possible. You can help your friends and family who care about this stuff move down the risk gradient, and, and, and, and, and also like, there's something to be said about Bitcoin here, which is a lot of folks give me pressure 'cause I talk, I've been talking about like get on zero lately, this idea that, I've been experimenting with, oh man, what if I could, stop living in fiat in my checking account, right? 'Cause I've done every-- I've done the ninety-nine percent already, all my retirement and savings, like everything is done, it's, it's self-custodied, and I'm like, okay, check. But I'm still living in a fiat account. I still have dollars in a bank account. And, Pretty long runway just sitting in dollars, and I'm like, \"Man, I really wanna invest that. I just need it to be able to pay bills.\" And so I think a lot of plebs are like, kind of right up at the ninety-nine percent mark, and I'm like, \"Well, what do I do now? What's next?\" And So I, I, you know, I've been playing with this idea of, is there anything that will prov- let me just live on Bitcoin, right? Hold my checking account in Bitcoin, get it out of dollars, hold it there permanently, give me the ability to direct deposit, directly, or convert it automatically to Bitcoin, give me a, a debit card, when I spend it, you'll convert it to dollars transparently, I don't have to think about it, so that, at spend time, give me a bill pay, give me wire transfers, give me all the- All the features I need to plug into the fiat world, all the banking features, but let me hold permanently in Bitcoin so I can have zero dollars and zero cents permanently. I can actually leave the dollar system in that way. And, it's still early, but I found a one company out of Austin, Texas, level, level dot co, and they're a quirky company, but like they, they, they kind of, they did this, they had this banking model, and they, they had Bitcoin and a couple shitcoins, and I started talking with them and saying like Hey, I think where the whole Bitcoin space is, is like, this is a problem that's going to get turned into like a hair on fire problem. As we get closer and closer to the monetary reset, the monetary system collapsing, people are gonna need to answer, what do they do with their checking account? what, you know, what do you do? and I realized I wanted to- Pay that pain down ahead of time. Like, I, I wanna get out of the dollar years before they, they say, \"Okay, you need a, you know, we're doing bail-ins or whatever form of confiscation that might crop up,\" or that, \"Okay, you ne- you need to move to the CBDC, whatever it is.\" I wanna, I wanna be out many, many months, years if I can, out of the system and already, gone through the pain of adjusting my lifestyle to live on Bitcoin, in the Bitcoin standard now. And so level like- I can't promise anything, but like I'm cautiously optimistic 'cause I started chatting with them for a couple weeks and gave them a hard time about shitcoins and started talking about the idea of get on zero, like that this probably is gonna be important in twenty twenty two and so it looks like they're gonna go Bitcoin only and their, the idea is real simple, it's like, give people a, a Bitcoin native bank, Right? Let them live in Bitcoin. Now, of course, you could say, \"Holy shit, Laser, if you're living month to month, that's pretty scary, right? 'Cause what if, what if you get rid of your checking account and you ride down the Bitcoin bear, you-- that could really hurt. And yeah, it could. I mean, i-if you're in a place where you're listening to this and you're like living paycheck to paycheck, you're probably your first order of business is like getting a few years runway in Bitcoin terms so that something like this makes sense You know, you could go through pain for up to two years, but after two years, generally speaking, you're, you're, very grateful that, you know, in whatever position you take across your portfolio. Yeah. So," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:16:03", "start": 4563.65, "text": "because, being honest, that would be my main criticism of the idea, right? I think it's one of those things where, of course, everyone's situation is different. You might have loans, you might have other aspects of it. People might not be fully retired, right? For those people who are still working, it might make sense for them to Fair cycle, because you could end up with less sat in that scenario, right? And that, that could be an issue. So, I think you have to-- it really does depend on each individual and whether they are, you know, ninety-nine percent in Bitcoin or a hundred percent in Bitcoin. Like, I think that's-- Yeah, like the" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:16:40", "start": 4600.06, "text": "last, the last one percent is harder than the first ninety-nine percent, to be honest. I mean, and there's, there's things to be serious about, like doing napkin math. What I realized was, okay, for me I readily kept two years runway in my checking, I already did that, so I knew that like, okay, I could, I could be like pretty berused, right, for a while, but then as long as I live this way and I funnel new funds in this way, the value to me of living on a Bitcoin standard now, and plus the mat-- napkin math that showed me that after two years, it would be really silly not to do it. So, that was my basic synopsis, but the, the thing that was really compelling for me is as we head into re- Set, there's an inflection point. There's an inflection point where, and you look at other countries who have gotten, who have lost the reserve currency or gone to hyperinflation, where it seemed okay to hold that- That currency for weeks at a time in between paychecks, but they got to a place where you wouldn't wanna hold that currency for days or hours." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:17:43", "start": 4663.57, "text": "Of course, of course, that's what happens in the late, later stages of inflation, right? It happened in Zimbabwe, it happened in various places. So I think for me, I see it more like, you've gotta think also about like the value of your time and effort and energy and where's the best place to spend it. And for me, going from ninety-nine percent to a hundred percent, I mean, it's like- I've got other areas that I need to focus on, and there are other reasons, but I mean, look, I understand the, the-- I think I understand the reasoning why I just would be cautious about the bear cycle risk of, you know, ending up with less, literally spending, ending up with less sats if-- And also, I think that my scenario is a bit different from yours because I'm still working, I'm still earning, so some of my income is in fiat and some of it is in Bitcoin, and so I, I just have to sort of manage that in terms" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:18:34", "start": 4714.26, "text": "Like that, and so that's my situation." }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:18:37", "start": 4717.08, "text": "Really clear what, what Stephan's saying is like quite literally, like, like say you have a mortgage and Bitcoin starts going down, and your value is stored in, in, in Bitcoin, your mortgage is getting more expensive because the amount of sats that you have to-- it rel- relative to where you store your value, because the amount of sats that you have to exchange for dollars automatically when you pay it, right? That goes up. And, and so, like, it, that's true. The other thing to, to note is that, Level isn't like some cypherpunk, no KYC thing, right? So the every time you're going back and forth between Bitcoin and dollars, even though they don't charge any fee, and I think they're the first ones that truly don't have a spread, that's still taxable technically, right? So yes, you, you only, you only pay taxes when you make a profit in fiat terms, but it's still taxable. And I know what Level does, they'll just give you an automatic form you upload to, like TurboTax or Hantier. Accountant, so it's, it's straightforward, you're like, okay, you know, for example, I had a hundred thousand dollars in checking, and, it was, you know, I, I've had it for the whole year, and let's say it went to a million dollars, well, you know, and I've, and I've spent half of it, right? Well, of course, you know, the, the, the government wants their pound of flesh, you get your automatic form, you see, oh man, I gotta pay them, you consider, and, and, and of course, that also implies that they are custodying your Sats, right? You're not holding that in cold storage, so it truly is this one percent use case where you've done everything else, you've done everything else, and you're like, okay, like how do I solve this issue of I don't want to live in the old banking system, I want to live in the Bitcoin system? And, even with a, like, your salary, like the napkin math is fairly compelling in terms of if you can get through the first couple years, the napkin math is very compelling. I mean, when I looked at mine, I saw that, like, if I had been doing this, four years ago, it looks like I've left, you know, nearly half a million" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:20:48", "start": 4848.44, "text": "You know, no worries, this didn't exist four years ago, you couldn't have done this four years ago, but just- And not everyone's in America, right? Right. Not everyone lives in the US. And, and, the other thing I would say, if you're gonna put one percent of your purchasing power of your household into something like this, and you're gonna have accounting stuff, then, you should hedge that, because there's a real chance that the, the state will go pathological, and, you know, that you, you roll the dice and you're in The pathological state, and so you should hedge that with some type of mechanism for realloc-- for rebalancing your portfolio to have, a, a smart amount of no KYC Bitcoin. just a, you know, and one way that I've been looking at that is, you know, you have, Steve Barber coming out with this black box that makes like home mining looks like a fun project, it, it takes care of like the worst parts of it, like the noise, and making it sort of fire safe and, like it's- It's not crazy to think, you know, you run a node today, it's not crazy to imagine, you know, a-outside next to your, your AC, you have a black box with a couple miners that, and you can use that to con-to rebalance your stack. So, you know, if-- let's say you've gone into Bitcoin quickly 'cause you-- the light bulb came on, you're like, \"Oh man, so I moved everything quickly, that's all KYC.\" Let's say you're not comfortable with that, you're like, \"My state could go You could set something like this up and you could basically rebalance to the allocation that makes you feel comfortable, right? Like, okay, we want a ten percent allocation within our household of electric Sats, you know, Sats that we got through our" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:22:25", "start": 4945.3, "text": "non-KYC coins. Yeah. I, I do think you can have a-- Now, I think you can exist in two worlds. You can have one foot in both worlds, right? You can have some KYC coins and some non-KYC coins, and so that's a balance that every individual has to find. And so I think these are a thoughts, tools, ideas that can be used to fight this battle, and I do think we should be overall hopeful long term. I think we are optimistic long term that things are going to get better, at least for those people who are doing it intelligently and stacking sats and diligently looking at ways to improve their sovereignty, and to make themselves more difficult to, tyrannize. So I guess if we had to close out, do you have any thoughts there for people out there why they- They should be optimistic, as you said." }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:23:14", "start": 4994.77, "text": "Well, I'm extremely optimistic and, and I'm white pilled. I, you know, I try and share what I'm doing with my household to give you a framework for how I'm thinking about it, how I'm navigating it. Hopefully, you can apply that to your own personal circumstances and find a path that makes you feel like you're in control, that you're taking charge. I do think that like the, the world is very large. it's very easy to make yourself very expensive to tyranny, to where you, Defense that Bitcoin provides to your money, you could provide that to other parts of your life. It's, it's possible, it's right there, you can do it. I do think that the worst of this clown world will probably peak in twenty twenty-five. I think that they're aiming to relaunch society around twenty thirty with the social scoring technology and, and-- But I, I think, I think what happens is, because there's so much synchronicity and you have basically like over a hundred countries trying to coordinate together to try and follow this, this game, game plan on the They have a prisoner's dilemma where they know that, they can't fully trust each other. Only one person has to defect and they'll be essentially on the, on the, the, the bad end of the deal. And so, with Bitcoin hanging out on the sidelines, it really puts a wrench in doing something like this. So what I'm looking for is some more countries in LATAM to defect, from this vaccine imperialism, this sort of central banking colo- colonization and And so I'm expecting to see others, join El Salvador. I, I wanna see like a defector in Europe. I wanna see Africa starting to say, \"No, you know, we're, we're saying, we're pushing back against this. We won't be, colonized by the West. We won't be colonized by this, this agenda.\" And I hope they start clinging to Bitcoin, and I think we will see that, you know, the, the, the game theory of Bitcoin is extremely strong. We've been watching it play out." }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:25:12", "start": 5112.83, "text": "Is, you know, we, we continue to see, these four-year cycles all the way through the supercycle. I think, I think, you know, the floor is probably something like, like a hundred thousand, you know, in the next, call, call it eight months, the floor. I don't, I don't know much about ceilings, it's easier to look and like, m-make a educated guess about floors, and then four years after that, you'll probably be at like, you know, at zero, like a million" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:25:42", "start": 5142.81, "text": "Will get steeper even on the log curve as countries race to not, to not miss out. And, and so I think what will happen is, countries will ultimately act in their own best interest. They'll break away from this synchronicity, they'll stack Bitcoin. I think they are stacking Bitcoin covertly now. I think it all falls, you know, it feels like it's the great reset's falling apart right now, and I think we'll see, a Bitcoin essentially, a supercycle in Twenty thirty, twenty thirty one, to me, it's almost, predetermined. I mean, you, you zoom out, like, what are the chances that you have, the gov-- you know, this collectivism that's threatening to swallow the individual completely, and then you have sort of the sword of Bitcoin that's aiming directly at it, perfectly timed to when they wanna relaunch society into this, this new system. So, for me, I'm, I'm thrilled, I'm psyched, I think Pleb should be two. You know, there's no reason to be sort of paralyzed by fear, stuck in a holding loop. You can simply opt out of this, and you should look at this, this whole-- you know, all this hardship as opportunity to build yourself up and, and become the type of like hard men that are able to leave this soft era behind. And so with Bitcoin, you know, in our satchel and, street smarts about, you know, where we are physically and digitally, I think we can do it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:27:12", "start": 5232.71, "text": "Yeah, that was fantastic, Laser. I really, I agree with a lot of what you're saying there. I think they need tax revenue, and if more and more Bitcoin people are able to essentially take that away from them, then essentially they won't be able to sustain this nonsense and sustain the nightmare. And so I think it might look bad right now, but I think if you confidently take steps now as Bitcoiners, you can definitely achieve a lot more freedom for yourself. And I think the long term benefits are definitely going to be there for us. So certainly really enjoyed chatting with you. I think you've got a lot of great insights around what's going on with the Great Reset and especially how can Bitcoiners react, respond, and fight back in their own way. for anyone who wants to find you online, what's the best place to find you? You" }, { "speaker": "laserhodl", "time": "01:28:03", "start": 5283.1, "text": "can get me on Twitter, Laserhodl. Yeah, I was pretty much on there and, and I think I, I would say it's, it's much more enjoyable to work on your household, Side lines. Just get to the sidelines. It's, it's like, this, this whole thing doesn't need your help collapsing. It's going to implode on itself. Just get, you know, orderly move you and your loved ones out of the blast radius. I think it's as simple as that. Focus on Bitcoin. Focus on realizing the Bitcoin era, right? They've, they've got it. They're, you know, they don't need help failing at the Great Reset." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:28:34", "start": 5314.13, "text": "Fantastic. Thanks, Laser. Alright, bud. Get the show notes at stephanlivera.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }