{ "episodeId": "SLP334", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "jeff_booth": { "name": "Jeff Booth", "role": "guest", "tag": "JEFF" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:06", "start": 6.14, "text": "Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin. Today, for episode three hundred and thirty-four, my guest is Jeff Booth. We're talking about escaping the system and twenty twenty-one, the year in review for Bitcoin. We talk about where the narrative is going with Bitcoin, people who are fiat denominated versus Bitcoin denomination, community building, Bitcoin wallets, Bitcoin tech. As well as how people are dealing with fear. This show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin, and with the Christmas and holiday period coming upon us, it's time to think about gifting for our loved ones. With Swan Bitcoin, you can give the gift of Bitcoin alongside Swan's world-class education and service and customer support. So that website is swanbitcoin dot com slash gift, and you can create a custom message, your recipient will receive an email, and they can claim that after they create their Swan account and then convert. The USD value that you sent to them into Bitcoin. So that website is swanbitcoin dot com slash gift. If you're getting involved with Bitcoin mining, you've got to check out Brains. Brains are a principled Bitcoin company. They were the first to support Taproot. They offer Brains OS Plus. This is firmware for your ASIC machine, and you can use the auto-tuning feature to get more bang for your buck. So you really don't wanna leave Sats on the table. You wanna go and check whether Brains OS Plus supports the ASIC machine type that you have. Also, Brains are operating Slush Pool, which is and was the first Bitcoin mining pool. So you can sign up and if you're using Brains OS plus firmware, you get zero percent pool fees when you point your hash rate towards Slush Pool. Also, they are the co-creators of Stratum v2, the next generation pooled mining protocol. So go to the website brains dot com, that's brains with two i's. Now, if you're looking to source a machine, compassmining dot io can help you. This is mining made accessible for people who are new to Bitcoin mining. So you can source an ASIC machine, if you're in the US, you can have that delivered to your home, otherwise you can also select to have that machine sent to a facility and plugged in and turned on. You obviously pay the hosting fees and you select the mining pool to point your hash rate towards and you then start receiving Sats. Now, they've got all sorts of educational material available, such as a podcast, they've got a newsletter, another blog post as well that provide all sorts of material around Bitcoin mining, so go to compassmining dot io. And now onto the show with Jeff. Jeff, welcome back to the show." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "02:34", "start": 153.84, "text": "thanks for having me again." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:35", "start": 155.04, "text": "So Jeff, lots has happened, there's been so much, and I thought it was time for a, a bit of a year in review episode. So I guess let's start with some of your thoughts. What were some of the, the big items in your mind in the Bitcoin world for this year?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "02:51", "start": 171.01, "text": "it, it, it's hard not to say El Salvador. Yeah. that would be, that would be pretty big. and, and I think just besides that, the-- it's probably just the growing awareness of why people, why this is so important. And, I, I've talked about this often pro-- with you as well, it's, it's an emergent network, and, and more and more people understanding it is making it stronger and stronger all the time. And you can- You could yell at it, you could not like it, but, but all of that, all of that energy is actually creating more and more awareness of why it's so important." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:31", "start": 210.52, "text": "Right, and I think you're right to point that out, and it's important especially when you're thinking about where are the average people, where are the everyday people putting their wealth? Are they storing it in stocks or bonds or property, which are the typical things that people would do? They're not thinking first, \"I store my wealth in Bitcoin.\" But Where would you say people are at now? Is it more sort of like most people have-- by now they know what Bitcoin is, but they might sort of think of it like, \"Oh, it's just one of the many cryptos, and, you know, I, I wanna be gambling on some meme coin or memeston.\"" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "04:04", "start": 244.38, "text": "Yeah, you know, we should, we should, double-click on what you just talked about, because, because when a-- when an economic system is failing and people are trying to figure out what's going on, there is a whole bunch system. And in that, in that escape, really what you could just say, their time is being, their time is being eroded, 'cause money is just an abstract concept for our time. And they, they feel like they're trapped, and it's getting worse and worse and worse. And so they're hitting kind of two different, two different sides, either fear and then blame on, on, on a whole bunch of the population, or, and then another part of the population that is, is young Hunger and typically, and if you said in altcoins, is I'm going to make a million dollars tomorrow and gambling and to try to escape that system. And all of that is caused by manipu-manipulation in the system that will make that-- and that, that will get worse, and we can expect that to get worse. So, I think- and you know this, many of the people that are in Bitcoin are Mac-Macys, were actually all in altcoins in the last run, and they real-- and, and they realized, and, and understanding Bitcoin, I, I fortunately never was, but I do understand its appeal if somebody hasn't, doesn't want to, hasn't done the work on why this is so important." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:34", "start": 334.24, "text": "Right, and I think it also goes to the way people talk about it in a lot of the well-known press or in, let's say, large YouTube accounts that are talking About these things. I mean, for me, I, I've just stayed Bitcoin only since, you know, twenty thirteen, right? But, it-- that, that's not the typical, that's not a typical case. It was very, you know, I think it was also seen that there was more experimentation of like, you know, things like whatever, namecoin or Various other ideas that, that came and went, around there. But I think now, to, to your point, it's that we're sort of reaching this end stage, and as people are trying to escape the system or in some way try to get ahead, they are being pushed into more gambling options or gambling methods of trying to get ahead, as opposed to just humbly stacking and just saying, \"Okay, you know what? It doesn't matter that I wasn't in Bitcoin in two thousand and nine. What matters is that I understand this and...\" Where it's going, and so then I'm taking the right action from now on." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "06:34", "start": 394.17, "text": "Yeah. And I'll, I'll give you a perfect example of this. So when it was eight thousand dollars, my uncle, just because I was talking about it all the time and we're, we're close, he said, \"Okay, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll do it,\" and \"I'll do it,\" and, \"And I'll put some money into Bitcoin.\" Now, how much? And I said, \"It's your choice, but you, you should put some," }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "07:00", "start": 420.37, "text": "Here at my house tonight for, for a pre-Christmas dinner, but here's what, here's what he said. He goes, \"I, I wrote it up and then I sold it, and, and, and then now I realize, why did I sell it?\" and he says, \"He's a, and, and he, he, he got out at the top, but he's buying as much, and now he's, he's never gonna sell it again.\" and as, as he understands, because he's, because he's used to measuring his wealth in fiat terms, and he thinks everything's rising in price, and he just did well on a, on a stock play, but, but now he realizes, now he understands everything will fall in price against Bitcoin forever. And, and so it's a very different mind shift that, that people are going through, and some people have to go through that. You have to understand what's happening, and when you first come into Bitcoin A lot of people don't understand at the depth of what's happening to the entire global currency regime that we've lived in all our lives." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:02", "start": 481.78, "text": "Yeah, that's a really good way to put it, because a lot of people have come from a stock trading mindset, and if they think, \"Oh, you just buy it and you flip it for a five x or a two x or whatever, and you take your money and run, \" because again, you're fiat denominated. Whereas once you've learned, then you become Bitcoin denominated, and you become more about how many Sats do I hold? Particularly, how many satoshis do I hold in my own self custody that I control? And I think it's very important to hammer that point that you made, which is the price of things is coming down in Satoshi terms, in Bitcoin terms. The price of things is coming down, and that's very difficult for people to accept because it's like you've been driving, you know, in reverse your whole lives, and now all of a sudden we're switching the gears and now we're gonna drive forwards." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "08:49", "start": 528.91, "text": "Well, they're two completely different systems. They're completely different systems. And they work opposite from, from, opposite from everything we know. and so it's really easy to measure the new system from the system you live in, and, and, and I would, I would say that that's a mistake on this, on this transition. It's way bigger than people realize. It's way bigger than pe-pe-people realize." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:14", "start": 553.77, "text": "Yeah. And you know, maybe another, maybe another way to think of it is like Imagine if you're walking on a treadmill and it's providing some resistance, right? Because you have to walk just to stay in the same place. It's, the difference is with Bitcoin, it's like, when you're in the airport and you walk on those travelators, and they're walking with you, so they are speeding you forward. That's like the difference between fiat and Bitcoin, right? You're holding fiat, it's like, it's-- you're working against it, you're paddling or you're walking just to stay in the same place. But on those airport travel, travel ones Hold this thing, and it, you, you can, you can, and you can run with them or walk with them, and walk even faster, so you're getting even further ahead. So I think that's maybe an easier way to think of it." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "09:57", "start": 597.15, "text": "And, and again, we're talking specifically right now about the monetary gains people are gonna win, who win by it, but it's way more important than that. you, you just, a, a system, if you look at the long h-hor-history through system, through this system resetting, I, I think it resets- Because of the way we think. And w- way we think in h-h-hard money used to, you not, you weren't able to gain velocity with hard money. You couldn't gain velocity with gold because of the time to be able to transport it around. So what ended up happening is you put a fractional reserve lending on top of it that ha- that had to have, 'cause credit needs an inflation to be able to run that system, and so it had to grow forever. And because nobody wants to take the pain of, of a recession or a depression to clear the, the excesses, and we will always vote for the politician who s- tells us, \"No, no problem, we'll just print more money, \" right? And because they don't say that, that, they're picking your other pockets To be able to, to, to, to pay for, pay for it. They don't say that, so nobody votes for inflation. It's just created and it's created in ever and ever increasing magnitude through, through debt that can't be paid back. And so you're monetizing that debt because it can't be paid back, but because the entire system you live in is measured by that system. It causes all of these negative externalities all around the world, and people wonder what's going on as it gets worse and worse and worse, and then you reset it. In Roman times, you reset it every five hundred years. In recent, more recent times, you reset it every eighty years through, a world war or conflict. and because of technology, you're gonna reset it faster and faster and faster Because we've always had technology, it's just moving at a faster rate. And so that, so that inflationary system that we believe in and we'll vote for, because it needs that, that system, it just keeps on getting worse and worse and worse. And then you reset it, you talk about the government saying, \"We promise we won't do it again. We'll set up Bretton Woods, and this won't happen again.\" And then it happens again because of human motivation. That's the thing that Bitcoin changes. That's the thing, so at a bigger level, a fundamental level, it's something we've never seen as humanity, be-before, because you can have velocity of money through the ten minutes win-windows. You don't need a, a different system on top of it to gain that, gain that velocity. Now we're really early in that transition, but, but it's like nothing humans have ever seen, so it's easy to, it's easy to look- Historical patterns and believe we're gonna fix it the same way we've always fixed it, and I, and I don't think that's gonna happen today. It's gonna be-- it, it looks like the car looked like horses, right? It's a, it's a different change, it's a, it's a completely different change that people can't grasp how big a change that is." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:17", "start": 797.42, "text": "To your point about making big changes and a difference of kind, right? A car isn't just a faster horse, it's a totally new thing. And I think if people were to look back historically at what happens when there's a monetary collapse or some kind of reset, let's say people who have done long-term contracts have to figure something out. So as an example, there's, you know, millions of people around the world who have, let's say, a home loan or some kind of commercial loan, and then they might then have to go back to the negotiating table with their banks because the underlying money has gone so low in value That they have to try to renegotiate something in terms of what they're repaying, or they end up just paying back pennies on the dollar, right? Because their loan might be, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars, but the, the real value of that loan has gone diminished dramatically, and so such that the amount that they're paying back to that bank or that lender is just so much less. But they, if they've managed to correctly keep making the payments, i.e. they didn't lose their job and so on, they now hold that- Property, that home, let's say, as an example. So I'm curious, do you have any thoughts or any speculation on where you see that might go or how that might look?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "14:33", "start": 872.69, "text": "Well, well, that's actually what gives the system its power. So let's-- so there's a whole bunch of people that would advocate for deflation everywhere in the world, because, and, and actually through their individual actions, vote for deflation, because you want more for less. That's why people buy an iPhone, that's why people buy a new computer, that's why you're getting more And on that iPhone has a whole bunch of out-value that you get for free. This program that we're doing, th-this podcast on, wasn't available ten years ago, and we use it because it's free and it touches millions of people for free. That means that content, this content, this conversation, before it would cost millions of dollars to be able to distribute this content, now it's free. The cost Plummets and society wins as a result. And so we wouldn't use this technology if we didn't want that value. Nobody would consume the content if they didn't want that value. So, and it's free And it's, it's increasingly free everywhere around, because, because what ends up happening is, you, you, g-goods and services ju-uh move to the marginal cost of production with technology, and the marginal cost of techno-uh, of production is almost free, or, and it, it will move to free with artificial general intelligence. So on one side, we are all voting for that, but with the p-- same people that are voting for that with their actions, with their actions every day. Choosing that. Want their house to go up in value forever, right? It's an income unit, right? It's an income growth. And the only reason-- And, and the only reason their house goes up in value for-- if you take the last twenty years before COVID, is because you, you essentially created a hundred and eighty-five trillion dollars out of thin air to be able to increase GDP by forty-six trillion globally. If you didn't create the hundred and eighty-five trillion dollars out of thin air, the house wouldn't go down in value. And you would see, you would see what we're talking about everywhere. You'd see deflation in ever- in everything. It, but it, it, but it raises a really important problem or, or, or that we're dealing with as a society Door one, if any, if anybody, if the Fed keep- kept tightening today, let's call that door one. The entire world collapses because the, the- we live in a credit system, and that credit system requires growth forever, because if it starts to have deflation If things turn cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, then you can't pay the back the debt, the debt turn, the debt, debt explodes in real terms. So, but we all live in that world on top of that, and we, we pretend we don't, but the banks are the, on top of that, so all the banks would close, all the grocery stores would close, all the, the, the, the entire world is built on top of that inflationary system, and it would be complete havoc if you tightened Credit, if you kept tightening credit, and you'd, you'd cause a cascading collapse, and what people think is their wealth, a lot of times in their home or something, something else, would keep on collapsing, it, and they'd go to the bank to try to get their money out of the bank, and their bank would be closed. it's all credit, the entire thing is credit, down to the sand, there is no hard money. So that's door number one. And so you could imagine that no matter what governments do right now to say that they're gonna tighten, they won't tighten for very long. Now, there could be a massive chaos in, in the between part as they tighten and then ease, but norma-door number two is I keep printing money. And essentially, I'm making up, I'm changing the denominator of, of, of money, and people are, prices are rising in those fiat terms. And, and that same inflation is wage deflation, and it can work to make the debt repayable cheaper, but the cost to society is enormous, and what you, you run is you're pay- you're, you're, you're essentially advocating for theft Of money and a transfer of s-money from some people, because savings and, and wages go down in real value, to other people, to, to people who have assets or, or technology companies, and you're driving it faster and faster and faster. And because there's more people left out than are-- that, that win by that? And different politicians emerge and they prey on the people who are left out, who had their pockets picked by that policy, to say, \"It's not your fault, it's those rich people.\" They are the problem. We're gonna tax them more, and we're gonna take back control of those companies. If you look at what's happening in China, we're gonna take back control of those companies, and we're gonna put more of that power in the state. but there's no fix from that system through taxes. If you taxed a hundred percent of all the value of the com-companies in the US in two thousand and nineteen, you couldn't pay half of what you printed. So, so there is no fix through taxes. So what those, so what those politicians would do is keep picking your pocket faster to be able to do this and, and a-- and create enemies, us versus them, through that process. And that's how you get through to revolution and war. And throughout history, you see the same thing, and we're suckers for it. We are all suckers for it because we believe that it's, it's a pe-peopple problem instead of a system problem. And so if I'd, if I said, if I could encourage Bitcoiners on one thing, it would be, it would be understand what other people are going through. 'Cause when, when people move to fear and they don't understand Bitcoin and they're, they're paralyzed by fear Then, then they aren't likely not to be gonna be open to a, a belief system that counters their belief system, because what they'll, they'll turn to instead is, it's easier to believe it's Elon Musk's fault. It's easier to believe it's all those rich people's fault than it is, it's a system problem that requires a different system. So doors number one and two, what you'd say is, it's impossible to solve through, through doors number one and two. The system can't solve itself. And what the beautiful thing about Bitcoin is, just like any technology that changes the rules, it changes the rules by drastically removing co-cost and opening up access to people left out. That's how every technology enters, and it's actually a bottom-up movement. When I talk about that emergent system, that bottom-up movement is actually a- A path from doors number one and two to door three that actually fixes or, or aligns, incentives around a world that actually works better. and so, so people that really understand Bitcoin, like yourself, understand it's way more than a wealth, wealth transfer, wealth gain. It's, it's, it's about fixing the incentives of the world and being, and being able to provide an abundant path forward for everyone." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:06", "start": 1326.11, "text": "I, I think of it as an honest money. It's going to drive accountability and responsibility to more of us that it will sort of enforce a kind of economic discipline on all of us, whereas maybe- For many years, we or kind of the world has been living beyond its means, has been living in a way where we lie to ourselves through using a fiat system that, oh, this thing is affordable, you can do this, when really we've actually been doing capital accum- capital consumption. We've been de- subtly destroying some of our capital equipment, and what we need to be a prosperous and wealthy and, you know, good society is wealth, and we need to use capital accumulation, not capital- Consumption, right? And so I think that's, that's big change. Go on." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "22:52", "start": 1372.06, "text": "Yeah, it's a huge change, but, but again, in the system, if you have theft built into the system and it has to grow more and more, imagine, now imagine there's a whole bunch of people that know-- In two thousand eight provides a really good example. People talk about, people talk about All of the same people still being in power and gaining tons of wealth by socializing the losses to giant parts of the population, but some people couldn't fail. Kept their jobs, kept their bonuses, kept everything else, and actually just got stronger as a result. So, so what that does is it changes the rules of capitalism. But what, what's worse than that, is it encodes those rules in capitalism itself, because what it signals to, to everybody who knows, it says I can take massive bets, and because the system-- they, they can't allow a system failure, then I have a one way bet that I win, I win, and I lose, and the taxpayers are all gonna bail me out, and I win too. But it encodes that new rule in capitalism itself, and the free mar-- and as a result, the free market is gone. When you're printing money at this, there is no free market at all. It's just all an illusion, but people, people believe they see We still live in a free market. And, and so, so you, you have, you have to, to your point, that You could hate Bitcoin and you could still gain value through Bitcoin. You could never buy it, but because you're working on a system where all, all of the entrepreneurial talent is driving prices down lower and lower and lower, you benefit even if you hate it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:37", "start": 1477.18, "text": "Yeah. And so, I guess turning to what happened this year, twenty twenty-one, how would you see the broader understanding of that amongst, let's say, politicians or regulators? What's your take as We survey and look around the world, are there any standouts there in your mind around, politicians and regulators of society?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "24:59", "start": 1498.69, "text": "even this conversation, I think every time you do this, with not just me, but a whole bunch of others, and, and, and a bunch of podcasters are doing this, it is, it is breaking down what people used to believe to have them question deeper. And, and, and just think about politicians as, they're just people. Some of those people will never understand technology, as if you're really old and- You've lived in, in this, in, in all of your wealth and power is from a system that works differently. You're probably not gonna see tech, the, the technology is going to change the rules. You'll probably fight against it, but you get older and new people, new people, that, that, that Talk about the truth, get elected as a result of, as a result of that. And when I said this is an emergent system, it is an emergent system. There's, in Canada, Pierre Po-Poliakov, he's, he, he read my book three times. and same thing, he couldn't get it at first because it was such a change from the, from, from what, what he understood, and then he understood the inflation part, but he didn't have a way to get out of it because the entire syst- this He, he, he was really trying to figure out how do you do this and how much power the existing system has and how they're gonna, how they would come after people on Bitcoin. And, and I, and I said to him, I said, \"You're either advocating for truth and, and, and for where humanity needs to go, or you're part of the problem.\" And, and, and so it doesn't matter if there is no fix through the system and you stay in the system to get elected because you can't solve it. And so, and, and, and- And so he's become a Bitcoiner, that's public now that he's become a Bitcoiner, and, and he, he on his own time will determine how do I, how do I move this for-- how do I move this forward? But the first step is, and, and again, he's a really intelligent person. But the first step that everybody goes through is, is how do I, how do I fix it? I'm looking for-- He was looking for a fix, but he realized he couldn't fix it from the system, and then started to realize, okay, we have to advocate for it. We have to advocate for rules that be able to where the, where the world's moving so that we're a part of, part of this. And that's one example in Canada, but there's examples. I spoke at the Austrian Central Bank, central bankers, leaders from around the world in that room. I can tell you how far, how far this con-- how early we are, because, because that is just starting to be known. Now my phone is ringing off the hook. The, the, oh, even an example, one, one podcast, and I, I sometimes say, \"Yeah,\" I, I try to say yes to, some of the smaller podcasts too. And everything, and one of those podcasts had three thousand visitors or three, three thousand views until ten days ago. That podcast now has three hundred and thirty-five thousand views, and, and, and what's happening is a lot of people are looking for what I'm saying or me or, and, and those keywords are now search-- driving the algorithm that is s-- searching, and some of these, some of these talks are causing more and more conversations. It's not just- It's me, it's Michael Saylor, it's you, it's a whole group, a whole group of people, because when you tell the truth, it seems to spread." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:32", "start": 1712.21, "text": "That's right. And I think it's, it's funny because in some ways, it, it just represents such a big shift, and so that is one of the difficulties of trying to convey this idea to people that, hey, deflation can actually be a good thing. We could actually benefit out of this, and that it just runs so counter to what people learn from their Keynesian and monetar Textbooks and teachers at school and university and even just in the media, what they read. but despite this, it seems that some of the media are turning around, some of them are starting to actually research Bitcoin and write well about it. Of course, the still overwhelming majority are still writing in very inaccurate ways about Bitcoin, but of course, that's why we've got the likes of Bitcoin Magazine and various podcasts and other people out there who are trying to give accurate information and at least what they can, and, you know, organize Organizations like the Mises Institute who are trying to put out actually good quality economic a-and some political analysis as well. so I think maybe it's, we, it's probably fair to say, at least in the English language material, if, if you'll, if you know where to look, you can find good material on Bitcoin now. But, I think it's, it's just going to take time for more people to get there, right? It's like, I'm sure a lot of those listen, a lot of those people who you were talking to at the Austrian Central" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "29:52", "start": 1791.76, "text": "They, but they will. you'll, you'll be amazed at how many people are tuning into these and, and following my work or, or other people's work that is starting to feed back because it forces a qu- forces these questions at a different level and people wanna know the answer. Actually, that's actually why, why I'd say one thing that we could do better in Bitcoin, when you know it as well as you do. it's easy to think everybody else does, they don't. I can tell you, they, they, they don't. and, and what we have to think about is, how did we learn the first time? What, what was it that broke through for us? And, and you know what happened-- I think you know what happens. When you're polarizing against somebody? Very few people will actually be curious enough and, and remove their ego to be able to look deeper at, at what that, what you're saying. Most people will fight that and they'll lock in their, their views. And, and, and when I say most people, that's just how humans are, like, are, are, are dialed. So, so how do you break through is you have to speak in their language. and a lot of times in Bitcoin, once you understand something so well- You wonder why everybody else can't see it, so it's easy not to speak in other people's language. And if I just looked at friends who are just coming around to this now, and you know how long I've been talking about this. and, and, and when I say friends, like really good friends that are really just, just starting to really get this, it takes a while." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:29", "start": 1888.54, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. Lend at HoddleHoddle is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin-backed lending platform where you can lend or borrow stablecoins globally. And anonymously. So sign up in just thirty seconds and you can borrow stablecoins without any verification. You deal directly with other people and the users control collateral throughout the whole deal with all interest paid at the end. Now, if you have stablecoins, you can earn extra by lending them at the highest returns and you're issuing out over collateralized loans with the full interest guaranteed. So lend at HodlHodl, lend and borrow stablecoins on your terms at your desired interest rates. There's no hidden fees, the terms are transparent, users can Control the keys in the deal in escrow. Go and check it out, lend dot hodl hodl dot com. If you're interested to upgrade your security, go to coinkite dot com and order your coldcard. The coldcard is my favorite Bitcoin hardware wallet. You can use it in various configurations. You can have it just on single signature with no passphrase if you're a beginner, and maybe once you're learning more about it, you can add a passphrase to it, and you can use some of the other features like a juris pin or the brick me pin to wipe the device. Or And aspects like seed export, so there are all sorts of features available and possible on the cold card, and in order to use it, you end up learning more about Bitcoin too, so that's a great feature in that sense. You can use it easily with wallets like Specter Desktop, Sparrow, or Electrum also. So if you wanna order yours, go to coinkite dot com, use the code Livera to order yours. And if you want to upgrade to multi-signature Unchained Capital, I'm making it easy to do this. With Bitcoin security, we want to remove single points" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:07", "start": 1986.85, "text": "Draw those coins. Also, even if you're on a single signature hardware wallet, you might still be exposed to other single points of failure like your wallet and that backup, and even ourselves. With Unchained Capital, we've got collaborative custody. You can have two hardware wallets in different locations and Unchained hold the third key. So if you need help setting up, they've got a concierge onboarding program. You can go to the website Unchained dot com, select the concierge onboarding program, and use the code Livera for a discount on your concierge program. Back to the Yeah. I also think some of that comes down to user friendliness as well of the wallets and the apps and different Bitcoin software and obviously the interface that some of the exchanges and broker provide, broker services provide. I'm curious your view on, on twenty twenty-one. What was your view on some of those? Did they improve? did they make a meaningful difference in terms of that for your friends who you're trying to help onboard?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "34:04", "start": 2043.74, "text": "Yeah, I would say, a lot of things. Do Do those friends know that yet?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:09", "start": 2048.54, "text": "No." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "34:09", "start": 2049.34, "text": "But, but some people, when, when you could have ETFs in Canada and some people started buying there, you know, that was their first entry points, point, then they say, okay, maybe if this is that, maybe I should self-custody and I should learn, learn more. Now self-custody with multisig and it's easier to use and you can have a hard wallet that's easy to use. And so, but, but your point is actually a really, really important point. And, and I just, I encourage every single person to think about when first faced with a new technology, that technology typically looks clunky and it doesn't, it doesn't emerge as fast. And that technology is, if you looked at the internet through that lens, the internet, most people couldn't forecast, I couldn't forecast, even though I built a business on top of the internet, many businesses on top of the internet, I couldn't forecast what It would look like today and how it would be prevailing in everything today. But most people couldn't do that at all, because at the time, '97 and on the internet, it would take two weeks to download a cat video, right? You just-- the use cases weren't there. And then the ease of use, the UX, all of the experiments, some of those experiments failing on top of the internet made it Stronger and stronger and stronger because the next experiments created massive businesses tied into that network effect. That same thing is happening today on Bitcoin. And, and people look at-- some people question the El Salvador bond, why do they do it that way? Think about it this way, it's an experiment. I suspect it's gonna work. If it doesn't work, the next one will work way better. And, and, and, and all of that is making the protocol stronger. The UX is getting better, it's easier to use, there's tons of innovation and people building to it as Taproot comes, comes comes out, it's already out. So if it comes out and you allow, and you're building, smart contracts on top of this, and you're building a whole bunch of technology on top of this, it'll explode further and further and further. So, so we're just really early, in this, but two thousand and twenty-one sure made a difference, and one of the big differences was El Salvador using it as a currency means McDonald's now uses it as a currency in El Salvador. El Salvador. And Starbucks uses it as currency in El Salvador. And how easy would it be to move that into Canada or US or somewhere else, because it's just a-- it, it's an open protocol, really simple. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:00", "start": 2219.83, "text": "and the other cool thing with that is the likes of McDonald's and Starbucks. So I know, McDonald's in El Salvador are using OpenNode as their Lightning provider, to do payment processing, and I believe Starbucks are, are using eBEX Mercado. Who are a Guatemalan exchange, but also now setting up in El Salvador, obviously. and so then what would happen is that McDonald's in other countries might then start saying, \"Oh, well, how did they do it in that other country? Oh, okay, let's start looking at that.\" Although that is also- Important to think about in terms of stages of adoption. Here, here I'm thinking of my friend Vijay Boyapati, or also Nick Zabur has also made this kind of argument or written on this kind of line of thinking, which is the whole store of value and then medium of exchange and then unit of account, narrative. So I'm wondering how much does that play into your mind? Do you believe it will be mostly people using it as a store of value and only when enough of the world has, is actually holding some? Then we'll start, there'll be more of a common medium of exchange use." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "38:07", "start": 2287.2, "text": "So, so again, look to other technology, or look to what technology does to be able to talk, talk to that. And by the way, if you talked about, Nick or VJ, I would have believed the same thing. I didn't see, El Salvador, a country using Bitcoin as a medium exchange this early. Why didn't I see it? Because I thought with the volatility that they wouldn't, that nobody would- Use it as a currency. Same thing, a whole bunch of people talk about Bitcoin, well, it, it, it'll emerge, it'll be a great store of value, and then it'll become a medium of exchange. But here was the miss in that, and it's typical a miss, and it's actually, so if it can happen to me, and if it can happen to, and I think about technology all the time, then it can happen to a whole bunch of other people. We, we look at other countries through our privilege. And remember, what a technology does, or we look at other companies through our privilege. And so if you were, Sears And, and Amazon came out, and you controlled what products that the world saw, and, and they were all on your shelves, and people buying those products reinforced how smart your people were in picking products, and then there was a vast billions of products that couldn't get on your shelves? And then Amazon opened shelves to anyone, and a bunch of those products started fi- finding the shelves, finding the digital shelves, and you had unlimited shelf space. And then people realized, \"Whoa, I can get this for this price.\" That technology, lowering that cost, what it effectively did is it lowered the access cost, the barrier cost, for a whole bunch of people that were blocked out. And who, who used it first were the people that were blocked out, all the suppliers that were blocked out, and by using it, they attracted buyers, and that created Amazon's monopoly today. And if you look at, if you think about in systems so, so this fiat system, largely US dollar, dollar system that we have globally, there's a whole bunch of people that benefit from that, or there's narrow group of people in narrower all the time that benefit from it, and there's a whole bunch of people locked out from it. El Salvador is one of those nations that locked out, is locked out of it. So when you look at it, at something that lowers access cost, and, and if you think about their transaction cost in US dollars and all of the fees and everything else and all of the brokers in between to be able to access an unjust system that somebody else can control and hurt you Then it makes more sense that a country like that would be first. and, and there will be lots of other countries that'll join that, and as they join it, they'll make it stronger and stronger and stronger. and so I think now you have two network effects feeding back on each, each other. One is a store of value, and one is a, and one is a payment me-mechanism or medium of exchange. Now and, and as that's used as a medium of exchange, well, so three weeks, four weeks ago, I wired a six figure, my, my, to India, to one of my companies in, in India. It took three weeks, and my bank here couldn't tell me where it was, the bank there couldn't tell me where it was, the fees were, outrageous. And, and I just thought, I could pay all my employees directly, go to Bitcoin right now. What am I doing? What am I doing going through this into-- like, I don't need the system, I can transact with people directly. And so, so, so it starts to break that down, and it's probably-- I, I suspect it's unstoppable. if you tie the same thing to the, to the what's happening in El Salvador. You would rather have something that was upwardly vol- upwardly volatile, increasing all the time, than something that was losing va- was guaranteed to lose value." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:25", "start": 2544.97, "text": "Of course. Now It's not been, a smooth ride. So let's say you were, you were a Salvadoran, you might have started with a small amount of sats and then seen the price run up like crazy and then, you know- Gyrate very rapidly, right? Like at one point it went sort of sixty k down to thirty k, then up to sixty-nine k, then down to maybe forty-two k or something, and now we're kind of, I don't know, forty-seven k, something like that, in US dollar terms that is. So I think part-- that's part of the journey of learning for any new Bitcoiner as well as avoiding temptations on things like leverage trading and things like that where maybe when people are new, they think I can make money on this thing, right? Where once you sort of become more savvy about it, the, the, the leverage that you're using, if you are, is more conservative, and you're much more about just humbly stacking. At least that's how I've, I've seen it, and I've seen that as like a very typical progression as well out of people who I've been trying to teach about Bitcoin. I presume you've seen something similar, right? It, it" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "43:30", "start": 2609.86, "text": "pretty, it matches exactly. But, but my uncle's, example provides key- The same thing. Oh, it went up, I should sell, and then it went down, oh, what am I, what am I gonna buy? And, and now he's gonna hold forever. He's gonna buy every week and hold forever. it's a pretty normal course in something that is moving like this. Now, I would ask you to look at any single technology company, for, or the internet itself, but let's use a technology company because it's easier to see. how many people held onto Amazon from five dollars until three-- thirty-five hundred or thirty-two hundred when Like no one, right? The-- and beca- because they did the same thing. And so, so they were trying to time or trade, trade a stock rather than thinking the fundamental value, beca- because they, they were, they always, like, again, it was predicting the future and it was moving faster and faster. And I still remember having these conversations with very, very senior executives at Google, very senior executives at Google saying, \"We don't understand-- And Amazon, and this is early days, they don't make any money and everything, and I, and I said, their losses and its cash flow positive are your profits one day, they will take those too, because once they, once they move, move here, they could easily add advertising to their site and drive straight into your business, into your, but you can't add products to your site, their, their whole thing is a supply chain, everything out. So Whether that happens now or, but you can see that's part of the drive that, that has, has created that, and it's easy for people to miss, no matter who you are." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:17", "start": 2716.9, "text": "Yeah, it is important, and I think that's a very useful analogy because people in their minds, when they are maybe newer to this, they're expecting just a steady growth. They're just thinking, \"Oh, it's just gonna-- it should just steadily grow, and that's when I'm gonna take some time to get some or learn how to use it properly.\" And until then, it's You know, it's not worth my time. But as you rightly point out, many tech companies had histories that were very volatile as well. It's not like they were just a straight line, steady growth. That's just not reality, even for some of the biggest tech companies of the world today." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "45:49", "start": 2749.48, "text": "Every one of them, every single one of the ones that you were talking about the bigger, biggest today, had drawdowns of fifty percent or more during their, during their run-ups and multiple drawdowns. Every single one of them. It's not new for technology. The, the, the, to another, takes-- it, it's a, it's a, it, it's, it's a feature of the system." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:11", "start": 2770.89, "text": "Yeah. And this also is very reminiscent of the point that, say, Michael Saylor would make about dominant digital networks. He was saying, like, imagine trying to trade in and out of Amazon as it was going on the way up, and it's the same thing with Bitcoin. People are trying to trade in and out, it's just foolish. It's just take a position, lump sum, and hold." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "46:30", "start": 2789.54, "text": "Fool's game. Fool's game. Yeah, exactly. To give an example, but Bitcoin isn't like Amazon. Bitcoin's like the internet itself. It's like all of the Amazons, Googles on top of that, it's like the internet itself. And so, imagine accruing all of that value into Bitcoin, into, that's and tr- and trading that for fiat money game, for fiat money win at some point in time, it's ludicrous." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:00", "start": 2819.52, "text": "It is insane. And so, I think that's one thing. Now, as we were talking about with El Salvador, it's like obviously the biggest in- The best example of a country adopting Bitcoin, but I also think it's also just about probably who, who holds a lot of the assets today. It's high net worth individuals, it's family offices, it's these big investment, you know, funds, insurance funds, pension funds. I think it's about those individuals or entities transitioning a lot of their wealth out of the fiat world into Bitcoin. Now, of course, you know, the number of stocks is the same, but what we're talking about is the relative valuations, right? Like, so people selling, let's say, stock in- This or property, and then buying Bitcoin, and then, because obviously what we're talking about is more and more of the people of the world holding some of, at least some of, or maybe high percentages of their investable net worth in Bitcoin, in Sats, right?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "47:53", "start": 2872.53, "text": "Yeah. My, my house fell by half, half this year, went down by, my, my, and, and but, but people think house prices drove up by twenty-five percent. that's, that's what, that's what happened. And, and that transition allows you to move from a system that must fail spectacularly to another system. Now, the people that go first, few people, I'd like to say, walking across the bridge, what they're actually doing is building the bridge as they're walking across. And, and they're building it wider and stronger and more, and, and then more people are walking across, building it wider, a-and so you have a transition from one system that doesn't have to fail spectacularly into another system that can emer- that can emerge. That's what ha- that, that's what's happening." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:37", "start": 2917.22, "text": "Yeah, I love that, because you could almost argue that in the early days, the likes of Satoshi and Hal Finney and, you know, Dustin Trammell and others who were early, they were walking, it was like a tightrope, you're walking this thing. And then now, it's starting to become more like, okay, it's like a two-lane bridge, and it's like, it's reasonably sturdy and secure, and over Those mega bridges that's ultra secure, ultra sturdy, very stable, but it's all being built out now in real time, and that's the most exciting part of all this because there are-- there's all these different parts of the ecosystem, whether that's the Bitcoin mining world, the, the Bitcoin development world, there's people who are focusing on, let's say, developing countries, the adoption in those countries, you've got people who are trying to help influence, let's say, pools of capital in the, in the rich Western world to obviously- Take a position, take, take a foothold in this, in this Bitcoin world. also wanted to get your thoughts, if you have any, on the Bitcoin mining situation this year. Obviously, I guess the big story is obviously the, the China bans Bitcoin mining. So any, any thoughts on that? And, any thoughts around Bitcoin mining just generally?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "49:49", "start": 2989.13, "text": "No, it's just, specifically when, when, when China banned Bitcoin, I just, I had had this conversation like for years with Preston before that happened, saying That it, it's guaranteed to happen because, because, Bitcoin, it, it defunds communism. You can't run, a com-command control society where you, where, to, where a few people own everything and everybody else is a slave to that system. With, with Bitcoin, it's a free market system. So you, you could see for sure that China would try to ban it at some, at some point, and what is it their seventh time trying to ban it, and this is, this is Probably the most pressing, pressing time, but you s-- you still see by hash rate that there's still twenty percent or so hash rate in, in China. And what's happened is it's just gone underground. And try-- trying to ban Bitcoin means you ban yourself from Bitcoin. It doesn't stop, and you see the hash rate expand in three months, it's higher than it ever was, as, as other Distributed parties fill that gap, and Bitcoin chases lower cost energy and that, and, and I suspect that over time, that you're gonna see, just energy is priced in Bitcoin. You're already seeing it, but energy specifically will be priced in Bitcoin everywhere." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:17", "start": 3077.09, "text": "The world is going to Bitcoinize, and I really believe that. I've, I believe, I've been saying this for years, I believe every, we're going to denominate our prices in sat, and we're gonna spend that. And of course, maybe that's a longer term- Vision and maybe in the short term, you know, people will still use fiat dollars or crypto fiat, right? Like crypto dollars or whatever, t- you know, the, the tethers of the world and stablecoins and whatever. But I think long term, it is all going to Bitcoin, and so I think that's the, the journey we're going on, and I, I view it as we're out there trying to help educate, advocate, put, put, the tools in people's hands or in their heads in terms of how to think about this transition as well, because, I'm, I'm also such a big fan of the community aspect of it, the meetups and the conferences and the events that we do. So those, I think, are important to help instill the right ethos and get the education out there about how to use Bitcoin and really use it for yourself. And so I'm curious if you have any thoughts around, the current state of Bitcoin meetups, conferences, events." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "52:21", "start": 3140.93, "text": "Yeah, i- i- it might, request for podcasts or, kind of three to five a day or, or email- Emails or any sense of what's happening, it's just exploding. and, and what I would, what I'd say though is, is so, and you, Stephan, you weren't in Bitcoin twenty-one, were you? No," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:41", "start": 3160.93, "text": "unfortunately I couldn't make it, but I am on for next year, so I will be there." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "52:44", "start": 3163.79, "text": "I, I saw that, new speaker at it, right? Yes. Awesome. So I can't wait to actually meet in person there. But w-if I could say about twenty-one, it was like the greatest lovin' in the world. It was like Woodstock would have been in six, in six-- I couldn't believe how, how fa-fantastic it was in people I met and what that, what that looked like. And so when, when, when you start to understand what this means and you're around a whole bunch of other people that also understand what it means, and most of those people- are, are in it for a whole bunch of the right reasons and kind, kind of path to where, where we're going. It's a powerful group of people and it's just getting stronger and stronger all the time. And so that's through the meetups, that's through the different education that's happening, it's through- I think I've been asked three times in the last two months on, on being an advisor or helping set up, large Bitcoin, Bitcoin-only funds to be able to invest in technology, and because the, what's available to be able to build on, build on top of this layer, it's, it's extremely hopeful, extremely Positive, positive place where, where a whole bunch of investment is gonna go. So it's just accelerating and, accelerating. It's really exciting. So it's, but I say this We in Bitcoin need to realize that when people are in a state of fear, it is easier to blame a person than a, than, than a system. And, and the existing system is going to place people in fear. It's already placing people in fear. And it's going-- it has to get worse, and it will get worse whether you, you tighten or, or ease, it will turn people against each other. And so I would, the, the, I'd say with that in mind, be kind, because there's a whole bunch of people that don't know what you know, and we want them walking across the bridge with us." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:56", "start": 3296.02, "text": "I think that's a very excellent point around Fear, fear is the mind killer, as the, as the saying goes, right? And so when people are acting under this state of fear, they can do things that they wouldn't ever have normally done under normal circumstances. So I think that is a very important point that I think even I, I need to take that on board myself, because I think, especially for those of us who've, been searching down the Bitcoin rabbit hole for years and years and years, you, you sort of forget what it's like for people who are yet to even start that journey. And so that's a very Very good point. also wanted to ask you about Bitcoin technology. So I, I know we spoke a little bit about, you mentioned, Taproot and things. in terms of Bitcoin technology or pot- potentially Bitcoin companies, are there any ideas that you're, you're bullish on? You wanna see more of that? I mean, maybe a few examples I could throw out there. there are some, you know, focused on, say, lending, like Bitcoin lending or borrowing against your Bitcoin or maybe, some of those ones focused on providing a better user experience Right, having like an app where it's like Bitcoin and Tether and Lightning all in one, or, there are some other ideas out there like using the Lightning network to make a more censorship-resistant VPN or Lightning network podcasting and things like that. What's What's on your mind in terms of companies or ideas? Are there any that you're interested in or hopeful that you want to see?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "56:22", "start": 3381.77, "text": "So if I taint this, I got to be careful about, because, because the whole point of this open network and ecosystem is there's gonna be a whole bunch of innovation on top of it, and some of it's gonna fail, and some of it's going to tweak. Remember the Palm Pilot? Yeah. It was an absolute failure before the iPhone. Yeah. All of the diff- the only difference is a couple years difference on technology. The really, the only So an abysmal failure and a, and a, a massive success, success. There will be a whole bunch of failures of technology companies on top, on top of the, this network, but there's gonna be so many successes, and each one is going to point the way to more and more success. If I think about the If, if I think about the existing, if I think about Google, Am-Amazon, YouTube, all of these, these, these TikTok, all of these programs, they effectively say this: I win by aggregating content providers. And when enough content providers are competing for viewers on my, on my site, then, then Then viewers keep coming back and they keep looking for more and more content providers. So I have billions or hundreds of millions of content providers essentially selling their soul to try to get views to, to view, viewers, of which the, the monopolies give the top people maybe one percent. And can shut them off anytime. Oh, you're out of the algorithm, you're gone. It's a huge risk as a content provider. and, and, and the way that whole system works is an advertising system over top of it that essentially is, is, is monetizing those users with advertising. And so it feeds back on itself and feeds-- and the entire cost and it takes a bunch of people to run that s-that, that system. And that c-- entire cost of that system is gonna be eradicated. By Bitcoin. In not just music, in, in YouTube, and every, and a whole bunch of different other, other industries, as the power moves back to the content providers. How? I could write a contract in, into the-- and say, \"I need to be profitable, and but ninety percent of the profits, ninety percent of the value is delivered to you, to the content producer, and forever I'm gonna make ten to be able, to be able to-- I could put a, put, make a company designed around that.\" And then where would the content providers go? Likely, if you made the UX easy enough, like YouTube made UX easy and, and on the, on top of the, top of the web, if you, if you-- the content providers that were putting on YouTube trying to compete for YouTube, they would also provide option and they would put it on, on the, on your site. They would provide it. And then as more and more people did that Some would only do your site, and more buyer, and more people would come and find that content there, and more people, and you'd have the same network effect start-starting really small that would grow and grow and grow, and create a huge entity by Sharing more value with the people who are creating the value. And so those types of business models are going to emerge on top of this network like crazy. it's not to say that everybody's going to get rich because the long term trend on, on top of that is that trend reduces prices and reduces prices, everywhere. But what it also means is you don't need as much because you don't-- because prices are falling everywhere around you. It means everybody's, is competing on this network Is actually making everybody else's life better by competing on this network." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:10", "start": 3610.82, "text": "Yeah, I think there's a lot to be seen yet in terms of how content shifts and changes because it's, yeah, will it, what, what will be, what will become of the advertising model? And I don't know, will it still be the main dominant method or how will that change if we were to operate in more like a, Bitcoin pay for service sort of option or Just like podcasting two point oh, right? Like apps, that's, that's definitely an interesting area as well. but I think it's probably about time to wrap up. So if you had any closing thoughts there, Jeff, for the listeners out there, what should they be thinking of? And maybe if you've got any ideas around what you'd like to see for next year?" }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "01:00:55", "start": 3655.82, "text": "Closing thought for, for everybody, if you have a friend that is doesn't own Bitcoin, just tell them to get off zero. Do a, put a hundred dollars in it, get a hard wallet, do a hundred, like, do something to get them off zero so they understand. Once they're off zero, they'll start looking at it and paying more attention to it and starting to, start understanding why this is so important. So, it probably if I had a closing, it doesn't take you taking them all the way down the rabbit hole to start, start the- down the rabbit hole from the rest of the way, they'll find, they'll, they'll likely find their way down. What am I excited on in, this year? I, I think you're gonna see, what am I first, what am I fearful for? winter is coming on the existing financial system, no matter what. There is no way out, and it's going to get worse and worse and worse, and that, that worse could come in forms of control, the it growing as a result of your individual rights and freedoms going away. or a cascading collapse, but one or the one, one way or another, that's, that is the end state of the existing financial system. It's really important that people start to take to-- that don't understand Bitcoin, start to, to move into, \"What am I excited about?\" that same thing that is, will drive that at a first principle level and why people need to, to, need to know is going to accelerate." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:22", "start": 3742.73, "text": "Yeah, I think those are some excellent tips. Definitely for people out there, try and get your family and friends off zero, try and get them started, get them on the journey, and, of course, everyone, get out there, follow Jeff, read his book. I'll put the links in the show notes, and of course, Jeff is, a well-known character on, Twitter and all around the trap, so I'm sure you'll see him around. And, Jeff, it was a pleasure chatting with you. Thanks for joining me again." }, { "speaker": "jeff_booth", "time": "01:02:46", "start": 3766.37, "text": "Really good" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:48", "start": 3768.71, "text": "to see you again. I hope you" } ] }