{ "episodeId": "SLP515", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "american_hodl": { "name": "American HODL", "role": "guest", "tag": "AMERICAN" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 8.29, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics brought to you by Swann dot com. Today we're talking about hodling through the cycles. Do you find it hard to hodl? Potentially, now at this time, there's a lot of people who are feeling very bearish. Well, American HODL rejoins me to talk about hodler psychology, Bitcoin culture, areas of overconfidence. As well as a bit of a discussion about mainstream culture, as well as thoughts about different jurisdictions and thoughts on the next cycle. Here's my chat with American Hoddle. Mr. American Hoddle, I mean, if that even is your real name after all. Welcome back to the show." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "00:47", "start": 46.75, "text": "Yeah, there was like the, that thing with, well, we won't say who, because in my opinion, that, that was a bit of a light dox, you know? So out of, you know, in our, in our culture, in Bitcoin culture, light doxing, not cool, not cool, even if the person self doxes, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03", "start": 62.89, "text": "Right, right, yeah. I mean, in this case, it sounds like it's been public since that time, but anyway, whatever." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:10", "start": 70.02, "text": "it has, it has. Yeah. And my guess on that, and I'm, I'm curious to hear what you think. You know how people, the, people make that saying, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference and stuff like that. And, you know, if you look at, as an example, some of the conferences last year, even in a bear cycle, where- More populated or more attended than some of the conferences even this year. So I'm wondering if it's like that, are we kind of in this indifference zone? It's a bit of an accumulation phase, it's equivalent to, you know, twenty fifteen or maybe twenty nineteen, something like that. What do you reckon? Yeah, you" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:48", "start": 108.23, "text": "know, to me, this cycle-- I don't know how you feel, I'd love to get your take too, but like to me, this cycle feels a lot more like twenty fifteen than it does twenty nineteen. And in twenty-- twenty fifteen was when I Really on class of twenty fifteen. And, all throughout twenty fifteen, you know, I was like a, I was a newbie then, so I, I would come in with a chipper attitude, very optimistic, young, eager to take on the world stuff, and, and I'd be like, \"Hey, tell me about bitcoins, guys!\" And people on the forums would be like, \"Fuck you, shut the fuck-- you know, whatever.\" everybody was just in such a bad mood, so depressed. There was like almost no news coverage of Bitcoin in two thousand fifteen. Now NBC every day, Bitcoin is in the, you know, the permanent like cultural zeitgeist. Bitcoin is a, is a presidential campaign issue, but I think that same feeling of just like sort of general malaise is there. And I think if I'm to diagnose it or pinpoint it, it's because we as Bitcoiners, and I'm as guilty as anybody, got into this sort of malaise of inevitability where we just assume that like, some of these sacred cows, like, you know, higher lows, right? Like, we're, we're just, you know, immutable laws And they're not, and Bitcoin is still a wild and volatile beast, and it's unpredictable as hell. And, you know, if you get too married to any sort of outcome in Bitcoin, especially like a price outcome, you're gonna have a bad time, and you're gonna suffer from like some form of Bitcoin derangement syndrome. And I, I certainly like, we've lost friends over the years who've been, you know, guilty of that, and, we've had to fight off these feelings inside ourselves, and hodling is not an easy journey. It's, It's one of the simplest things in the world. When you tell the story in thirty years, people are gonna think that, you were just some lucky son of a bitch who just, you know, showed up at the right time, right? And it's like, \"Oh yeah, what'd you do? You just bought bitcoins and then you, you hoddled them.\" it sounds like the easiest thing you could possibly do in the world, and it's not until you get in the, you know, the inside of the maelstrom that you realize, like, this thing is" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "04:03", "start": 243.18, "text": "difficult experiences you can have as a human being right now, psychologically, maybe not physically, but psychologically. And yeah, it's very simple, but it's not easy, and like, you know, we're all gonna have to- We're all gonna have to let go of some of our more religious beliefs around price models, definitely around price models, you know? Maybe not around the culture and the principles, but around the, around the price, certainly, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:29", "start": 269.06, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And for a long time, people had this idea of, \"Oh, it'll go up, but then it'll crash, but the, the crash won't be high, you know, it'll be better than last time, kind of thing.\" This, you know, like you were saying, the higher lows idea, or even this idea that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:45", "start": 285.09, "text": "Be up, where I think recently that was kind of broken. Depending on, you know, if you cherry-pick the exact top of December 2017, and there was a point where recently, you know, maybe last year, it was down at fifteen thousand, so okay, yeah, you were down theoretically. If you were stacking over that period, you were up, but if you had just done like a point in time, you know, at the peak of 2017, okay, yeah, you were down for a little bit, but you're right," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:13", "start": 312.64, "text": "Bitcoin is here to stay, right? And I think that for me as a twenty thirteener, and I agree with you, a lot of what you were saying, for me as an early twenty thirteen Bitcoiner, sort of riding, you know, through the eighty percent drops all the way There was not this sense of, \"Oh, Bitcoin is coming back,\" you know, in twenty fourteen and fifteen. It was, it just wasn't there. So the twenty eighteen, nineteen bear cycle, it, it was-- that was like a walk in the park. It sort of felt like there was just so much going on and all this development, and, you know, Bitcoin is coming back for sure, so it just felt so much easier, than the fourteen, fifteen cycle where a lot of people kind of, you know, they left, you know, Bitcoin Twitter or kind of online, but yeah, it's, it's, it's changed. I think in," }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "05:59", "start": 358.93, "text": "I think in eighteen, nineteen, twenty, what happened was, many of us got overly confident. We were also- You know, as, as sort of a, let's just call it what it is, it was sort of a fear reaction. We were having sort of a fear reaction, that caused us to suddenly our entire lives became Bitcoin, and it was like nobody was touching grass. It, it was just, you know, you were listening to every single Bitcoin podcast that came out, you were on Twitter eight hours a day. Maybe this is just me, but I feel like this was actually a lot of people were doing this, and we were all upping our conviction, and then, you know, there" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "06:39", "start": 398.94, "text": "We're all the most convicted maximalists that could ever be, right? And it was around the time Safting's book came out, and I think we realized like the historical importance of Bitcoin, not just in a, you know, the last fifty years context, but the last five thousand years context. And then we started to feel the sense of, you know, just, I don't know, destiny about this whole thing that, you know, certainly, obviously, we, we have the secrets to the universe. And I, I think what happened is reality smacked us in the face, which is" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "07:09", "start": 429.18, "text": "I wasn't around for thirteen, but I've gone back and looked at, a lot of the things that were written around that time. So in thirteen, people were wildly overconfident. I mean, just so overconfident. if you read the VC takes from that era, people were saying that Bitcoin's going to fifty thousand dollars. In thirteen, they were saying that, right? And Bitcoin wasn't anywhere close to fifty thousand dollars. It was, I think like twelve hundred was the peak. Yeah. And then when you-- whenever you have this overconfidence cycle, you Overconfidence, you know, and it's like this sort of depression. And then in '17, you had sort of a more, more of a cautious optimism about what was gonna happen. And I remember myself, I don't know how you felt at the time, but in sort of early, '17, like late '16, early '17, I was telling people that Bitcoin was gonna go to twenty-seven hundred dollars. I was like, \"Yeah,\" and I, and I thought I was being wildly bullish, right? I was like, \"End of the year," }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "08:09", "start": 489.0, "text": "Because the market likes to climb a wall of worry. And so I think there's something to this, you know, cautious optimism that produces better bull markets. I'm not sure like what the psychological phenomenon is at play, but this is just something that I've noticed over time. So if that is true, just a little injection of opium, that means that, you know, the cautious optimism we're all feeling after having just been overconfident is potentially setting us up for a better cycle, right? 'Cause I think this last cycle was a bunch of bullshit. You know, just, it wasn't as good as it should have been, and there are many reasons, for why that was the case. But the, you know, we have to look inward and say that one of the primary reasons is we were all overconfident. We were thinking Bitcoin is being inevitable, and, you know, the, the price was just gonna stair step its way to heaven, and that's just not how reality works. Look at the, go back and look at the Weimar chart, right? That Weimar chart is chaos. And now imagine-- I've, I time period. And, you know, if you're being honest with yourself, i-it would have been really hard to make it to the end, especially if you were one of the people who saw it early, right? So You know, yourself being a twenty thirteen Bitcoiner, Bitcoiners who are in even earlier than you, is like over time, you know, you basically, you get weary, you get worn down by the market, the, the emotional volatility is so much, and so you have to do something in order to cope with that so that you can make it to the end. Otherwise, you're gonna be one of the guys who coughs up his coins at the exact wrong part of the cycle. Like, you know, I, I knew OGs who were in for seven, eight years and then they were selling" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "09:51", "start": 590.89, "text": "Or the fear just enveloped them, it overwhelmed them, and you just wanna do anything you can in your power to prevent yourself from being that person, and it takes a lot of emotional control and self-discipline and, you know, having a, having a support network, like also all the sort of regular advice, like get enough, get enough sleep, go to the gym, you know, eat right. It's like very grandma advice, but that's what you gotta do to survive this market, 'cause it's psychologically torturous, and it's, it's okay to admit that," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:19", "start": 619.43, "text": "you You're, you make a lot of good points there around overconfidence. I think I definitely tried to say, \"No, there's not gonna be a supercycle,\" right? Like I was one of those people saying, \"No, I don't think it's gonna be a supercycle. Like, be ready, it could be an eighty percent drop, but I just don't know where the top or bottom is,\" you know? but at the same time, it just psychologically hits you. And I think what happens is if people are in this mindset where they're just like, \"I'm That can make, make it just another level of tricky, you know, another level of difficulty for you because now you're thinking about managing the finances and sort of, okay, how much fiat do I need? How much runway do I actually need? because, okay, let's say you're a committed Bitcoiner And you believe that there'll be future bull cycles to come, you still need to kind of ride out the bear cycles. And so the question then is like, how do you do that as long as, yeah, if you're not working? Now of course, I think the best plan is to continue working, but, you know, there's a bunch of Bitcoiners who aren't. So, you know, that's kind of like, how do you manage, how do you manage the financial aspect of it and not get wrecked on that?" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "11:31", "start": 691.44, "text": "So the, the two methods that I've seen OGs, try and do, like just to speak to that, you know, specifically and directly, is, if you are in a position where you're retired off Bitcoin and you don't have any fiat income coming in, there are basically two things you can do. You can try and take enough off at the top to make it through five years, six years, whatever it might be, you know, and whatever your burn rate is for your family, you try and stay within that. Or the other thing you do is you don piece off a little, along the way. So like you, you'd take off a little Bitcoin each month for expenses, and I think both of those are like fine strategies that will get people through, and I think both of those are good things to do. Now, the worst thing you can possibly do, which is what I've seen a lot of people actually do, right, is they say to themselves, \"I'll just take off a little as needed.\" Then the bottom hits, they get panicky, fearful, and they end up locking in, you know, a loss or, or a, a lesser gain, right? The, you know, if you've been hodling for a long time, you, you lock it in, and then it becomes real, 'cause a paper loss is just a paper loss. It, it doesn't mean anything, right? you know, if you look at, if you're a seasoned hodler and you were with us for March of twenty twenty, I mean, Jesus, go back and look at," }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "12:52", "start": 772.42, "text": "March twelfth, twenty twenty-one. It's a crazy swing, I promise you. And yeah, the volatility is intense. I mean, a year ago, Stephan, it was like, every influencer I could think of and many who I greatly respect were on Bitcoin, Twitter saying that, you know, all of the GPTC, Bitcoin was fake, right? And this, this was like the big chief item at the very end of the cycle, and they were like, \"It's gonna take us all down. There's six hundred thousand bitcoins unaccounted for, right?\"" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "13:22", "start": 802.44, "text": "Really feeling it, and there had been a lot of shenanigans with like the FTX and Luna, and I think one of the things we found out is that the, you know, all, almost all of the yield started as an arb play on GBTC and then became a derivative at some point, and then, you know, it was a derivative of a derivative of a derivative of the arb on GBTC, and that was what was funneling, that was, that was how all the money in DeFi was being made for a time period, until, you know, inevitably that The daisy chaining of the DeFi ecosystem and the collapse of the DeFi ecosystem was always inevitable. The people who were shocked by that, it was like, \"Come on, man. I, I felt the same way as, when the, when, when we're like crying in our Cheerios and the TradFi guys look at us and they go, \"Hey, come on, you idiots, you invested all your money in, in, in internet, coins. What'd you think was gonna happen, right? Like, I-- That's how I felt about the DeFi deg" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "14:20", "start": 860.4, "text": "I remember having this thought, like a year, a year later it feels like ancient history, but even at the time I thought to myself, you know, hey, in, what, just two or three months, the clock is gonna strike midnight, the ball is gonna drop in New York, and it'll be a new year, and this memory is gonna be just etch-etched from everyone's mind, and we'll just be onward and upward, and that is essentially exactly what happened. I mean, the Bitcoin price basically recovered, to, you know, around twenty-five to thirty K And all of the fear that was, you know, at the bottom of the market, that was enveloping people sort of just dissipated, or it, or it lingered, it hung in the air, but it didn't really have the teeth that it once had. So My advice to people who are, you know, on their hodling journey is, when things are their most scary, try not to listen, try to go slow, take things day by day. And conversely, when you are feeling the most greed you've ever felt in your life, and you think you're the smartest person that ever lived, and you're so rich, and how could life get better? I mean, you're just, you're a genius and everybody else is a fucking peasant, like, also go slow and take it day by day, and maybe don't buy yourself the Multi-million dollar home or, you know, the Rolex or the Ferrari or whatever, right? Just take it slow and just realize like, hey, whether it's a really bad time in the Bitcoin market or a really good time in the Bitcoin market, like this too shall pass. This isn't gonna be here forever, this is temporary. in Bitcoin especially, you know, the bull markets are very short and infrequent. Most of our time spent hodling is in times like this, in, in this kind of market. This kind of market is like the majority of, of the Bitcoin- time, where, you know, things are just sort of chopping sideways. I mean, we lose perspective over the years, Stefan, because, man, if me and you had had a conversation in, whatever, twenty eighteen, and I was telling you, \"Dude, we're gonna be at twenty-seven K and everybody's gonna be so angry and upset,\" we would just laugh and laugh and think that was the best thing ever, and then we would push all our chips into the table and buy even more Bitcoin, right? But now, when you're here living it, it feels terrible. I" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:33", "start": 993.06, "text": "feel so bad. Yeah. And I, and I, one thing I'll add to that is people anchor to, let's say, twenty K from twenty seventeen. Yeah. But the reality, here's the reality, seventy-five percent of that year was spent under five K. Right. Ninety percent of that year was spent under ten K. It was only that last month or so that it was like, you know, maybe one, one or two months that we were getting up above ten K and around twenty K. But, and yet people anchor back to twenty K. And so this is, as As we speak today, we're recording this 18th September, 2023, the price is around twenty-seven, twenty-six K, whatever. And like you said, just in March of twenty twenty, it was three K. So there's kind of, you know, it's, it's a lot of cherry-picking, right? And people, you can always kind of pick the dates, and let's say a Bitcoin hater or a skeptic can always pick their own dates and say, \"Oh, look, see, blah, blah, blah, you're down.\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:32", "start": 1051.98, "text": "Everyone who's done, you know, who's been sacking for five years plus, is done, okay, you know, but there are times where you feel like an idiot, you know? Like we feel like idiots at times in the cycle." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "17:42", "start": 1062.09, "text": "I think it's okay to admit that. I think that a lot of people are, you know, they're, they're in their Bitcoin Zen. They say they're in their Bitcoin Zen, and, I never believe them because I know it's not true. I know that they're in their house or their apartment just being like, \"Fuck, fuck, fuck, right? Like that's-- I mean, that's the feeling that I'm having, so I'm assuming that many other people are feeling that way also. but, you know, it's-- your feelings aren't that important in investing. You don't really need to listen to them, you know? Ev-every human being has, activity bias, right? And activity bias is basically that You know, it's better to do something rather than nothing, and, and this is what our evolutionary biology has taught us, because when you are facing predators, you know, you're a small mammal facing predators on the grasslands of wherever, and you, you know, you see something move in the grass, well, nine times out of ten it's gonna be the wind, but one time out of ten it's gonna be a jaguar that fucking kills you. So it's better to run away every single time and be scared of the grass than it is to face the one time where the jaguar" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "18:47", "start": 1126.62, "text": "If you, you know, run away every time you see the wind move, you're basically just locking in losses, and you're gonna, your performance is gonna be abysmal, right? The people that are perform-- that perform best in markets are people who are literally dead, or people who act like they're dead, or people who don't have access to their money. Like, how many of the Mount Gox creditors do you think would have been-- would have done as well had they not been a Mount Gox creditor, right? Like, they still haven't received any of that money" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "19:16", "start": 1156.04, "text": "And it, it was basically a forced hoddle, like the Japanese court system forced them into hoddling it. And yeah, they're gonna receive pennies on the dollar, but guess what? They're still gonna do better than they would have done if they were allowed to control their own money." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:29", "start": 1168.86, "text": "Gotcha. And, and it's fair to say many of them have now sold off their claims, so it's kind of those coins have kind of transferred to stronger hands, let's say, or kind of, people now who might have bought a claim from a Mount Cox claimant" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "19:46", "start": 1185.8, "text": "in the forums for the Mount Gox claimants, and over the, the course of their forced hodl, many of them were, you know, they came in as degens, some of them were drug users on the Silk Road, I mean, who knows? Why? There were a lot of reasons people were here in twenty thirteen, and not all of it was for sound money economics, like not everybody on, the Silk Road was reading Hayek, you know? It's like that's just not how things work. So, you know, they came in for whatever reason, and over the Internally for the Mount Gox creditors show that, they're planning to dump their b-cash when they receive it, but they're gonna hold their b- they're gonna continue to hold their Bitcoin. So sometimes this is a fud item that comes out, you know, during bear cycles or bull cycles where it goes, you know, \"Oh, all the Mount Gox coins are gonna get unlocked and these people are gonna dump it.\" It's like, no, they-- these people learned during the course of their time, hodling, forced hodling, that Bitcoin is going up" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "20:46", "start": 1245.78, "text": "team to, to study. It should be documented in, in, whatever Bitcoin museum ends up being built one day is the meme of the guy looking at the computer screen and he's elated when Bitcoin goes to a thousand, and then the last panel is he's got a shotgun in his mouth when it goes to a thou- a hundred thousand, it crashes to a hundred thousand. That is human psychology first and foremost, and I feel like every Bitcoiner like highly relates to that feeling, that, that little cartoon character is, is having. So like, study that meme and don't be the guy with the shotgun in your mouth at a hundred, at a hundred K Bitcoin. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:22", "start": 1281.65, "text": "Yeah. and, you know, looking more broadly at what's going on around the world, obviously there's a lot of talk now about are we in a recession, right? Like kind of macro, you know, what's going on around the world? Are we gonna see higher unemployment? Are we gonna see like, is commercial real- real estate going under? Like, there's kind of a lot of talk about this kind of thing. I mean, my sense of it is we're, well, I think parts of the, like, I think a lot of America is really struggling," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:51", "start": 1310.81, "text": "A little bit aloof or out of touch with that. Obviously you saw, you've seen, Paul Krugman's, talk about how inflation has been defeated and so on. I'm curious if you have any views on this kind of idea that, you know, is it that, you know, certain sectors of the US economy are doing great guns and then other parts, you know, big parts of the American economy are really struggling? Where are you at there?" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "22:12", "start": 1332.2, "text": "Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, rich people aren't struggling, right? It's, In America, we basically have this, this middle class that is effectively poor, but, they have access to debt, so they're able to do this sort of theatrical impression of not being poor, right? I mean, when you make, fifty thousand dollars a year, but you have a fifty thousand dollar truck in the driveway That doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, right? And you also have a mortgage payment, and, you know, you got, you know, just daily living expenses, and like a lot of these people are, are deeply struggling, right? But, you know, when you're rich and you go to the grocery store, it doesn't matter to you what eggs cost 'cause you didn't know what the fuck eggs cost before, right? So like, if eggs cost five dollars or six dollars, it, it doesn't matter to you because it's all the same, it Current or every time they inject liquidity into the economy. I think that a lot of, global finance depends on the outcome of the American election in '24, and if the Republicans, you know, take the executive branch, then I think we're likely to see the replacement of Jerome Powell and the reversal, of a lot of his tightening at some point, and also injections of liquidity. I mean, Trump, Trump particularly seems to be the front-runner, and he has stated numerous times that, you know, he's a fan of negative rates. He's a fan of helicopter money, he's a fan of, you know, artificial stimulus, like he's a fan of all those things. And one thing we know is that those things pump Bitcoin, right? And so, you know, it's very- Macro, listen, we all learned a lot about macro, Stefan, over the last few years, and, you know, what I basically learned about macro is that, i-it's, it's divination. I mean, it's like, it's like, you know, it's technical analysis, but the guys who do it have access to a thesaurus and they can use words you don't understand, and it's like they're casting a spell on you. No one knows what the fuck they're talking about. I've seen, you know, ninety-nine point nine percent of these macro Well, your guess is as good as mine, is as good as, you know, Luke Grohman's, is as good as anybody's. Like, it doesn't, right? Like, nobody knows what's going on. It's, it's just much too complex of a system, and it has too many interventionist policies to really get a, get a handle on it. Whereas, when you contrast this to the Bitcoin system with its programmatic monetary policy, well, we don't know what the fiat price is gonna be because this is an important, I think, mental model for people to get" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "24:49", "start": 1488.93, "text": "It's this metronome of precision that is just constantly producing blocks every, roughly every ten minutes, and, you know, Bitcoin, does what it's going to do no, no matter what is happening in the outside world, whereas fiat is full, you know, is subject to the whims of, of, political elections, it's subject to the whims of regulators, it's subject to the whims of the personal, legacy of the Fed chairman, like how Jerome Powell wants history to view him, it's subject to all of these many human foibles. And, you know, the thing that we did in Bitcoin was to create a fair, rules based system and say, \"Hey, I'm not a-- I'm not allowed to change the rules, you're not allowed to change the rules. It doesn't matter if you have, you know, one Satoshi on the Lightning Network that's held in the custodial wallet or if you're Michael Saylor and you have a hundred and, you know, whatever, fifty thousand Bitcoin, it doesn't matter. We're, we're all subject to the same rule set, and we choose voluntarily to abide by this rule decisions and, you know, these messy human actors in the economy, and it's just, it's impa-- you know, you know from being an Austrian, it's impossible to forecast. So it's like, I could give you my best bullshit advice about what's gonna happen macro, but I don't know if there's gonna be a recession and, and nobody else does. You know, you gotta just, if you're a Bitcoiner, the best advice is just to keep stacking, to continue working your job, to make sure that you're All areas of your life are defensible, you know what I mean? I mean, if, you have your own business, even better. you know, stack up on what you need and, you know, inflation is starting to hit in America, right? And it's changing some of the consumer, spending and saving patterns, which I think is interesting. And, you know, we as Bitcoiners, we predicted inflation accurately long before everybody else predicted it. In fact, we were predicting it basically since 2010. I mean, since they printed, we've been It finally showed up when they, overprinted on the fiscal side rather than the, the monetary side in twenty twenty, and now we have consistent high consumer price inflation, and it's not coming down anytime soon. It's gonna take quite a bit to get it down, and, you know, it's basically here to stay. And I hope over time that drives people to, towards scarce assets, you know? So far, I think many people are looking for, you know, safety in all the wrong places, like we see, you know, the, the high end- And watch market is going up, the, you know, the comic book market, vintage cars, right? Like people just, they don't know about Bitcoin still, and it's still, you know, we say this, it's like, it's trite, amongst Bitcoiners, but we are still very early in understanding. We're not, we're not early in sort of, brand recognition. Bitcoin has tremendous brand recognition, but how many people actually know, for instance, that there are even twenty-one million bitcoins? Of the people who've heard of Bitcoin, I would hazard to say that less than ten percent of those people are e-even aware that there are twenty one million. Most people just don't know." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:50", "start": 1669.61, "text": "Yeah, I think that's right. It's- It, it takes time for people to make that change, and, for a lot of them, they're stuck in the mindset of, \"Oh, I need to save in property,\" or, \"Oh, like you said, random things like watches and whatever, used cars and whatever things that are out there.\" I also wanna talk a little bit about culture and what you think will change, you know, from a culture perspective. Now, of course, we're still living in a very degenerate culture, but I think we, as Bitcoiners, many of us have" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:22", "start": 1701.75, "text": "That, you know, people will start focusing more on family and long term, and therefore that will change how they look at things like the current system of family or schooling or, you know, how we interact in our society. I'm curious if you have any, you know, any thoughts you've been, you know, thinking about that? Yeah, I," }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "28:40", "start": 1720.5, "text": "I think the interesting thing is that, you know, the mainstream sort of- Celebrity culture, mainstream news culture, mainstream television culture is just not, it's not providing people any health, wealth, or happiness. And I think that, you know, basically we've, we've lost religion largely, and there's a movement back towards religion, especially, you know, Christianity and, Islam seem to be ascendant at the moment, especially among, amongst younger people, because they're, it's, and it, I think it's wise because, you know, one thing we know about human- beings is that human beings seem to have a religious module in our brains where we're all religious about something. Certainly, many of us are religious about Bitcoin, and other people are religious about, in general, things that make them healthy, wealthy, or happy. So it's like- You know, every-- I look around and just everything's a religion now, Stephan. You know, the Joe Rogan podcast is a religion, and CrossFit's a religion, and the Marvel movies are a religion, and veganism is a religion, and keto is a religion, and Bitcoin's a religion, and shitcoins are a religion, and it's like- I, you know, everywhere you look, people are looking for things that are gonna make their lives better. And if you look at, you know, the mainstream discourse and mainstream culture, I think that it doesn't have the answers that people are looking for anymore. Everybody has a sort of sense of institutional betrayal where, you know, they trusted an institution, and because they trusted that institution, whatever it was, they were, they were harmed by it in some way, shape, or form. And people are starting to come together and form communities over a shared sense of in- Institutional betrayal. Now, here's the, the hard thing is that the institutions still have a tremendous amount of power, like real, just raw, hard power. And, you know, we're gonna kind of move into this world in America, I think especially, and, you know, it's already happening in Europe pretty, pretty heavily, it's happening here too, but, of just, you know, sort of a narco tyranny where the state is powerless to help you or make your life better, but it's not powerless to harm you and make your life worse, right? and Into that sort of, society, and people are, you know, rightly looking for a return to what I would call, you know, postmodern or, or, sorry, premodern or traditional values. And what do those traditional values consist of? It's like community, family, purpose, meaning. You know, there's a big meaning crisis in the world where people go, you know, what, what is the point of it all? And it's like, well Listen, like modernity and capital-- you know, modern capitalism told you to like, you know, have it your way, it's all about you, man, focus on yourself, and it's like the truth is the best parts of life are living for other people and, you know Trying to gratify yourself is, is really not that, not that meaningful or interesting and is certainly not substantive. So I think people are looking for gratification in more of the traditional sense, in a communal sense, and what's interesting is they're finding a lot of these communities online. I was talk-- I was talking to my wife the other day, and she goes, \"You know, you Bitcoiners are basically like Amish people who live exclusively on the internet.\" And I was like, \"That's, that's strangely true. That's true about it.\" us, I think, you know, it's like we do have a lot of Amish values. If you go to, you go to the Bitcoiners, they're talking about, raw milk and being close to nature and being, you know, not, not taking in, you know, modern chemical. I mean, there's all sorts of things that are like very Amish in nat-in nature, which is sort of hilarious, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:13", "start": 1933.22, "text": "Right. Back to the show in a moment. The lead sponsor of this show is Swann dot com, and Swann is putting on Pacific Bitcoin Festival. This is more than just a conference, and I think this is a great event for you to attend to help you huddle through the cycles. Certainly, at different times in the cycle, you can feel up or down, but at Pacific Bitcoin Festival, we'll be celebrating the incredible world of Bitcoin, the ultimate lifestyle. It's a thriving community working together to forge an awe-inspiring bright orange future. Swann has pulled together an incredible lineup of top-notch Speakers, including featured speakers like Max Keiser, Stacey Herbert, vj Boyapati, Alex Gladstein, Lynn Alden, Jimmy Song, and so many more. There will be a main stage for dedicated talks, panels, and fireside chats that you know and love, and also the very popular SwanDome with deep dive sessions, as well as all kinds of activities and side events all happening all at this time over the week October 5th and 6th in LA at the Barker Hangar. So I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Make sure you bring along some friends Friends and family so they can learn about Bitcoin, get your tickets at pacificbitcoin dot com and get a discount using code livera. And of course, when it comes to hodling through the cycles, you need hardware. CoinKite dot com can help you get the ultra secure cold card. The cold card is a phenomenal device, it's really secure, you have multiple secure elements there, you can be more confident in the fact that your cold card doesn't actually have to phone home in order to work. So that's a cool feature that you can use, you don't even have to directly plug it into your computer. So it's a great tool to use to take your coins off the exchange, get them off any custodian services, and hold them yourself. With the cold card, you can use it in a range of configurations, so don't be afraid if you're a beginner, you can just buy the cold card, the Mark IV, and get a USB-C cable, plug it directly into your computer, and use it easily with software like Sparrow Wallet, Specter Desktop, or Electrum. Now, of course, if you're a more advanced user or intermediate user, you can use it with Your computer. And of course, there are all kinds of advanced features like if you want to use a passphrase, if you want to use seed x or, or if you of course want to use multi-signature. There's all kinds of options there available for you. So go to coinkite dot com, pick up your cold cards either for yourself or your friends and family, and get a discount using code livera. And now back to the show. Yeah, and maybe having, having big families, maybe that's sort of encouraged in our, in our world. Maybe not everybody, but it seems, you know, it's funny because the-- from the outside looking in, they might look and say, \"Oh, you Bitcoiners, you're all a bunch of, you know, incels or whatever.\" But the reality is, a lot of the Bitcoiners I know are married men with, with kids, you know? And that's just-- that's this reality of, that's kind of a very common demographic for, for us." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "34:59", "start": 2099.24, "text": "Yeah, totally. I, yeah, I think the, the stereotype of like the van dwelling, meat eating Bitcoin insell guy, I mean, I've certainly met him at conferences. He's real, he's real. But, he's, he's not as plentiful as the media would like you to imagine or other people on Twitter would like you to imagine. Like, most people in Bitcoin are yeah, they're like, I would say that some of the bonds that Bitcoiners share, it's like pranatalism, a respect for beauty and culture, a respect of things that are Lindy, so a respect of traditional things, conservative value sets, you know, not just- Not just fiscally, but also in, in many cultural aspects. these are sort of things that bind Bitcoiners together. Now at the same time, it's interesting because there are Bitcoiners who are, you know, more on the progressive side of things, who I, I think actually share a lot of these same values, right? Like, I would call, I would call many of the progressive Bitcoiners like classic liberals, who fall more into that camp of classic liberalism, which is like sort of mainstream libertarianism, right? And it's interesting because it's like, when, when you think about culture, it's not just I, you know, I, I shuffle everything through the lens of, American culture because I'm a, an American xenophobe. No, I'm kidding, I'm not xenophobic, but I am an American and I view everything through the dogma of American ideology and American culture, right? It's, it's hard for me not to because this is the only place I've ever lived and, I am uniquely American in that way. Same with, you know, I think it's hard for, you know, like Peter McCormick to, you know, not view things through a uniquely British lens, and that gets him consistently in trouble on Bitcoin Twitter, right? 'cause the Americans fucking hate that, we always do. But when you think about Bitcoin, it's a global-- Bitcoin is a global asset, it's global currency, it's a global phenomenon, and I think that every culture that's Lindy in some respect is going to be, you know, passed through the prism of Bitcoin. And some of them are going to stick and embrace Bitcoin, some of them are gonna view Bitcoin as, you know, haram basically. and it'll be interesting to see which cultures embrace Bitcoin or which cultures," }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "37:15", "start": 2234.94, "text": "Sort of marry the two things together, because I don't think it's every culture on Earth, and I certainly think that the cultures that don't embrace Bitcoin are likely to be significantly weakened because of that decision, and that's sort of an inevitable decision in some respects. And I'm not smart enough as, as an anthropologist or cultural anthropologist to tell you like which cultures are gonna dominate and which cultures aren't. I'm hoping, and I think- Strongly that American culture is perfect for Bitcoin because I think Bitcoin is sort of a uniquely American idea, in that, you know, Bitcoin is foundational about property rights and America is also foundational about property rights." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:58", "start": 2278.35, "text": "So, I mean, I'm with you in terms of the ideals of what America, how America started, but I do wonder about the typical-- I'm sure you know where this is going, right? Like a lot of Americans, particularly young Americans, have-- they sort of have this idea of like social- First ideas, and maybe for them it doesn't mean that, you know, the dic- okay, so the dif- dictionary definition of socialism means, you know, public ownership of the means of production, right? Many of them aren't thinking about it like that. They just think of it like, oh, I just want a big welfare state, I just want, you know, so they look at maybe the, the Scandinavian nations, right, your Danmarks and Swedens and so on, and they say, oh, look how big the welfare state is over there. I want, you know," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:44", "start": 2323.78, "text": "From this idea of, you know, kind of libertarian private property rights, and now it seems to have devolved in some ways. Where do you think that settles out?" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "38:52", "start": 2332.23, "text": "Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, obviously a lot of this comes back to fiat and the structure of the money and who has access to the money. You know, what's interesting is that, with- With rates rising, I saw a meme the other day that like, in, in twenty twenty-two, when rates, when we had zerp, the, the models on Calvin Klein were out of shape, right? Calvin Klein models were out of shape. And now in twenty twenty-three with high rates, the models are smoking hot tens again, right? It's like, yeah, maybe, maybe you weren't selling enough jeans with the out of shape models, and you had to go back to what works, right? And so I think that's, I think that's kind of interesting, Yeah, you know, when I hear people say socialism, I think that many young Americans mean not this, not this instantiation of capitalism. We don't, we don't know what we want, but we don't want this because this isn't working for us. And I do sympathize heavily with that view. Now, if you wanna do actual communism, you're my fucking enemy, and you should be destroyed because you're trying to destroy other people. Like truly, you're a bad person. you're, you're the scum of the earth. All communists So this coming of the Earth, right? But if you're a misguided young kid who's saying, \"You know, I'm a, I'm a socialist,\" and, I think what they really mean most of the time is that the system's not working for me, it's not really working for many of the people I know, and I'm looking for something different, and I'm hopeful and positive that over the, you know, next decade, many of these people are going to find Bitcoin as the thing that is, restorative technology that also allows them to have, have dignity," }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "40:32", "start": 2432.0, "text": "and, you know, have a better quality of life because you now have a unit of account in which to save and store value that is increasing over time compared to everything around it, right? And also, when you look at the socialism, modern socialism that is, you know, the Scandinavian countries, for instance, I mean, it's like Scandinavian countries are homogenous, number one. Number two, they're oil rich or they were oil rich, some of them. And number three, they have sovereign wealth funds that are invested in the em- American markets. So American capitalism, or whatever the structure of modern American capitalism is, and you can quibble about the word capitalism because it is-- there are, there is a lot of like corporatism, you know, social corporate welfare, a lot of that kind of stuff, and that's all true, oligopoly. It's still the, the engine of American capitalism that is driving the prosperity and the socialism of the Scandinavian countries. Also notable, the Scandinavians invented death metal. So how happy are they, Stephan? They can't be that happy." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:30", "start": 2489.72, "text": "That's right. Yeah. Well, I mean, I-- and I also think it's, you know, I agree with you on a lot of points there. I think it's also fair to say, some of those Scandinavian countries actually got rich from capitalism, and then they sort of became more, quote unquote, socialists, but really they just mean big statism, you know? I think also it's a--" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "41:47", "start": 2506.65, "text": "I think it's a bit xenophobic and, restrictionist because you can't have socialism and immigration. So I think that in some ways, it's protective mechanism to maintain their culture, so that if they do socialism, they have a, a non-racist way to say that, people from other cultures aren't allowed in, right? Now, that's not something that I necessarily agree with. I'm an American, and I like largely believe in immigration, and I think that we should have, you know, a tremendous amount of immigration, especially for intelligent people. But it seems like that's some sort of a protective mechanism that the Scandinavians are using to hold on to their, you know," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:22", "start": 2542.33, "text": "And famously, countries like Japan are very, you know, insular and they don't sort of take in new people. And there's, there's very much this culture that even if you go to Japan and you marry a Japanese person, you're still kind of not seen as one of us, let's say. right. But a, another topic I wanna get into, and you know, related to what we were saying. Right. Now, politically and philosophically, yeah, I'm a libertarian, I believe in anarchocapitalism and fully free markets, as, as you know, and many listeners know. But at the same time, there are times where we need, let's say, cultural restraints or restrictions on what we do, right? So you may be a libertarian politically, but that may not necessarily translate exactly, into how you are in the family. Like maybe in the family, you believe that there is a role for, let's say, a beneficial patriarch, or maybe there's certain restraints Discipline of the market, maybe that's one way I would put it, like we, we need the discipline of the market, and maybe that's kind of getting to what you were saying about, you know, the Calvin Klein ad, that maybe the real issue, the Cantillon effect, and all these issues are being created by artificially low rates, and that is what's creating all this crazy woke behavior and all the LGBT stuff and all the other ESG and whatever, because it's allowing- Various parts of the government or various people to live beyond what they really, live beyond their means and live without those constraints that we actually need. We actually, in some kind of counterintuitive way, we need these constraints because that's actually what civilizes us." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "43:53", "start": 2632.78, "text": "Yeah, I think also that, this goes back to living for other people and not living for yourself, right? It's important to be a valued member of, you know, your social web and your community and, you know, your, and your family. And I think that, the, the sort of the race war, the cultural war are, are substitutions for a class war that was starting to pick up steam in two thousand and eight when the financial crisis hit, Occupy Wall Street Obviously was, you know, sort of a weird movement full of dirty hippies, but at the same time, they were more over the target than I think they realized. And ever since Occupy Wall Street, you see, you know, to, in- In 2008, it was the same year that Tropic Thunder came out, which was a movie where Robert Downey Jr. was, you know, playing blackface, and everybody in America thought that was the funniest fucking movie of the year. The theater was packed, it was, it was multi-racial, it was multicultural, everybody thought it was funny. And then, you know, suddenly these sort of psyop campaigns started, in order to get Americans focused on hating each other over inborn, you know, characteristics like skin color, rather than focused on the- unfairness of the financial and political system because they're intertwined with each other, and, it was largely very effective. So kudos to whoever's idea it was to start pushing that, 'cause you did a good job, man. I mean, Jesus Christ, it's wasted a lot of my time in my life." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:28", "start": 2727.72, "text": "Yeah. And when it comes to, you know, these scams, right? We've lived through this, you know, fake scam, for the last few years, and I guess I'm a little concerned, like, are there more scams to come, right? Is it the climate scam? Is it the, you know, is it another pandemic scam? Like, what, what's, you know, what are some of the scams that we should be worried about, that, that could be coming in the years, in, in years to come?" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "45:52", "start": 2751.7, "text": "Yeah, I'll throw out a conspiracy theory just for fun on the podcast. One thing I am worried about is, there's been a lot of telegraphing of a cyber pandemic. And something that is mildly concerning to me is that Bitcoin could get wrapped up in the cyber pandemic story. Now, whether the cyber pandemic is a real phenomenon that could happen or whether it's a false flag operation, impossible to know, probably w-will be impossible to know even after the fact. But looking forward, you could imagine somebody that was hostile towards Bitcoin making it a central or key part of the story, like a ransomware attack that involved Bitcoin that took down, you know, some crucial infrastructure, and that crucial infrastructure being out ended up, you know, resulting in the death of some number of Americans, right? Like a, a hospital system or something, you know, people on the ICU, their vents shut off, et cetera. These things can happen, and, you know, the digital world is increasingly- The digital world is being grafted onto the physical world, and it's making things increasingly fragile. So like where I am, there was a attack on, the MGM Grand, Resorts and Properties just recently that's being sort of underreported, but here in town, it's been sort of widely reported, which is that, the hackers just got into almost everything. I mean, they, they were able to attack the slot machines, they were able to attack the front desk systems, and this is costing this corporation untold amounts of money, and, and you don't-- Cyber stuff is like, you don't really know if it's a state actor, you don't really know if it's a individual group, you don't know where they are in the world, if they have protection from a government that's hostile towards your government, in which case there's gonna be almost no reprisals against them. And I think in the case of the MGM hack, these people were in, Russia, and so obviously Russia and America aren't on good terms at the moment, so Russian law enforcement isn't gonna lift a finger to help an American corporation that suffered an attack, Enforcement agency. So we're gonna move into this world of, I think, you know, there's gonna have to be an event that causes people to like wise up about security practices and things online. I think like AI hacking tools are kind of terrifying when you look into them, like the speed and the capability at which people will be able to be socially engineered, it's, it's kind of frightening. And one thing that I'm hopeful on is that we as Bitcoiners have been like living in this, you know, test environment for- The last decade where we've been subjecting ourselves to all manner of, you know, cyber, cyber stuff, and, we've gotten good at, you know, first of all, we have a pristine elliptic curve that we can use, right? Like that's, that's good to know that Bitcoin's elliptic curve isn't subject to a trillion dollar hack. That's really good to know. And so if you're building a technology that's, you know, gonna be cryptographically secure, like why not use Bitcoin's elliptic curve? Like that's, that's probably like the smart" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "48:48", "start": 2928.25, "text": "Rabbit hole, but like, yeah, I do think that we're gonna live in a world, I think we're sort of the canaries in the coal mine as Bitcoiners, and we're gonna live in a world in which the regular person is carrying around the equivalent of a UBI key or a hardware wallet or a physical password manager, and they're using them to sign in to, you know, all their different devices and services and interact with everybody in their life who's a real human being, because it's gonna be really easy, you know, it is really easy now, these tools just aren" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "49:18", "start": 2958.15, "text": "Oh, I need money, send me money, I've been kidnapped, help me, help me, help me, right? And I'm gonna be like, hey Stephan, I need your, I need your key, my guy, I need your, I need your cryptographic signature, because if not, I'm not helping you, sorry. Like, it is what it is, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:32", "start": 2972.08, "text": "Yeah, I, I think, the-- and you've, you've spoken about this as well, about the identity, the market for identity and products, a-around this. I think it's interesting there's this idea that, okay, once enough people get burnt or wrecked, that they're going to take it more seriously. But at the same time, as I'm sure you know, there was this big Equifax hack where like almost every American got, you know, wrecked or doxxed in some way, and, you know, it seems that there's kind of just constant- attacks like this that are happening, and yet, I guess it's just difficult to remain private in the world today because of how many things that require doxing, right? If you wanna fly, you need a passport. If you wanna drive, you need a driver's license. If you're having kids, guess what? You need to get birth certificates for them, unless you want them to be fully like non-KYC kids, undocumented, you know what I mean? So it's just kind of like- It's just how do you manage all of these things together in a world where there's so much manual? what kind of digital things are realistic? Because at the same time, of course, you know, there's the grandma argument of, you know, grandma doesn't know how to use a YubiKey, and people just like not being tech-savvy enough. What gets them to take it seriously?" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "50:43", "start": 3043.38, "text": "Yeah, I mean, o-obviously a large scale cyber event would get them to take it seriously. I mean, the thing that has got, gotten us to take it seriously is, having our, having our wealth, you know, having to secure our wealth. That's a very serious, thing. I think having to secure your, you know, digital identity against, fraud of various types is gonna be, you know, something that people are gonna want. when it comes to the identity thing, you know, I've been paying attention to the calls for, there's this sort of want or desire for a driver's license for the internet, certain elite boomers in America are certainly pushing this and globally. I think Europe is well ahead on this, and, you know, Europe had more success with the, the vaccine passports and that kind of thing. America defeated the vaccine passport, this time around, but that's- It's not, you know, that's not how they're gonna do things in America. In America, we're gonna get backdoored, you know, some one way, shape or form, because Americans are fat and lazy and we love convenience, and so it's like, whatever's convenient and easy, and, you know, I mean, how much privacy am I doxing just by, owning a suite of Apple products? Probably a shitload, you know? Prob-probably just everything. there's a, you know, you have a Alexa or a smart TV in your" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "52:05", "start": 3125.48, "text": "be able to in Europe, where in Europe, and in Australia and in some of the places that were more, you know, authoritarian. Did you, did you see recently Sean Strickland versus Israel Adesanya in, in Australia? I heard about this. Yeah. In Australia. It was, it was an" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:20", "start": 3139.53, "text": "upset fight. Yeah. Go on." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "52:21", "start": 3140.93, "text": "It was an upset fight, but what was more interesting was Strickland, sort of a American right winger, he was going at the press and saying, \"Your country is garbage. You arrested a pregnant lady for Facebook, fuck you guys, right? And the press was, the, the press was like bemused, like they were like, \"What are you talking about? We don't, we've never heard of this event, right?\" It's like, \"What do you mean you've never heard of this? This was worldwide global news, like we all now know.\" I used to think of Australia as like a place where people threw shrimps on the barbies and chased kangaroos around or something, and now I think of Australia as a authoritarian police state, and I'm never gonna get that out" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "53:05", "start": 3185.44, "text": "Police state, right? And, so yeah, I, I mean, you basically lived through it and, yeah, I mean, that's why, that's a big" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:12", "start": 3192.09, "text": "part of why I left. I mean, I'm in Dubai now and, yeah, absolutely. I think I'd-- Coming back to that point you mentioned earlier about betrayal, right? To me, it was just a massive betrayal, right? As, like you and probably most people thought, you know, we're freer than those other countries, right? And think about Canada, New Zealand, Australia, particularly were bad on the COVID authoritarian, front, and all of us in these countries would have thought, \"Oh, we're better than those other countries.\" Okay, yeah, maybe our taxes are higher, but we're still free. But the reality is, you know, none of us are really truly free. And so, yeah, it just felt like a massive betrayal to me, and, you know, I'm still just surprised at how many Australians don't see that and understand that. You know, to them, it's like an alien concept So" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "53:58", "start": 3238.12, "text": "yeah. One of the things that's amazing is when the, you know, when, when the state, especially like your, your relationship with the state is, is important, I think, and it's important that people think about their relationship with the state. And, you know It's like, you used-- I used to feel like I was, you know, abiding by the rules and regulations of my country because this is what we do and we're good citizens and, you know, you pay your taxes because they're going into social services and they're, they're helping people. I used to really genuinely think this, and, now I think to myself, the reason you pay your taxes is so somebody doesn't show up at your door and murder you, right? I mean, that's how I think, and maybe that's just, you know, us" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "54:42", "start": 3281.92, "text": "Monopoly of violence filter and everything comes down to the non-aggression principle. Maybe that's the case, right? And regular people don't think about this, but that is the reality. And when you have a relationship with the state, as, as everybody does, even in Dubai you have a relationship with the state. the state holds a gun to your head in every interaction you have with it. And when somebody has a gun to your head, you know, you really listen to what they have to say. It's really interesting what they have to say, right? You could be saying Very interested in what you have to, what you have to say. And so I think it's important to like listen closely. Some jurisdictions are gonna be better than others, and, you know, there's gonna be, I think, I think the jurisdictions that are going to do well are going to be the jurisdictions that have, that prioritize human, individual freedom and sovereignty, right? And respect the rights of encryption-powered individuals and respect people who are, you know, taking a toehold in this new digital world in a way that's, self-sufficient, sovereign, and free. And that doesn't mean that those people aren't, you know, subject to the rules and regulations of whatever jurisdiction they happen to find themselves in. Because obviously they are, because of the gun that's pointed at everybody's head. but I do think that, you know, you're going to drive capital away from your country if you aren't respecting, the property rights and the freedom of, you know, the individuals within your country. And that was the thing that made America a great place, is we respected capital We really respected capital. Everything else was secondary to that primary respect of capital, and the places that are going to be great, over the next hundred years are gonna be places that respect capital. And I hope strongly that America's on the list, and I think we as American Bitcoiners, you know, not yourself, Stephan, but the people I'm talking to in the audience, it, it's on us to make sure that that is the case and that America doesn't stray too far from its foundational principles, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:39", "start": 3398.52, "text": "Yeah, I think that's right. I, I ultimately, we are going to see more and more competition as well, so I think more and more people will look at other countries around the world and they'll say, \"Well, hey, you know?\" Why be here if you're paying all this high tax there or a high cost of living there? I could go somewhere else, you know? I think that, you know, yes, there are certain hurdles and things that come, you know, with that. But if you really compound it, and here's an interesting stat, as you might know from the sovereign individual, there's a really interesting stat. So basically they say if you could earn, if you could make a tax saving of five thousand dollars per year, and you could invest it at ten percent per year over a period of forty years, do you know what that number is? It's two point two million dollars. Yep. Right? And for some people, they could save a lot more than just five thousand dollars, right? If you could save fifty thousand dollars, well, now it's twenty-two million dollars at the end of your life. And so, you know, whether that's for you or for, you know, your children, you're passing down that wealth. You know, I think that will start to weigh on more people's minds. And so this kind of idea of it's gonna get really competitive where you go and where you actually live. And I think some countries will just sort of treat it like, \"Oh, we can rest on our laurels and we don't need to be competitive.\" And then on the other hand, you have other places that are trying to be competitive, whether that's El Salvador or who knows if," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:00", "start": 3479.65, "text": "The story" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "58:00", "start": 3480.03, "text": "is really interesting because until, Javier Milei's candidacy, I wasn't paying much attention to Argentina. I knew that, Wences, Cezaris, you know, famous Bitcoin, famous Bitcoiner, was, was from Argentina originally, and that had shaped his early understanding of Bitcoin. And I know actually there are, a numerous Bitcoiners I've met over the years who are Argentinians, and Argentinians just get it. Like, like that instantly, right? So I think his, his, presidency and his campaign is very interesting. He's not president yet, but, you know, I was looking into the history of, the history of, you know, Buenos Aires, and, Buenos Aires is a fucking amazing city, you know, that was really respectful of capital and people were coming there and it was considered like the Paris of, of Latin America, and then they embrace socialism, and the minute you embrace socialism, you're just stuck in this permanent downward spiral where, you know, you're being" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "58:54", "start": 3533.64, "text": "you know, sort of culture of envy and, you know, equality, right? Where it's the type of equality where, you know, if, if your dick is seven inches and, and minus three, then we gotta cut four inches off your dick, Stefan. I'm sorry, like it's, it is what it is, you know? We gotta be equal, man. that's, that's a brutalist, you know, anti-human philosophy, and o-only monsters believe in that, like only terrible, awful, horrific scumbag people believe in that If you do believe in it, fuck you, in the strongest possible terms, like just fuck you. I, I can't make it any clearer than that, you know? It, yeah, it's, it's interesting though, like, hopeful, I'm very hopeful that the experiments that are going on in El Salvador, potentially there's a new experiment going on in Argentina, I know about other experiments that are happening, like, you know, potentially in the Caribbean, and I think we're gonna see more announcements about nation states in the coming years, you know, in Latin, in I think El Salvador was a real, you know, sort of, guidebook for, you know, it was a framework for how to do this for people, and there are many people in many different governments thinking about How they can do this. But the problem that many of the people in many of the different governments have is they think about what Bitcoin can do for them, and really what the framework that you need to create is what can you do for Bitcoiners? What can you do for the people who have the capital? Because you wanna bring the capital to your shores, so you need to be in a more of a giving relationship than a taking relationship, 'cause you're not in any position to take. If you, if you look at like the places that take the most, you know, like, in America California, California's a gorgeous, it's beautiful. I mean, Malibu is fantastic, like everybody that lives there is beautiful. The infrastructure isn't, the infrastructure's piss poor, but like, you got the beach, right? And so they can be a bit abusive to you be- because they have this amazing beach and coastline, whereas- Texas is sort of a shrubby mess of, you know, just, tumbleweeds and, and scorpions and deserts. And so it's like, you can't be as abusive if you're the, the Texas, you know, if you're the, you, if you're the regulators in Texas. I think, one thing that's interesting, it, you know, from an American framework, we always think about just the ability to move states, hop states, and I think that's a unique thing for Americans. So we're not stuck in, like," }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:01:18", "start": 3678.36, "text": "Culturally, like pretty disparate, and their politics are extremely disparate, at, you know, Florida, Wyoming, et cetera, all the places that are embracing Bitcoin in America, I think, are gonna do extraordinarily well, and all the places that are embracing socialism in America are, are gonna do worse and worse and worse. If you look at, California, the California population grew every single year from when they started keeping statistics in the late 1800s until Gavin Newsom's governorship, in which the population began to decline. So if you're the guy who- The population declined on for the first time ever. Maybe you should take a good long hard look in the mirror about, your ability to govern, because it's not that great, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:58", "start": 3718.84, "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, so there'll be competitive, you know, states inside the US, there'll be competitive countries all around the world. another interesting question that I think some people raise is this idea of, \"Oh, is Bitcoin for everyone or is it for anyone? you know, what kind of relative levels should- You be targeting, right? Because some people have this view of, \"Oh, the remnant,\" and other people have the view of, \"No, just like get as many people on board.\" my view is, yeah, I guess my view is more like Look, we've just lived through, you know, a few years of craziness. I think clearly eighty percent of people are just, you know, sadly, a lot of them are just gonna go with the narrative, right? As much as whatever the new narrative is, they'll just go with that, and it's gonna be difficult, to sort of get them on board. But I think maybe that ten to twenty percent or so, these are the people that we can reach. And currently today, in terms of Bitcoin adoption, we're probably under one percent. So there's, you know, I'm gonna try to go to them and try to obviously get them to learn about Bitcoin. but where do you, where do you see that? Do you agree, disagree? Where are you at? Yeah." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:03:06", "start": 3786.41, "text": "So one thing that frustrates me, is when I hear Bitcoiners have this conversation about why aren't there not more people using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange? It's like, that has such an obvious answer that I'm not sure even why you're asking the question. The reason why there aren't more Americans and Europeans using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange is because of tax treatment" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:03:31", "start": 3811.16, "text": "Through, cycles." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:03:56", "start": 3836.72, "text": "primarily maybe India, th-those are the places where you need to be building for, but yet for some reason many American Bitcoiners seem to not understand this phenomenon and they don't like, they, they, they think that it's a technical failure of Bitcoin, like something wrong, is wrong with the Lightning Network and therefore that's why we don't have enough people using it. It's like the demand isn't there because of the tax treatment. Nobody wants to have to deal with a taxable event every time they buy a sandwich at the supermarket. Like that's just not how things work, In America and in richer and more developed nations in general, you know, Bitcoin, we have to always remember that Bitcoin is a capital system, and so, you know, capitalists who have a lot of fiat wealth are gonna bring the most value to Bitcoin, right? So it's, it's not like you getting your grandma to stacking sat to stack sats is good for the, health of the Bitcoin network, right? It's good for your grandma, it's good for the people that you orange pill along the way, but it's not good for like Bitcoin, Bitcoin's network effect. The thing Network effect is rich people allocating. That's why Michael Saylor's important, that's why the next, you know, ten billionaires are important. Eventually, it even leads all the way up to central banks allocating, which there's nothing that anybody can do to prevent that from happening, that will occur. Central banks are sort of like the last big allocators of Bitcoin, and they will allocate. Sometimes I talk to Bitcoiners who think that's not gonna happen, it is gonna happen, 'cause they have to, you know, for self-preservation, to prevent speculative attack, they literally have to Is such that if you don't put Bitcoin on your balance sheet, you're, you're going to get eaten by Bitcoin, right? So you have to put some, you have to put up a defensive front. Do you want to spell" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:34", "start": 3934.03, "text": "that out a little bit for people who aren't familiar, like why would they have to?" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:05:38", "start": 3938.46, "text": "Yeah, so based-- You called me out on this. I'm not, I'm not as good an economist as, yourself or Pierre, so I'm, I'm gonna ask you to spell. You spell it out for me. So, okay," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:49", "start": 3949.32, "text": "if I had, I mean Okay, so, I mean, you could, you could make an argument that, okay, a lot of them hold gold, right? Why do they still hold gold? you know, there could be an argument made around that." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:06:01", "start": 3961.35, "text": "There's an argument even that we're on a shadow gold standard because all the world governments still have a tremendous clutch of gold." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:06:07", "start": 3967.64, "text": "Yeah, it could be. But I mean, at the end of the day, we are, you know, still liv-- as you know, as listeners know, we're still living in a fully fiat world, and, you know, if This money rate growth, right? Just looking at America from nineteen sixty nine to like, I think the stat, his stat goes from last year, it's like nine percent per year. So if you haven't been making more than nine percent per year, you're losing We're literally losing pace in real terms. So, yeah, I, I don't know. I mean, I think it's possible that, there'll be central banks who try to buy Bitcoin, and I mean, of course, there are some already, like I'm sure El Salvador's buying some, publicly they're buying some. My reason," }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:06:50", "start": 4010.99, "text": "my reasoning for saying this originally is because I've been imagining a scenario for a while now where, a rich Bitcoiner who's like a Soros type attempts to break one of the central banks using Bitcoin, and if you don enough Bitcoin reserves, you can't dump them at market in order to stem the attack or prevent the attack, right? And so I think that's one of the reasons, game theoretically, why a central bank would wanna have Bitcoin reserves." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:07:15", "start": 4035.59, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. Mempool.space is the leading Bitcoin and blockchain visualizer. Bitcoin is a multi-layer ecosystem, and mempool.space helps you explore that ecosystem. It's really useful if you are looking to target the fee for your transaction, whether you're looking at medium or high priority fees. You wanna look at the mempool, you wanna look at the blockchain, you wanna look at the history of transactions and search transactions and see even which transactions relate to lightning channel opens or closes. They also show you second layer networks works like the Lightning Network, and with mempool dot space you don't even have to trust a third party, you can host and run it yourself, it's free and open source software. Keep an eye out on the website, they are continually rolling out new features, and you can find more information over at mempool dot space. And now back to the show. I think that would make sense in a context where their fiat was perhaps backed by Bitcoin, and what I mean by backed by is redeemable for, right? And I think historically in, you know, in the gold standard days and the bimetalism days, they- The gold standard, at least in those, you know, imperfect as it was, the gold standard acted as a little bit of a check on government expansionary behavior because if they did, gold would flow out of the country to other countries, and so that central bank would sort of lose some of its, you know, his poker chips at the table, right? He's losing. So for that reason, it acted as a discipline, like I was saying, it's kind-- it was kind of like a beneficial discipline. Then of course, as you know, every Bitcoiner knows, every good Bitcoiner knows And then we were fully free floating fiat from that point on. Yeah. And so" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:08:52", "start": 4132.14, "text": "you touched on something important, which is that, this is part of my framework is that, you know, I, I believe we're likely to see, nation states back their central bank digital currencies via Bitcoin, the same way that Terra Luna attempted to back its, currency via Bitcoin. I think that nation states are gonna do it, but they're gonna do it a lot more effectively than, than Terra Luna. And that's one of the ways that they're gonna-- That's one of the ways Power. Yeah, I mean, they'll" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:09:18", "start": 4158.47, "text": "likely use a basket of fiat currencies. Yeah. I don't know if they would, maybe they would include gold in there. Right. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:09:25", "start": 4165.06, "text": "It's not gonna happen right away in one fell swoop. Yeah. it's, you know, Bitcoin will become a small portion of the basket and then over time, it'll grow because Bitcoin grows, right? Yeah. And then eventually, you're gonna move into this world in which, you know, it's, I, I think about it similar to, maybe I'm getting too big" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:09:45", "start": 4185.01, "text": "and Christianity, which is like, in the beginning the Roman Empire killed Christ, and then later they had to accept his teachings and his doctrine in order to maintain power, right? Right. And so then they became the Holy Roman Empire, and they, they be-- you know, it sort of collapsed all the functions, the church, the, the emperor, the state, all became one thing, and they used it to maintain power, and I think that, you're likely to see If, 'cause you have to, let's like go a little far out here, Bitcoin at ten, a hundred million dollars a coin, that's a different world than the world we live in today. It's a very different world. And Bitcoin is a really large, like, financial behemoth on the world stage, and its gravity and its weight is, you know, affecting things much more strongly than these things in absentia. So right now, the reason that you're able to play some of these fiat power games is because Because you don't have some large monetary black hole out there sucking up your energy. Although Bitcoiners like ourselves, we think that that black hole is here, and it's right on the, right on the event horizon of like this thing tipping over to sucking in the entire world, right? That's, that's like sort of our belief system. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:10:59", "start": 4259.2, "text": "I mean, not this cycle, but maybe a few more cycles and, yeah, maybe it gets to that point, right? Yeah." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:11:03", "start": 4263.37, "text": "I would like it if it was this cycle, but, you know, it's probably not this cycle. But, in the world of, financial assets that it changes the calculus for what you're able to do and not able to do. You can't, you can't run negative rates in a world where like, let's say, let's say seventy percent of the American population holds Bitcoin, you can't run negative rates on them, you know? You can try your best, but it's not gonna work" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:11:29", "start": 4289.31, "text": "Yeah, and I think, yeah, so it, that really, to me, it shows the importance of the bottom-up adoption. But like you said, you know, for every Michael Saylor or MicroStrategy or big company, or even, you know, insurance firms, yeah, you know, advisor firms, like, you know, there's, there's po-big pools of wealth out there, maybe even excluding the central banks, just big pools of wealth out there, you know, businesses could stack on their balance sheet, insurance firms might need to hold some Bitcoin, yeah, pension funds might need These things up, and of course, the ETF stuff, you know, that'll drive a lot of people in too, and I think that is what's gonna change it. And so to your point about when the price of Bitcoin is much, much higher, I think- Large holders of Bitcoin will have a lot more political sway in how things happen because they'll say, \"Hey, if you want me to invest in your country, you know, I want this, or I want this low tax, or this low regulation, or whatever.\" So it might be-- maybe that's one angle that, you know? A few cycles from now, it could go." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:12:28", "start": 4348.97, "text": "By, by the way, just to be, you know, I, I wanna make sure that, like, I do think, I do believe strongly that Bitcoin is, is for everybody. I just think that, the average American is, is so uninterested, at least at this point, and, attempting to talk to a person who's largely uninterested is pretty much just not an effective strategy. You know, I mean, nobody had to orange pill you. You orange pill yourself. I orange pill myself. You know That's how it works, right? And yeah, we're on the vanguard of this thing 'cause we're, you know, crazy libertarians or whatever, but, you know, it's only-- I, I, over the years, I've, I've noticed more and more normal people, you know, there's plenty of people who have no idea what the non-aggression principle is or who've never read about Milton Friedman's pencil, who, you know, own Bitcoin, right? And that's a good thing, that's a positive thing. Can't just have it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:13:25", "start": 4405.55, "text": "Memes came from, right? you know, and, you know, your right to criticize as well at the same time, people being overconfident and so on. But I think some of those, you know, three-word memes, they came from this idea that, look, most people aren't gonna go read the one thousand page textbook or Human Action and so on. Totally. And so most people will just adopt some of these ideals, just like an osmosis thing, because that's just the society you live in, that you respect other people's property rights, like you don't even" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:13:55", "start": 4435.49, "text": "They make an exception, a special little exemption in their mind for the government. They say, \"Oh, the government is allowed to do X, Y, and Z, right? You know, conscription for warfare is okay, but if I were to manual-- if you were to manually enslave me, that would be obviously wrong, and to send me off to war in your war, well, no, but when the government does it, oh, okay, now it's okay, right?\" So that, I think that aspect is gonna change." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:14:17", "start": 4457.01, "text": "By the way, just, you know, on the overconfidence point, I'm, I'm not just criticizing everybody else, I'm criticizing myself mainly because I was the most overconfident. You know what I mean? I was like insanely overconfident. And I, I do think that there's, definitely something very useful to the distillation of memes because they spread Bitcoin's idea and it gets people talking. So like, if you hate the meme Bitcoin fixes this, well, then like you've fallen perfectly into Michael's trap when he created the meme because that's now, now You're talking about Bitcoin and why it does or doesn't fix things, right? So it's like, it doesn't have to do the perfect-- It's like this, it's like, you can't tell people how to think, but if you're good at meme craft, you can tell people what to think about, right? So like, certainly none of us, focused much on most of the cultural, topics over the last ten years, but we've all been sort of heavily psyop'd into thinking about them quite a bit, right? And like, we make up" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:15:16", "start": 4516.97, "text": "The truth is, the person that's, you know, actually the most effective at the propaganda is the person that is telling you what the subject is, not how you think about the subject, but what the subject is. And so, like, in that way, I think the Bitcoin memes have been very effective. but also, you know, there, here's something is, there's a danger to, this is gonna sound maybe controversial, but there's a danger to orange pilling people before they're ready, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:15:41", "start": 4541.73, "text": "Right. So it's like The Matrix, unplugging them before they're ready, thing." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:15:44", "start": 4544.73, "text": "100%. And I've had this with friends who, you know, I've had friends who got into Bitcoin, were stacking Sats, were doing all the right things, and then at some point, the greed got the better of them, and they went on And they thought to themselves, \"Bitcoin will never go below this price,\" and then it did, and they ended up losing all of their Bitcoin, you know, and it took them to a deep dark place because they had gone from this feeling of, in financial empowerment and sovereignty to a feeling of despair. And I look back on some of those friends I had that went down that path, and I think to myself, Maybe this is your fault. Maybe, like talking about myself, like maybe I orange pilled them when they weren't ready and they should have waited longer in their journey, right? so yeah, I mean, forcing Bitcoin on normal people is really not the answer. Bitcoin is gonna meet the need of the people that it meets the need of, where it meets the need of those people. And like when you talk about medium exchange, that's in, that's in the developing world, and when you talk about, you know, savings devaluation technology, that's, that's in the developed world, because people in the developing world don't have anything to save. So why the fuck would they need to hold Bitcoin for a long time? Like, they don't. They Because their lives are, are tough and they're trying to hustle, you know, some amount of bananas into, you know, a meal for their family that night, right? whereas me and you are thinking we're a little bit more at the top of Maslow's hierarchy and we're thinking a little bit more long term. So Yeah, I think Bitcoin's gonna meet the need of whoever, you know, wha-whatever needs it at that time, and that when you try and force things before their time, you actually end up causing distortions. And again, I'm talking about myself and being self-critical here because I think I've done that to people, and I think it hasn't always worked out effectively." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:17:35", "start": 4655.67, "text": "Yeah, look, I, I would say in, to, in your defense, let me say, you can't know in advance. True. Because, you know, it's kind of like sometimes, you know, that saying like sometimes money changes people. Well, maybe they were always that way and it kind of revealed what they really were, you know? And I think to some extent, yes, you know, you wanna- Be, encourage people to be prudent, right? Like to not lever over their heads, to be intelligent and stay solvent. I think that's an important thing. But it is also difficult in today's world when so many people are in debt, as you mentioned, right? So many people in the middle class are just living on credit, living on debt. They've got their credit card, they want their credit card points, or they want, you know, loans for this and loans for that. It's just genuinely a hard, slog out there. So I guess, you know, focusing on the Are open-minded, I think that's, that's probably where I'm seeing it, that's the pathway forward. so" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:18:31", "start": 4711.25, "text": "I, I think that, you know, just in general, like, The best way to do things is to let people know that you are the Bitcoin guy. They already know that anyway, 'cause you, yeah, you're, you're not gonna shut the fuck up about it. None of us do. And, to just, you know, that if they have questions or whatever, they can come to you anytime, and you're happy to help them, but not to force things on, on them, right? Right. And, yeah, I, I think that that's just been, you know, 'cause if you believe like we believe in Bitcoin People, because you're just so damn sure of what's happening here, and you know that most people don't see it, and it feels almost like morally, irresponsible not to tell people, right? Yeah, of course. I mean, it's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:19:17", "start": 4757.04, "text": "like we have this life raft and we want our friends to get on the life raft instead of sinking." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:19:22", "start": 4762.14, "text": "But then you, you actually may be doing an ineffective service by, you know, being so zealous about the whole affair, right? Like that, that might be the problem. I think quiet confidence wins the day nine times out of ten. And so for me, I, listen, I probably did this for like seven years, I was just going around being like, \"You know, you gotta get Bitcoin.\" And then over time, I was just like, \"What am I doing? I, I'm being so annoying.\" Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:19:50", "start": 4790.04, "text": "Well, I think we, you know, we all have, reflections, and we're all, you know, you and I are going on our hodler journey, you know, even now, today, like you, like even this deep in. So I think the, yeah, I think, but I think you're right, the, the lesson is, focusing on the quiet confidence and, you know, being available to help people when they need help, but not sort of ramming it down their throat, and sort of, it's like that saying, You need ideally an ongoing relationship with that person, so that you can sort of coach them and say, \"Okay, so you bought some coins, have you got a, you know, a Bitcoin wallet? Have you got a hardware wallet? Have you got a Bitcoin node?\" And sort of sl-slowly step them up when they're ready, of course, and of course, you know- The, the tech and the UX will make it easier and easier, you know, but that's, that's sort of the high level of how I'm seeing it. yeah. So yeah, let's, let's finish up here. Oh, go on, yeah." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:20:46", "start": 4846.4, "text": "No, no, go ahead, go ahead." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:20:47", "start": 4847.58, "text": "Yeah, I was just saying, well, let's finish up here. I guess, I think some of it, like, obviously we're talking at this time now, it, it's a reflection of where we are in the cycle, right? If we were talking" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:21:06", "start": 4866.77, "text": "If we talk again in a year or two, it might be totally different." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:21:10", "start": 4870.32, "text": "Should we do some, just, just for fun, should we do like a wild bullish prediction? Oh yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:21:15", "start": 4875.32, "text": "sure, sure. Yeah, do you have any? I don't know. you mean like a prize or like what happened? You got a good one too. You got a good one too. Yeah, I will. Yeah. Okay," }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:21:21", "start": 4881.79, "text": "okay. I'm gonna say, okay, my prediction from last cycle was three hundred K, so I'm sticking with it. I'm going three hun- three hundred K sometime in late '25 seems to be where things are gonna, are gonna head for me. And I think, I do think like just looking forward, I think we're probably gonna trend upwards towards, you know, the having I, I wouldn't discount the idea of a potential, you know, precipitous fall, the same way we had one in March twelfth twenty twenty. So don't lever up, by the way, this important. I had friends who levered up, and got totally hosed in March of twenty twenty. And these guys are, you know, Bitcoiners who should know better. So don't be that guy. just hoddle your coins, don't take leverage. If you're gonna take leverage, do it much later in the cycle and with a lot less leverage than you think" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:22:14", "start": 4934.54, "text": "Towards the having, and then after the having, I think same old story. And people say, \"Is the having, is the having doing things? Is it not? Is it effective? Does it, you know, whatever, is it ineffective?\" I think that the psychological phenomenon of the having is reflexive in nature, and because the people believe the having It basically tells the story of Bitcoin scarcity to the ninety percent of the market who don't believe it, right? And so people who are hearing about the having are, are literally hearing about Bitcoin scarcity for the first time, and that's a powerful story. The having itself, could mean something, could not, but Bitcoin scarcity means a lot. So after that, we're gonna trend up to three hundred K, that's my prediction." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:22:50", "start": 4970.97, "text": "Yeah. Okay. Interesting. look, I, I, so, okay, obvious disclaimers here, not financial advice, et cetera, don I actually think this cycle could be, so, okay, he-- people have this idea that, you know, oh, the cycles are diminishing over time, but maybe just the last cycle was kind of outlier. Maybe next cycle actually is a bigger cycle than that, like I think it's actually possible that we really do go to like something close to gold, right? If, if Bitcoin's market went to the size of gold, it might be something like half a mil, something in that range, maybe half a mil, maybe six hundred thousand. It's like" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:23:26", "start": 5006.44, "text": "eleven, ten, eleven, twelve trillion market somewhere in there. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:23:29", "start": 5009.3, "text": "yeah, exactly. And Bitcoin today is what, five hundred billion something, so, you know, it's not that, you know, to me, it's not that crazy, but I'm also not a trader, I'm a staker" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:23:43", "start": 5023.65, "text": "Drop at the end of it, you know? So, yeah. I, I would not, you know, if you take, if you, you know, like generally just avoid leverage, or if you are doing it, it needs to be like you're a professional, like you're doing a very small percentage of your stack, you have income, you have kind of contingency plans, like it's not just kind of like, don't be a DeGen and like lever up and, you know, don't, don't do DeGen leverage. But of course, you know, maybe for some And I think that is gonna be the pathway for most people, but, you know, also, I would encourage people to actually look at other jurisdictions, you know, like I think it's, it's time for people to do that because here's the thing, it'll make it more competitive, and I think over the years to come, we'll see more people actually try to do that because, look at the other trends that are coming, right? We've got more digital work and remote work stuff happening, you know, there's all this kind of automation and, you know, AI, whatever And you have to adapt, we have to continue to innovate, or you get, you know, you get, like, you get wrecked or your business model goes down. So you, you sort of have to continue innovating. So I guess, I do predict also that, you know, in this, in the next bull cycle, whenever it happens, that we'll see more countries, big companies, big investment firms come out and say, \"Hey, we're doing Bitcoin.\" Obviously, like the spot ETF and stuff is gonna drive a lot of that. I" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:25:10", "start": 5110.75, "text": "think" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:25:12", "start": 5112.83, "text": "our stuff, but I think human nature and greed will kind of come in again. There'll be people who overleverage at the top, there'll be people who kind of chase for yield, there'll be, you know, maybe there'll be some more like cloud mining stuff or cloud mining scam or something like that. You know, we don't know exactly, but I think it's like, that idea that it kind of rhymes with past cycles, that, you know, things that we saw in prior cycles, we'll see them come around again. So I guess that's kind of high level Of the next cycle, maybe five hundred, maybe five hundred k, but I'm, I'm expecting a big drop after that as well. So, and I wouldn't try to-- and importantly, I'm not trying to trade it, right? So, yeah." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:25:55", "start": 5155.01, "text": "Yeah, yeah. I, I have huddled, I have huddled down twice now from the top, and, let me tell you, it sucks. But, but I'm not trying to trade, yeah, yeah. I'm not trying to trade away my stack, so I'd, I'd rather just deal with the bad feelings than, end up with less Bitcoin, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:26:16", "start": 5176.14, "text": "Yeah, so I, you know, I, I think, that's probably a good spot to finish up. So I guess, I don't know if you have any, any last things you wanna say, and let's leave it there until, until next time." }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:26:26", "start": 5186.45, "text": "No, I'm good, man. Thanks for having me on, brother. Thank you." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:26:30", "start": 5190.05, "text": "And it's great to see you, and I hope to, catch up again soon. Are you going to Pacific Bitcoin? You're gonna be there, right?" }, { "speaker": "american_hodl", "time": "01:26:34", "start": 5194.4, "text": "No, I have a, I have a newborn, so it's gonna be, too hard. yes, okay. Yeah, yeah, but I'll, I'll probably be in, Nashville." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:26:42", "start": 5202.31, "text": "Yeah, yeah. I, yeah, I should be there. So, yeah. Awesome, man. Well, thank you, and I'll see you soon. Bye, brother. So, what do you think? Are you hodling through the cycle? Let me know what you think, and of course, if you enjoyed the show, make sure to share it there with your friends and get the show notes at stephanlivera dot com. Thanks, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }