EP17 Bitcoin podcast with Knut Svanholm.

Welcome back to the bit-by-bit podcast. In today's episode, I speak with Konut Funholm. We had a long discussion both before and after the podcast, and I really enjoyed chatting with them. This episode was recorded two, two and a half weeks ago before all the craziness in the world,

but I think it's more relevant than ever, and I think the ideas being discussed in this book are why we talk about these things, why we discuss the fragility in the current financial system, why we believe that sound money is important, and why hierarchical structures may be

a not the way forward. Anyway, as I say, I really enjoyed this, and I hope you do too. Yeah, starting with something. All right, perfect. So we're just jumping with an intro. Nuts Funholm. Is that pronounced correctly? Nuts Funholm? Not really. No, go on, tell me.

All right, let me try again. So Konut Funholm, the author of "Soverentry Through Mathematics." If you can just introduce yourself a little bit and tell the listeners, what was it that made you stumble across Bitcoin, and then what was it that made you write this

honestly awesome book? It is now the go-to for me. If someone asks, "What is Bitcoin, how do I understand it?" It is now the go-to book that I passed them on to because it's so concise, all the sort of ideas that we talk about on Bitcoin, Twitter, and all the things that run

around my head all the time, just all were ticked off in this book. So what was it that made you find Bitcoin and what led you to write the book? First of all, thanks a lot for your kind words. Well, I'm Konut Funholm. I'm a Bitcoin enthusiast, I guess, and an author nowadays,

but this is not my day job. I'm a crew manager for a shipping company, but I'm really into Bitcoin, and I use every spare minute I have to descend these rabbit holes

and honey badges dense further. Yes, and I wrote the book, or how I stumbled upon Bitcoin. It's a combination of a curious mind and a boring situation, a boring ocean sailing across the Atlantic.

Oh, wow, so you found it at sea. I don't really know if this is a true story, but this is like the romantic version of it. I can't really recall a specific point in time, like a discovery that this is something I should try to wrap my head around more, but I was curious enough to take a

university course online in Bitcoin and the now dreaded word blockchain technology. So you took a course on, I guess, a blockchain technology course. It was called digital currencies.

Okay, digital currencies, whatever that means, whatever current means. Yeah, and I found it really interesting, and I learned a lot. I liked the course. Andreas Antonopoulos was one of the teachers and one hour sessions where he answered questions from all the participants. And each

year, there are more and more people enrolling to the course. So I guess he has to keep it to an hour, each lesson nowadays. But anyway, it was very interesting. And I didn't really know what to do with the knowledge I gained, except for stacking sets.

Then one fine day at another boring job, I decided to start writing instead of just wasting away the day playing phone games. Yeah, I started writing articles instead about this. And then one of the articles was called Bitcoiners, or like newcomers, you need to know what to do on August 17th. On

the 17th of August, which was when the Bitcoin Cash 4 happened. So I wrote an article about how important it was to actually own your own private keys when that date occurred. And that article really took off, and got like 70,000 reads, something like that. Wow, and that was the first one you

wrote, was it? No, no, no, I've been writing quite a few by then. Okay. But that one really took off. And I had another experience with like something going viral on the internet. We made a music video a couple of years back with my with my band, my rock band, which got promoted on the the pirate

base promo thing they had, they had like a really promo base. So they they promoted local bands that they themselves liked. Okay. And then we were one of those bands, and that like gave us more than 100,000 YouTube views. So after having had those two experiences, I saw that they're

there's like, the internet isn't impossible to to gain an audience. It's not an impossible task. There is actually a potential reader somewhere out there. And like, I'm right for my own pleasure, but of course, the whole thing gets fueled by the engagement of others. And like, of course,

I appreciate that the people read my stuff and like reading my stuff. Absolutely. Well, it spurs you on, doesn't it? If you know that other people are reading what you have to say, and they're interested with it, it definitely is going to help spur you want to do more. It's a nice

feeling. Yeah, definitely. And this is not the first book I wrote. I like compiled the articles into a book just to, and turned it into a book on Amazon just to just to see how the process, what what the process would like of publishing a book. And but then I had my name attached to that.

And that is the only book you could find in my name. So I thought I'd better write the proper thing about this. So so so I have something to be a bit more proud of leaving a legacy. Yeah, no, like, you don't want the wrong thing to be on top of the search engines.

Yeah, the search the search results. So so I wrote another one, and I got some help from the Bitcoin community. A lot of help with proofreading and technical proofreading and everything. And after that, I had a product that was really proud of. So I brought a whole bunch to Riga,

to the Balthick Honey Badger Conference, and I handed out half of them and sold half of them. And now it lives its own life, it seems the book. How did you find, I mean, I assume you came from a non-technical background into it,

correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume that that was the case. Did you find writing the technical side of things took a long time to really be able to explain? Because I always find that's the hardest bit. And I feel you've explained it really, really clearly. Did that have input from other

people? Or was it just something you did all by yourself? It had input from a couple of other people. Keller Orson Baum, for instance, who wrote Grockin Bitcoin. He had me out a lot. But I wouldn't say I have no technical background at all. I've read quite a lot of maths in my past.

And I finished the first year of an engineering bachelor's degree before I quit that. So I have some technical background. And I've always been trying to stay updated on what's happening in the

computer world. Like I had a Commodore 64 when I was a kid and I started programming on that. Oh, okay. So you've always had an interest in it? Yeah. Okay. Well, that definitely helps because I was the other way. I came from it with zero technical

understanding. And that was the last thing to wrap my head around. And it was by far the most challenging thing to wrap my head around. So I guess we all covered it from different coming from different perspectives and different angles. How long have you had the pod for?

I've really short amount of time. 2019. It happened because, I don't know, you maybe had a similar experience. But when you sort of wrap your head around this stuff and you understand how important this technology is and what it can do, all I wanted to do was talk to everyone

about it all the time. And I was, I was basically just becoming a badger. I was just going around annoying people and no one cared about it. So it's, I don't know, I found it sort of in some ways quite frustrating because I wanted, you know, I felt, oh, you know, I can help people and I can

explain this and it's, you know, it's going to be really good. But then I didn't want to be just annoying everybody, but I wanted to talk about it. And I thought, well, all I can do is I can, I can talk to people who have a similar interest. And I'll enjoy talking to them. And then if people

listen and they find it interesting, then that's brilliant. And at least I don't have to go and annoy people in my normal life. I just could be quiet in my normal life. Seems like you found a way there. But yeah, I can, I can,

yeah, the similarities there, like, like, it was so relieving to come to, to, to rega and like be, you know, I'm usually not very comfortable in crowded rooms. There is, it's like instantly felt like I knew everybody, which I sort of did from Twitter, from Twitter. Yes. Like,

like, you knew that everyone in there had like they were already over a certain intellectual capacity threshold. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean. And it's, it's definitely that they have that the intellectual capacity. And then it's also that they seem to have those

shared beliefs. Well, one thing that I like is that people seem to take responsibility for themselves. And it's really refreshing that it's, you know, it's, it's so different to what I experience in normal life. And then I meet Bitcoiners and they're like, well, if you want something done, do it

yourself. It's, it's really nice. It's refreshing. Yeah. And I think there are misconceptions about like, Bitcoin is all being filthy rich, for instance, which I'm dragging the others down.

Yeah. But there are a lot of people dragging the others down. I mean, it's like the thing that struck me was like, there's no like social status or class that doesn't seem to matter at all to these people, which was, which is really refreshing. And I think might be surprising to

would I think that might, that might have been surprising to an outsider, not very surprising to to Bitcoin. I think like the ideas are what's important, not not like all of the bullshit in real life. Well, I say real life in normal life. It's less real, but in normal life, it's, you know,

it's materialistic or it's a pill to authority. And you know, what degree have you got and all this sort of stuff. And then you meet Bitcoiners and it isn't. It's like you say, it's how interesting are your ideas? And are you a good and fun person? And if you've got those things, then great.

And it's so, so nice. Yeah, really. I heard Riga was awesome. I really would like to get out because I've heard really good things. Yeah, we're doing a thing there next next year, like a course for beginners. I don't know how confidential this is at

that point in time, but there's a thing in the works between me and a couple of other Bitcoiners doing like introduction, introduction courses for newbies the day before the conference. Oh, nice. Yeah. And see if we can turn it into a concept which that you can bring to other

conferences and stuff, which would be really nice. Yeah. Like it would be nice if this nice, this lovely conference could be more popular among the normists in Riga at the time. Like, yeah, when we're there, we should like be more welcoming to like the people out.

It's hard though, isn't it? I mean, do you find that? It's, you know, like I said before, and I really do mean this, you have distilled these ideas, the foundational ideas of Bitcoin so, so well, but explaining it into a normie in a casual meeting or in a 10 minutes.

I've still not found a way to do it. I've still, I don't know, maybe you have. Now, we live in a world where everyone is brainwashed into not seeing certain truths, like the subjective theory of value. We're not with people on the telly go on and

they go on and say that there is such a thing as intrinsic value all the time. Yeah. And there isn't like value is a subjective thing. And the value of money might be an inter subjective thing between several brains at the same time, but it's still subjective and still not an objective

through. Absolutely. Neither are. You explained it. You explained it with the diving analogy. I thought was very good. Yeah. The traps under ice diver. Yeah. So I thought that was really nice where I'm putting it actually. It explains it in a way that I think people would get their heads

around because a lot of the terminology that's used for normal people, it is like, you hear all these words and you hear these talking heads on TV talking about intrinsic value. They don't really think deeply about what that means. But like you say, things are valuable to different

people depending on their conditions. And I think that explained it very nicely. Yeah. And that's something I remember this possibly as a kid that you could you could haggle for prices in certain places, but not in other places. Like I spent parts of my childhood in Africa in

Mozambique and in Tanzania. But and you could always haggle about prices at the markets like yes at a food marketer. And you could never do that here in Sweden except for maybe at the when you were buying a guitar or something. Okay. Like the music stores, they had a haggling culture

even here. But like and wrapping your head around why that is and like that a price tag is is just historical data and not an absolute truth. It's very hard. It's very hard since since you like we act as if if it was an absolute truth all the time. Like when we go to the grocery

store and they tell us to pay a certain amount and we do. Yeah. And some people have bonus checks and they cash them in and some people have a bank like a credit card connected to the supermarket's own bank and they get or their members like so the cost can really vary.

But what we don't see is like every cost could vary and we could like bargain and haggle about everything. Well, yeah, I think I think you you can. It's just the social construct, isn't it? People would people would find it weird if you walked into a high street

shop. But I bet I bet if no one was no one else was in there and you're with the store manager almost anywhere you can haggle. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And people people don't think about this. Yeah. And this is part of why it's so hard to explain Bitcoin to people because

in order to understand Bitcoin, you need to understand money. And in order to understand money, you need to understand a lot of other basic things that are not taught in schools. Like what value? Yeah. Yeah. So it's really hard.

You talked about that as well in the book. And I think from memory, you've said, you know, it's it's probably just something that's been overlooked in the school systems. I sort of feel like it maybe is a bit more sinister. I struggle to believe. Obviously,

there's there's an element of just stupidity. And I definitely think that a lot of what goes on is just people not thinking and following the crowd. But but I do think that it's it's so convenient that this you know, the inflation and the way that things are working serves very few people.

And those few people make all the decisions. And I feel for them not to know that it benefits them. And I don't know. It just it feels like it feels a little bit like it's a they obviously know and they're just trying to breed cattle. Yeah, I try really hard not to be a conspiracy

theorist, but it is hard. It is hard. But yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't think there's anything wrong with with thinking about these things because I know people get upset about it and say, Oh, don't be stupid. The people in power wouldn't be doing it for their own benefit. It's like,

Well, do you know how how humans work? Do you have any ideas? People do what's best for them? Maybe maybe the people at the very top know. But I think you don't have to go very very far far down the hierarchies in society to get people that are completely ignorant about these things.

Yeah, absolutely. Like the politicians, for instance, I think they have no idea what they're talking about. Well, they're just puppets. Yeah. But maybe the central bankers do.

It's depressing either way. Yeah, it is. Well, it is depressing, but it's also quite exciting because, you know, in a film where you have a bully and it's bullying someone, and then eventually that person gets their own back and you feel yes, this is the tides have turned. I do feel that the

tides are going to turn. I feel really positive about it. I always vouch for the villain when I'm watching a movie. That's the most important character I want. Yeah. Anyway, sinister or stupid,

which is worse. I don't know. Maybe a combination of the two. Yeah. Does ambition and stupidity equal?

Politician. I was trying to make a verb out of sinister. It's not your word. But there is now synastarity. There you are. To copyright that. Yeah. Well, it's recorded. I can't steal it now,

sadly. Creative comments, creative comments. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, it will probably never know, but it just, it feels that way. And I don't know, like you were saying, the security that it gives us and the way that we can store our time and all of these benefits to me feel inevitable. I

sort of hesitate to say it, but it does feel inevitable and it feels and it is a big if, but it feels like it's the power shift is so huge that it is very difficult to predict quite what's going to happen on, on what time scale, but it's yeah, yeah, it's massive. It's just massive. Yeah. Yeah,

it feels like we're just before the tipping point of everything. Yes. And that's not only with Bitcoin, but with AI and all this dystopian stuff happening everywhere. So social credit scores, like, happening, happening without us knowing everywhere, not only in China, like, yeah.

It's creeping. Do you find it's sort of accelerating in Sweden? I mean, we certainly is in London. Yeah. Yeah, you have the whole Orwellian video surveillance thing there. It's really bad. It's really bad. I, it makes me feel very, very uncomfortable.

No, of course. Should move to the countryside. Well, I actually have, but I still have to go, I still have to go into London occasionally. It just feels horrible. It's not, it doesn't feel natural and it doesn't make you feel more safe. You know, a lot of people say, Oh, well,

it's good because it's good for safety. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. It's not. It's not. They should all read Orwell. Yes. I know. It's surprising how many people just happened, though. They'd know, like, if you say to people, oh, you know, 1984 and they'll say, no. And you say, big brother,

I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great TV show. Really enjoyed it. And you're like, Oh, God, you've missed, you've missed the point. Yeah, it's hopeless. And like,

films like Brazil, for instance, it's a very good prediction of what the British Society turned turned into. I haven't seen that one. Did you say Brazil? Yeah, Terry Gilliam film. Oh, I'm going to write. I'm going to write that down. I'll watch it. Very, very inspired by

1984. Right. Okay. Very bureaucratic society. Right. I have to watch that. Yes. Yeah, it should. It's it sent sent shivers down my spine 1984. It it felt it felt so close to

home that almost as if Orwell had a crystal ball. That's how it felt. It was like, it was like, wow, Orwell knew it was a bright guy. Animal farm is great as well. I think that's that's on my reading list. I haven't haven't got through to that one yet. But yeah, what an incredible guy. I'd

love to, I'd love to be able to say like, just sit in a room and chat to him and say, you know, what was going through your head and like, is, is this how you were thinking things were going to play out? Yeah, I always say that you only need to read two books to, to explain the entire world,

or human society at large. And that is 1984. And the emperor's new clothes by Hans Christian Anderson. Yes. You can explain everything from there. You can deduct everything in society from those two books. Yeah, I agree. And if you have to read a third book, go for human action by Ludwig

von Mises. Yes. Yeah, I'm working my way through it. I worked my way through a lot of these with audio books. In fact, I actually had a bone to pick with you because I was listening to your book.

I got through, I went through it in a day and had a long drive. And I pulled over on the side of the road, got my phone down and stack sat on four separate occasions because of your book. And because of that, it's rice and beans. It's rice and beans for the next couple of weeks.

So my, my fiendish little plan of making people, trying to make people put more money into Bitcoin in order to get made up. It works. It worked. I stacked more sat, I was that more sat that day than I had in about two months. You're making the hair stand on my arms.

There was just a few, there was just a few bits in that that the bits where you were talking about the fact that borders are basically irrelevant. It really resonated. I was like, yeah, this is something that was one of them was the borders part. And the other part that really made me pull

over and stack sat was the fact that sociopaths are drawn into politics and these sort of things. And it literally, I went, yeah, that's absolutely right. I'm going to pull over now in a fucking sex sense, because I'm not having these bastards run the world anymore, right? Pull over.

Oh, so good to hear this. Speaking about the borders there, that's one of the rabbit's holes that is most fascinating to me. And like, what's the concept of information literally being

valuable? What that does to like, how we think of ownership. And like, if there's really, this rabbit hole is so deep. Let me try to dive into my thoughts around this. I went into this

with Daniel Price quite a bit about nation state acquiring Bitcoin. And then you start thinking about how? How can a nation state own Bitcoin? Who is going to be responsible for the private keys?

Is there going to be multiple solutions? Will they have like two big red keys that they have to turn at the same time to send the bitcoins away in some nuclear warhead bunkers? And all these things start to pop into your head. And this rabbit hole seems limitless, because like, what the

conclusion, the inevitable conclusion of like what ownership is in the Bitcoin world is like, there is no such thing as a collective ownership. Ownership is always personal. Even if you have a multi-sig setup, your personal ownership of that part of the multi-sig is worth something.

So that like ownership can only be personal, which like obsolete the nation state in an entirely different, from an entirely different angle than the borders of obsolete angled. So like, and the next thing that pops into mind then is like, has ownership ever been a collective thing?

Is it possible at all to own things collectively? And the more you think about it, the more it seems like it isn't possible, because there's always a guy on top of every hierarchical structure we have who makes the decisions for everyone else in that hierarchical structure. So ownership

is an entirely personal thing. And it has always been, the valuable things have always been very confiscateable though. And this is what Bitcoin changes, because now all of a sudden you can't confiscate stuff, and you can't even know that people have it. So this turn says everything

affixes this. Yeah, not only fixes this, but turns it on its head, and like ob sleeps everything with thought we knew. And like, well, it's unimaginable actually. I would say that we can imagine this because, you know, we live on Bitcoin, Twitter, and obsessed with this sort of stuff. For someone

who's not involved in this, it is unthinkable. If you talk about, even for us, I think we've only barely scratched the surface of the implications of this thing. Because it turns everything on its head. Like, if we can't own anything collectively any longer, everything in society is like,

we'll have to figure out other ways of doing things. I believe them to be better ways than based on a truly free market. Not the charade of the free market that we have right now, like socialism, dressed up as a free market, which is everywhere. But trying to

there are so many barriers to this. Yeah, it was interesting what you're saying about how to how does a government or state have ownership. And I think that's a really good point because any entity bigger than one individual, like, yeah, because you either have to have it split so that

nobody owns it without the other people, or it has to be like, you say down to one person. So it's, like you say, you can only actually own something if it is one. And that throws some serious problems into the way that they've set up their little pyramid. And yeah, and every pyramid.

Yeah, like you say, we certainly haven't scratched the surface. And the implications are going to be just, well, we don't know. But I think on, do you have some sort of prediction of how this might play out? Yeah, I think there will be a limit to how big an organization can get. And I think

there's something to do with Dunbar's number, if you're familiar with that. Yeah, 150. Something like that. And like, yeah, after that, you can't know, or therefore trust everyone in an organization. So after that, like with Bitcoin, when everything is personal, humans will have,

once again, have a hard time forming groups of more than 150 people, which is, by the way, is true for every other primate. We are the only primate that, or mammal, but maybe not mammal, but the only primate that forms in large groups of more than 150 individuals. Yeah, so I've written

some about this in my in the follow up to the book. I'm thinking a lot about it, but because, like, this is humanity's greatest strength and greatest self-desertive thing at the same time, I think, because our ability to imagine that intersubjective things are as good as objective

truths, making a sense like religions or nation states, we can organize ourselves in vast numbers because we believe the same thing. We're rally under the same flag or something like that.

Yeah, we can create something that is an idea. We can we can scale because of language and being able to sort of paint an idea that's like, you say, like religion. And well, the idea of a nation is an idea. It's not reality. We're not any different. You know, biological difference is

just it's a manmade construct, which feels quite outdated, really, but yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, there's objective reality, there's subjective values, and there's intersubjective truths about that that we either believe in or not. And they are shaking at their very foundations

right now. The nation states, world religions and money itself, they're all being questioned. They're all being questioned. And like the bigger they get and the more bureaucratic and sinister they get, like the EU, for instance, or China or the US, the more questionable they

become. And people are starting to see through the veil and like exposing the truth, but the emperor really has no clothes on. That's, that's the thing. He has no clothes on and he's fuck ugly, really very, very ugly underneath. The more you look.

Yes, not on the underneath, but on the outside as well. Regardless of if you're thinking of winner the poo or, or like that fake suntan of yellow tongue, I'm thinking about all of them, I'm thinking about all of them. And it's one thing that's really fascinated me, like we were

saying, sort of going back to this fact that, you know, Bitcoin is going to meet and have a pleasant conversation, even if we disagree on certain things, it seems that most people can communicate and get along with each other. And I find that most people in life can, like most of

the barriers that are put up and the things that people argue about seem to be not just man-made, but media-made. And a lot of these, a lot of these arguments that, you know, about the use and the boomers and this country and that country and the left and the right. And

actually, we have much more in common with each other than we do that separates us. And it seems that all the media and government really try to do is just drive a wedge. And it feels to me that it's probably because they know that if they don't drive that wedge, people will

realize that actually, we are much more powerful together. And maybe this, that the internet is breaking those barriers because, you know, now we have access to all this information. And it seems like it's accelerating. Yeah, definitely. The internet is like, so many things got exposed

when the internet happened. So many lies were exposed. Like, and as a, as a, as a species, we're just about to wake up from all these spells we've been under, I believe. But it will take a while. It will, sad. And it might be violent. Yeah, I think almost definitely it will be.

I think that's why we have all the preppers and all that and all the preppers on Twitter. But I always like to think about the future, I think is really exciting. So, a lot of my time is spent thinking about, do you have a sort of, you know, if I said you write 25 years from now,

where are we? What's going on? Or do you have two? It's like, one, we're all dead, two.

You want me to dig myself a hole here? I dig myself them all the time. It's fine. I've got, I've got lots of spades here. We can dig ourselves out or dig deeper. Well, I, I try to be optimistic about the future because regardless of all the,

all the negative stuff that is happening and like, the most things in the world are, are getting better. I really believe that like, I believe Hans Rosling and Steven Pinker when they, when they show graphs of how, how everything is, the world is a better place for, for most people on,

on the planet. And I believe these trends will continue in one way or another. It would be harder to, for authoritarian regimes to, to keep on doing what they're doing just because they're, they're exposed a lot earlier and atrocities are exposed. And like, people have better tools

for separating themselves from the, or emancip, emancipating themselves, if you will. There are more and more tools of getting out of whatever narrative the government or the media tells you to live in. Like, and Bitcoin, I believe is the ultimate tool for this. Yeah, maybe not,

like, it still has some privacy issues and like, maybe some fungibility issues. But in the long run, I, I think the, the, the big benefit of this tool is, is not, maybe not the technology itself at this stage. Because the, it, you're better off if you're not using it, you're off the radar and

hotling is the best thing to do with it anyway. But the thing that it does to your mind and the thing that you start thinking about the world in other ways, and you apply these time preference thoughts into everything else you do in life as well. And it alters you more than you can alter it

as the GG says. And that is really powerful in itself. It makes people think. It's crazy, isn't it? Have you found change within yourself since you found Bitcoin in terms of your time preference? Yeah, definitely. I don't really like the terms high and low time preference because I

have difficulty remembering which one is which. Yeah, it took me ages. It took me ages to do this same. After about three reads of the Bitcoin standard, I was like, okay, yeah, no, it's yeah.

For a longer short time preference, like, yeah, it makes, that makes more sense, I think. But it's, it's like you say, it's so powerful. And it's something that's, that seems not out of place, but sort of, it seems to be an idea that was almost lost. And everyone was living in the future

in terms of their finances. And, you know, eating, eating shit and spending money on shit and, and talking shit and just borrowing to buy more shit. And now that you have this sound money, it does seem that it, well, certainly, it sounds like you for you and definitely for me as well.

I'm thinking all the time, whatever I'm spending, I'm thinking, or not even spending, whatever I'm doing, I'm thinking, is this the best for your future self? Because it matters. Yeah, and this, like, this is something that you will, like, people tell me, what if Bitcoin doesn't work,

and if it goes to zero, and if you were wrong, and all these things, which I admit, there's some, there is a small chance that we are, or a small risk, that we are wrong about it, and that we

take off, and yeah, all these things. But I don't really mind because it's, these ideas has made me a better thinker. And I believe, I'd like to think that I'm a better person because of it.

It might sound like a grandiose thing to say, but... No, I would do it all again, if, like, yeah, even if it were, yeah, I'm with you there. People have said the same to me, oh, what if it, you know, you're spending all your time and all your money, and everything you're

doing is on Bitcoin now. And I say, well, if I'm wrong, or if, even if I'm not wrong, and there's a catastrophic bug, or there's some failure, I can honestly say that I'm doing something I believe in, and I'm supporting something I believe is better for civilization. And if I'm to become a father and

pass this world on to future generations, I want to do what I think's best. And I don't think it's best to be popping bottles in a club and spending money on a flash car and wasting money on expensive clothes to show off in front of other people our stack stats. Because I think I just, I honestly

think it make the world a better place. And like you say, if we're wrong, at least we tried, at least we're, at least we're trying to do what we believe in. And we, we learned a lot from it.

We learned how to prioritize and like, how to question, like, it makes you question everything. And like, like one of this, I've been talking about this before, but on other parts, but like, I went to a crypto conference once, and I was about the only Bitcoiner there.

That sounds about right. And the amount of insincerity and like, the amount of snake-old salesman and charlatans in the world is, is truly depressing. Because even like, and the amount of gullible people, they're everywhere. The scammers and the gullible people.

Yeah. And they, so many of us fall for all these, and it sort of explains everything as well, because we've all been scammed by nation states and like, big hierarchical things that have governed us for its centuries. But when, when you see it firsthand, the scammers and all their followers,

it's really, it's back to a Monty Python again, and life of Brian from me. Think for yourselves, you're all different. Yeah. And like you said about being fooled, there was a part in your book as well, where you were talking about, you know, the fact that

you're paying taxes is paying the interest for your governments, and they're paying that to banks. And when you really think about that, you know, people say, oh, well, you know, you've got to have taxes. Otherwise, who's going to build the roads and all that stupid argument?

Yeah, yeah. And if you say to them, well, no, you're paying interest, and it has to be paid by somebody, you know, and the old argument of like, well, it's just money we owe to ourselves. It's like, well, who's ourselves? It's, it's a future generation. So it's such a, it is, it's such a

trickery that once you open your eyes to it, for me, it's impossible to close them again. Yeah. Yeah. It's like we're staging a civil war for offspring. Yeah. Yeah, worthless. Yeah. And you said you're putting the kids to bed before we spoke to your obviously,

I assume thinking the same, same way of, you know, you've got to look out for your children, and do you doing what you think is right? That's the, that's the way. Yeah. And it's so depressing because like, we were taught in school about every human being's

equal value all the time. And no one, no one questioned this, that this was the right philosophy. And like, of course, you should respect human life and all that. But no one ever questioned like, the word value, what, what, what is value? And in, in socialist Sweden, the, like,

the emphasis was like everyone should have the same chance of getting somewhere in life. And like, equality of opportunity, which is a nice thought in a way, but like, or equality of outcome, that's the best one. Yeah, that's the thing is they always,

they always confuse the two, don't they? Yes, they do. But the thing is, even making your parents' generation pay so much taxes that they never get the chance to get anywhere in life. So that

everyone can start at zero. It's not, it's not a very, if you're not able to, to, to store wealth through generations, it's like, what are your incentives to really take care of your kids and take care of your family? If you're all going, if you're going to get robbed of all of it anyway,

when you die, why bother? Yeah, like, this, this fucks up the incentives for, for parenting in general, I think that like, it destroys families, I understand with you. And it's, I think you're touching on a really important point there, which is, you know, if you take out that, and that's

something that has happened for tens of thousands of years, and that the parents would look after the children, and then eventually the children would look after the parents, but not only if the values being stolen, but if people are relying on governments for their health and their welfare,

and for everything slowly but surely being outsourced to the government, it breaks down that family bond. And, and that's all at the end of the day, without that, what's the point? Yeah, and what, what these social security net, safety nets and social benefits are doing is that depriving the people

of the ability to learn from their own mistakes. And if you do that, you'll, people will never be responsible, if you, if you deprive them of the opportunity to have skin in the game in whatever they do, like you take that away and they'd never learn anything. And there are other ways, and like,

there are so many innovations for financing stuff nowadays, like crowdfunding, for instance, that could be used to such a much larger extent, like for instead instead as a substitute for taxes.

Yeah. Crowd fund everything. I mean, absolutely. And I really, I really believe that humans are hardwired to cooperate, and this is what, like the first chapter of my book, Everything A Trade, like, this is, we interact voluntarily. That's a trade. And that's commerce. And it's,

it's cooperative rather than coercive. And I believe coercion should be minimized and cooperation should be maximized. And I think really what you're getting at there is that all interaction is, is value exchange and effectively all value exchange is a form of speech. And by restricting

that value exchange and restricting speech, it can only have a negative effect on society. Yeah. And I believe no society has ever had free speech, freedom of speech, true freedom of speech is never existed. No, because speech includes money. Yeah, it's what is massive, massive part

of it, huge part of it. The most important part of it. Well, you speak exactly by, by putting your money behind something and backing it, you are speaking and telling someone that you agree with it or you don't agree with it and you want it to happen or you don't want it to happen. And

yeah, I think that's missed. I think just because of the wording, maybe people struggle to wrap their head around that. But it's worrying. That's what it is. Money is just appreciating the other person's efforts. Hmm. You said you'd listen to a lot of Andreas Antonopoulos when you first started

with your course. There's a couple of talks that he's done about money as speech and about Mike, micro payments on the Lightning Network and how you can say whatever you want to whatever degree with your money and that there's no barriers if we can get this right. And that's something that

keeps me up at night thinking about it. Do you have a view on, I don't know whether you've seen the one I'm talking about, but well, there's a few that he's done, but is it something? No, it's quite old actually. It must be two or three years old now. I can't remember what it's

called off the top of my head, but he's talking about micro payments and that you can... Dreaming money and all that. That's it. That's it. That really blows my mind. Yeah, I've seen those and blew my mind at the time as well. They really did. But I've not been following Andreas

that much lately. He's gone a bit shit-coiny, hasn't he? Yeah, I hate to talk down on the guy. Oh, no, I mean, he's... Honestly, whether he's gone shit-coiny or not genuinely without watching his videos right at the beginning, I would not have wrapped my head around this.

I really don't think I would have and I have unbelievable amount of respect. But it does worry me. Yeah, it worries everyone, I think, in the community because he has done so much for so many people in this community. So it's like a taboo to criticize him. Yeah, I don't understand

what he's talking about with Ethereum, though. I just know that this guy is smart and he sees... I believe he sees value in Ethereum. I cannot see it myself. But sometimes I think, well, he's so smart and he helps you get through all this stuff. What is he seeing that you're not seeing?

Or is there a financial incentive? And I just... I don't know. I can't get my head around it. So I've just chosen to accept that, well, he sees something I don't... He still sees value in Bitcoin and he's been incredibly useful and I have the respect for him. But I just... I can't get on

board with it. I just think Ethereum is bullshit. Yeah, totally agree. But... Yeah, so I didn't put I didn't put any punches there, but... No, no, no, no, and you shouldn't. I just wish we were talking

about some... There are some other Bitcoin OGs that have done far worse things than Andreas ever did. Twice! Yeah, he dug himself ahold in me. Oh, that was bad. That was bad. Do you know what was weird, though?

The first... I don't know if you ever watched this. There was a show documentary which he was in years and years and years ago. And I was... Roger Vere, right? Roger Vere was in here. And so was... What's his name? Who did Shake Shift and all of those sort of ones?

Yeah, Eric Vore is here. And I watched it. This is before I got involved with Bitcoin. And I remember watching it and there's a part where Trace is sat in an office and he's talking about trade with Africa and there's a backdrop behind him of a, I think, a harbor or something.

And he's talking. And I remember distinctly thinking, "What a cock!" I just remember thinking... He seems like he's a cock. And then I saw him about a year and a half later when I was really falling down the rabbit hole. And he was talking a lot of sense. And you know, a lot of what he was

saying was really logical and smart. But I couldn't help thinking. I thought I feel that he likes himself too much for me to like him. And when I first started this podcast, I sent out invitations to everyone that I thought, you know, I sent out invitations to everyone that I like and respect

and that I think that they have good ideas. And he was the one where I stopped and I thought he talks a lot of sense. But I think he's a cock. And it turns out that he was. So, Trace, if you're listening, which you're obviously not, but you are. You're a cock. Sorry.

Have you watched the office? Yeah, yeah, I love it. Did you watch the English and the American version? Or just one? I tried to watch the American one, but no. Yeah, me too. I watched the English one so many times. I absolutely love it. And then I tried the American and I just thought,

"Ah, I can't." It's just nowhere near as good. I love the English one. It's almost hard to watch though, isn't it? Yes. I know a lot of people, including my wife, that doesn't like it at all, just because it's so hard to watch. She feels embarrassed watching it. It's cringe-worthy.

It's so clever. On the podcast, Joe, with Daniel, he always asks at the end, if you could speak to one person and talk to them about Bitcoin and make them understand who would it be, mine is always Ricky Gervais. Oh, yeah. He would be the person and he lives not far from me. And I

always think, if I bump into him, I would never normally speak to a celebrity or try and annoy them in that day. But I would love to talk to Ricky about this stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He would be sort of already on our side, isn't he? Freedom of speech, big time. Yeah, yeah, he is. But he's

sort of left leaning, you know, the issues though. But I guess he's, yeah, but he's got a heart and he's got a brain definitely. Oh, yeah, he's switched on. Yeah, he is. Yeah, he would be a great spokesperson. The first guy that came to mind when you said that now, like, who would be the first

man? Can you guess who came? Who came to what name popped up in my head? Go on, tell me. I can't. He'd be a good one to have on your side. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why Darth Vader then? I don't know. It just popped into my head. What is my head? He would be the person. Darth Vader. Darth Vader. Maybe because his name rolls off the tongue so nicely in the British accent.

Darth Vader. Yeah, he would be definitely a good one to have on the left side. Yeah. He's credited in space as well though. Yeah, space credits. I think it's going to go that way. I listened to all these crazy podcasts talking about it and like, you know, into

having Bitcoin in space and how that would work and all the sort of how it would and wouldn't work and would you have to have different chains and all this and the sad thing is that I just see that as a definite reality that is going to be intergalactic money and that we are going to eventually

sort of leave this earth and start spreading and lurking around space and that it's probably going to be Bitcoin. Not in our lifetimes? No, not in our lifetime unless we can somehow sort out this aging problem which they seem to get closer to. Oh yeah, no problem. Yeah, it's I've sort of accepted

that it's probably going to be my generation are going to die and my kids generation are going to die but the one after that maybe they might be able to extend their life quite a significant amount but I've accepted that I will just be dying. The flip side of that coin is like they're all going

to die tragically in an accident someday then. Yeah, that's true. The longer the life span, the higher the likelihood of that goes towards infinity. That's true. And isn't it true that eventually atoms we're going to rip themselves apart in a certain amount of time. I was talking

to someone, talking to someone recently, I was like, oh well in theory we can live forever because we can just basically like have robotic bodies and we can upload our consciousness and then effectively we can live forever and download ourselves into other bodies and he was like, no,

because atoms will rip themselves apart and then effectively you will die anyway so you will die eventually and I was like, okay, it's good to know. Yeah but isn't the sun like eating the earth way before atoms start ripping themselves apart? Oh maybe, my physics knowledge is poor. I just,

one of my mates is a physics teacher so I always ask him weird questions and he will always answer with, no you will, whatever I come up with, no you will die, you will die. Okay, all right then.

I just want to be immortal. Yeah, that's so much to ask for. Yeah, that's something I can work with. I just want to live forever and be able to store my energy and time in a currency that doesn't devalue. That's all I want from life and I'm halfway there. I like the thought of, you know,

using Bitcoin to knight your children like to pass wealth through five generations of like, you can try and lock them. So like, is this something you'll consider or? I imagine time-locking a part of them so like,

here you can inherit this but you have to leave behind this amount to the next generation and then like have a halving schedule or something. So for each generation, each generation will only need half the amount of Bitcoin anyway. So you can do this as a forever thing. If you like,

program a time-lock thing, a halving into that for each generation after yourself, you can secure the wealth of all your children for all the generations to come. That's actually a very reasonable, that actually makes a lot of sense.

Maybe that's something that we need to propose to the sort of financial planners of this world. Yeah, like, like you said, it's technically possible and logically, logically, it makes sense.

And like, regression theorem or something like that. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, a fancy name. I always like the one that Andreas comes up with, it's a geometrically declining supply function. It always sounds posh. Whenever people ask, oh yeah, yeah, well, it works on a geometrically declining supply function. They're like,

what does that mean? They're like, well, it halves every four years, it gets more valuable, basically, a more scarce. It sounds good, though. That's a good one. I don't think I had that thought before, but if the halving does what it does to Bitcoin and the value of Bitcoin as of now,

and if it continues to do what we all think it will, like number go up, that you could apply exactly the same thing to your personal wealth, to the generations after you. So you spend half of your Bitcoins yourself, you leave half to coming generations and each generation will have to do

the same thing. Okay, the only floor that into the whole thing. The only problem I can see is if you only had one child and that child couldn't have another child, maybe two, three generations down the line, what happens? Is it just coin burn? Is it just that just goes, okay, that's fair enough.

You just say that goes to the community. That's coin burn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Precise, precisely. You will donate the value of those coins to the rest of the community by increasing the scarcity. Okay, yeah, I can get on board with that. I haven't got kids yet, but you little bastards

just know that this is what's happening. You're not getting my money, you're gonna have to wait, you get a percentage, you got a breed, and if you don't breed, you're not getting it. Yeah, your criticism. It is interesting thinking about these things, though,

because it's, like you say, that's really sensible and we're talking about a very far-out idea, like, it's crazy. It's a speculation that, yeah, it's completely crazy and we're talking about it like it's a reality already. It is crazy, but it is also logical.

It's something can be crazy but logical at the same time, and I believe that it is. I think that a lot of the ideas, you know, a lot of the ideas that are talked about are crazy. A lot of what we talk about on Twitter is crazy, but I think it's less crazy than what's accepted as a norm in society

in most cases, you know, citadels and all these sort of things that are crazy ideas. Really, when you break them down, illogical. Yeah, yeah, it's far less crazy than most things out there. There's so many ridiculous things that people believe in.

If we are right and let's say that the S2F model holds true and the plan B model, the plan B model holds true or something similar. I have an issue with that, though,

because that's not what Austrian economics teaches you, that it's not something you can do like that. To model things. To model an economic prediction like that. I'm not a big fan of it

because I don't really believe that you can, that it's that simple. I think hyper-big connotation is more plausible than that model in a way. Well, I think that, I mean, Naseem Taleb has a big problem with models, and I've read his books,

and I agree with what he says in those. Have you read full-by randomness or the black swan or skinning the game? I read skinning the game. Yeah, so, I mean, he talks like it's brilliant, and his other two are absolute fantastic books, and he says that. He says, you know, you can't

model these things, and I think like what you're saying, you can't model because you can't predict human behavior. Although I agree with that, the numbers that Plan B is talking about do roughly align with, you know, if you take, if you take gold's value, if you take a percentage

of property value, if you take a percentage of the stock market value, and if it is this black hole that sucks in value, where we are allocating capital to, in to say, property, and these things that are sat vacant, or they're not actually yielding what they should be yielding, then it would

make more sense to allocate your capital to something that is completely liquid and that stores value better over time. And if that is to happen, the numbers he's talking about do seem logical, whether they follow the exact line that he's predicting, I probably agree with you, I think that

that's fairly unlikely. But say we hit the numbers that he's talking about, whether they follow the line or not, where do you want your citadel to be? Are you staying in Sweden or are you going to a Caribbean island? I'm not staying in Sweden, that's for sure. It's too dark here. And cold. I've

always been, I've already been like smitten by a life in a less dark place than this. I was sailing

around in warmer places for quite a lot of years, and I sort of miss the sun. Or you sort of Asia or Caribbean, or whereabouts did you enjoy the most? Where I would put my citadel, I don't really

know, wherever the other bitcoiners are, I guess. I think bitcoiners will, the citadels are quite far ahead in the future, if you believe in them. But I think bitcoiners will start to move around the globe to places and jurisdictions where they can be themselves, like Portugal and Japan, for

instance. Yeah, they seem to be favoured. Yeah, I like the idea personally of like somewhere, maybe off the coast of Thailand, Elanqawi, that sort of area, or Barbados around that sort of area, somewhere warm and tropical. I like the idea that enough bitcoiners will have enough land that we

can all sort of just phone each other up, be like, look, can I just mow my boat off the coast of your island? Can I just, you know, come chill and just chat some shit and watch, you know, read some books and watch some interesting movies and have a good fry up and eat some steak? That's why I'm hoping.

This is the thing though, like I think about this a lot. If I were to end up in a situation in life where I could basically buy everything I ever wanted, financially independent of whatever you

may call it, what would I do with my time? And like, how would I spend my days and how long would it take before I drank myself to death or whatever? Because you don't want to get bored. Would you procrastinate it all away or would you be creative or would you build something like,

what's the point of building a business if you're already financially independent and stuff like that? Well, I guess some things are built out of love, aren't they? Some things are built out of passion and love. And yeah, and I hope that that's what I would do, like build things out of passion

and love, like make music and write books, I guess. Well, I don't think there's a better thing to spend your time with than music and art. I can't think of a better way to spend time. No, not really. Not if you have an seemingly unlimited amount of time. Time is always limited

but anyway. And money, that's the problem. I work as an artist but I have to do other work because it doesn't make enough money. If I had all the money in the world, I'd just paint all day every day, paint and maybe do a bit of diving or something. But it's working as an artist whether it's musician

or painting or writing or it's hard. Anyway, think about that Dr. Flo model. I have a theory about an always up point in the Bitcoin price, which is like, is there such a point or not?

Which is where the Bitcoin block subsidy is when it's low enough and when there are enough huddlers of last resort and there will be a point in time when bitcoins will be so hard to come by that they can't lose value. We can always look at a point in time where there will be

only one Satoshi left because all the others have been lost somehow. Eventually, that point will happen even though it could take hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years.

Well, I just lost all of mine in a boating accident. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, it was tragic. Absolutely tragic. It always is. I just in my Twitter profile, the boating accident, Captain. You have a better excuse. You actually

did some sailing. I live near a river, so I'll just use that. It can lose them in the river. The thing is, this point where the price just can't go down because they're scarce enough and the demand is high enough, it's somewhere between now and there's only

one Satoshi left point. There is a point where the price can't go down, denominated in another currency like the US dollar. When does that happen? Is that a hundred years from now or like a thousand

years from now or a couple of months from now? Well, I guess we will never know, but I actually think it's going to be a long time. Yeah, but the thing is, it doesn't need to be

where everyone, for everyone to start acting like that point has already, this thought just needs to get into the collective mind of all Bitcoiners. We need more hotless of last resort. And after that, say that all the Bitcoins that were already in circulation started to

or stopped circulating. Everything that had already been mined was people just started hodling it like crazy, like never selling. Then the halving is, what is it, 75 days away, something like that? Something, yeah, close to that.

And after that, we'll get 6.5 new Bitcoin for the entire world to share every 10 minutes, which is not a lot. No. And like, not if I keep listening to your book, I'm going to listen again tomorrow, I'm going to clean up all the blocks up today.

Yeah, but with enough demand, this point is not theoretical anymore, and the price can only go up from there. Because once you believe in hodling, and even if you believe in hodling, 99% of your Bitcoin, something like that, if you're enough of a believer in hodling,

and enough people are that, this point is inevitable, and it will happen. The price cannot go down once we're past that point. Yeah, once you build a base of hodlers of last resort, and we are building that base, and it is less coins are moving over time, and less are being

mined over time, you're absolutely right. Yeah, it seems like our point is very far away, since the price goes up and down like crazy still, but it might not be, it might just be a couple of months away, or even weeks, you never know where then it's certain point, and then a specific point

to down how far away at that point is. And this is so fascinating, I can't stop thinking about these things. It's, well, yeah, it is sort of it consumes your mind, doesn't it? Because it's not just about if number goes up, and people stop moving them, it's not just we all get filthy rich, and we'll

sit on a Caribbean island and paint and write, it's actually that the world dramatically changes, and being part of it and watching it is, it's just fascinating. There's no wonder we can't get out of our heads. Yeah, the only thing more fascinating than number go up is number doesn't go up,

which is the the bit that is fascinating. Yeah, I must remember the awful next book, next book. When's the next? When's the next book out? Do we have a sort of rough book schedule, halving schedule?

I'm happy to, I'm happy to say that I'm in the proof-reading phase of it. Excellent. Some time this year, I think I can promise that. Excellent, well, I'll be straight on to that. And I will say to all my listeners, anyone

now who is listening to this, first of all, go now, now, now, and buy sovereignty through mathematics. And as soon as you've done that, get on, is there a list waiting for your next book? No. Right.

As soon as there is a list, I'm going to share that out in the show notes and all over Twitter, and you go and buy that as well, and then listen, and four times through it, you stack sats, and then you huddle, and you write a will, and make sure that your children only get a percentage,

and that halves over every generation, and just take the advice. That's the best advice I can give in life, I'm afraid, is just buy that book, read it, or listen to it, and wait for the next one.

Thank you for those kind words. All right, we're listening. I'm tweeting this right now, about number doesn't go up, by the way. Excellent. Well, listen, I, like I said, I don't want to keep you too long, and I think this has been brilliant for any of the listeners. I'm going to link

all of this, all of the information for your book, and where to download, and where to buy in the show notes. And do you have any parting words of wisdom, and I think you'd like to say to the listeners?

Life is too important to be taken seriously. Like that, I like that. It's not me, it's Oscar Wilde. I just write, I'm just writing that down. Yeah, he went to prison just about a couple of miles away from me. Oh, yeah, good old Oscar.

Right, very wise words. And yeah, again, thank you very much for coming on, and well, thank you for writing the book, and thank you for giving me something. I'm really sorry, safe Dean, but Bitcoin standard is no longer the number one book that I pass out to newbies. It's now number two. It is,

it's now number two, and it's not number two, it's very good. It's, oh, it's, it's an absolutely world-class book. However, it is the second book that is now suggested, yours is the first, that is the second. So, safe, I'm really sorry, I'm really sorry, but it is now the second book

that is suggested. All right, I will, yeah, we'll end the recording there, but yeah, thank you again for coming on. I've really, really enjoyed chatting to you, and hopefully we'll speak again soon when the next book comes out. Yeah, looking forward to that. Fantastic. Thanks for having me on.

It's been a pleasure. Yeah. All right, thank you. All right, speak soon.