EP20 Bitcoin podcast with Aleks Svetski.

Welcome back to the bit by bit podcast. In today's episode, I speak with Alex Spetsky. We actually recorded this episode a couple of weeks ago, so I apologise just getting out a little bit late. Things have been crazy busy, and I've also got a puppy very recently.

He's a lovely little bloke, but he doesn't particularly like to sleep, which means I've got very little. Anyway, despite the episode getting out a little bit late, I think that the topics that we discuss are very important. They're the real reason I started this podcast.

Although it's mainly a Bitcoin podcast, what I really care about is freedom. During the episode, Alex and I discuss coronavirus, freedom, and Bitcoin. I hope you enjoy. Alex, thanks very much for joining me today. Like I said, just before we took the call,

I'd like to go through, well, first of all, it'd be really nice to start with, where were you and what were you doing? Or can you remember what you were doing when you first heard about or found out about Bitcoin?

First of all, thanks for having me on, man. What the fuck was I doing? I can't pinpoint it. It depends. I think about Bitcoin in two phases. Once was the first time I heard about it and just dismissed it, and that was back in the gold bug days. If anyone's ever

listened to my podcast, they've heard me tell my Genesis story about probably seeing Max Kaiser jumping up and down on a fucking couch. I love him. 2011, 2012, I'm sure telling people to buy Bitcoin. That shit actually turned me off Bitcoin in the early days, to be honest, because I was like, what the fuck are you talking

about? I just stuck with gold and silver at the time to my everlasting regret. That's probably my first time hearing about it, but not really listening. The big difference between hearing and listening. When I started to listen was probably in 2016. Again, I think

it was actually a friend of mine who, the guy was a junkie actually. I'm pretty sure he was just buying shit on the dark net. He mentioned Bitcoin again. He was rambling on about how a friend of his made a bunch of money out of Bitcoin. He mentioned it again

and then I was like, yeah, okay, interesting, but the guy was a junkie. You don't take

it too serious. I moved away from that company. I found myself looking for something else to do with my teeth into. I decided to have a look at Bitcoin,

see what all the hype was about. The more I read, the more interesting it was. I've got a little saying that the people say something like, I came for the trades and then I stayed for the freedom or whatever. I came for this to stay for that. I came for the money and

I stayed for the money. I came to make a bit of money because I was looking for an opportunity and then I definitely stayed for the money, which is the actual revolution here. I guess Bitcoin has a way of depending on your level of curiosity and your view points about life

that it has a way of really sucking you in and it hasn't stopped. You found out 2016 and then did you dive straight in and really start researching and they just haven't looked up or did it take a little bit of time?

No, it was actually pretty quick. I must admit, because I'd already had the whole gold buck background initially. I spent time, I was involved in Texas, so there was just a lot of things that interested me. I must admit, in the beginning, I thought that there was

something there with blockchain. I thought that there was something there with Ethereum and all that sort of stuff in the beginning. I quickly, the faster and quicker I dove in, the quicker I realized that all of that fucking shit was complete, just scams. I see everything

really pissed me off. There was just so much garbage there. I kind of like to really get my hands dirty when I find out about something and really dig, dig, dig. I must admit, one person who strongly influenced me in the beginning was Andreas.

Yeah, that's a common theme for anyone. I think anyone who's in this who really cares about this and it's not just about money. It is about societal change. It seems to be a common theme that you've learnt from Andreas and it's sparked something in you and you've gone shit. This is big. Then it goes from there, that seems.

His early stuff was incredible. He's going off the rails more recently. Yeah, Ethereum's awesome. Exactly. There's a lot of things I just don't agree with within, but whatever. He played his part for a lot of people that came in between 2014 to 2016.

I think a lot of those guys who are interested I had had quite a bit of inspiration from Andreas. He played a role there. From Andreas, it was then a case of, I guess if you were already into gold and silver and

I'm guessing there was a sort of libertarian, the streak possibly or a Austrian economics. I've always had an anti-authoritarian streak. Excellent, we like that. Just a natural rebellious streak. I've always got myself into trouble. My life story is

one of immense highs and crazy lows and all sorts of dramas which one day will make for a hilarious book. The common theme has always been me pushing the envelope. The idea of

personal sovereignty and personally, I really hold those highly. Bitcoin's alignment with those two principles really just resonates with me and fuels my fervor around it. I was just reading through an article that you'd put out the rise of the individual and

you had an interesting part where you said right at the beginning, it's that thing which protagonist Winston Smith of Orwell's seminal piece 1984 was unknowingly calling out and that line there really resonated me because that book scares the shit out of me and anyone

who's listening to this, go and read that piece. I'm going to link it in the show notes. Like you're saying, I think it is the key to unlocking all of this and it's what he was searching for but it wasn't a possibility and it is now and that's so powerful. It blows my mind every day and clearly yours and that's why you're here.

Yeah, I mean, that piece that I wrote is sort of what I think and it's pinned on my Twitter. It's like, I think it's the most important thing I've ever written and it really distills my thesis around why it quite's important more than anything else. It's that quote.

I think you just really nailed it there like in pulling that piece out is Winston was screaming out for something but as we know or for those who have read Orwell's book, it doesn't end well and I guess in the absence of something like Bitcoin, we'd all be very much marching

in the same direction. I see it as the most important innovation in modern times, man. It just brings chills down my spine when I think about without that as a lifeboat or without that as an option. Fuck man. Oh, we're fucked without it. We are fucked.

At least the concept of personal liberty and personal sovereignty is completely fucking. We may find a way to adapt to human beings and live as fucking drones, manage the state and all that sort of stuff and we might be able to, I kind of view life as this game you

can play with within some balance. You've got these barriers on other side and the wider those barriers are, the richer life can be because you can have some sort of amplitude and you have some sort of freedom to move. What's happening in the world is that those

bounds, those barriers are getting tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter. Most people live relatively with low amplitude, low modulation. They're right in the middle and they're fucking average, that sort of middle of the bell curve kind of thing. Most

people won't get up and revolt and they won't even notice the bounds being tightened. Those of us who want to be extraordinary, want to make an impact on the world, we're all change in discovering all that sort of stuff comes from is by playing as close to the bounds

as possible, being outside of the central distribution of that bell curve. The tighter and tighter those bounds get, it's those of us who respect and value freedom, discovery, exploration, all those things that we feel that first and we're the first ones who start

to rally around that. I guess where I'm going with that is without Bitcoin, we would have to also as the free thinkers of society operate within a narrow, narrower bound. Maybe we could survive and live that kind of life and all that sort of shit, but holy fucking crap

man, that's not a life one, looks forward to unfortunately. It's survival, not thriving, it's surviving. Exactly, exactly. As I picture it, I just think of a fucking grey sort of scene. It's the real manifestation of the dystopian futures

that we've weathered in books or watched on film. It's fucking sad man. I think as much as life in humans are messy, the colour and the beauty comes in the mess. The more you allow that mess to occur and the more you allow people to express and figure it out themselves,

the freer, stronger and more prosperous society has an opportunity to become, but the more you fucking quench that shit, the greyer, duller, drabber, it fucking gets. Seriously, without a tool like Bitcoin, I think we'd be in a position where we don't have much

of a choice. That's why the blessing is right. Yeah, I completely agree. It feels, I don't know what it's like in Australia, but certainly in the UK, when I came across Bitcoin, I was at a point where I'd been involved in lots of different things. And for the last couple

of years before finding Bitcoin, I'd got to the point where every business idea, everything I ever thought of doing, everything I wanted to do, I just went, fuck that, the regulations too hard. There's too much of a barrier to entry. It's stacked against me unless you've

got a serious amount of money and backing. It's just too hard. And the regulations are there to cycle my innovation. And I got to a stage of feeling like, oh, is this something that we can fight against? And then I found Bitcoin, I was like, oh, holy shit. Okay.

Yeah, this is how we went. Like you said, that you find the colour in the madness and in the mess. And sometimes you've got to try some stuff and some things have got to go wrong before it works to have everything pre-planned and so regimented and regulated. It just makes

the world fucking boring. Yeah, I mean, if you look, the question comes down to it, you know, are you on the side of life? And you know, life is a story of trial and error. If you subscribe to any form of fucking scientific logic, you see the development

life of life, you know, whether from the Big Bang through to, you know, the creation of life on the planet and, you know, single-selled organisms through to me was through to fucking, you know, the animals that predate us through to, you know, where we are now. It's this messy

evolutionary process of, you know, things coming together. And like, if you're on the side of that, if you're on the side of life, you need to be on the side of allowing things to find their own fucking way without trying to constantly prod and intervene. Like, it's,

I mean, it's, it's, you know, complex systems like you, like the two things you don't fuck with in my mind is you don't fuck with biology and you don't fuck with economics. You know, and, you know, they're way too complex for us to ever properly understand, properly be

able to, to, you know, whether you want to call it managing, whether you want to call it, you know, operating like they should just be allowed to just do their fucking thing. And, and, you know, kind of find naturally equilibrium themselves and naturally, like

what freaks people out. And this is one of the, I guess, the stupidities of, of humans is, you know, the process of naturally equilibrium freaks us out, because it is messy. But that is by definition, what life looks like. And it's, it's how systems, whether micro or macro,

you know, practically speaking all the way through systems learn that way when I was on the podcast with, you know, McCormack, I was trying to talk about, you know, why do pain receptors exist in the body? Well, pain receptors exist. Not just fucking, you know, show you

pain for fuck's sake, like it's to teach you, you know, it's to help you self regulate and self correct. And, you know, what we consistently do in society, whether it's, you know, from a health and, you know, biological perspective, whether it's from an emotional perspective,

whether it's from a fucking psychological mental economic, we try and fucking remove the pain receptors by masking underlying problems and dealing with just the symptoms. And the more and more we do that, the more we stray from, you know, reality, the more we stray from

the underlying, all in this bid to like fucking avoid a little bit of pain. And what happens is we have zero fucking context back to a, you know, where and even what fucking reality is anymore. And B, we become even softer and more afraid of experience and pain which

perpetuates the problem. And then you've got a scenario where, you know, you hide the problem, you hide the risk so much that at some point in time, because again, you know, we were part of a broader context of life, something messy inevitably happens. Like we

think Corona and everything fucking blows up. And it's, yeah, man, I don't know when, when the thinking will change. But, you know, Bitcoin again, like I've just finished up writing a new article that talks about Bitcoin and the halving. And it's not a fucking article

I'm, you know, discussing the stock flow and price and all that sort of shooting. And it's, it's an article that talks about how Bitcoin and the halving represents a divergence or a fork in the road in the arms. And the kind of thinking that's prevalent in society today,

you know, society today, it's all about more, more, more, now, now, cover the pain, cover the pain, you know, excess excess excess. Whereas the halving represents something extraordinarily different, like 180 degrees in the opposite direction. And it talks about something diminishing

in supply, you know, something becoming more strict, more scared at the opposite of this fucking blind abundance for abundant sake mindset. And, and for me, that's so symbolic. It's so different to, to the prevailing narrative. And, and it's just, I dunno, man, the more

I think about it, the more, you know, I just feel like this has, you know, this is such a historic moment in history. Yeah, I mean, when we first jumped on the call and you said, you know, you're a busy person, you're doing doing all sorts of things and you get bored

quickly. And I can relate to that. And one thing I don't know if you found this the same. This is the first time in my life I've ever been interested in something. And then my interest only grows. And, and, and I've never had that normally, I'll, you know, I'll start

something I'll do it for a couple of months or a year and I'll be excited. And then something else takes my attention. And then I think, oh, there's flaws in it because of X and Y. I mean, you know, the more, I'm fucking weird. Yeah, dude, I am, I say that to everybody

because, you know, and everyone knows me as, you know, this, you know, traditionally serial entrepreneur kind of guy, like I've done so many things, I've tried so many things, you know, like I've, I've experimented with so many different businesses and like, you know,

everyone's always, you know, been under the assumption that, you know, Alex is doing something, something new every couple of years. But this is the one thing that just, I mean, I have no near peaked, like, you know, you think about something that just continues to suck

you in. I'm so much more interested in tree and fucking captivated now than I was at the beginning. And I've never experienced that in my life. And anything, not with girlfriends, not with not seriously. It is weird. I assume that is why you come up with the idea of

Amber and we're getting a little bit into sort of what it is you're trying to do with Amber. But my question is, what was the motivation for it? Obviously, you believe in Bitcoin, it seems like the business model is obviously set up too. It's dollar cost averaging as

far as I can tell and then try to save people the fucking pain that me and I think everyone I've ever spoken to has had when you come in, you think you're really smart, you think you can trade and you just get rex. And it makes a lot of sense to me. So how did it, how did

it come about? What was your thinking behind it? Well, I mean, I was interested in the space. So just me just being entrepreneurial in nature wanted to do something. And, you know, I just heard the same old problems and objections. You know, I tell people to buy

Bitcoin and they're like, yeah, it's too hard. I don't know where I don't know how much and all this shit. I'm like, just fucking buy 50 bucks a week now. And I'm like, what do I do that? And the more I thought about that, like, you know, I was familiar with

a product called Acorns in the US, which there's one called Moneybox in the UK, I think. And the idea of like, you know, rounding up your spare change. And I just thought, fuck, what better place to round up your spare change into NASA with such asymmetric upside. So that

was sort of the first iteration of the product. We ditched that whole round up in the spare change version of the product. Because what we found was, I mean, it went against a lot of the core premises of, you know, what Bitcoin and, you know, what I personally stand for,

you know, around privacy, financial privacy, not sort of like we in order for an app to do round ups, it requires full cart, lunch, access to your bank statements. Yes, transactions, you know, it's got to look at the transaction and work out the round up, right? So we kind

of dumped that version of the product and went with something, just simple a cleaner leader, which was set in an amount, set a frequency. And, you know, let the thing just accumulate Bitcoin in the background for you. And that's the premise. And I guess it also

for me represents, again, a difference in thinking where you had the, you know, you had the shitcoin casinos as I call them, you know, like the finances and cracking and all that sort of shit to the world, sort of rise up, you know, between 2016 and particularly 2017

and 18, as places where fucking degenerates could, you know, go on and satisfy their gambling addictions. And, you know, I had my degenerate moment as a lot of, you know, people, you know, did, you know, at times we all need a climb out stupid. And I kind of climbed up

really quickly and fucking ran back down the other side, just quickly as I could. And, you know, I wanted to build Amber as kind of like, again, a difference or a different, I wanted to build it with a different ethos than that again, which was this idea of slowly

accumulating wealth over a period of time for the long term. And, you know, Amber doesn't is not optimized for you to quickly buy and sell and all that sort of shit. It's like a purely designed for you to set it up, you know, link your card or your bank account

and just accumulate Bitcoin really slowly, you know, whatever frequency you want. And then, you know, withdraw it out to your wallet and, you know, Bob, your uncle, like that's how simple it's designed to be. And, you know, we'll never list another asset class we don't

need to. We'll never list another fucking shit coin. Like, you know, that stuff is not all or about where we went to be a Bitcoin accumulation app. And I just want to be known as the place you go to, you know, intelligently accumulate in a quite Bitcoin. So simple as that, like, there's nothing else to it.

Well, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, that's literally when I first, like you say, it went through all that crazy trading bullshit, realized I was useless at it. And then when people, friends and family come to me, I literally do that for them. I'm like, well, just buy

it a little bit every month because it's the safest thing. So they don't shit themselves when it suddenly drops in half because it's only £20 a month or whatever it is. See, you need to get yourself over to the UK because I'm having to do it for all my friends and

family and keep track and suck about with it. And we've got no one useful in the UK who does it as far as I'm aware. And I get pissed off because I have people phoned me up and go, Oh my God, Bitcoin dropped 50% and I go fuck off. You put £40 in it over the last

three months. I'm doing it for you as a favor. Just go away or I buy it off you and I get all that nonsense. So you need to start in the UK. So I can send them to you. I am literally before you called me, I was emailing my UK lawyer to set up a call for

next week. So I will be in the UK soon, man, assuming that we can get some of this, um, regulation, uh, regulatory and banking bullshit. Like one of the bigger drugs actually, the banks being wankers and not allowing you to operate a bank account. Yeah, that doesn't

surprise me at all. Yeah. Well, I wish, I wish that it does come here. And if it does, you have to let me know and send you some people 100% then. Yeah. No, it's, it's a really nice product. And it's literally is, I feel is what you would, it's what you would advise

people you actually care about to do. Yeah. You know, you don't want to send them to fucking Coinbase and then they see a hundred other assets and they're suddenly phony. You're saying, Oh, well, can I buy denta coin? And I know you're like, Oh God, say you're told

you just gone and buy Bitcoin. Just just do as you're told. And then, and then don't win. So it is the, it is really is a nice product. So that happens. We talked a little bit about freedom and why it's important in that respect. But I think what, what people

find confusing or certainly when I try and explain to people because of the sort of Bitcoin fixes this, uh, name and it does seem to fix so many things. It's difficult to explain that, okay, yes, it can allow freedom and yes, it's unsensurable and all the rest of it.

But I think at the core of it, the fact that this is, I think, and, and it definitely from reading through what you're writing, you think this is the best money ever. Can you explain to the listeners, what is it that makes this good money? And why, why is it so much better

than what we have now? Okay, well, I guess, um, you know, money is this emergent phenomenon. You know, we've sort of, um, seen it evolve over the years as, as basically a method for allowing human beings, um, who may or may not know each other to, um, to collaborate

and cooperate. Like, what, what makes us human and what makes us dominant, um, on the planet is that ability to cooperate. And, you know, we, we cooperate based on all sorts of different stories. Um, and you know, some people call them shared fictions, you know, some people

call them hallucinations. I think, you know, hallucinations and fictions sort of give it the wrong sort of, um, premise, but you know, money fundamentally is a story, but it's a fucking true story. It's it's something that represents what we do, um, as, as a species

on the planet, which is we, we spend time and energy, um, you know, performing acts and functions and things and, and society is just nearly a collection of all of these acts and functions and things, um, some which we value, some which we don't, um, which we kind of

measure, um, in some way, shape or form, uh, in order for us to collaborate and cooperate. And that form of measure, um, you know, has over the years, you know, become known as, you know, money and, and like what a lot of people don't understand is like, you can't

have society, you can't have broad collaboration amongst, you know, participants, um, of a group without money, without something to represent the work or the labor or the time or the energy or the effort that the different participants or the constituents on the society,

um, uh, you know, input, um, you just can't, it doesn't, that doesn't exist. So, you know, if, if money is sort of this, you know, real foundational layer of society, it's sort of at the base, but when that thing functions properly, you have an opportunity

for, um, you know, to build society in a good foundation, um, if it doesn't, then you basically, you build society in a really poor foundation and you have all of these, you know, externalities and these effects that, um, that occur or these symptoms and you think those symptoms are the problem.

Again, it comes back to that symptomatic versus causal thinking is, you know, you have these weird fucking distortions that happen, you know, that are second, third, fourth, fifth order, um, consequences, or you know, more, and order consequences, you know, much for

the down the track, which you have no idea where they came from or what they exist. Then you sort of mask them up as well and sort of keep this band-aid, you know, um, society together, um, without understanding that, you know, the base is broken and, and the whole

Bitcoin fixes this meme, you know, is based on the idea that you fix the base and you may not fix everything because, you know, you know, human beings and, you know, collective access, you know, has its own fucking dramas, but if you can fix this piece, which is the,

the element through which we measure time, labor, effort, energy, value, production, all these really important, um, concepts in society, you fix that, you, you will have a fucking extraordinary, uh, slow one effect into every other element of, um, of society

and, you know, human life and, um, and yet if we, if we come back to, you know, again, the money conversation is, um, you know, over time, what we found was, you know, this, this unit of measurement is thing called money, um, functions best when it, you know, has

particular attributes and it performs particular functions and, you know, a lot of people have spoken about, you know, the function of money and all this sort of stuff, so like really touching on it briefly here is, you know, money that thing should be something that,

you know, can function as a means to exchange, can, um, you know, function as a store of value and can function as, um, as a, uh, what do you call it, as a way to, uh, as a unit of account as a way to measure as well, um, and, and sort of, you know, and, and those

functions are, you know, very related, um, to themselves as well, um, you know, without, you know, without being able, without being a, you know, that account, you can't really have me exchange, you can't measure, without being a store of value, you don't have anything

to exchange, um, but without having the exchange function, um, it's not storing any value and you can't measure, so, so they're all interrelated in essence, um, sort of like a nice delineation and, um, in function there that you can make to help people understand it. Now an, an object

or a good, um, that, you know, has specific attributes that is not consumable effectively, um, can be used to, you know, act as the medium for those functions and that's something that has, you know, good durability, good, uh, to disability, good portability. Um, it's,

you know, easily recognized, um, you know, it's the same throughout, you know, so that way, um, you know, it's, it's, uh, uh, a fungibility is actually the other one, you know, so it's like the point in, um, in using a form of money if it's fucking different for everybody, um,

and then, and then the two most important ones I think is, um, the, the impossible or the difficulty to forge and, and, and, and it's scarcity. Um, and, and those last two are sort of the ones that have been forgotten over the last couple hundred years as money has really, um,

become the basis for the emergence of a modern economy. Um, and you know, what we've managed to do, um, is to make money, you know, more portable, more divisible, um, etc. But in the process of sacrifice, it's, um, scarcity and, uh, difficulty to forge. And what that's done is that's, um,

basically undermined the, the very essence of, um, what money's supposed to represent, which is, you know, time, effort, energy, you know, so this, you know, money is a contract for future work. It's a form of credit. And if you can just create it without tying it to some sort of work,

or at least a contract for future work, you, you basically, you, you break the element in society that makes society function. Um, and that's why money is so fucking structurally important.

And that's why having a structurally sound form of money is so important. And, um, and, you know, if I tie all of that back to Bitcoin, Bitcoin is the most fungible, divisible, portable, scarce, impossible to fucking forge form of money that has ever existed. And it scores a 10 out of 10

in every single one of those, um, uh, you know, attributes of money and as a result can perform the functions of money better than anything else in the world ever can or ever will hope to.

And, you know, if we, if we continue building Bitcoin's critical mass, the way it's been building and, you know, continue compounding and deepening that liquidity, this thing will change the world more than anything else we've ever done. Hmm. Yeah. I completely agree with that. The only,

the only one thing that concerns me is, is, is actually the fungibility. Um, but I do see that we, it seems we're moving in the right direction. That is really all I can say on that one. And, and I hope that obviously we want the perfect privacy, but then we need to know that we can

guarantee that there is a finite supply and, you know, it's a trade off, I suppose is, is the thing but, um, that's the verifiability versus individual privacy argument, which is going to be, I think, you know, one of the things that will be battling each other over once Corona's fucking finished.

Um, it's going to, it's going to end the world, isn't it, Corona? Everyone's going to, that's what everyone's told me. Everyone in England's told, everyone in England has told me they're all cheering. They're all cheering here. You better stay in your fucking house, man. You better stay

in your fucking house. I honestly, I'm getting messages from, uh, from people text messages saying, Oh, isn't it amazing what the government are doing? It's amazing. It's so good how they're handling the situation. And you use, I heard on the Peter McCormack episode you did recently,

you were talking about the first thing they should do is to give out tests. And that is what I've been saying to people so long. And every time I say that's almost like, Oh, well, you know, if they care so much, why haven't they given us fucking hand sanitizer or tested anyone? And it's like,

they just go, Oh, well, you can't actually do tests. And you know, you can't give hand sanitizer to everyone. It'd be too expensive. You're like, well, to run the maths, how much does hand sanitizer cost? You know, how much does everyone certainly hear is just literally they watch the news,

they recite it, they send it to each other on Facebook. And then like, pray to the government, it's unbelievable. Mass delusion, my friends, fucking mass delusion. It makes me, I mean, yeah, I was thinking about this earlier is like, this is the importance of pain in any system,

is that, you know, pain or suffering or trouble or crisis or whatever, basically helps peel back the layers and the lapping actively. And what it does is, you know, people who supposedly call themselves, you know, the libertarian, all that sort of stuff was so quick to, to drop their

ideals. And when the first sign of trouble comes, it just sort of shows you who really will stand by their beliefs and convictions and who's just there to fucking live action role play, right? And it just, it angers me like the amount of people that I've seen who without question,

you know, people that are even supposed to be fucking smart, like without question, be like, all right, well, normally I'm a libertarian, but in this scenario, I'm a status, it's like, well, you know, it's like saying, you know, like, I don't know, man, I don't even want to

bother finding an analogy. And it's like, you know, what's easy, I'll do it when it's hard, I won't. And it's that that is just so reminiscent and evident of how weak society has become in general, is that we'll only do things when it feels fucking good and cushy, when it's, you know, a little bit

scary, doesn't matter. Yeah. And as long as you can get, as long as you can get a selfie and tell everyone that you've done it on Facebook, it's fucking cheap, man, it is fucking cheap. So I've, yeah, it's, it's just been interesting for me to watch. And for a long time, like, I didn't say

anything about Corona for like the first two, three, four weeks, I just shut the fuck up and I was just wondering. And then at just one point, I just got really fucking pissed off about it, man. So that I'm just that ranting about and obviously jumped on the Cormax show and the one prior to

that. And it was just like, I know, like, I've grown a lot of respect for people, like, you know, parabolic, traveling, and hodlmott and stuff like that, because, you know, we sort of aligned in our thinking around, you know, none of us is saying that Corona is not real. You know, I haven't heard

anybody say that. I just what I've heard is that, hey, yeah, this thing is real. But as soon as you start prodding and fucking with a complex system, you don't make it better, you actually make, you know, the situation worse, because you create, you know, feedback loops and externalities that

you just have no fucking clue how they're going to, how they're going to manifest themselves, or what the second, third, fourth, fifth order consequences are going to be you have no fucking way. And the more you touch it, without letting it find its own equilibrium, all you do is extend

the fucking pain, you extend the drama, extend the problems, you hide the risks. And it's the same fucking story over and over again. And like if every time a crisis happens, you come back to it all will, you know, we just need to do it this one more time, like it is no different to a degenerate

fucking junkie. Fucking needling themselves one more time and saying that they won't do it next time. It's just, it's so blatantly obvious to me, and a few others, but I don't know, fear has a way of like bringing out this powerful, the the weakness in people man. Yeah, it's powerful fear.

It's, I've definitely seen later, I've seen some very, very small people that I had a lot of respect for completely just bend the knee because of it. And yeah, it's, how do we get around it? Do you, do you feel that, you know, say, for example, the, I don't even know what percentage we are,

people who are interested in Bitcoin or really interested, say it's a quarter of a percent or whatever, if it gains enough traction, and it gets enough liquidity, and it does start to permeate into normal society more and more. Do you think that it can change these behavioral

patterns and give people a different time preference and start to wake them up and get them to sit up and go, ah, hold on, I was being fucking stupid before, and now I understand, or do you think that there's just a level of people who just literally will never care, and they just have to, if this

thing takes off, they just have to stay with their state money, lose their purchasing power, and we're going to end up with citadels, like, or is there a middle ground? What's your, what's your thoughts on the future with it? Well, I was trying to stay with, um,

McCormack on the call, you know, sort of talking about, I think he quoted me, it's um, you can't get rid of shitcunts, all you can do is limit the amount that, um, shitcunts can do, or something like that.

I remember you saying that, yes. Yeah, so I was, um, I was kind of like trying to say that, you know, if society's like a, this slope, and there's water flowing down the slope, like, the best we could do is the water's going to flow anyway, is we want to

carve some grooves that are, that are, you know, better grooves, I guess, and, and, um, what, what Bitcoin does is it has, you know, base ingredients, which are what I would say, um, better long-term incentives, things like, you know, a limited supply, you know, doesn't instantaneously incentivize,

you know, blind consumption, you know, with that regard to its cost, you know, like, so, so you can say, you don't have to go on fucking randomly invest in shit that, you know what I'm saying?

Um, you know, the fact that you can't create more of it, you know, inherently incentivizes people to think twice about how they deploy capital, how they use capital, um, you know, how they, how they, you know, draw credit, um, because they know that if they, you know, destroy

their own capital, there's no way to just, you know, create more of it by turning on some random fucking printers. So I think it, from a societal standpoint, um, you know, creates these different grooves that, um, you know, make the, um, you know, make us approach reality slightly differently.

Now, you know, what, what's that going to look like? Um, I mean, I think, initially, it's going to attract certain types of people, you know, like the meas and yous of the world. Um, you know, like the tribes and the Holocaust and all that sort of stuff. And you know, it's going to, um,

it's going to attract us. Now, the, the beauty of Bitcoin, because it's, um, because it's a monetary, monetary, you know, call it monster, like it's a monetary phenomenon, um, those of us who get attracted to it, um, and stay involved in it, we are going to, um, to get very wealthy.

Comparatively speaking, um, out of it. And because money is, you know, the, the measurement for, um, you know, prosperity, uh, in a sense, um, in any society, um, you know, we're, we're going to get noticed, um, and that inherent desire to, to be prosperous, to thrive as human beings

is going to drive more people to want to learn about it. And, um, and, you know, that, that sort of, um, came for the money, stayed for the money, um, concept, I think is going to continue to grow.

And I mean, we live in a world that's, you know, far more interconnected these days, you know, ideas, um, you know, go viral quicker, you know, concept spread. Um, you know, I do hope that, you know, more people, you know, with sense, um, you know, get attracted, um, to Bitcoin for those

reasons, because there's, you know, that core group, that intolerant minority who've not moved from the, um, from the initial thesis. And, uh, I think it's just the, it's just the layering, um, effect. Now, this, this isn't going to take, um, you know, 10 years before we got some

fucking citadels and we're safe. Like, I think this is going to take many decades to, um, you know, go through the system. And the problem is, you know, the prevailing, you know, consumption, blind consumption oriented, um, state, they're not going to give up easily. You know, they're

going to get more draconian. They're going to get fucking more stupid. They're going to do dumb things. Um, I personally don't think, you know, I, I think in 12 months time, you know, corona's going to be a distant memory and that, um, markets will likely bounce back and that

everyone's going to think everything's fucking all happy again. Um, but there's going to be a big, big, big, big, big question mark around, you know, uh, Federal Reserve fucking Mr. Infinity and all that sort of stuff. So I feel like this, this Ponzi scheme has got one more, you know, major

push left in it before, you know, something really structural breaks, um, down the back. Yeah, sadly, because everyone, everyone, like everyone I speak to, I mean, I've been running this podcast for a year and I've been annoying everyone for like two and a half or something,

telling them this system's going to fucking crash. I was in property before, and I was like sending everything off and I was saying to everyone, please sell. And if you have any stocks sell, this thing is going to crash. This is going to crash and they're like, oh yeah, fuck off,

whatever. And, and now it's crashed. And, and I speak to them and I'm like, look, I told you this was going to happen, not on a gloating, but just like, I told you, do you want to listen to me now? Why? And listen to why this is going to happen? Well, it's corona.

And that's the reason now that we have all these problems is there's not, there's an underlying problem that corona has caused all of this. So I think you're right, it is probably got a bit at least one or two more serious crashes, because they still won't wake up, which is sad.

Exactly. And this is why I believe that we're going to have, you know, another strong run at the Ponzi is that not enough people are waking up there. There's a convenient excuse. Now, you know, last time we had the excuse of, you know, oh, it was the bankers, you know,

the previous time it was the terrorists, the previous time it was the tech people, the previous time, it was the, you know, the bond market or whatever the fuck it was. And, you know, although it was the Russian, you know, they fucked it up. So, so there's been an excuse now, you know,

the next time around, like, you know, they're basically running out of excuses as to why the system broke down. And they're reaching a point where, you know, the, the string has nothing left to pull, like, you know, you're really pushing now on the string. And I don't know, I just,

next time around, you know, a real absence of excuses, and because things are so connected and everything like that, it'll be very hard to kind of sweep the money printing in the so-called solution from this time under the rug. So, I don't know, this thing is obviously a car

spiraling out of control. And I feel like they're going to somehow get the illusion of momentary control back, but on a, on a grand scale, it's going to get, you know, very messy later on. Now, you know, what does that look like? How does that progress? I don't know.

I guess that this is where Bitcoin and its perfection really lie is that during that period, the incentive to be involved in something that a bunch of crazy people, like I'm talking about me, you know, the parabolic tribes of the world have been saying is an alternative. The incentive

to learn about an alternative is going to just continue to grow. And that's just going to gain more and more and more momentum as the prevailing status quo. Not only loses momentum, but, you know, loses control. And it's going to be a fucking sight to see, man. I mean, I don't know what

catastrophes lie ahead, but I'm going to be big. They will be. And we're just going to have a chance to at least shelter ourselves from a, from a wealth perspective and, you know, wealth is extremely important. And then I think, you know, we just need to band together now as Bitcoin is

not thinking about other things that we need to prep, you know, and I don't mean to sound like a doomsday, but you know, there's, you know, we, we are seriously, you know, seeing shit happen in society that we've, you know, that is genuinely unprecedented. So we're going to have to prep for

a lot of things and whether that's trying to come up with our own, you know, supply chains that are, you know, built around Bitcoin businesses that allow us to, you know, to move, you know, physical stuff around the world without reliance on, you know, morons, et cetera, et cetera. It's like,

you know, we're going to need to rethink things, you know, whether that's the creation of, you know, communities around, you know, like smaller little, you know, mini cities or whatever around the world that are, you know, that are Bitcoin, purely Bitcoin-denominated, you know, whether we can buy them from

failing states or whatever, or whatever the case is and just sort of uploading themselves, you know, learning how to farm and, you know, create food and, you know, learning how to defend ourselves and all this sort of stuff like, there's going to be, yes, such a different set of, you know, skills

and interests that people are going to need to develop. And again, I think a lot of Bitcoiners are at the forefront of this and thinking about this more so than any, you know, most other people who are just sitting there, frightened in their lounge room, fucking locked up in their house waiting

for the government to save them, basically. So, yeah, we are the resistance fan. And, you know, without sounding too fucking tin for hat, like, we've got to start planning, you know, we've got the economic tool now, we've got to get all the other things ready over the next 10 years, because,

yeah, the next catastrophe is going to just be larger. And we all, we all need to have a backup plan for this viable and the strength of numbers. Yeah, get things ready, basically. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Well, like I said before, I'm pleased that products, or perhaps like

AMBA are available, I'm pleased that more and more Bitcoiners seem to be throwing themselves into this. And in all different aspects, in all different areas, things seem to be getting better.

And all I'm trying to do with my podcast is to wait people up, let them understand why this is important and try and point them in the right direction. And as soon as you get your product over here in the UK, just give me a shout. And I will, I will let people know, because I think it

is the safest and the best way for people to get involved. And once they got a little bit, even if it's a tiny amount, it gives them that incentive. It's that skin in the game, until until someone's got a little bit of skin in the game, they're not going to bother to do any research,

and they are just going to sit on the couch at home watching Netflix, like you say, and waiting for the government to help them. Yeah, man. And thank you. Thank you for the work you're doing, but I was going to say these pods are, you know, I mean, as much as, you know, I sometimes keep

podcasts to shit, like, because I mean, and even I was podcasting at one point, you know, and like, there's just, you know, podcasts about podcasts about podcasts these days, like they're everywhere.

It's actually important to just explore these ideas, which is, you know, and the fact that people like you and, you know, everyone sort of, that are podcasting sort of take time out of their own schedule to go and dig deeper and, you know, talk to people and put this information forward,

like, you know, you guys are all, you guys are a big part of that fucking frontline. You guys are the counterculture to, you know, the mainstream media fucking monkeys who are out there, regurgitating nonsensical dog shit that, you know, adds no value to people's lives.

That's it. I mean, it's, it's, thank you. And like I said before, this is literally just, you know, it's something I do because I've got sick of bleeding onto people and them not being interested and sounding like the crazy temple hat bloke in the room and everything. Anyone said, I was like,

no, that's Pollock's because X, Y, and Z. And I thought, you know what, I'm just going to put my thoughts online once a week, speak to some interesting people. And if people want to listen, they listen, and in normal life, now I just shut up. Just don't even talk about this stuff. It's

fucking pointless. Oh, man. So true. Yeah. But yeah, thank you. Listen, thank you so much for coming on. If you ever find yourself in London, it'd be great to catch up for beer or something and it'd be nice to meet. And then like I said, it'll be in a couple months. So we'll, yeah,

definitely catch up. Excellent. All right. I look forward to it. Thanks again. And hopefully we'll catch up soon. 100% man. Thank you for being on. Cheers. Thanks a lot. Bye, bud.