EP24 Bitcoin podcast with Sir Badminton of Bitcoin @HodlerThanThou.

Today I speak to Hodler Than Now. Enjoy. I was just wondered whether you were having a drink as well. I'm actually having a corona at the moment. Just building those antibodies. Yeah, I was going to have a wine, but it's so hot in this house that it just wasn't quite doing it for me today.

So yeah, having a nice cold corona, what about yourself? I'm having a boring old Heineken now, but I had a 1950s photo of White Horse looking at me. Very nice. Basically just old Lagerville and they were using it back in those days.

So yeah. Very nice. I'm prepped. Excellent. All right, well, I could say, we're just letting it flow. And I think the best way to start, really, is obviously we spoke a little bit before, and you were involved in the music industry and still are to some extent.

We'll get onto that maybe a little bit later. But how did you find Bitcoin? Did you stumble across it? Did it suck you in straight away? What was your backstory to how you are now? The obsessive about Bitcoin and on Bitcoin's Twitter and we chat all the time.

And how did that happen for you? Well, I think Mike with most people, with most Bitcoiners now, it takes a couple of touches before you get there. And I was living in a shared house in London.

This is about 2010. My wife and I had just got married and we were being really low time preference even then. So we were living in a shared house to save money, build a deposit to invest or buy property, whatever.

And there was one of my mates who was living in a warehouse complex and a bit of a loose cannon who had started mining Bitcoin. He was talking about it to me, saying that he had thousands of Bitcoin and he was going to, he was going to, well, later on he certainly used it on.

Do you remember a drunk young Yao? Yeah, it was all the rage, like, I don't know. It was all the rage for a short while. Eight years ago or something. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, he was buying tons of that and cutting them and those sort of things that we were dabbling in in those days.

So I didn't at all get the, it just sounded far-fetched to me. And as he was a bit of a loose cannon, he didn't give me any of the sort of monetary policy aspect of it or anything like that.

So him, it was just a way to gain drugs for free, essentially. So I kind of slept on it then. I had all of them to focus on. And then it wasn't actually until mid-summer 2017. I was on the train to see my parents in Denmark.

And I was checking through my email, I got an investment newsletter through. It seems really unlikely that they would have written to me about Bitcoin. And then all of a sudden it's bigger than my memory of Bitcoin.

And basically by the time my two-hour journey had ended, I had read as much as I could find in those two hours. And by the time I got to my parents, I set up my first exchange account and bought a pretty significant sum, actually, already then, because I just read about the scarcity aspect,

proof of work, and that just made it seem like a no-brainer to me. Well, that's pretty amazing for a two-hour train journey, because for me, it took me many months until I started to wrap my head around it.

I actually, the same, I chucked some money at it because I was like, this sounds cool. I can see how this could work, but I had lots of questions and concerns and worries that, over time, all pretty much being debunked.

But that's impressive over two hours. Well, I think it was based on the fact that I had, from about 2011, and then for about four or five years, I had a real, I fell down into the rare whiskey rabbit hole, predominantly Japanese dead distillery whiskey from the '70s, '60s, '70s, and '80s.

And that sounds really random type, so I had very recent experience with a scarce commodity, at least, and on quite a lot, in fact, it was my whiskey collection that bought us the house where we're living now, or the property where we're living now.

Because whiskey's incredibly collectible, and you know what you're doing. I know some people who trade in it, and I know it's quite a serious thing. Quite a lot of my bottles, I bought for like 300 and sold for 2,500, 3,500.

So I think it was that experience that kind of made me think, "Oh yeah, well, if there's only ever going to be 21 million, then I'll work out the details later." And of course, I didn't know my ass from my elbow at all, you know, I still don't.

We're all still learning all the time, but yeah, it was a good train journey. And so after that, so you bought some Bitcoin, it made sense to you in terms of scarcity. Did it take some time to really fall down the rabbit hole?

Did you, first of all, just treat it as an investment and think, "Okay, I understand the scarcity. I'm going to just sit on this and weigh in, and there's nothing more really to it." Or did you immediately start to consume content and to really start digging deep and learning about this stuff?

A bit of both, really. I mean, it was very much, it was very much number go up to begin with. But I did start reading immediately about it. Unfortunately, I did like many others have. I did fall into some despicable ship coinery for it.

You stemmed in some shit. I did indeed, and yeah, I mean, and well, you know, my dad always used to, whenever I used to make a mistake as a kid, lose some money on something or just lose time spent, you know, the time I'd spent on something.

He would always call it school money or learning money. And he was like, "It's never ever wasted if you just take a lesson from it." So true. And that was very much, that was very much the case with my ship coinery.

And it did take me until February 18, and losing probably seven, eight bitcoins worth of value to kind of think I'm never touching this rubbish again. And then the real journey really started because once you wed yourself to Bitcoin only, all the noise has gone.

It's incredible. That point, isn't it? We've sort of similar sort of timeline for me. And that point where you go Bitcoin only, I found personally for me, I was like, how the hell was I trying to keep up with all this stuff?

I can't even keep up with Bitcoin development. You know, I can't even start to dig into all the developments going on with this. So how was I messing around with 15 other ship coins or trying to do things that are technically impossible? And that really, when you look at their market cap of the problems

they're trying to solve, and nothing, and nothing in compare, you know, old file storage, whatever that is, a few billion dollar industry. And then you look at like money. It's like money store of value.

Like it's huge. It's the biggest disruption ever. So it's the foundation for absolutely everything else. I did my sort of political ship coinery, if you like, for many years living in the metropolis.

You know, 15 years in London, as a creative, being surrounded by creatives, very much meant that I was buying into this democratic socialist kind of nonsense. And I think the thing is that I was still trying to solve the same problem in my mind,

then, that I am now, you know, it was still based on the fact that I knew that the game was rigged. I just hadn't groked how. And so I think there's definitely parallels there. You know, you get with chip coinery as well.

You are kind of, I don't know, there's just so much noise and kind of a pseudo academic cleverness to tell you, to tell your turn, essentially, and it doesn't really be that complicated. No, it doesn't. And at that moment where you find, I think, especially with Twitter,

it takes a while to just refine who you're listening to, to find a couple of good podcasts, to find a couple of people with good newsletters, to get the quality content. That takes some time. But once you get that, and you're in that, you're in that space where you can click Twitter on and, or listen to your favorite podcasts or

whatever your favored content is, and you just, you get a feeling for the people that you're listening to over time, aren't talking shit, and aren't that, you know, Lambo boy nonsense. And you start to get a feeling that, you know, these people actually really are smart and they

really do know what they're talking about, and they're not selling the dream or a lie. And it's just such a nice, so much nicer, isn't it? But as you say, it does take time to trim the fat and to cook it down with this pure signal.

But I do think, and other people would disagree with me, but I do think most people, whether it's within politics and the sort of echo chamber that I was, the sort of metropolitan do good echo chamber I was in before, or whether it's the shitcoin world, I think a lot of people have the right intentions.

A lot of people have intentions of really changing something, and whether it's like file storage, or whether it's, I don't know, a future outage, or whether it's power distribution. There are a lot of really noble causes in there, maybe not file storage, but you know what I mean?

The same in politics, but if you're tugging at the wrong thread, I just don't see, nowadays, I don't see how you can have economic justice, or environmental justice, or social justice, without sorting out the money first.

It is at the heart of every problem and everything that we do. Did you always find that once it clicked with you, you thought, how did I not? Or maybe you might have felt it at times, and in your gut, things didn't feel right, but you sort of think, how did I not suss this? It's so big, and it didn't quite grasp it, and now, when you look

about retrospectively, it seems so obvious. And now that it does seem obvious to you, trying to explain it to other people, do you find that frustrating? Or have you just accepted that these things take time and take a step back from trying to explain to normies?

We'll call them a little, call them B, I think. I mainly, I just feel horribly embarrassed for the way I was carrying on beforehand, before I found this, because I always trusted. I never verified. You know, I think I considered myself a political junkie, but I was just, everything I was getting, I was getting from

sort of the Guardian, or some shit rag like that, because I was busy having a career, not that it's an excuse, never really dove deep into things. And I think most people are like that, even some families that I have that are sort of super academics, really high up at one of the

most elite economic universities, they still buy all this sort of party line, without really ever looking into things. And I think that's just very common doing that. It's a nicer world view, isn't it?

It makes it easier, sort of in terms of workload, and yeah, I don't know. So I try not to be too harsh on the normie, but don't get it, because I think if somebody had kind of

pontificated or borderline lectured me on monetary policy, and anything else on top previously, I probably wouldn't have been very receptive, I think. So nowadays, I try to

just do it in, because I do have a tendency of verbosity, if that's a word, isn't that verbosity? And probably, I'm a bit of a know-it-all. Join the club.

I don't know whether that is a Bitcoin, the thing as well. But yeah, so I try to sort of refine my delivery, but I have had, oh, it's a wet woodpecker set out on the fence.

So yeah, so I do try to go easy on people, but I have managed, I have pretty good track of record now, even my in-laws who are quite statist have a whole coin in us now. I saw that, I think I actually, I wrote you, just I was so jealous when I saw that, because you'd written about, I think it was your father-in-law's stacking.

And my dad, he's got like 20 Bitcoin now, I don't know, wow. He's just, he wanted to take his money out of the stock market, he was just like, "I need more exposure to Bitcoin." Oh, what a legend, literally from my whole family, my entire family, not one sat between them. Oh, really? Yeah, not one sat. And even though

I've done relatively well with my investments previous to Bitcoin, with my properties and other things that I've been involved in, they just laugh in my face, literally just like laugh in my face. But at the same time, they're buying the stock market dip,

because their financial advisors have told them it's definitely going to go up forever. And so I've tried for a long time, and I actually started this podcast that was part of the reason was so I could say, "Look, you won't listen to me here, but maybe you'll listen to some other

smart people that I'm speaking to." But no, I think maybe that's just a family thing, because the rest of my friends and family, the rest of my friends have started buying. It took about a year, but they've all now started to convert, and they're all getting to that stage where they'll

send the articles and say, "Oh yeah, what's this hardening thing? And what's this?" And I'm like, "Yes." It's a nice feeling. That is really good. It's a bit of luck. I mean, it's really, it's a godsend to having Twitter. I didn't even, I was trying to stay away from social media. I'm

sort of a bit sort of a retro grader in many ways, you know, moved out into the middle of nowhere, and basically knit my own lentils now. That's a, a piss-take way of saying, just, you know, "What happened?" You grow all your own. Yeah, exactly. A bit of a hippie existence.

Awesome. But yeah, where was our social media? You were sort of funny, Twitter. Exactly. So, I didn't find Twitter until early 19, I think, and all of a sudden it was just like, fucking damn it. Why, what went on here like years earlier? That's, yeah. It's just all so,

so much incredible content, so many, I mean, it's a humbling, you know, and being in touch with so many incredibly talented and gifted and introspective and terrific people. It really, I mean, there's a discussion about whether there's a Bitcoin community or not, but certainly the

community around Bitcoin is fantastic. What's your thoughts on that, the whole, you know, is Bitcoin a community? Is it not? You know, how do you view it? How does it feel to you? I mean, Bitcoin is network effect, isn't it? And so, it stands for reason to me that

certainly part of that is community-driven. I know Bitcoin does its own thing, but, you know, to me, it's not really that important whether Bitcoin is a community or whether there is just a community around Bitcoin. To me, that's kind of semantics. It feels like it sometimes,

though, you know, so, you know, sometimes when you say you're on Twitter for a couple of hours in your chat, into the usual suspects and you're having these conversations and then you step back into the real world. And sometimes, well, I find this is like, I have a lot more in common with a

lot of the people that I speak to on Twitter than I do with most people in life. And it's not all just about Bitcoin, you know, we talk about with Daniel talking about homeschooling or with people talking about dire or talking about being accepting of people using different

substances if it helps them for certain reasons or no, just more that open and introspective thinking and all these taking responsibility for your own actions. It does feel we have more in common than just an asset. I completely agree. I think it's a whole sort of value set that is in common. And

you can maybe replace one or two things depending on who you're talking with. But yeah, it's really just really, truly open-minded and free-thinking. And I'm slightly regretting not finding Bitcoin Twitter earlier, but hey, that's how it goes. I'm enjoying it now. Although, I have just deleted

Twitter for my phone because I realised I have so many things to get on with. I mean, I'm having a two-year-old that needs lots of attention and having acres of land that needs doing stuff with and projects that need to happen. That sounds like an amazing project. Have you been out there for a

while? Is France, isn't it, you? Yeah, we are in the south of France. I'll set the scene for you. We are in the middle of the forest. You drive off the main road up to our little village, which is about 10 kilometres away, which is a fair distance away. And it's dead. There's not even

bakery. Then you pass through the village, it gets even more rural. You carry on until you reach a forest and then you turn off down a little forest track and you carry on for another two, three kilometres until finally you're in this forest valley that kind of opens up a bit

and that's where we are. Wow. So yeah, I could just see the roof on the top of the valley of the distant neighbour's house. But apart from that, there's no man-made sound. It's just us, the wild boars, deer, all sorts of birds and rabbits. That sounds amazing. That's absolutely awesome.

It was kind of born out of a similar experience that what you told me that you had with your work before we started recording of this sort of kind of long drawn-out kind of frustration with the status quo, frustration with being in the music industry. I sort of stopped loving what I was

doing. I was taking the piss with clients. I was given them a half-baked product because I just, I don't like shitty pop and unfortunately that's what pays. So I sort of, my personal development curve had completely tapered off. I was frustrated with the politics and this sort of

increasing polarization. There was in England and I was born in the countryside and I want to be a master of my own domain. I don't want to live with somebody below me and above me and to the side of me. It's great as that is and that rocks some people's worlds. I have no judgment

on it. But for me, I just, I want to live somewhere where I can go out absolutely stark as naked in the morning and just walk around and not do you know what I mean? That sort of freedom and freedom to make my own decisions all the time. And yeah, so finally, we decided to, as I said, actually,

we were just down here on holiday, found this place. We're walking, we're going for a walk through the woods and kind of came past it and found out that it was for sale and we just like, we just have to have it. Just there and there and then on the walk was it. Yeah, and I think it was only

like the following day, we had an offer accepted and then we got to find a way of of drumming up some money. So we went back and then saw my whiskey collection and then shortly thereafter, rented our house up in Brides and where we were living. And yeah, just got on with it. That was in

16. Coming up to coming up to four years. Yeah. So you, so you were saying about the polarized political sphere and all the rest of it, that was around brexit time when everyone was fighting and mad and crazy. It sounds like that was a crazy time. That's one thing with this

corona stuff is like at least everyone is just shut up about it. That's like all the one posted. I'm like, oh, it's been a while since I've heard someone argue about brexit and from whichever side they see it, you know, it's nice just to have that a bit more quiet for once.

It's interesting really how he says you a new little dog in the background. That's yeah, that's my little baby. He's with his mum, he's been told to be quiet, but he's getting bored I think. I'm absolutely crazy about dogs. So I got two dogs on my own.

Oh, you've got two? Yeah. Because I think you said you had a colleague, is that right? I've got a yeah, I've got a colleague cross. Okay. Yeah. Every rescue. I mean, she's she's hyper as always because she's so intelligent. But as I told you, I I think she knows 80 commands. Unbelievable commands and sort of like names of toys and in

general words. So she's a very clever dog and so I have a very close bond with her because I mean, I speak to her in full sentences and she still picks out the words. Back to the, back to the virus. I mean, I definitely feel like it has

I mean, it's unified to a certain extent. It has also divided a little bit further between those who seem perfectly confident or comfortable, I should say, with sort of a burgeoning totalitarianism. And then those who are, you know, I mean, it's created its own sort of

factions. For sure. Yeah, for sure. I'm seeing it definitely in England. I don't know what it's like in France, but you know, I've almost fallen out with people because I've said, you know, I'll do what I want. And it's really, it really, you know, or suggesting, like you said, in a little

bit, it's getting a little bit closer to totalitarian state and people just don't want to hear it. So I have to give them a mouth shut now. Just, you know, I talk to people on Twitter and on here, but in normal life, if you go against the grain and the status quo, no, it's not the whole Brexit

debacle to not really discuss politics anymore with family. Because I mean, I've come, I wouldn't say full 180, but very much as part of my sort of metropolitan up, you know, breathing my own exhaust, self-righteous sort of liberalism. I very much felt, and maybe also because I was a European,

a national living in England, you know, I'd spent years paying shitloads of taxes and investing myself in the culture in all sorts of ways. And, you know, everything from language and pop culture and financially having separate properties there. I felt quite rejected at the

time. And I think from a very sort of almost narcissistic point of view, I have beef with Brexiteers because of that. But again, after discovering Bitcoin and, you know, I know I do believe in a further sort of Balkanization and sort of more national independence is needed. I

mean, and Corona has kind of, it's kind of that mirror, isn't it? It's being held up to us. I mean, we're seeing what's happening with borders throughout Europe now, all of a sudden the union, isn't that important when it comes to Schengen borders? I mean, you've also seen how the state

of our health services or how little family times most people have together. You know, and that's a whole other subject that Marti, uncle dear Uncle Marti talks about a lot about this sort of a degradation of the family unit. Yeah, it's so huge. Yeah. And now people there,

you know, now parents there may be together having been around the dinner table for the first time, or waking up together for the first time as a family. And I think more people waking up to how fucked the monetary policies are of nation states, you know, or at least little by little

that that is happening. Yeah, I've got some questioning. And I would be coupled with become from nature even, you know, I mean, to me, that was obvious before people, they just go and buy their meat and eggs and they have no very little sort of knowledge or thought that goes into

where it comes from. I mean, we've lost contact connection to death itself. Yeah. I don't know if the life, if you don't somehow treasure death. I mean, yeah, it's a weird one that with, you know, you're saying about this disconnect from there.

What you're doing is my dream to be out in the countryside, away from the hustle and bustle, and to be able to grow my own produce and be self-sufficient. I just think that is, especially when you have a family is the most natural thing we can do as human beings, I think.

And when you suggest to people, I've suggested to people before, I've said, look, I'm never going to give up eating meat. And a lot of my friends and vegans and vegetarians and then, you know, that's fine. And if they want to do that, that's great. But I probably won't ever

do that. So if I suggest, if I had land, I'd say, oh, you know, maybe I'd go and hunt in my food, because if it needs to, if I hunt in my food and I kill it and I have to actually kill it, then I'm going to be less wasteful. They actually find that disgusting. Whereas those same people

who find it disgusting who do eat meat are very happy to go to the shop and buy a packet of chicken or beef or something else, because there's almost a disconnect. It's like, oh, well, it's not being killed. It's a packet. And what they're completely missing, of course, is that they have absolutely

no grasp of, I mean, they might kid themselves and thinking because it says organic on the pack, that the animal has left a charmed life. That's not at all the case. And I mean, I do think that if you really can't kill an animal, maybe you should need animal produce. I mean, there's some decent

logic in that for me, at least. I do find very quickly, and my wife is a suburban English girl who, like me, I grew up with beef cattle. You know, my parents had a 45 head of limousine beef cattle when I was growing up and sheep and all sorts.

This was in Denmark, was it? This was in Denmark, yeah. I've got some Danish heritage as well. Oh, dear. Yeah, so my mother's side, Danes, I had my mum all more and my mum all far, and they're Danish cousins and all of that. I don't speak anymore. I used to when I was a kid, but sadly, I lost it.

That's why he's such a handsome and agreeable chap. Yes, exactly. Exactly. No, but, you know, I mean, even my wife, who's not at all from that life and her parents are not at all, although they do enjoy coming here and they think it's beautiful where we live.

They find it very odd that, like, I was skinning a deer here, you know. That particular one I didn't hunt, it was actually one of my dogs that scared it to death, you know, like sheep and all of them, outpathications, and this one just dropped dead.

So, of course, you don't just leave it to rot. You honour the animal, and I was skinning that, parting it up and taking a vent to, and make some lovely linguine, or whatever, the old venison linguine, but they find that really gory and off-putting and kind of disgusting, and it's just like, this is natural.

This is just, this is how we are meant to live. It's only the last couple hundred years, I mean, it's only really properly since industrialisation that we've kind of lost touch with that little by little.

But it's amazing to see with my wife, like, how quickly she just came back. She came back proud from her dog walk today saying, "Oh, I stumped a mouse to death, because one of my dogs had dug it up and moulded a bit, so you had to finish it up."

And she was like, "Yeah, I've got to hold up my leg!" But she's putting it out, it's misery, I guess. She was really, I could tell us, he was secretly a bit proud that that was something that she could do now. So you adapt very quickly to, because as you say, it's innately in us.

It is, and that freedom, that feeling of being in the countryside, the feeling of that open air, and there's something, it just puts you at ease a little bit more than the city, and being around too many high rises, and grey everywhere, it just doesn't feel right.

And I mean, there are many, many lovely aspects to it, and I don't want to come across all, like, a smug and sort of, like, pious about the way we live. But, you know, like, last week I was foraging wild asparagus, and Jerusalem artichokes that are just like, growing wild, or I bet next week with a bit more rain, we're going to have

shit loads of gyroles, and seps, and opportunities, all sorts of mushrooms coming again. And I bow-hunk, so I have a hunting bow. Oh, really? A crossbow or a bow-bow? No, a bow bow, a bow bow. Come back.

Oh, really? Hunting bow. So, while it's really fair to be animal, to hunt that way, because it is difficult getting anything like that. Oh, I bet. There's that taking some time to get to a good enough standard where you can hunt with it.

I mean, I say I go hunting with it. I've managed to kill one pleasant. That's all I've managed in the last year, so I'm hoping to get to a stage where I'm a bit better at it. But I do have an over-under illegal shotgun that, and maybe we'll get into this later.

This is a bit for my sort of lower probability thesis that I had that for. We sound like we might be in line of protection. Yeah, we're definitely getting to that, because I think it sounds like we're on the same page there.

So, but yeah, it's just fantastic. And also, like, when this is a side note and a bit personal, and I promise I won't start tearing up, but we tried for eight years to have children in the city, and it wasn't happening. We tried with IVF, and all sorts.

Moved out here, started drinking the water from our own well, which is fed by our own, the spring on our land. And within the year, we were pregnant. So, again, it could be down to lots of things, but it certainly was a sign to me that life is about decisions and decision-making,

and that sort of vindicates me and the decisions we've made leading up to that.

Yeah, good for actually. It could be two seconds. I'm going to grab another one of mine as well, I'm smashing through it. I'm going to open it with a screwdriver, because that's all I have to hand.

And I'm going to pour myself a whiskey. Why not? It's Sunday evening. Bottle is so old. I was telling you, I was, I had a 1950s bottle of white horse or MAGA villain, as they were back then. Yeah. And the cork is so old that it just broke,

but the screwdriver that I had to open my beer also managed to pry out the cork. Is that a low-time preference thing? Just refuse to buy a screwdriver bottle opener? No, no, it's just extreme extreme. No, extreme at low-time preference.

I am actually not bad now, but no, it's because a humble brag. I'm sadly in our sort of gatehouse or guesthouse, and I didn't have anything. I've set up a little music studio here for Design Being, and I didn't have anything sort of civilised hanging about.

I saw, as we always can't have the video going now, because it's my terrible internet, but the beams there looked absolutely gorgeous. It's an old, our main house was the old bakery that was a bakery in 1700, something when there was a bit of a community out here in the forest,

now it's the only house standing. And this guesthouse where now, to get a bit of peace, was an old barn that was partially converted, and that we have done a lot of renovate. Well, we've done a lot of renovation to both houses, but yeah, so it's old work that I'm sure has

been milled from the trees just outside here. It's a lot of upkeep, that sort of place, keeping it original and keeping it standing. It's not an easy task, generally, is it? I mean, most of our land is not lawn, but just our lawn around the house takes three hours on

the tractor miller, and that's twice a week nowadays. Put a podcast on and mow the lawn? Exactly. With my two-year-old in my lap, he loves riding there, he sits there for the whole three hours, he might have a 10-minute kip, but otherwise he's just sat there looking up at me

sometimes with a great big grin. That's cute. It's amazing when you're younger as well, just being near a steering wheel. I remember when I was a kid, just like, if I was near a steering wheel, it was the most amazing thing. I have a sort of all-terrain vehicle, sort of a side-by-side

ATV with proper seat belts and seats and roll cage and roof and stuff. So we go out on a very regular drive on that way, sits on my lap. Whether we're working, pulling, it has a winch at the front, so when I'm working, cutting down trees in the dense bit of the forest, then we can tie

the winch around the bottom of the tree and drag it out if it gets stuck. He's already loving all that sort of shit. That's awesome. You mentioned earlier as well that your wife has now got into the whole Bitcoin thing, and that she's now sort of chilling as much or more than you are.

That's the dream ride there. Well, it was because she's a very, very, I mean, partly a very intelligent person. She's also a very sensible person, and I am definitely, she claims that I'm always the most emotional person in any room that I'm in. But that's just

like, that is born out of pure passion. My whole life has been driven by ideas. So I've been going from one idea of something we can do to the next. I've never believed in a career, a subject, in one subject. And she's much more measured. So when I got really pulled under by the Bitcoin

world pool, she saw it as her duty to kind of stay on her side of the fence and kind of stay reasonable, stay questioning, but little by little, she's just seen, she hasn't been able to deny

this sort of inevitability of truth, really. And I mean, yeah, so she's, I wrote this on Twitter the other day to my very few followers. But she was saying to me, oh, so what do you want to do for the anniversary? It's our wedding anniversary next week as well. So I was like, oh, it's, it's

not even what she was saying, what do you want to do on Tuesday once you thought it was going to land on Tuesday? I was like, the wedding anniversary isn't until Thursday, man. You'd never remember these things. So she's like, no, the halving, you idiot. I've been having blocks 630,000 in my

diary under the 12th or ages. That's amazing. Of course, it looks like it might happen on the 11th, but we'll see. Do you use Clark Moody's Bitcoin dashboard? Of course. I've got that up and it's saying to me 12th of May at the moment. Time zone dependent, isn't it? Well, it does it,

it's local to wherever you're using it. So that'd be for me, 12th of May. Of course, I haven't really even considered that weed. But it's yeah, 169 blocks away. So it is, is creeping up. It seems like a long time away, but it's really creeping up. And we just had a little dump today as well.

I know I suspect. Did you, I haven't yet. So I'm going to do that right now. Should we both stack on the pod? That sounds good to me. See, I always, because I'm such a passionate individual, I dropped like 50 grand on, on Bitcoin about like, and March 11th. And

March 12th of years, we know what happened. And I was like, I could have had so much more Bitcoin. It's painful now, but in the long run, it'll be fine. Oh, I'm in the plus now again. So I don't care. Well, I'm just, you know, do I, do I drop a, a bit of a, a bit of a wad or I'm going to go,

I'm going to stack 200 euros. Okay, I'm going to do the same. Right, enough dry powder if it goes much further down. That sounds good. I'm going to do the same. Hold on, we're just doing the same time. You just entered. I did. I often authenticated successful. Right. Next.

That gives me another part, zero point zero, two, five. I've got the same. It sounds like you might be using the same app as me. We won't say it on here, because, but it begins with a W. Oh, no, no, actually, I might be one of the different ones.

Unfortunately, I, I was using Ruben's Ruben service to get better for my. Oh, yeah. But of course, he's now no longer in the bin is. Yes. It's been, it's been closed down. Have you ever used a coin flaw? I, I've used that for all my big purchases since I got, I love the, I don't know, it's

OB or OB. But OB, yeah. OB, I mean, I, I, I, he's just seems like a solid, solid guy and proper Bitcoin. And I really want to support that. I recorded with him last night and I can confirm he, we recorded, but we also had a chat before and after and I can confirm he is proper, hardcore

Bitcoin. He really is down for the cause. And yeah, I really respect what he's doing. It's really, really good. So I'm going to start using my, because that just started or, or the trial from March, I think, or to DCA. Yes. And I'm, I'm, I'm setting that up now that

Ruben, this, this goes down. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. But no, it's weird. Carry on. No, no, I was just going to say it's weird how not weird, but how DCA has become the sort of go to and it's becoming more and more accepted. And, and I think it's a brilliant

thing. It's so good, especially for newcomers. I agree. I mean, it's, it's really good by getting a bit of skin in the game. And for, if, if they feel like they want to get out of it, or, I don't know, it's just a really gentle in, isn't it? And, and over a long time, I mean,

now with the halving coming up, I'm not sure. I'm just whack it all in, man. Yeah. That's, that's the same with me. I'm sadly my finances. I'm completely, ringed out every single penny that I possibly can. So it's, it's only, it's only little bits and pieces now, but literally, me and my voice supposed to be white, we have to cancel out

wedding because, because of this corona stuff. So still, still Beyonce, but we were going around the house today, taking photos and eBay and everything that we haven't used in the last two months. That's not necessary. Just selling everything so that we can stack.

Man, I, I respect that. I mean, what, what, what, it's, I mean, moving always does sort of puts these things into a chance of light on the, on how much crap we build up over time of things we just don't need. For me, it's tools. Yeah. So much, just so much that like, you know, I might use it once

in five years, but I'd also know enough people I can borrow it from some, like, just, I've got a garage full of tools. I don't need all of them. That's, that's, that's apart from diesel and food when we don't have enough, um, from our own sort of project. I think tools is probably the only

thing I spend money on because, well, I can't get anywhere without tools. So, um, yeah, so it's, yeah, I, I need to, um, I want to burn all three and I have left, but, um, I've had my first tenant default on rent and I don't know whether the other things that we're getting passive income from will

will kind of, I don't know, it's just a really uncertain year ahead. So while I really want to spunk all my money, put it right inside the womb of Bitcoin. I, I, um, I just, yeah, I just feel like I need to be sensible and just hold on back. So, yeah, I mean, this is, this is going to,

this is going to do me for a couple of weeks. This looks like an hour. Yeah, I think the, um, the whole property thing, because, you know, I mentioned you before this call, that, that was my business. Well, one of my businesses before all of this and I tried to sell off my

entire portfolio over the last three to four years because, you know, without being a smart house, I sort of saw what was coming, even coming, not Corona, but, but more and more regulation that I saw that the markets were topping out. It's just been a pain in the arse. It's been getting

more and more difficult. And I haven't managed to get rid of them all. So I have the same issue where at the moment, luckily enough, I've been collecting, but I am very aware that things could change any minute. And there's basically nothing I can do about it without being arrested.

So, yeah, you have to be a little bit careful. It's a very similar story. I mean, we started, we started putting things on the market. We started thinking about it longer ago, but started putting things on the market this time last year.

Because again, I was seeing the same thing. And one of our properties is a nearly 3000 square foot house, which for American standards is probably just a box, but in England, that's a pretty fucking huge house. Yeah. And we're like, we're like a hobbit houses over here, generally,

aren't we? Exactly. And I was thinking, you know, with this sort of, with the boomers selling up and retiring, downsizing people, people, my generation, and largely not going to be off of this sort of property. So that's the one I really wanted to get to get shut off because obviously they would

free up a nice chunk to buy Bitcoin for. But, yeah, like you, it just hasn't happened. But I'm even at the point now where I don't know, what do you reckon? Because part of me is thinking if people of, you know, relative, decent privilege like you and I are going to be

in the shitter at some point, if that's if that's going to be the case, then loads of other people will be, are they going to allow that to happen? Or are they going to keep easing to keep the bubble going? It's a difficult, it's a difficult one. I would think that the property markets still have

a way to go down because anyone who was smart in by to let, I mean, I was, I was heavily involved in by to let eight years ago ish. And I was just at the same of just like, every time that the markets would move up, I'd be mortgage, I'd buy again, mortgage, I'd buy again. And it just,

you'd buy what you could because it was good and you knew that this was a profitable business. But it got to the stage where they changed the rules and made so, made it so difficult for landlords that I was seeing, I certainly lost all excitement and enthusiasm for it. And I was seeing it slowly

happening to the people around me. It's no longer as profitable. It's more of a pain in the arse. So there's more properties on the market. And like you were saying, that retirement age, that boomerage group, they're not really going to be getting involved with it so much anymore.

So I don't see who the buyers are because most millennials, unless they've done well for themselves, can't find. So, you know, we talk about supply and demand with Bitcoin. There's a huge amount of supply, especially with all the new builds going up everywhere. I don't see where the

demand's going to come from. So I only see that the prices go down. Other than like you're saying, the quantitative measures that are going to be put in place and all this money printer go burr stuff, maybe that saves it in terms of nominal value? I don't know.

Yeah, I have similar thoughts, but I've reached no conclusion. I think, I mean, for me, it was always as a way to store some value and a way to maybe earn a little, but definitely to not lose money with inflation. And you know, there's no point having lots of money to do in banks as we

all know. So that was the reason that we were buying property. It wasn't to be some leaky kind of rent-seeking, blood-sucking creeps. It was basically to put our money somewhere where we knew where we knew it was safe and where we would devalue. Hopefully it wouldn't devalue.

So, I mean, I'm not attached to it in any sort of way. It's a means to an end as far as I'm concerned.

All of the properties we have, particularly because I did a lot of remediation to all of them to increase the profit or the value. I mean, we could sell it at a significant discount and still be in the plus. So then, pardon me, I just thought, well, opportunity cost,

do I just sell it now for a markdown of say 10% to shift it quicker and then just whack it all into Bitcoin. Yeah, I suppose maybe it's not the worst thing that if you, you know, someone who's holding maybe Bitcoin and property and a little bit of cash is probably, it's probably not a bad portfolio

because property could still do well. It shouldn't. But you know, a lot of people are saying, oh, this is it, you know, this is the last time, you know, all this that's going on, all this money printing, all this uncertainty. We've seen how poorly the governments have managed everything.

We've seen how bad everything's going. This is going to be the last time. Well, they said that in 2008 and they're saying it again now. I'd love for it to be true, but I actually think we need another round or two of pain because I don't want it to be. I mean, seriously, I don't want it to

be. I want to see this revolution. I want to see people be able to store their value and not be stolen from. I really do. That's why I'm here. But I kind of think there's one more round. And if there is, then I suppose maybe earning property isn't the worst thing. But yeah, I don't want to

be. I'd rather have the money in Bitcoin as well because I'd like to think that people like you and people like I would hopefully make the world a slightly better place than the people who hold the money now and probably things like better things with it. And that's how I see I can contribute

to Bitcoin. I mean, not that Bitcoin needs need per se. But you know, I'm not a coder, although, as we've been as we've been writing back and forth, you've been studying it. I want to start studying so I can teach my son. But I'm not a podcaster like you. I'm not a

an incredible intellect. I'm, you know, or speaker. What I can do is horrible. And I'm, you know, I haven't sold a single sat. I'm not interested in that. You know, I'm not here to make more dollars or pounds or euros. So if I take all of the value or most of the value that happened,

the stated square with the current system, I move that to Bitcoin and I'll huddle it. I mean, I can only see that as being, you know, better for bootstrapping Bitcoin. So that's kind of, that's kind of my thinking. And it's so much less complicated. You know, you don't have to deal with

maintenance or bureaucracy and the occasion or annoying tenant and occasional. Yeah. I've been very lucky. I've got some very good tenants. In fact, last year for my because because they're all such good tenants. And last year for Christmas, I sent them all a

Trezil one and a copy of the Bitcoin standard. And I gave them 20% off their rent for three months with the on the provider that they bought Bitcoin with it. Amazing. Okay. Changing one hodler at a time. Well, my reasoning was, was, or watching myself was that it's something I can do

for Bitcoin and more people. And also, they're helping me with my investments. You know, they're helping me make some money. Although I know I'm providing the service to them as well. It's not just one work. So I thought, you know, why don't I help them with an investment on theirs and pay

it back and hopefully that way they will spread their own Bitcoin rents to people they know. That's an interesting way of doing it, actually. Have you got any thoughts around would you say to them, if they said, you know what, thanks for sending that book. It all makes a

lot of sense. I really, you know, now that I've dug in, I'm now buying Bitcoin. Would you consider giving them a discount on their rent for Bitcoin? If they paid you at Bitcoin, what's your thoughts around that? Well, I maybe I'm just not bright enough to get it, but I don't see what really is

the point if I can just buy Bitcoin with the rent that they're paying me. It's simply privacy. If you look at it in terms of, you know, say you buy a KYC Bitcoin and then you've got to put it through Samurai World or join market or whatever else. And the cost, the cost of doing all of that

or buying the cash machine and all that, it will be quite expensive. So say it's 10% more to get a coin that has no links to your identity or those carry a little bit more value. So some people would say, oh, well, you know, if they're selling a product or service or rent

or whatever, they might be prepared to earn a little bit less to have that privacy. It's not for everyone. But I think I think that's where that value comes in. Yeah, I get you. I suppose I haven't really spent too much time considering it. Well, I mean, we have we have some mortgage on

on all of the properties. So I'd still have to pay my mortgage in fiat. Yeah, I mean, let's move on to privacy because I am about to flash a pixel three with graphene and do some some mixing of my own because but I mean, until this point, I've just kind of I'm in the middle of

fucking nowhere. I've got, you know, our property isn't even on Google Maps. You know, if you if you have the property name, no delivery driver can find us. I always have to go and meet them somewhere at the main road because they just can't look it up on their more sophisticated systems.

So I'm kind of like, well, if you want to if you want to come and try to take it from me, come and find me. Yeah, I suppose it's more if you're in the middle of nowhere and you have you have the confidence that, okay, you know, I know about my key security and I understand all

those things and maybe they're placed geographically or maybe it's a multi-seag or whatever someone's setup is. I think the thing is that we don't know who gets this information. These exchanges store our information, our KYC information. We know they get hacked. We know what whatever

information is stored by these companies eventually gets hacked and it's sold on the dock and we don't know who gets it. So probably not someone like you or I, but you know, really high profile people. If if someone's thinking, well, you know, I've just seen a couple hundred or a thousand

coins move, you could have some seriously nasty people turn up and that's that's the concern. If you're spending, which I guess is not something that we either are probably interested in doing for a long time, but just to have those coins cleaned and break that heuristic, break that link,

I guess it's just that it puts you at ease a little bit more is really the thing. I completely get that. I think partly because I only have so much time to devote to my Bitcoin study because of having a toddler, because of having a, you know, a life that needs maintaining,

and also because I felt like it's still early days. Things are still being worked out. I still believe I have time to kind of wait for slightly better UX maybe to come in, but also a lot of my optics are naturally based on the kind of environment I'm in. And so it's because I'm living here

that I've become much more than libertarian or anarchist than anything else. It's because, you know, of the self-submarine life that I'm living. And that also affects my views on privacy because I've got two very intimidating dogs. You know, when my dogs are out, we stay hard at night and

and sometimes in the daytime, the very occasional unfortunate hikers should hike past. They get pinned to the spot. They're not allowed to move by my dogs. As I said earlier, also, you know, I do make preparations for low-probability outcomes. So I feel like I'm pretty well protected if

somebody should try a five-pound wrench attack. Yeah, I think that's the thing is just thinking these things through. And although they are low probability, it's just, it's important to think through them. Because otherwise, even though it is low probability, you know, I've especially at

the beginning, I had sleep at night because I'm thinking, you know, it's not about me. It's about protection. Those around me. And, you know, I've got a dog, he would probably pin a fly to the wall, but anything much bigger than that, he's gonna struggle with. Even when he's fully grown, he's

like, "Yeah, he's not exactly attempting to exercise, is he?" No, he is not. He is not. So, you know, that is a concern. Once you have multi-sig and once you have things placed geographically, and once you've thought these things through, you just feel more comfortable. I think that's the

thing. It's just that feeling of feeling more comfortable. And the next step for me is breaking the link. So you, it feels even more comfortable because it's like, well, even if someone is trying to find me, then they don't know who they're trying to find. That's the thing with, like,

samurai. And so you were saying you're setting up this Pixel 3. That's a brilliant tool. That's just so good. Hmm. God bless Matt Odell. I've got the video queued up for tutorial. And it's just about finding enough time during a toddler's nap, trying to do it. But how do you feel? I mean,

obviously you are... I'm a fucking nobody. You know, I don't... Even when I was in the music industry, I did my utmost to never be. That's why I chose a career as a writer instead of as an artist.

You know, I never wanted the spotlight. I was lucky enough to... Again, this is not an excuse to kind of humble brag. But, you know, I was lucky enough to win a lot of industry prizes over the years.

But I never created a website or did interviews to do with these awards. I actively discouraged anything that... I mean, probably quite dumb. No, I don't know. In a business sense, because I could have probably... If I'd bang my own drum a lot more, I might have generated some more business.

But I just... I'm not on Twitter to gain a following or create a brand or anything like that. So it's very easy for me to be secure with my privacy. But somebody like you, who's much more public than I am, in our presume you live in some kind of town or city,

how do you square that circle? Yeah, it's something I actually struggle with on a daily basis to be honest with you. I am denied about creating content for a long time, because I'm the same. Like, I have a very, very small circle of friends. I like my own time. I definitely don't like being

in the public eye. I hate all that kind of... Anyone really knowing my business, I like to be private. I tried writing for a while, because I thought that was easier actually to protect my identity, but I'm a horrible writer. It's awful. I've tried. I've written a few blog posts and things,

but I'm heavily dyslexic. It just doesn't... There are definitely people who can write better. And for me, it's verbalizing. Yeah, it's definitely not. I can verbalize things much better than writing. So yeah, I did. I went back and forth with it. And in the end, I thought,

well, do I believe that this can make the world a better place? And I do strongly. Do I want to help people and do I want to make a change in this world? And yes, I do. What sort of man am I?

If I let fear control me? And I thought about what my grandparents been through and fighting in wars and the problems they've had to go through to make some form of freedom. And I know that obviously things aren't exactly how we want them, but we do live in a relatively free country at

the moment. And we generally say what we want and do what we want. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. And I see it sliding the other way. And quite fast, I want children and I don't want to pass the world onto them where it's kind of going a bit 1984 for me. So I've taken that approach

of just saying, well, it's probably not the brightest thing to actually be public. I'm trying to obscure my identity to some degree, but I'm sure anyone could find out who I was very, very easily, because I'm not that technical. But also, I'm not that wealthy. So people would have much better

targets. It is a worry. But yeah, like I said, I don't want to be that person. I don't want to let fear control my life. And I do want to make changes to the world. I want to, when I die, I want to be able to look back and say, I did my best. But I think that's important.

It's a really interesting one. And it's a difficult one for many people, I think. I was I was talking to Daniel Prince, big up down. Yeah, this was off mic. I don't think we ever got to chat about it on his once bitten pod. But he was because he was saying to me,

basically, he was he was saying a similar thing to what you're saying is that on balance, it's more important for him to educate and to spread the message than it is to remain private. Yes. But again, and again, this is very much built on the life that I've built for myself

and the kind of freedom that I've managed to carve out for our family. It's just, I feel so self sovereign. I do, I show, I show loads to all those I love and care about, and who I trust will never talk too much about what I've got or don't have. Well, I enjoy just being able to

say whatever I like on Twitter. Yeah. And of course, I might in laws can vouch for this because they say so many things that they probably cringe over because they're much more like, oh, this is a salad fork job instead of, I just go straight in with the dinner fork. Metaphorically

speaking. So, if I want to say like, I don't know how much I stacked one day, I want to be able to say it without worrying about it. Yeah. And we should be right. I mean, if you really think about it, like, what are we, what are we doing? We're two guys who have earned money. We worked hard.

We think that the current money is shit. And we think there's a better option that not only is going to keep us, store our value better, but also it's better for the world. And we're buying that for that reason. Like, I don't think that makes us bad people. And if we can't be open

about it, there's something wrong. I said, no, 100%. And as I said, I would probably like that regardless. However, I live in a part of the world, albeit beautiful and abundant in all sorts of food. And with very nice people and a very nice culture, it's also a root level, very poor.

But it's still a agricultural culture and community in many respects. And again, we're talking low probability thesis here. But if this next few years become as bad as they have potential to be, it will really be felt here. And I did start around, shit, what would that have been? Christmas

18, it would have been. It was probably spring 19 after the Glee Jean had really started that had a few months of demonstration. I started basically going to some other roundabouts where they were putting up blockades and sort of congregating. I both have both as a way of having an excuse to

speak French, but also mainly to kind of add a bit more fuel to that proverbial fire. I have this feeling that I think it's more than feeling. I think it's actually fact that both the left and the right are tugging at the same loose jumper or same loose thread on the jumper, but

from different sides, one from the inside of this jumper, one from the outside. I mean, both lots of people are clocked on to the right thing. Lots of people they know that government is a fucking Sharables, that the system is rigged for the few. You know,

lots of troops that are being shared, but have very, very polarized ideas of how to fix it. And I just thought, what better thing to do than go to some people that are really politically motivated, really driven to make a difference enough to go and demonstrate and explain Bitcoin to them

and explain to them that I think the stat levels going around at the time was that if 20% of people took out all their savings of the majority of banks in Europe, they would be basically the bank would default. So I started having some of these chats. It's really quite esoteric to begin

with, isn't it? I mean, it's money in itself. It's such an abstraction that just getting through some of the most basic things was a challenge, particularly with this like bit of language barrier there is, super fluid. And then I sort of started thinking about my, again, my low probability

kind of outcome of all of this. And I'm just thinking, do I want all these people to know that I'm six foot four blonde, I definitely stand out already. Do I want them to know that this face is the Bitcoiner if shit really hits the fan? Probably not. Just checking out a bit.

Yeah, I don't, I think it's wise for sure. You're definitely not wrong. And it does make us targets, you know, even having this conversation now, it makes us targets. I guess it's just balancing that risk, isn't it? It's, it's trying to find the sweet spot where you can still talk to people

about something you're interested in still try and make the change, but also not for yourself too much out there. So it's a real balance. And I guess we have to kind of see how things turn out. I would think that if things really heated up, a lot of people will just go dark.

Because, you know, at the moment, all the governments and banks never are playing nice. Because I honestly, I really don't think they see us as too much of a threat. I don't think that they see Bitcoin really yet as so much of a threat. Because I don't think many of them

wrap their head around it. When they do, and when things, and I say when, because I really do see it as like an inevitability, that it's like it's a better product. More people are going to go for it, especially as the money printer has to go burl. Like there's everything is sort of set up

perfectly. There's probably going to be a certain point where they get nasty. And that is a concern. Well, I think we might be underestimating how many of them get it. I mean, I think suddenly, do you see that clip of Putin who was asked about cryptocurrency? Oh, yeah, he knows.

I say crypto because that's the actual word that was used. It's worse than the other C word. I agree. Yeah. And she's been saying several things that allude to the fact that she gets it. But I think you're absolutely right about the fact that they're underestimating it.

I think with all of them, and I noticed this with a lot of the academics that I know as well, a few of them in my family and they're very successful. There is just this normalcy bias. And they, because they've had a lockdown for so long, they just can't see the alternative. I mean, most people, they don't even realize that

the dollar hasn't always been, you know, global money. I mean, obviously, none of the people that I've studied it. But, you know, there's just a lot of people that think that things will never change beyond what they know, because that just seems to utopia, nor whatever.

It's how it's always been. It's how it will will always be. And that is, yeah, and people don't have the time to think about it, it's the other thing. It's like Henry Ford was saying, wasn't it?

Was that if my clients had asked me or had told me what, if I'd asked them what they wanted, they would have set a faster horse. He would have been a Bitcoiner. Yeah. Did you see his quote, the other quote about it? It's something along the lines of,

it's well enough that the average person does not understand the banking system for if they did. There would be a revolution before the morning. Yes. And he was also the guy who said that actually the best kind of money would be some kind of energy based money. Was that, am I making that up?

Someone definitely said it and it may well have been him. I think you're right. But as you say, he would definitely have been a Bitcoiner. Yeah, he got it. I mean, and that's so amazing that from that long ago, people knew something's wrong. And it still hasn't changed.

So, yeah, I think it's going to be pretty crazy few years coming up. And if you look out- It's resonated. If you look out from what you predict or what you think, or even what you hope, I mean, you said, and I'm very similar myself, you're an emotional person. You're a big thing for a dreamer.

I imagine you have a dream of how you want this world to look. And I imagine that you can see that happening through Bitcoin. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here and spending this sort of time there.

What do you see? What do you hope for? Oh man, there's a big question. It is. I'm hoping for a much more egalitarian kind of world. One that is truly based on merit. But one where the rules of the game is the same for everyone.

I'm hoping for a world that is much more productive and where quality is the focus of this productivity. A fairer world. Yeah, it's... I mean, more freedom above all, I think.

Yeah, man, it's an unfairly broad question really. But I think I've tried to articulate it really because it's so huge that... And it encompasses so many things. And there are so many sort of like second order effects of the first order changes and whatever. But yeah, I don't know. How about

yourself? Well, what have you been thinking? Very similar. I mean, you've just said that basically you want a meritocracy. You want there to be more freedom and there to be more quality when you boil it all down. For me, before I found Bitcoin before I started doing my art and I was

doing what I was before, I became very, very depressed and a very unstable person because the world that I saw around me was... It felt completely wrong and I felt that there was all this...

The things that really mattered weren't valued and the things that really shouldn't be valued were valued very highly and that true honesty wasn't valued and that there was all this plastic shit that people were buying and showing off to people they didn't care about. And it just felt

like this crazy rat race that had no point to it. I just remember like clearly just thinking, "What is the point in this? What is the fucking point?" I didn't see that things would change.

And I thought, "This is just not for me. What I want to see is just that there is more freedom, that we build some really incredible things, that it isn't just about what's the latest iPhone that has a camera that's 0.5% better and a battery life that's slightly better." I want to see some

really amazing stuff. I want to see us trying to help with people starving and I want us to help us be able to create things that are actually going to make the world a more interesting and creative place, not just people sat in cubicles punching in data that doesn't matter so that a

few people at the head of the corporation can get a few more hookers in cocaine on the weekend. Like it just doesn't matter. It's bullshit. Like you said earlier as well, those family values and people be able to spend time with their family, not work two or three jobs and end up so stressed

through financial problems and just sleep deprivation that it breaks down to families and people relying on the state. I basically see 1984 as something completely realistic that could come

if we don't fix it. It's already here. I mean, it might be an early sort of pass, an early run of 1984, but it's already there. I mean particularly, I don't know particularly, but I'm very much felted in the UK. Oh yeah. There's just the amount of surveillance.

Again, I feel like this whole corona situation has kind of come as a godsend in a certain way in that it's for people that haven't spent a lot of time really dissecting the system and society we're living under and in. I think that they have seen a few things in

this mirror, this proverbial mirror that I was talking about, COVID being. And from the things I was talking about, decoupledness from nature on sovereign city life is, or how little money

people are able to say to whether these sort of events or how dependent our nation states have become on outsourcing, in hunt more profit and how all of a sudden if there is actually a need, there is a political way when most of the time there's a computer says no. And also this

thing that again, reference Marty Bent, talking about how as a society and an economy, we are this rider of a bike, you know, that has to keep it. Because if you stop for two weeks, you are kissing the asphalt, or how wildly we consume, or how much we take the comfortable life for

granted, or you know, there's just so much that I'm hoping that people will really kind of reflect on and start growing some fucking balls. Yeah, I think that's the key is people do need to do that. They need to look at what is around them or what's happening and grow up there. Maybe it's become too easy life, maybe people,

maybe it's all just a bit too easy and people have lost their backbone. But I think you're right, maybe this will highlight that, you know, what the fuck are we all doing? What are we doing?

I think maybe like, maybe this is a, maybe I'm reaching, but in a certain sense, I can see COVID being a bit of a sort of like Bitcoin for normies in terms of organization, because all of a sudden, you know, this is a place where we've been, but maybe for them, this is the chance to rethink

how we treat each other or the kind of society we're living in, or how we're looking after a planet, or what sort of system we want to be part of. Do you know what I mean? Like, maybe they haven't had that kind of opportunity to reflect in these things before. A lot of it's time, you know, people

don't have a lot of time and they're sort of so emotionally, physically and mentally trained, but when they come home, they flick on the TV, watch some bullshit, open a bottle of wine, drown their sorrows, go to bed and they start all over again. If maybe this has given them a little

bit of time that you say just a thing. So it'll be interesting to see. I do think that I'm completely with you. Sometimes I also really wish it would happen quicker, but I'm also with the, have you spent much time listening or reading Jeff Booth? I haven't actually known. So price of tomorrow,

my wife and I, we're doing it on the audiobook because we are romantic like that in the evening. That's nice. Yeah. And he's just, he's an incredible, he's an incredible mind and very, very eloquent and articulate and if you, if Preston Pish did a fantastic part with him.

He's great. Okay. Oh yeah, I've got a bit of, I've got a bit of an intellectual crush on Preston Pish. And also Jeff Booth, he's been on, what else has he been, rapid fire? Okay. I have a lot of, I have a lot of time for John. Yeah. Anyway, he's, he's, he's fantastic,

but, but I think also, it's what I've been fearing is that the, the, the kind of place Bitcoin really takes off and really, really thrives is a pro, it's likely to be a pretty tumultuous, pretty volatile world. Because that's when everything crumbles, isn't it?

Yeah. I think there's probably no getting away from that, sadly, as part of the, the reason, you know, people laugh at preppers, but the reality is that this will probably happen very quickly and be that gradually then suddenly. And, and then it leaves everyone scrambling.

It's going to be a weird sort of 10, 15 years I'd imagine, but it could even be quicker, quicker than we all expect. It's, it's amazing, you know, you, when you see number go up and it's really, it's really going, people just pile in. The numbers we saw in 2017 were, you know,

reasonably big numbers, but they're nothing really is a drop in the ocean. If this really takes off and we see some big players step in or nation states or that kind of stuff, things can get crazy very, very quickly. You know, we can see green pandals that would just rip your face off.

I wouldn't, I can't say out of mind seeing a little 10,000 dollar daily candle. It's coming. I'm, I'm sure it has to. I'm feeling getting, I'm getting slightly chubby, just thinking about it. Could you imagine that and just, just wake up and just look at, look

at that, having 10, 10 hours a day. I do, I do think it's realistic. Yeah, so, so do I. I mean, I absolutely do. And, I mean, you, you, by the sounds of it, you were part of the 17 bull market as well. And just seeing that go up again and again and again, I mean, it was hard to not be

glued to the ticker the whole time because it was gone somehow. But even then I knew that it wasn't, it wasn't worth selling from me. Even then, although I was only in it, maybe four or five, six months at that point. And even then I knew that this is not a play, if you know what I mean.

This is not getting out at some point. Yeah. This is not, it's not, it's a long term thing. Well, for me, I actually, I didn't even see that. I've only ever seen a bear market. So, yeah. So I actually made my first purchase, like I started looking at it a little bit before,

but I actually made my first purchase after we had a 30% fit from the top because I'm used to property. And so I was like, well, you know, 30% fit. That's probably not a bad time to jump in.

The 14K Jan. Yeah. And then just all I saw was it drop and drop and drop, but I carried on leaving. I carried on learning. I just got to a point where I was like, you know, I just, I wasn't really concerned. I was like, I really just hope this goes back down to 1000. That's

what I was hoping for. I just keep, just keep going just wherever I could keep buying. And so, I've actually never seen a run and I've never sold anything. And the same as you, I never will.

It's, it's too, it's too important to be fucking around with. Well, I mean, I, I don't ever say never because I do have, I feel like I've stacked so much over the last few years that if Bitcoin is all of a sudden, 150,000, I don't mind selling a coin or two to, to, you know, but, but not to like buy a fucking

Lambo or, or, or buy any of the 2000 pound coats that I used to wear when I lived in London, absolutely ridiculous. When you think about it now, yeah, but I mean, there are so many things

I do here, or just like get help to do, you know, like, buying some manpower to do the extension of planning in less time that it would take me on my own, or do you know what I mean? I wouldn't say no, but definitely like my stash is for the long term, sure.

Yeah, that makes sense. We can say, we can say never but I think it's probably quite difficult when you see these sort of crazy numbers in front of you. And also, as, as, as I, as I humbly keep trying to remind myself, well, I carry this with me so

it's not something I have to remind myself of, but I think it's something like this, I have this as my pin tweet as well. But this is, I'm stacking for my, for my son, you know, I don't know if you've heard this native American kind of philosophy of planning for seven generations ahead.

Yes. I'm determined to create a fucking legacy. And that's, I'm creating a legacy of love, the love I have for my wife and the relationship I want my son to see the two people can have. I'm creating a legacy of sound choices, right decisions of personal responsibility,

but also it's, it's to secure the freedom that I've, that I've built. It's, it's, I have a sister who was in a car accident and still has brain trauma issues. I'm stacking for her. I'm stacking for my friends who have rubbish partners who they might want to or need to leave.

I'm stacking for my parents very old age. You know, I mean, this is Bitcoin, I'm sure many most Bitcoiners feel the same. It comes about so much more than just yourself. I think that's very powerful. And I think that's actually a good place to end it is that you are stacking for love.

And that's what it's all about. It's all about love. Wow. It's been, it's been a really, really nice conversation. It's been great chatting to you off Twitter and getting to know you a little bit better. There's been a great episode before we close out. Is there anything else that you'd

like to touch on that we haven't? Anyone you want to hear from, you're criminally underfollowed on Twitter. So at hodler than thou, that's a badminton of Bitcoin. But anything we'd like, sorry, gone. No, no, no, that's just the, I don't have anything more to add, really. The hodler than

thou is just a reference to my old, holier than thou, socialist self. So no, I don't have anything to add other than anybody who should have listened through these two hours of this lowly pleb random.

I feel, I feel very, I feel very grateful. I feel great for you to want to speak to me in the first place. But also just so much love to the Bitcoin community, whether you exist or not. It's just a constant source of inspiration and affirmation and just, yeah, it's the fucking business, isn't it?

It is, it is. All right, awesome. Well, I'm going to put, I'm going to put your handle in the show notes. And we will end on that. Everyone who's listening, stack the love. And maybe you see you in the citadel sometime. A hundred percent.