EP40  Bitcoin podcast with Knut Svanholm.

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Now what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

All right, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space, and sliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Today's guest is Knut von Holm. We've actually had a conversation before, and I always love speaking to him.

He has written some of the best books in the space, sovereignty through mathematics and independence re-imagined. If you haven't already read them, check them out at Amazon. Yeah, it's a wide-ranging conversation.

As I said, it's always great speaking to him, and we agree on a lot of points. One thing we definitely agree on is we are both very, very bullish at the moment. If after listening to this, you are also bullish and you're thinking, "God, I just don't have enough sats."

Or maybe you don't have any sats at all. Then that's when my sponsor comes in. CoinFool UK are the best place in the UK to buy Bitcoin and dollar cost average. Enjoy. How are you? It's been too long.

I'm fine, thank you. How are you? I'm very well. Very hot, but very well. Yeah, it's very hot over here as well. Yeah, for Sweden, that is. Yeah, I'm back at work. Yeah, things are chugging along, as usual.

And there's looming bull markets just waiting. Yeah, a million dollars in a couple of months, right? Yeah, it really feels like it. The last week or so, I've just had this sort of feeling where I'm like,

"It's our time now. This is our time. It's coming. It's the perfect timing." The last couple of times we've had a bit of a run and then we've dropped again. I was never that excited as I am now, so I'm guessing we'll dump within the next few days.

Yeah, it's like everyone knows about Bitcoin now. Everyone on the planet has heard the word. The lion's share of the world's population has heard the word Bitcoin. Even that is just exciting beyond belief, I think,

because they have a word, but they haven't understood it yet. And when they do, we better brace ourselves because we're in for a ride. Those delicious sats are going to get a bit more expensive.

They are, and they're going to get a bit more expensive, pretty fast, I believe. I think there's a big chance that this next bull run actually triggers something akin to hyperbiconization.

I really believe that. That's a chance of that happening. Well, from what we talked about previously and from reading your second book, it seems to me that if it does happen, a lot of good can come from it.

Not only is it good for both of our pockets, but also, I think, for the world. It's a really exciting time, especially when there are so many dirty weasels at the moment that are pissing me off everywhere I look seems to be just smug, arrogant, bureaucratic weasels.

I would take not earning any money from this bull run just to wipe the smirk off their face. I'd rather be right and just be able to say you fucking weasels. We told you, you dirty bastard, you are wrong.

That's all I want. Politicians are a special place in my weasel book. My weasel book. They take up so much time and they're always so incompetent and so insincere in everything they say. It's like they believe in nothing except for their own careers.

And they know fuck all about anything. They're just unbelievably incompetent across the board. Very seldom that you encounter a really well articulate and knowledgeable, wise politician. There's no such thing.

I mean, they're extinct. I bet that they have existed in history at some points, but they're not here now, that's for sure. Or is it that they become a politician, then realise that they've been put in yours and my weasel book and why?

And then they change their ways and go and get a proper job. I think the whole problem is that you can make a career out of being a politician. It's a career path. You start at a very early age and then you climb that ladder and you learn how to play that game.

And unfortunately, the way it's played is much more about grabbing people's attention quickly and scoring cheap points than anything that has to do with anything real. Yeah, it certainly seems that way.

Well, that's what Bitcoin Fix is. That's one of the many things that Bitcoin Fix is and why we're all here. And it's going to be an exciting time and I share your sort of excitement and bullishness.

It's difficult to be this bullish and sort of talk about it every day. I tend to keep quiet around, you know, sort of normal people, but it's getting difficult. It's getting difficult to actually get my mouth shut.

Yeah, no, what do you mean? I heard you on a podcast quite recently. I can't remember, what's it, John Valles? Who was that? I haven't been on John Valles's one yet. He didn't invite me, but I was really late and I got the invite.

Daniel? It must have been Daniel, right? It would have been Daniel. Yeah. Of course. Sorry. I'm listening to a lot of podcasts, so I tend to track them. But of course, it was between you and Daniel.

And you're a lot more hardcore into Bitcoin than I first thought. Yeah. It's really grabbed my attention. You're a closet like nothing else. You're a cloth wort, sorry. You're a closeted super nerd.

Yes. The paranoid cypherpunk inside. Yeah. Yeah. And do you know what? There's a weird thing which is like the level of paranoid and where I want to be far exceeds my competency. So I'm in this constant battle of like, I hear of these amazing new technologies and all these different things that are going on.

Do you find a similar thing where you're just constantly trying to keep up with it? Yeah, I do. And for me, it's really the time that's the bottleneck. Like, I can't seem to find the time to get everything up and running properly.

Like, I should probably install a new operating system and get all the features in my full node to work properly and all these things that you're supposed to do and like, but you know, running a family and having a full-time job and doing these podcasts and everything, everyone's in a while and writing.

And I'm saying that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. I should probably look into my opposite and my like, yeah. I should take care of my privacy a lot more than I do, I guess. But there's another side to that coin.

There's a flip side there. Like, sorry, I lost you there. It keeps cutting out every sort of five to ten seconds. It like loses the end of words. And I'm running a VPN at the moment. I wonder whether if I just take that off, it might run slightly quicker.

But I don't normally have this problem. As your internet on full whack, is it all working? Okay, your side. Yeah. It should be. Okay. Let me just, just give me one say, because it's got this kill switch on it.

Let me just, let me turn that off. Disconnect. I'm just going to see if this works any better. We should hopefully be fine now, because I was losing every other couple of words. Are there, Max?

Yes, I can hear you perfectly now. It was just getting out all the time. And then I obviously made it much, much worse. No worries. Okay. Had we officially started the pod? I don't really know.

I don't tend to sort of really start them in any particular way. I just roll the conversation and do an intro, because it always feels it's a little bit less scripted that way. Yeah. Why don't we do an introduction?

Yeah, they are a little bit. Most people who listen to my show will listen to our last conversation. I think they know what they're in for here. I don't think there's trouble ahead. Yeah.

We don't need to do the intro. I'll do that before. Yeah. I don't know where we got to now. I have the last part of the recording, so I'll jam them together anyway. Yeah. I don't know whether you heard my last question, which was obviously, this is now your second book has now been written

and it's out there and I've read it and it's brilliant. And did you have any sort of, did anything change the second time round for you? Was it as enjoyable or was it a little bit more stressful?

Because obviously your last one was quite a hit, especially within the Bitcoin community and I absolutely loved it. Did you feel a little bit of pressure writing the second one or did it just flow straight out of you?

Yeah. Both those statements are true. I did feel the pressure, but I wrote it during my vacation in Spain. So I disciplined myself and I told myself to write for an hour a day. So I did that for like almost four weeks.

And I promised myself to exercise for an hour a day as well. And that worked for like three weeks. And then my brother arrived and that was, but I kept up the writing though, the writing parts of the promise.

So I did that and I like, it's not that long of a book and I got this amazing forward from hot or not. And of course, Daniel's. From Daniel, yeah. A contribution there as well. So it's about the same length as the first one.

And I hadn't written about Bitcoin for about almost a year when I started with this one. And that sort of helps because I didn't feel that I was repeating myself, which I sort of did at the end of the process of writing the first one.

What I found with it is that, so your first one was, it was and still is, if someone has asked me about Bitcoin and they're reasonably bright, I'll just say, read this. Like, don't even ask me, read this because it explains it so well.

And it's short enough that people are going to get into it and they'll get the gist of it and it will then make them want to learn more. And I feel to me, your second one, if I gave that to a complete normie, they'd maybe struggle with it a little bit more, but you go much deeper into some of these ideas, which for me, I found

really interesting because, you know, some of these ideas are the ideas that are world-changing. And I think once someone's starting to fall down the rabbit hole, this is the book for them.

Yeah, it is sort of a sequel to the first one. And like, if the first one is the first book you read about Bitcoin, maybe you should read some other books in between that go a bit more into the technical details and maybe some Austrian economics and all of this.

But this other one is, yeah, I tried to like find my own voice as well while doing this and like see where my perspective on this can fit into the larger narrative, so to speak. And it sounds pretentious as hell, but I don't know.

I tried to do this dualistic approach, like the chapters are called poverty and prosperity and cooperation and coercion and so on. So I like to like flesh out what sort of alternatives we have as

human beings, how we can go about our affairs and ways that are preferable to other ways. And it is sort of from a libertarian perspective, I guess. I think it definitely is. And reading through like, you know, we all, a lot of

like the Bitcoin, Twitter a lot seem to all have very similar ideas about things and how things should work. But there were certain parts of this book which really struck a chord of me and that I just think are, they are facts, but no one will ever really accept them.

And one of them, you know, towards the beginning of the book, you describe the public sector as being made up of redistributed stolen goods, and that's a fact. It is a fact, but not a lot of people will like that or necessarily agree with it.

But yeah, it doesn't seem like it's, it doesn't seem like it's a great idea and it doesn't seem like it's playing out that it works very well. So what would you, what would you suggest instead of this sort of insanity of stealing people's stuff and then like really lazily and sloppily spending it on things we don't need in a

manner that never works and then just complaining and just laying everyone down while filling your pockets with everyone's hard earned cash? Like, is there a better way? Yeah, I think first and foremost, the free market capitalism is a thing we haven't tried yet as a society ever, really, since we've always had inflating currencies.

And I don't think you can really have a truly free market where the like the division of labor and everything is truly works as well as it could within a system of inflationary currencies.

I think that the resources will get misallocated and the markets will be skewed in one way or another under the current paradigm. And you need a totally sound money to really see the how beneficial a truly free market could really be a global one.

And I've been trying to frame this because I think that's the biggest misconception we have, we have a lot of misconceptions, but like one is that we have free speech, which I don't really believe you can have without having free sound money because money is speech in my opinion.

It's just a means of expressing value to your fellow man. And as long as you can't do that, you don't really have free speech or freedom of expression or any other freedom. And well, there's a lot in the book about this.

It's sort of hard to explain in a short amount of time, but the cantillon effect is like, I know I'm not the only one talking about the cantillon effect, but it's an underrated thing. People don't really know how bad the cantillon effect affects them.

Yeah, just for anyone who's listening and isn't a complete nerd like you and I, and maybe they haven't heard of this, can you just give a little bit of a rundown of what it is and and why you think it's a bad thing?

Well, Richard Cantillon was an economist who lived a long time ago and not really an economist, but a merchant and a banker. And notice that the closer you were to the new money being delivered by the central bank of your country or any other institution that printed new money, the closer you were to

that source of the money, the better off you were, and the further away you were from it, the more you had to pay for the whole charade. And this goes on today very much so, and like these so-called free handouts, the COVID relief money being minted and

given out, especially in the U.S., but also in other places, it's not really that valuable because at the same time as they're giving you 1200 bucks, they're giving someone else a lot more, and it's all from thin air.

It's just, it's fake. It's not to be trusted. It's a very cheap way of buying you out. Yeah, and what's it like over in Sweden? Are you having with all this COVID stuff? Is the general feeling from people that they're jumping on

board and happy with more money being printed? And these kind of things going on, or are people sort of starting to wake up a little bit there? The thing is, we've had sort of less, I fair, COVID policies, and we didn't have a lockdown, and we're very, like, we had a high death rate, but the median death age for

COVID-19 is 82 years, which is exactly the same as the regular median death rate age in the country. Funny that. So in terms of lost years, we lost none. But also because of us being quite lucky to be here

when every other country closed down, so we didn't have to live through that. The economy hasn't suffered as much as other European countries. We've had, like, the latest number I heard was like 8% drop in GDP, while a normal other European country drops like 15%.

So what I think that has done is that it makes people not notice the money printing going on, because there is a lot of money printing going on here as well. It's just that people don't see it that way, because the value of the Swedish corona goes up in comparison to the euro and the dollar, because they print even more of those.

But it's still the same destructive fiat bullshit going on here as anywhere else, I'm afraid. Nobody really talks about that. Yeah, so are you still very much in the minority when you have the sort of ideas that you have?

Obviously with Bitcoin you will be, but are you in the minority? I think I can sense and tell me if I'm wrong, but maybe you think that the whole COVID situation is a bit of a stupid way that it's been handled if it is real or not, and that maybe that it does more harm than good or the lockdowns and that

kind of stuff that's gone on and that printing of money. Am I sort of speaking for you wrongly there, or do you sort of have the same view as me there? I have the same view as you. I think it's like halting the economies of the world like they have for the last couple of months.

It's like riding a motorbike and putting a steel bar into the front wheel. Let's try that for like six months and see how far we get. Or the ecosystem in the forest, behind my backyard here.

All right, guys, ants and deer and whatever. Let's stop the ecosystem for six months, see what happens. It's just not a very good idea. Especially not in a fiat monetary system where everyone is indebted over their heads, especially small companies.

That's the sad part here because instead of deregulating and lowering taxes and trying to get the economy moving that way, they go for the bailout route. They hand out money to the bigger companies and make the smaller companies depend more on money from the state.

I don't like the direction it's going at all, to be honest. It further centralizes everything. It just doesn't allow competition. Those sort of views, how are they received from just normal people over there, or do you keep your mouth generally shut?

I have quite a few people that I can talk to about these things. Well, you always have some sort of filter on when you're interacting with normies. Yeah, of course. I feel that it's, while mainstream media is getting more and more tunnel vision, and it seems like it's harder and

harder for people to express their true opinions on TV and big newspapers and such, I feel that parallel to that, there's quite a big movement of us closeted libertarians coming out. There is definitely such a movement here as well or something

to it, but that's a tough question. When you're living in it, it's hard to be objective about the taboo society puts on you or not. Yeah, it's just interesting to hear what it's like in other countries.

Yeah, I think it's kind of similar to UK. We're the mentality in Sweden. We have a lot in common with the UK. We do like sort of a similar sense of humor. Yeah, quite dry. But you have another, you're better at hating your jobs.

You're not as allowed to hate your job here as you are in the UK. We're really good at hating everything, though. We are absolute world-class at winching. We're amazing winches. We have so many different ways of winching, and it can be quite subtle, but there's always a winch going on.

Yeah, but you also have those middle-edged women that go around and say, "Soup that a lot." Fabulous, darling. Oh, that's the homosexuals. It's both. No, we have so many different sort of...

I don't know, I find with England we have so many different groups of people who are very, very strong opinions, and it's like very broken into little sectors at the moment. And most of them sort of have half of it right and half of it wrong, and no one really gets to...

They all just sort of tend to argue mainly about politics that doesn't matter, because it all ends up in the same anyway. Yeah, it's the same here. And it just wastes a lot of time, and no one ever comes up with any solutions.

No one even can be bothered to think of the solution. All they want to do is generally just have a winch, and also obsessed with American politics. So many people just love talking about Trump, and I'm like, "Why are you so obsessed with this bloke?

What are you doing?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's like nothing you can do about whatever Trump does. The thing that people don't realize, though, is that they're upset about the totally the wrong things all the time, because when Trump is giving away his $1,200 handouts to everyone,

he does that not by taxing his population, but by printing new money and pressuring the Fed to print him more money with this minu-king guy. Like, so nice chap. Yeah, nice chap. So what he effectively does since the dollar is the world's reserve currency, is that he taxes everyone on Earth to give handouts to America.

So you and I are paying for those $1,200 that our friends in the US use to buy sets with instantly as they get them. So I'm happy to do that. Like, if our friends are buying sets with them, I'm happy.

If they're buying anything else. But I think they should be aware, and they should know that they owe us a pint or two when we... (LAUGHTER) They're sitting in Canada or wherever. Yeah, no, I like that idea.

I think that's fair. (LAUGHTER) Have you got any meetups or anything planned? I mean, obviously, most things aren't really going on, but have you got any put in the diary? I was sort of sad to hear that Baltic-Hannenbadger isn't happening this year.

So Riga. Yeah, Riga, the Riga thing. Yeah. There are a couple of other things happening. They're trying to get me to go to this hacker congress in Prague. Oh, okay. We'll have to look into it a bit more and see if I can get some time to do that.

Planning on not flying for a while. But maybe taking the car down driving around Europe, around Christmas. That's an idea. See if... Oh, you have to drive through and come visit. Yeah, too bad.

The UK is not really on the way to Spain, though. (LAUGHTER) But that is true. I haven't done geography for a few years, but I think you're right. (LAUGHTER) But these are just ideas at this point in time and they're not really plans like that.

But I'm dying to see everyone again in meat space. I had so much fun in Riga and everything and talking to other bit corners. I mean, I love doing these podcasts and would love to meet everyone again and buy overpriced steak dinners and all the shit.

(LAUGHTER) Yeah. I've still never been to a bit. I'm so jealous of everyone who went to Riga and all these different places. I've been to one blockchain wanky event in London. Yeah. And it was so terrible.

It was horrible. And bit devs, I've been to a few of them and they're great. But it's obviously a different vibe. And it's also painful being by far the most stupid person in the room. You do sort of go home and I just think, oh, why don't you study harder when you're at school, mate?

What's going on here? (LAUGHTER) But it is very humbling, being sat in those rooms. Yeah. It really, really is. (LAUGHTER) You can imagine that. But yeah, no, I'm really looking forward to sort of this whole thing opening up again and getting to do some of these things that you can meet up because, yeah, it's very different in real life.

Yeah. Got contacted by a couple of guys this week about having a meet up here in Gothenburg, or I don't live in Gothenburg, but close by. And I've been planning to have a little grill party here for a few friends, maybe a certain space cat from Norway.

(LAUGHTER) But that all got postponed when COVID hit us. Yeah. I think Norwegians aren't even allowed to go to Sweden, or these parts anyway. Oh, really? Yeah, they had quite different COVID.

A quite different COVID response than we did. Yeah, interesting. It's very different all over the place. And yeah, I think it's going to be like this for quite a while in England. They're sort of keeping us on our toes and changing everything sort of daily.

Yeah. And no one really knows where they stand. No. We'll see what happens. Well, we won't have those restrictions in the citadel. No. How long were you thinking until this is, you were saying earlier, you're feeling bullish, which is always good to hear.

And when you think about the idea of, you know, some of the things you've discussed in the book, and we've talked about before, do you see if we have this major bull run and we do? Yeah. Well, basically what you see happening.

I think there's a chance, there's definitely a chance that this next bull run is the hype of bit colonization one. Then again, there's always a chance and there's always a chance that that will just hit some random high figure Bitcoin price and then drop 80% again.

I don't really know. I have no idea how markets work really. Not like that and not with a thing like this. I don't think anyone does with this. No, no, no. But this is like, yeah. Yeah, no one does.

But there is a chance that we're in for a really weird ride. Like I said before, it's in the collective conscious now and where everyone has heard the word Bitcoin and everyone sort of has a vague notion of what it is.

And it's just a matter of time. I truly believe that it's just a matter of time. But I don't know the timeframe. But might as well be next couple of months. Who knows? Yeah. I mean, a lot of people say, oh, yeah, you know, don't be stupid because to change what the masses think will take a huge amount

of time and, you know, these things don't happen overnight. And obviously they don't happen overnight. And actually, once you get a few people who are very influential involved and once it becomes beneficial to the people who control the media for the price to run and it's now beneficial for them, then my opinion is that everything would

just be talking about how wonderful it is and how much better it is. And once that happens, you know, there's no one who can go crazy very, very quickly. And yeah, maybe in the past, in history, things took a long time to change.

But people didn't have these devices in their hands. Yeah, it will snowball when the snowball starts rolling. There's nothing stopping it. And remember when smartphones happen, how long did that take?

Less than a year and everyone had one? Yeah. Literally everyone. And there's a chapter in the book about this as well. Pokémon Go has like the world record for reaching 50 million users. And that was like 17 days.

50 million users. Finding stupid Pokémon eggs. And this Bitcoin is a very different beast from Pokémon Go. Yeah, slightly, isn't it? Talking about, like, what do you think of this way of

framing how important this invention is and what it can do when people actually get it? Let me see if I find it here. When you cannot know how much a person owns and when no one can take it by force, there's just no way of enriching yourself other than providing something of value to your fellow man.

If everyone is capable of having bitcoins in their heads and no one can know how much another person has in their head at any point in time, which is true right now. And so you can't really take that away from everyone because

you don't even know that it exists or how much of it is. Like if you can remember two separate seed phrases, you can have like 0.001 Bitcoin on one and give that away in a kidnapping situation or whatever.

But you can keep the rest of it. When all of humanity realizes this and we all can go around with any amount of wealth in our heads, then this whole coercion thing, it stops working.

Yeah, it is like it's pretty crazy to think what you just laid out there is well changing. First of all, it's literally a superpower. You had something in your book where you were talking about freezing value, basically cold storage of wealth in a

monetary freezer and then you got that coupled with the ability to hold that total amount of money just in your head and no one can know. And you then what you're saying is that if somebody wants your Bitcoin, if somebody wants your sat, they better fucking do something useful because otherwise they're not getting it.

And how does that change the world? Yeah, because we're not talking about one Venezuelan refugee finding this out and using this to escape Venezuela. We're not talking about a class of Chinese students that all at the same time decided to bring one Bitcoin to Australia and move there.

We're talking about the entire population of the world already. Everyone is already able to do this. And we all have this superpower right now. And all we need to do to store, you need to, there's such a small investment needed as well because Bitcoin's total market cap is so small at this point in time.

So if you just get your hands on some Bitcoin, you might have more money and you remember your seed phrase, then you might have that's key. Yeah, that's private key. That's private key. Yeah.

You might end up forgetting it down the X cloud. Yeah, then you might just have more money than anywhere else in your head within five years or within two years or within a couple of months if we're really in this gargantuan bull run right now.

Yeah. It's just mind boggling to think about it. I still get goosebumps just talking about this thing. It's all. Yeah. How was it, how was it when you were writing this stuff? Like did you have a, you know, you said about, you know, you take an hour every day when you were away in Spain.

You take an hour every day and you dedicate that time to writing. Did you have some kind of routine or like a place that you sat and thought about this stuff? Like, did you sit and meditate on it or like, what was your what's your way of writing?

Now, I think like the creative process is like you have to, you have to capture the flow when it's in the room. And yes. And you cannot know when inspiration will come to you or not, but you can be prepared for it.

And the better prepared you are, the higher the odds that you will actually capture something in your fishing net. That makes any sense. And like, no, it does. Like I said, I hadn't been writing about Bitcoin for quite sometimes when I started writing a new book.

So I just started and I forced myself to start just get on with it already. That's like the most difficult part. Kick yourself in the eye. Start doing it. Definitely. You're like excuses or bullshit, just start doing it.

And after that, it's sort of easy. Like, and I wake up two hours before the rest of the family. So I use the first hour of those two hours to write. And like two cups of coffee, sneak up, make a cup of coffee, and get onto it.

Nice. Yeah. That's a nice process. And a good friend of mine who writes as well, he has very similar like gets up before the rest of the family and goes and has coffee. I wish I could do that.

Like with my creative process, if I'm painting or if I'm writing or doing anything creative, it always has to be at night. And I always have to be intoxicated or have had like just sometimes it's just like I get hit with this just wave of passion or excitement.

But usually it's like everyone else is asleep. It's dark. There's no one else around. And like there's this sort of calmness. And then as long as like you're saying about being prepared, as long as if I have my studio on hand or if I want to start something like everything's laid out in a way that I can just

get into it, I'll find like you're saying this state of flow and it's amazing how you lose yourself like time completely. Time doesn't sort of almost exist in the same way as normal. And then you sort of lift your head up and you're like that.

Yeah. And you feel like you're a vessel for something else and that you're channeling something, I don't really believe that. I don't really believe there's truth there. But that's what it feels like.

That's all that matters. Yeah. And it's the same with like songwriting or whatever or like painting, I guess, when you're in the zone, you're in the zone and like, and it's a good place to be.

Because you can dedicate your brain to one thing instead of this bullshit multitasking that we're doing all the time. Like I have like 30 tabs up right now. And I'm checking my Twitter feed every once in a while and I'm thinking about other things.

And the best parts about this is when I get totally into the conversation and the thoughts and everything. Like I like that part of it. But we're so distracted all times. Yeah. It's kind of like meditation.

Yeah. When you're really getting into something and you do switch off, I can tell just from speaking to you that you are somebody who thinks about a lot of the time and probably finds it difficult to switch off, especially from this Bitcoin stuff.

And it can be tiring. Like it is a tiring thing to think about. Yeah, but I do meditate and I try to jog. So I'm out, so I'm out running and I leave my phones at home. And I even take my glasses off and I don't have any headphones music or nothing.

I just try to turn off, turn off the noise. Because like, yeah, the brain signal is, it's always there. Yeah. That's, that sounds quite nice apart from the running part. Yeah. I hate that part, but I like the other part.

And then you feel a bit clearer afterwards. That's the thing is like, sometimes you do just have to reset and then you feel clearer. So did that process of writing sort of make you think about things in a different way or bring you new ideas that you hadn't thought about and just connect the dots that are sort of all floating

around, did it make any connections that previously weren't as clear? Yeah, some of it. Not all of it, but parts of it. Like the last chapter I wrote, I believe, was the third chapter in the book called Why Collectivists Win and how it's harder

for individualists to form groups by their very nature. It's sort of, but I thought about that for a while and wrote a chapter about it. And there were some things there that some dots that I hadn't really connected earlier on.

And it sort of glue me because it's sort of, that whole thought process sort of puts a finger on why democracies can't ever work over time. Yeah, with democracies, the illusion really. Yeah.

Yeah, but even if they weren't an illusion, the collectivists would always win and an outsider would always be an outsider and have a harder time. Like they're a dampener on free thought.

And yeah, it makes me think of George Orwell. Yeah, it's, do you think that guy was a time traveler? Because maybe George Orwell was Satoshi and he worked out that this is exactly what governments were doing in 1984 was exactly the way they were going.

And he went, oh, I just have to stop this. And somehow he has then come back as Satoshi and time traveled and sorted all this. Because he did have it so right. Like, you know, you read, you read 1984 and you just think this is exactly what's happening.

This is exactly how it would play out if no one stands up to them. And it's such a beautiful book as well. If you haven't read 1984, go and do your homework, please. It's a brilliant book.

And it certainly has stood the test of time. It is, it's beautiful but haunting. Yeah. Yeah, it is really, really scary stuff. Yeah. Anyway, I don't think it was a time traveler. No, I don't.

I think it was a brilliant guy. I don't know who Satoshi is and I'm not really interested. I think the world is better off not knowing. Yeah. Yeah, what else can you say about that? I don't really know.

Yeah, not a lot. Just Satoshi, if you asked it around and you are listening, just thank you for giving us a chance because without this, I really, really do think without this, we're fucked.

Yeah. And like, I know that's like a weird thing to say. And everyone's like, oh, well, you're just obsessed with this stuff. And like, of course, you're going to say that and you're incentivized.

And it's like, yeah, maybe but like the whatever way I look at it. Yeah, we're fucked without this. What if you, what if you lots are the cult and we're, we're the only ones seeing what, what if we're right?

Yeah. What if, what if we're right and that Bitcoin isn't the Ponzi scheme and the entire financial system and the entire system that's been created and you live in is a massive Ponzi scheme and you're being played.

Yeah. And it wasn't my reputation that was on the line. It was yours, right? Oh, interesting way of looking at things. Yeah. Yeah. But that's the thing. It's the best asymmetrical bet you can make.

Yeah. The best chance we will have in our lifetimes for sure. I think so, I think so. Yeah. So there isn't a thing like go on. I was cutting you off there. Yeah, I was going to ask you a question.

How did you think the new book held up to the, to the first one? I think for me at this stage of like falling down the rabbit hole, I found it was something that gripped me, it gripped me more because I've already fallen down the rabbit hole, if that makes sense.

So you were elaborating and going deeper into concepts that I think, some of them we discussed last time when we spoke and they're ones that kind of, that you really have to get the basics of Bitcoin to even start to think about.

So for me, it really captivated me. I've listened to it twice now. I always do audiobooks because I'm an idiot and can't read. So, you know, it's always an audiobook for me. And Guy Swann's beautiful voice in my ears, yeah, twice.

So, it is, isn't it? I had him on the podcast the other day. And I was just like, I'm so envious of you. Yeah, yeah, I listened to it. I listened to it. How did you say? Yeah, yeah. I felt like I had to listen to some of Mac stuff.

So I know my shit. And I'm sorry about that. Thanks. Thanks for the shout outs. Of course, of course. No, sir. I mean, to answer your question, for me, I thought it was brilliant. I thought your first one was brilliant as well.

But it just, this one was, it went deeper into things. Like I said before, in all honesty, it's not one that I would recommend to someone who's new to Bitcoin. The sovereignty through mathematics would be the one I would suggest.

And then, like you said, actually, even once they've read that, I would say they probably need to read a few others and listen to a few podcasts and nerd out this stuff for some time before they can really appreciate what you've written.

Because what you're actually writing is your suggesting solutions. And you're really going into deep about, you know, not just old by Bitcoin goes to the mood. And this is why it's great.

But actually, you know, how can this change society and how can this make the world a better place? And, you know, at the end of the day, that's what it's all about for making things better for the generations coming.

And I'm trying to, like, find a framework, like how to think, think about these things, because it's such a different way of framing what a society is and what it ought to be, and what even more basic than that, what ownership is and what value is and what scarcity means.

Well, I really like the way you talk about ownership. And, you know, we touched on it on the last one. And you were talking about ownership and how technically how can a government or a corporation really own Bitcoin?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think that's a fascinating rabbit hole to go down because it flips everything on its head. And it really means that, like, you know, we're saying about these small businesses going out of basically being pushed out because of the way that things are being run and how

being an individual is harder than being a collectivist and all these things. And it kind of just flips everything upside down. And that's major. Yeah. And I think it's not talked about enough at all because this part of it is not only how could governments own Bitcoin, but, like, for instance, these chain analysis firms that

provide information about that. Yeah. Yeah. The really, the bad Bitcoiners selling from Bitcoiners. Oh, yeah, filth. Yeah, they're filth. But what happens when Bitcoin 10X is next time? I mean, they all have some Bitcoin and they all know how to hide it from the government

since they're the ones finding it for the government, right? Yes. So they've got all this privacy shit going down. They know all about the coin joins and everything like the multisigs and whatever.

And when they're Bitcoin 10Xs or 100Xs, they won't keep their jobs. The chain analysis companies won't be able to pay them enough. Not by long shot. They'll stop what they're doing and they'll be somewhere along this process.

They will start to see Bitcoin in the different lights and their own lives and like, what the fuck am I doing? Yeah. Like, why am I hindering this? Why am I working for the enemy? Yeah. And they will dissolve and go away.

Like I said before, there will be no other way of getting something out of someone else than to provide value for that other person. And we're not living in that now. We're living in a world where you can steal and you can taxate and you can inflate currencies

and you can do whatever coercive things, but you won't be able to in the future. It's hard to wrap your head around these concepts. And I think it's hard to actually, until you really understand the power of what Bitcoin can do, when these sort of things are talked about, it kind of sounds like dreams and fairy

tales, but when you do understand it and you go deep enough on this stuff, you realize that it's actually all possible now or almost all of it's possible now. And the game theory and the incentives of this system are so cleverly designed that, like you say, it actually changes people's behavior, which is really hard to do.

And it changes people's behavior to benefit the system. And that's so clever. And even for the ones, you might just have one who's just a super-weasel, number one on your book, and they do really well at Bitcoin.

And for some reason, they just don't change. All they want to do is just fuck the world up and run their little chain surveillance company and just, yeah, they just want to be at number one in your book.

Well, then I think about, I don't know if you listen to my interview with Chris Belchow, who's doing CoinSwap and with the guys at Samurai Guys and what they're doing. No, I actually feel...

He's, I mean, you know, he is just doing some amazing work. And these guys are so focused on helping Bitcoin privacy. I genuinely believe that even if they want to, in the future, they won't be able to do their chat.

I think they're just going to have to give up. Yeah, yeah. And we're almost there already. I think so. And my argument is that we don't even need to be there because we'll end up there anyway, even without the threat.

Like, the thing is the unstoppability of this thing is like, one of the moments when it first clicked for me was like, I had some Bitcoin that had gone up a lot in value. So I was going to try to store them on a paper wallet and it's years back.

And I had them on another paper wallet and I had scanned the public key. Yeah, the QR code on the new paper wallets. And I put it in an envelope. And then I scanned the private key on the other one and sent the money from one piece of paper into another piece of paper inside an envelope.

And just doing that and seeing that it actually worked. And the price of the one piece of paper that I had just vanished and all of a sudden this envelope was worth the same amount. I mean, just that simple, early Bitcoin light bulb moment.

It opened up so many. I just couldn't stop thinking about this thing. It was magic. And it still is. I remember it as magic. And it's still that you can actually do that. It's still magic.

And it is superpower. There's nothing less. Yeah. And like you say with the way the incentives are and the fact that people will eventually not fall in line, but will realize what's good for them and basically that they will give up on this sort of nonsense of tracking things.

And that we have all of this amazing technology that's being developed and the coin swaps and the samurai and all this stuff. And it just seems to me that we're just almost watching things unfold in slow motion, but there is an inevitability to this.

And it's amazing to have a front row seat of what's going on, but it really does feel inevitable. It really does feel like they're fighting a losing battle. And this is happening, whether they like it or not.

And it's exciting. And it's not really slow motion. Yeah. It just feels like it. It feels like you have this idea of hyperbiconization and stuff, but gradually then suddenly, right? Yeah.

And yeah, but as you say, like, don't get me wrong. I still think there are a lot of dangerous things on the Internet. Like, and a lot of dangerous technologies being developed, especially the surveillance crap and like the, we're so boxed in and categorized and put in neat little boxes everywhere.

And that's all horrible. But I think the, at the end of the day, Bitcoin wins. Like, because it's, like I said, we have one shot at this. And this is like, this is our only shot. And this is our only hope.

This is our Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is so, yeah. You're my only hope. Yeah. And that's why it's exciting to be part of it. And then see, see all this unfold and be speaking to, you know, that's why I love doing what I'm doing is that I get to speak to so many other passionate people who are excited about this stuff,

working on this stuff or explaining. You know, that's what you're doing is you're explaining to people in a synced way how this stuff is going to change society. And it's just, it's happening, like you said, at a real pace now, where I truly believe with your writing and some of the other books

out there and some of the other great podcasts and all the information and all the people helping. I think that a fairly intelligent normie can go from complete government cuck to a full-on Bitcoin who really understands this stuff within, I don't know, a few months, like maybe not deeply, but deeply, deeply,

but like they'll get it and they'll be like, yeah, it makes sense to buy it. And so like you said, it could be a couple of months for hyper-Bitcoinization. Why not? And I don't, I don't even know what to hope for.

But as you say, there's so many passionate people. And the funny thing is before Bitcoin, this bunch that we Bitcoiners are, we were probably the most cynical bastards you could find. Definitely, yeah.

We were real grumpy bastard. No, I wasn't really real grumpy bastard, but yeah, maybe, maybe deep inside, I was a dark, dark soul. No hope for humanity and all that, and all that crap. But Bitcoin really is a beacon of hope in a world that would have gone to shit if we didn't have this.

Yeah. Yeah. And it is interesting, like you said, the types of people. It does seem that there's a very similar character traits for most people within Bitcoin and like, who people are really interested in?

Like you say, there is that sort of dark street, and there is that. Yeah, because of an intolerance for bullshit. I guess that's what it is. And that's why we're so hard on all the so-called alt-coiners.

Because we just don't tolerate bullshit. We hate it. We like truthfulness. You better brace though, because it's coming. You know, I'd love, I'd love for the alt-coin stuff to all just fuck off, especially this DeFi stuff that is really pissing me off at the moment, this DeFi.

Yeah, yeah. Jesus fucking Christ. It's so stupid, but it's coming. And like, if there's a bull run with Bitcoin, it's going to be insufferable. It is going to be disgusting to watch. And we're just going to have to batter these people.

Yeah. Well, play stupid games and win stupid prices. I mean, people will, like, how long have casinos been around? Yeah. I mean, don't know. How can people still fall for them? I don't get it.

I mean, but it's yield. It's DeFi. It's DeFi. It's all wrapped in ETH and dipped in link and sprinkled with something. And then it just compounds, man. Did you see that graph with, like, how clever you think Vitalik is on the x-axis?

No, on the y-axis and, like, your actual knowledge of money on the y-axis. Oh, on the x-axis. I don't think I've seen that one, but I've seen some real, I've seen some brilliant ones coming out recently.

I know. Pierre Rashard has been on it on a-- Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. I'm trying to really find out how many ETH there are. I mean, how many-- how many are there? And they're like, why do you need to know?

Why do you keep on asking these stupid questions? It's not important. But it is sort of important. No, it's not important. Pay no attention to the right hand. It's on coin market cap. That's all you need to know.

Yeah, yeah. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That's the general message. [LAUGHTER] Pay no attention to the anorectic man behind the curtain. [LAUGHTER] Oh, that was a bit mean.

But anyway-- Wow. You know, we have to be moving on with some time. Oh, you have to. There's one thing with all this Bitcoin stuff where it seems, even within Bitcoin, there's these kind of factions of people who are like, you know, you have to don't spend only HODL and you have the, you know, you have to have the circular economy.

You have to have the circular economy people and you have all these little factions. Yeah, yeah. Look up Mises to the circular economy people. I would like them to read Human Action by Ludwig von Mises and see what he says about circular economies.

I'm about five or six hours into that one. Yeah, yeah. But it is a long book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Glad you started, though, and remember I said that about circular economies when you get to that pot.

OK. OK. You're going to enjoy that. I promise you. OK.

But so here's my question is one of the sort of things that people get annoyed with, and I haven't had it beaten out of me yet, and I have this kind of weird idea with Bitcoin, which is that, you know, we're talking about all of this, and you can batter me now and just tell me how I'm a fucking idiot.

And to change my mind on it. But this idea of the way that the internet is formed and how we have all of, like, basically everything centralized and all the data is controlled by these big companies like Facebook and everything else.

Do you think that we can have some sort of way of using the Lightning Network or some other technology where we can really actually own our own data using keys? And it's almost build a separate internet with this stuff, like, or is that just a dream that is never going to happen, in your opinion?

Oh, I've just think about that one. I'm not sure that Bitcoin is the literal key to that type of thing. It could be the means to an end. But more in the monetary sense that you could, like, I can afford to own my own data now and you can buy yourself out.

You have your own server and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, or just you just signed like a, well, money doesn't solve all the problems, but it solves a lot of problems.

If money is like in the very base layers of the internet and the geekiest people, like, whenever Bitcoin goes up in price, every Bitcoin gets a bit more influential.

And richer, which makes them like influential in that sense as well, like more money, more power and all that. And as long as we have the NGU technology going for us, like number go up technology, all the other problems will sort themselves out.

Because you will have all these, the Bitcoin people will be on top of the societal hierarchies. Like the hot list of last resort will be the most powerful people on earth. And then, and you just have to ask them what they think about internet privacy and so on.

And like, if they are calling the shots, that's true. Yeah, that's actually a very different way of looking at it because, you know, what I'm talking about is actually using something within the current system, which is controlled by the people who are at the top of the current system.

Yeah, I understand your concern, but I think it's sort of high time preference. Because if you think about this on a longer timeframe, like 100 years from now, that's a whole different story, right?

Like, I know I'm concerned about the censorship on all the social media platforms, like especially YouTube nowadays, just shutting everyone that they don't like off from everything. And it feels like the algorithms have changed a lot.

And you don't get as provocative content as you used to. Like, they're all filters in place everywhere, I'm sure. But definitely. Yeah, you'll just have to look a bit deeper and a bit harder, I guess.

Yeah, you had some problems with this, didn't you, with censorship? Yeah, yeah. I thought it was kind of funny because this new book Independence really reimagined. It was censored by, I do it all by myself, with the Kindle direct publishing service, like Amazon's print on demand book service.

Well, I have publishers in other countries that have translated the book, but this is just my pet project, right? So I use this Kindle direct publishing thing. And for the new book, you're supposed to write a little about the book section for the books page.

So I wrote something about the book being written just a couple of months before the COVID crisis hit us. These ideas are more important now than ever. That's like, that's the sentence that got censored by Amazon.

So that's dangerous. Yeah, so the word, it got triggered, literally triggered by the word COVID-19 or something, or Corona or whatever. And that got stuck in the algorithm and I got an automated email reply saying that you're not complying with our rules and regulations and code of contact.

Whatever, and unfortunately, you need to revise this before we can publish anything. Come right. Yeah. And so, of course, I took a screenshot on everything and I tweeted it out and like having your books censored when you're writing a book about independence and Bitcoin.

It's the best marketing tool you can ask for, really. I made Yahoo Finance news and stuff like that. So it's really weird for me. So it got a lot more attention than I thought it would in the beginning.

Right. Well, that's, yeah, like you said, that's worked in your favor very much. So, you know, it's just got to play the game, but it is worrying, you know, because what you've written there is, it shouldn't be controversial.

I don't know what you've said there that's a concern. No, it's just, I just, I just said that these ideas are important and they are written before the COVID crisis. Maybe they're more important now after the, it says nothing about the actual content or nothing about, I think we should handle Corona this way or nothing like that.

It's just a simple sentence. And the thing is, well, it worked out fine for me, but if, if Twitter had censored my tweet about it as well, or hidden it from, that's a whole different story.

Like, this was one site, but if they're in cahoots, then there's a different story. And of course, there are places like that in the world now and you can't really know if you're living in metaphorical China or little China.

Yeah, yeah, and yeah, like you say, you don't know if you're sort of being shadow banned, you don't know what's happening or what they're doing with their algorithms. It's all, it's all hidden, but yeah, I mean, that's why I guess, you know, I know it's a high time preference, but I just, yeah, I was just wondering about Twitter.

I offended you. No, no, you definitely didn't offend me. I love, I love the abuse. Yeah, but I'm so hopeful. I can't help it's an optimist, I guess, as cynical optimist. Yeah. Well, you've got, you've got to be, you've got to be. It's, it's much, there's much more of an enjoyable life that way, for sure.

Yeah. And so, it's just sort of final, a few questions here for you, because I don't want to take up all your evening and I've got a puppy who's ignoring it in my foot here.

Um, after writing this and after writing the first one, have you had people contact you and, and, you know, have you had a lot of people who hadn't maybe been open to these ideas before and, and, and who have come around and have been asking questions?

Or have you found that it's very much gone to the same smaller group of us who, who sort of very much agree with your ideas? Have you found, have you found a change since the first one?

Well, I have been contacted by a lot of people and this whole, this whole book project has turned out to be a much larger part of my life than I, and I intended it to be. I just, I just want to, to test myself to see if I could write a book about a complicated subject, really.

Well, you passed. Thank you. But, so, so of course, but, but I can't really say for sure that if I am, if I can take credit for converting anyone or like that.

If, if that was the, the question there, but, but it's, it's certainly helped a couple of people. I, I, I believe so, but, but I can't say for sure.

I mean, I think Bitcoiners and, like, people who are in the process of becoming Bitcoiners, that they, they, they don't read just one book or one article or listen to one podcast.

Like, when you start falling down the rabbit hole, you, you, you tend to like, Oh, shit, this is really interesting. I need to know more about this. And you, you read up on it.

The book first, that's like that, that, that's the first thing they read. I have been contacted by quite a few though that said that they, they thought that the books made them see things in a slightly different way.

Right. Yep. I guess so. Well, that, that doesn't surprise me. And, and like I said, you know, I love the first book. I love this one. It definitely, it definitely goes.

It changes, changes the way you look at things and I like that they're shorter. I like that they're not the boast. They just get to the point and you don't put any punches. You know, you, you say things how they are.

And I think that's really important. So I'm really grateful for the writing these books and, and doing what you're doing. It's, it's brilliant work. And it is always a pleasure speaking to you.

Thank you. It's nice to speak to someone else with a, with a dark and twisted mind. Likewise, and like, I, I can't wait to, to, to meet you one day, Max, and like, discuss these things further over a pint or two.

Definitely, definitely. Yeah. I look forward to it. And if you do get lost on your way to Spain and you find your way into London, then give me a shout. We'll go get some drinks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm sure I'll get to at least the UK in a, a not too distant future. Yeah. And I book my own tickets, I guess. So I'll make sure to have to have a whole tonight or two in London.

Brilliant. Well, something. All right. Yep. Awesome. Well, I look forward to it. And, and thanks again. And like I say, always a pleasure. And then I have to speak. Yes. Same to you. Thank you, Max. All right. Always a pleasure talking to you. Cheers. Bye.