You are a citadel! Build and secure a sound money future with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

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

Yeah.

Yeah.

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 deliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back, everyone. Today's episode is with Yuri. He's the co-founder of Bitcoin Reserve and the host of Citadelium podcast. I love the Citadelium podcast. I only just started recently listening to it when he had my friend's SoulEx and SoulEx boy featured for their Mechdel idea.

And I really like that he thinks about things outside of just stacking sat. He is thinking about how to secure yourself, your family, and create a Citadel. We went into all sorts of different subjects on this one, and I really enjoyed it.

Before we dive into the episode, I just want to let everybody know that I am very, very excited today because today I can announce that I have a new show sponsor. I have been working on this in the background for quite some time, and after I had my last podcast with Zach, the CEO of Foundation Devices, we finally sealed the deal.

If you haven't listened to the last episode with Zach, I suggest you go back and have a listen. We go into a lot of detail about the process of actually creating this device, and I have to say, I am absolutely blown away.

This is the reason I have been pestering them. Ever since Zach kindly sent me one out and I got to have a play with it, it really has become my favorite wallet, not just because they're free open source, not just because they have the air-gapping, but because it's just so easy to use,

it's very rare that you have something as beautiful as this that is also functional, and with the QR scanning back and forth, setting it up with blue wallet literally took me like five minutes.

It is so, so slick and simple, and as everyone knows, my good friend, Bitcoin Q&A, is now working on the team, so expect great things from these guys. If you haven't already seen one of these devices, I suggest you go to foundationdevices.com.

Once you've had a look at it, you can ask me any questions. My DMs are open, my email is open. There are loads of amazing guides. Q&A has done a couple himself. If you're in the market for a hardware wallet and you decide to purchase one of these, you can use the code bit by bit on checkout and you will get $10 off your purchase.

I promise you, you will not be disappointed. Thanks again, Foundation Devices, and check them out now at foundationdevices.com. (upbeat music) - Yuri, how you doing? - Hey Max, doing great, how are you?

- Really good, thank you. Looking forward to our conversation. We've been looking forward to this one for a while, and so I listened to you and I was like, so yeah, welcome to the show. - Thanks for inviting.

- So, yeah, let's get to know each other a little bit. Obviously, I know you from Citadelium, incredible show, really enjoyed listening through that, and I'm enjoying the fact that you're looking at things in a different way to most Bitcoiners, you're actually thinking outside of just stacking and holding, and I like that approach.

For anyone who hasn't heard of Citadelium or doesn't know what it is that you're doing there, do you wanna do a bit of an introduction and explain why you started it maybe? - Yeah, sure, I think like many podcasters initially I started to talk about these things because I really wanted to get the ideas that I had in my head out there,

but at the same time, I quickly understood that I don't actually know a lot of stuff, so I decided to have it more of a learning experience by essentially reading about something, processing these ideas in my head and then trying to communicate them to a broader audience because if you know the saying,

the saying goes basically that if you know how to teach something in the, it means that you actually understand it, right? If you don't know how to teach someone, let's say about Bitcoin or even those citadels, it means you don't really understand the topic yourself.

So I wanted to see if I actually understand something and I decided to teach and that's why I started the Citadelium Show as an extension to my blog because I started blogging first, I started writing, but at the same time, I understood, okay, there is many more media out there and maybe I can try something like audio or video

or interviews and I am experimenting with all these and so far so good. So I actually understood that I know quite little and it's, yes, you know, I know that I know nothing and it's a great feeling because I really love learning and not just getting feedback from the audience

when I post the podcasts, but also when I started interviewing other people, this was a great experience too because I could hear other people's opinions and their journeys through Bitcoin or building citadels and that gives me direct knowledge from people who actually do stuff, who actually build stuff

because as we know, there's a lot of talkers in the world and not a lot of doers and I am really interested in the doing part of life. - Yeah, you're right, there are a lot of talkers and what's really nice is as well when you have someone who's humble enough to accept that they don't know everything

and I find that something else in this space, you have a lot of know-it-alls. The people I particularly like to speak to are people who accept that, yeah, there's so much to learn and there really is, I mean, this is a space where you're surrounded by some of the smartest people on the planet, you're learning about all sorts

of different subjects and they all seem to intertwine so beautifully, you know, one of the things that I'm really getting more and more interested in and what I'm doing a show on it is this mecheredel idea and having networks of Bitcoiners working together and focusing on sort of, you know, permaculture

and education and all the things outside of just stacking stats where, you know, you'd need to survive and thrive with your family and that's really where I'm sort of being led and what's exciting me.

Where have you found your conversations have taken you? Has it guided or changed the way that you're thinking about things at all from the conversations you've had? - Yeah, well, at first when I started Citadelium, I kind of wanted to stick to one idea or one theme which is building citadels and back then

I understood citadels as something more physical, right? It's a community or even a city-state or something like that, but then it evolved, the idea evolved into something more metaphysical and I started understanding the citadel as more of a state of mind.

So I did write an article about it, the levels of citadels and the most important level of citadel that I currently advocate to improve is your own personal citadel, the individual, right?

Because if you're familiar with any so-called metaphysical or esoteric ideas, there's a common theme among them that your physical world, your material world is a reflection of your inner world and your inner world is essentially your mindset, your frame of mind.

And this is why it's really, really important to work on the inside, actually probably more important to work on the inside than on the outside because the outside actually follows what's on the inside.

So if you take your current situation, your circle of influence and people that you hang out with and the situation, even your financial situation and where you leave and everything like that, it's pretty much a reflection of your mind.

So to give you a simple example, if you go to someone's place and you find it completely dirty and out of order, that is a total reflection of the person's mind, right? That's how cluttered the person's mind is.

And so you can extend that concept to pretty much everything in a person's life. So I basically, to answer shortly, I started more as a material, materialist-oriented podcast, but it quickly evolved into something more philosophical and I'm actually liking it quite a lot.

- Yeah, so interesting, so what you're basically saying is you are your own citadel before anything else and you need to get your own house in order before you move any further and that's very similar to someone like Jordan Pete's and we'll say, get up, make your bed, before you do anything else, clean your room,

before you start trying to change the world, you fix what's around you and I think that's basically what you're saying and it makes so much sense. - Exactly, because there's a bunch of people out there who really want to change the world, but if you look a little closer to their private lives,

if you happen to know some details of their private lives, I bet you a lot of them don't really have their private lives in order and I know people like that and what they do is they tend to control other people's lives instead of their own because that's basically in psychology, I think it's called a projection, right?

They can't control their own personal things so they try to project these onto other people or onto the whole world. So you have someone who is an addict or simply can't control the life situations in their private life, they try to impose their own will on other people and control them, it can be their immediate family members,

it can be a village or a town or a whole world, right? Like, I want to change the world, I want to go to Africa and help all these poor Africans and not that I have anything against poor Africans, but very, very often you find it that just around the corner or right under your nose, there is a much bigger problem that needs solving

and maybe that's where you should direct your energy because that is pretty much a low hanging fruit, right? So, but a lot of people just close their eyes on these things. So, yeah, I do think that the individual citadel is pretty much the most important thing out there.

From it stems pretty much everything else. You go and expand onto the other things such as your immediate surroundings, like your dwelling, your family, then your community or extended family or as some people call it a super family and then you go and have a tribe and a town and then the country.

And obviously, the larger the scale, the more difficult it is to manage such things. So, obviously, it's not recommended to the majority of people to even start thinking about how to, you know, improve your whole country, for example.

Start something small, start with yourself first and then go little by little. And if you're really, really successful at it, and some people are, some people from the very early ages are really successful at controlling pretty much their immediate environment right away.

So, they can go to the higher levels because they can, right? But for most people, I think a smaller scale kind of a citadel is what they need to look after and improve and build. And that's, I think, that's the main message for it.

Do you think that a lot of that is almost like an escape because it's easier to go and try and fix someone else's problem or fix a problem somewhere else than it is to accept that you yourself are a problem?

'Cause that's a very difficult thing to do. It's a very difficult thing to accept. And it's something that I've gone through fairly recently after two, three years of just only learning about Bitcoin and obsessing over it and studying all day, every day and all night and smoking and drinking and not eating properly,

not taking care of myself properly, not going to the gym, not any of that sort of stuff and neglecting people close to me because I became obsessed with something. And it was quite a difficult thing for me to look at myself in the mirror and go, you need to sort your fucking life out, mate.

You need to get in the gym. You need to fix yourself. You need to sort the house out. There are more important things than just obsessing over this. What's the point in having your sats if you're going to have a heart attack?

And that was hard. It was like a, it was a real slap. So do you think that's why people just ignore themselves and try other things instead? Yes, exactly, this high-time preference behavior appears from the lack of control over one's reality, right?

So, and when people in general are quite addictive creatures, they're prone to addiction. And this addiction can reflect in many different things. It can be drugs, it can be overeating. I even wrote an article about space escapism, right?

Which is basically when people dive so much into science fiction and dreaming about space exploration and things like that, that they forget that, you know, actually right now, the planet Earth on which you live is probably the most beautiful place in this solar system, right?

It's the most comfortable, it's the most beautiful, it's pretty much paradise. And people are dreaming of escaping from this paradise because nothing is under control or at least they think nothing is under control, they can't control things.

So it's, yes, it's pure escapism and the same things happen with drugs. You know, drugs just give you an alternate reality for a period of time and then it ends and then you have to get some more because you get back to where you were, the real reality with the real way things are.

And people don't like it, but people can actually escape into things that seem good as well. For example, work, right? Work is not a bad thing, but workaholics exist and that's also sort of an escape because a lot of workaholics, they have families and if they have problems in families, for example,

they don't wanna be home, they tend to stick to work, right? And they work all the time. And yes, of course, you may have a really interesting intriguing project that you wanna work on all the time, but if you've had a family and a happy one, you probably understand that nothing can really replace those moments with a family

or even your project, right? So a person who does not have any problem with the family, whose family is really whole and happy, he doesn't need to escape from the family. So he doesn't need to become a workaholic.

He likes spending time with family. And there's other things like some gym bros, right? They're in the gym 24 hours, pretty much, that's also sort of an escape. Again, it could be some projection, maybe it's a projection of their inner dissatisfaction with themselves and with the way they look.

So they really wanna kinda overdo it in the gym, right? I completely understand if you're a bodybuilder and that's pretty much the way you chose, right? Like a professional bodybuilder, you wanna compete, you wanna win a prize or something like that.

But yeah, other people they just spend a bit too much time in the gym and that I consider escapism as well. So many spiritual teachings, they speak of the golden mean of finding the balance in everything.

And that's probably where most people fail, including myself, of course, because that's, you know, if you're a person who is perfectly balanced and everything, you are probably at a level at which you're Jesus or Buddha were.

(laughing) - Yeah, I think most people are far, far from that. And like you said, that balance of, it's like the health, wealth, happiness, and you're always out of whack on one. It tends to be, it doesn't.

It's like, you work and work and work and work and then you get the money, but then your health fits down. You know, whichever way it is, you can very rarely get it balanced. It's very, very difficult.

Have you got any tips for people who are looking to refine and make sure that they're in a citadel is working well and is secure and structurally sound? Like what are the things that you think about when trying to sort of make yourself better?

Like what are the things that you found of works? - Yeah, I think the most important thing is actually to start self-reflecting. You know, and I'm not talking about just, you know, staring at the ceiling or meditating all day long.

It's just you have to start looking at yourself a little bit from a side as, you know, from a third person point of view and maybe looking at yourself as a character in this game called life, right?

And maybe it takes some knowledge that you can learn from all kinds of spiritual teachings and then compare whether that character adheres to some of the, you know, if not commandments, but at least some of the advice from those teachings, right?

And then you can see, okay, well, here's where he's lacking and he's lacking there and there and those are the things that need to be fixed. Obviously, you know, I don't think there's a person in the world who would just, you know, have his room in complete disorder with garbage lying all over and, you know,

socks or just hanging from the ceiling and thinking this is completely normal and this is how it's supposed to be. I don't think there is anybody out there who thinks like that. People who live in such a condition, they actually know that their condition is pretty lame.

It's just they can't lift the finger to change it, right? So the first step to under, to solving a problem is to realizing that there is a problem. And so when you understand, when you truly understand, okay, there is a problem, I need to solve it somehow.

That's where the search for the solution starts. And it's, you know, the first step is just to start, to start looking for the solution because I don't think there's a perfect solution for everybody and perfect formula for everyone.

Everybody's different. What, you know, some of the spiritual teachings that I like teach about is that a lot of the, a lot of the so-called evil things that happen in your life have to do with matter and materialism, right?

And materialism is pretty much something that has to do with the bodily senses, with your own body. So most likely you're giving in a little bit too much into materialism and you need to spot where it is exactly that is, you know, that is totally taxing you in that regard.

So for example, you may be overeating or you may be overly lazy, meaning that you like comfort too much, you really, really don't wanna get out of that nice warm bed from under your thick warm blanket, right?

You like to sleep for 12 hours, you know, they, things like that, you need to spot those things and you need to start changing them because everybody, and as you mentioned, right, when you talked about not being completely balanced, everybody has their own things where they're off and some of those things, so they're off completely.

So you need to find those things and start working on them. And by working, it means that, you know, from that point of comfort, you just have to create discomfort for yourself because any work is essentially going outside of your comfort zone, right?

So if you sleep 12 hours, well, I'm sorry, but you just have to sleep less and that is less comfortable. So no work is very, very comfortable, simply because you have to work, it's already discomfort, right?

I mean, if you don't work in our world, unfortunately you don't get to eat and that's already discomfort. And so you start from there and slowly, but surely as some of the people write about habits and habits stacking so-called, you stack these new habits on top of each other

and basically a new you emerges over time. So one thing I want to notice is that it's a very long process. It almost never happens overnight. Sometimes things happen overnight with people who undergo a strategy, right?

They go a severe catastrophic event in their life. It can be a little catastrophe, you know, some kind of an accident or it can be a mental catastrophe. It can be some kind of a, I don't know, break up or whatever or something happens to their loved ones.

But very often such an event, although it is really bad, it fixes these people and they actually wake up a little bit from their slumber and they know what to do and where to go and what to spend the rest of their lives on.

But most people just don't get it, right? And for these people who are both blessed for not having any accidents like that, but also cursed at the same time because no accidents mean that you're in your comfort zone and you're just, you know, you're not seeing that something is wrong.

Then they have to just do it themselves. They have to learn to identify issues in their lives and they have to work on them. So those people have to spend a lot of time on it. I know from my personal experience that, you know, it takes years and years.

Most likely it simply takes until the rest of your life because there is no finish line in life besides death, right? Death is kind of the finish line, but even then when you die, you're probably not done because you have so many things in your head, oh, I could do this and I could do that and I could improve here and there.

But, you know, death doesn't think this way just happens to you whenever it's supposed to happen. So, yeah, I think the mindset should be that, first of all, there's just an unlimited amount of things you can improve in your life.

So you are never perfect. And secondly, it takes until the rest of your life to do so. So, yeah, you know, as some people like Osho, you know, this Indian guy who is quite funny as well, he talked about not having goals in life, but rather enjoying the process.

And that's probably close to what I'm talking about because once you reach a goal, you just ask yourself, okay, what next, right? - What's the next? - Yeah, exactly. - Always refining. - Exactly.

Always refining, short-term goals, fine, you know, to, it's more like a strategy rather than some kind of a goal after which you don't know what to do, right? But concrete goals, I wanna become a billionaire or whatever.

- Okay, you become a billionaire, so what next? What are you gonna do with your billions? Well, I didn't think about that. (laughing) - Yeah, a lot of people do that though, a lot of people just chase the money and then they get the money and then they realize, ah, this didn't make me happy.

This is not what it's all about. It's much more complex than that. And so these short-term goals and refinement is a much better way of getting through life. I wonder was Bitcoin something that came to you through introspective thinking and questioning.

You talked about evils or things that are incorrect in the world and then working out whether you're on the right path. Was that how you found Bitcoin in the first place or was it something completely separate and this is all come afterwards?

- Well, I think actually in my case, Bitcoin became a catalyst for my awakening because I had no idea about any financial stuff before I knew no economics, no finance, no nothing pretty much.

That was 10 years ago. And then when I stumbled upon Bitcoin, I asked myself this simple question, okay, well, what is this thing? Why do I need these virtual magic coins instead of the Canadian dollars in my pocket?

And I started reading about it and obviously it's a rabbit hole. Everybody knows Bitcoin is a rabbit hole, especially those people who have been in Bitcoin for a few years. They know it never ends.

Once you get the orange built, there's a bunch more pills waiting for you. And it's up to you to choose the direction which you wanna go because there's so many red pills out there that you kind of have to be careful not to go too deep into too many of them, right?

Because like I said, like I just mentioned, there's an unlimited amount of stuff to learn out there. So at some point you just have to maybe pick a direction that you really fascinated about and just go with it.

So when I started, yeah, I started just going for everything. People said, "Hey, read the human action by Mrs. "and you'll get it for sure." So I read it and I was like, "Wow, that's a heavy book.

"It's like a thousand pages and it's very academic." So then I read some more Austrian economics but more of lighter reads I would say. And after so many years I already have my own favorite Austrian economists and they are more modern ones like Hans Hermann Hoppe.

But along with that I started reading about many other things not just that they don't have to do with Bitcoin. So that's why I'm saying that Bitcoin became this catalyst. The way I stumbled upon Bitcoin was quite simple, just like many other people.

I just saw an article about it. I read about it. I think I dismissed it the first time I read about it but then it kept popping up on my feed. I don't remember what kind of feed was. It was probably even Facebook.

I don't have Facebook right now but I had years ago. So I just had this bit of intuition that told me, okay, if it popped up on your feed a few times maybe you should just look into it. And by the way, 10 years later now I really, really pay attention to my intuition and I'm learning to do that even more because I think that's, you know,

I actually saw it just yesterday someone posted it on Twitter. It's a quote I don't know from where but basically it said, prayer is when you talk to God and intuition is when God talks to you.

So basically, yeah, because I've had so many intuitive moments throughout these years that were quite important, you know? So I just didn't really use too much reason by just following my intuition and it was good.

And other times I followed my reason and it didn't turn out to be really good. And, you know, at the same time, you know, I consider everything, everything that happens, everything I do, everything that happens to me is just part of the experience, part of the flow that happens.

There is no, there is no negative. There's probably no positive. It's just the way you take it. And if you take it, again, with a detached attitude, then you can at least more or less reasonably analyze the situation and see where it benefits you, where it doesn't benefit you.

If it doesn't, you just move on and that's it. So, yeah, that's what Bitcoin did for me. Again, it sounds a little more philosophical than, I guess, some other people who get into Bitcoin and we're really excited about the monetary revolution and the 21 million Bitcoin cap and things like that.

I am excited about these things, but it's just, they are, you know, they're not that important to me. I know that that's how Bitcoin is and that's what makes it really, really important. That's what makes it the hardest money in the world.

But just, you know, personally to me, it is, okay, it is like that and that's fine. But, you know, I'm not gonna talk about 21 million Bitcoin cap all day long because there's already, let's put it this way.

There is already enough people who are way smarter than me who can talk about it in more sophisticated terminology than me. Look, here's the thing, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to get you on, is I like speaking to people who don't wanna just bang on about Bitcoin the asset

and talk about the supply cap and all that sort of stuff because I don't know if it's the same for you, but for me, it gets to a point after a certain amount of years where you go, yeah, I know.

Like you've just said, it is the hardest money on the planet, I know, I know that. And people can explain it in a thousand different ways and come up with all sorts of analogies of, oh, it's like this asset, but it's better 'cause of this and, you know, it's a wall of encrypted energy, whatever it is.

You come up with all that, but at the end of the day, once you know that, well, this is probably the best place for me to part my wealth and that there are changes that can happen with this, after a while, do you find it gets a bit boring talking about it to some extent?

I know that's gonna annoy a lot of people, but that you get drawn to the sort of conversations we're having these more philosophical conversations and about improving your life and your family because that's something that you have a grasp on.

I cannot change Bitcoin's protocol. It's not something I can do. All I can do is observe it, know enough about it to understand it and then past that, I kind of feel like, well, now I wanna fix myself and I wonder if that's maybe why you're taking this approach as well.

- Yeah, and the word boring is probably suitable here, I would say so, because I considered it a negative side of my character, but I'm kind of, you know, getting used to it and probably thinking about it is something more positive.

But the side of the character is that I get tired and bored of things quite quickly and I want to move on to something else. At first, I thought, you know, it's a curse and happy as those who have found the thing that they want to dedicate their life to, right?

Basically, they have this tunnel vision, they just go for it and they do it their whole life. But then I don't think I have found that particular thing just yet, I am still on the way there.

I'm still exploring and right now I just have to be honest with myself and Bitcoin falls into this category. Like I got excited about it, I work in Bitcoin, I was talking about it for, you know, for years, but then at some point I'm like, yeah, it's, you know, it's there, it's the hardest money in the world,

whoever wants to buy it, let them buy it, whoever doesn't want to buy it, you know, sorry, I don't have time to convince them, but yeah, and I just want to move on to other things because like I said, I learned about other things, I have other interests, I read some metaphysical works, I read some history, I read some psychology

and all of these things are really interesting to me. I could be reading every single Bitcoin book that comes out, you know, out there, but it's just a, and of course I will probably learn some details about Bitcoin that I didn't know before or I will understand Bitcoin slightly better than I did before, but I just at this point think

that I don't need to because I accepted the way it is, it's there, it's going to be there most likely, obviously there's always this off chance that it can go somewhere else and you don't, you know, I don't also like being completely dogmatic about it, but I want to focus on something else

because I actually thought for years and years, okay, well Bitcoin is something I want to dedicate my life to, but Bitcoin, to me Bitcoin is just money, it's money reinvented and I don't want to dedicate my life to money, you know, especially if we're talking about leaving materialism behind

and getting a little more spiritually developed, right? Money is not particularly on the spiritual side of things. So yeah, yeah. - No, that makes sense. My thinking though is that, 'cause obviously you run Bitcoin reserve and I've had Nick on here before and had a long chat with him.

The feeling I got from him and the feeling maybe getting from you is that you obviously want this sound money to be able to go into the hands of people who've need it. That's what it feels like, and you correct me if I'm wrong.

But then outside of that, I think maybe what's the most exciting thing is once someone has it in their hands and that's what some of these onboarding services can do and some of the education can do, it's the bit after that that's the really interesting bit.

It's the bit where people go, oh okay, I actually can, I can change my time preference here. I can focus on longer term goals. I can maybe get myself off this hamster wheel and because I can do that, then I'm gonna start maybe caring for myself and those around me a bit more and start to reflect on my life a bit more

because I'm not just rushing and panicking. And I think it's these changes where it really gets exciting, but it doesn't get exciting until people are onboarded because it does seem to have this, it just seems to change people.

I've seen it so many times. It takes someone buys a bit of Bitcoin, they learn about securing it, they start to understand and wrap their head around this low time preference thinking and some of the other ideals that are in the Bitcoin world and they start to change generally for the better as a person.

Is that the reason that you stay working in it, even though maybe you don't want to spend your whole time talking about the financial side? - Yes, I would say so. I, one of my very first articles that I wrote for the blog was titled Bitcoiners are better people.

And it's more of a clickbaited title, like what, how can you say that right? - Yeah, that's good, that's good, take both. - But I actually mean it because that's where I go into how Bitcoin lowers your time preference and you make different decisions in life because of the properties of Bitcoin and that those same properties

that I want to talk about anymore, right? The 21 million cap and the difficulty adjustment and all of those things, it really, really changes your personality. It forces a new reality on you because now you understand that, you understand the concept of opportunity costs really, really well.

Should I buy this Lambo? Or should I just wait and buy 10 Lambo's a few years from now? That's a very big difference, right? And obviously don't buy Lambo 'cause it's a useless car (laughs) but just to make a point and that's, and that's, I completely agree with you, Bitcoin has changed a lot of people's characters including mine too.

At the same time, if we speak about working on your personal Citadel, working on yourself in a world on your spiritual development, Bitcoin enables that because eventually you will have accumulated enough wealth to not really worry about what to put on your table for food the next day, you would be able to retire,

maybe a lot earlier than you thought you would and you will be able to dedicate a lot of hours to self-reflection, to meditation, to studying yourself, studying the world, studying history and all these things, studying art maybe.

And again, it's Bitcoin's fault that it will happen to you and thanks to Bitcoin for that. So I'm really happy to be running a company, a Bitcoin company that allows people to actually get their hands on Bitcoin and to start their journey with Bitcoin.

Some of them are quite wealthy already, right? Because we have the concierge service for people who are already wealthy. So they just send us money. But again, they are fiat wealthy. And when you're fiat wealthy, you leave more of a high time preference life because fiat melts like an ice cube.

You really have to spend it or you may not see it a few years from now, right? So whereas people spent it on people who really thought about the future a little bit at least, they spent it on real estate or gold or other things.

Now there is a much better way and now there is Bitcoin. And I think Bitcoin beats any of those other investments. Of course, again, a lot of people will just say Bitcoin and it's not in the investment, it's just money, right?

I agree with that too. I'm just trying to talk to a broader audience here. And yeah, so when you do have a certain stash in Bitcoin and then you go through one of its cycles and normally people say that the Bitcoin cycle is around four years, right?

That's where the bull and bear market happens. And then if you go at least through one of these cycles, that's such a roller coaster and you have so many emotions and your character changes a lot because you see these ups and downs.

But then you start seeing the bigger picture and the bigger picture is that number go up forever pretty much. Then you get calm, you get calm, you get your zen state sort of in terms of finances, right?

Like if you ask any Bitcoiner who has been in Bitcoin for years already, they don't care about the short-term price movements at all. Like they don't care if it falls 10 by 10,000 tomorrow.

Like none of that really matters. All their thoughts and eyes are on the future. That's where the price is. Again, the metaphysical price, right? No real price is there because like we said, there is no goal.

If your goal is that, you know, my goal in life is 10 million dollar Bitcoin and then I'm gonna leave. Well, no, when it's 10 million dollars, you're gonna have a lot of other problems and things in your life that you'll just, you know, you have to leave right now, but you also have to think about the future

and Bitcoin makes you do both at the same time. - You said obviously a lot of the clients that come to you are already wealthy, but they're wealthy financially, they're wealthy, but you know, wealth can be about more than just how much money you've got in the bank.

You know, how much time you have the quality of time with your family, all the sort of the ideals that we've been talking about. Have you seen any change in anyone who you've onboarded without doxing anyone?

Like, are there any that have stood out where you've thought, well, this is someone who's very, very rich and they bought a load and they've made money, but it's actually changed them. Do you ever see that with the real fiat culture or do you find that it's more sort of the plebs that are making these changes?

- Yeah, I'll be honest, I can't think of an example right now. I do have quite a few examples from the plebs. Yeah, from people, and people like myself, right, from before who have changed when they started doing Bitcoin related things, or simply started accumulating Bitcoin.

They have changed a lot. From the, what I can say about rich people, I have seen the other side of it and I've seen the negative side of rich people. So they did have Bitcoins, they, but they also delve into shitcoins and of course, and that world, you know, and there's all kinds of conferences and things happening there.

And that world is pretty, pretty dark. It's quite fake and a lot of it has to do with all kinds of, you know, fake pleasures and fake emotional roller coasters, right, that have to do with drugs and things like that.

So I have seen the other side of it and I didn't like it at all. That's not my way, that's not where I wanted to go. So I cut that pretty fast from my life. Whether those people have, you know, recovered or not, I can't really know.

But I have seen wealthy people who got into Bitcoin. At the very least, it took them a few years, but at the very least, they started understanding certain things about the government, for example, right?

Because when you meet a wealthy person who's already wealthy, who talks about taxes as something that's what you do in a civilized society to drive on nice and clean roads, right? And when you tell them that, you know, it may be a little bit different from what you think.

They're obviously against all these ideas. But then a few years later, after I introduced them to Bitcoin and, you know, they're already acting a little differently. They're like, hey, you know, is there a way to basically not show Bitcoin to the government, things like that, right?

So their mindset changes. And I'm sure it's not only about money. I think in general, they are evolving as individuals and they start thinking about things a little more practically and more critically.

Whereas before they took everything for granted and they're like, you know, this is how things are. And we live in this good civilization. But now, especially now in these times, it's if you have your eyes at least a little bit open, it's very easy to see what, you know, what governments do and what they really are.

- What's your views on that? I mean, I'm guessing from why you've just stated that, that you have similar views to me and you think that government is a real problem in the way that they're doing things is very wrong.

But maybe you can elaborate. Like, I'm sure you've given this some thought. Do you believe that we can get to a stage where because they cannot print the money and create value from nowhere and still from their citizens long term, that this accountability will cause them to lose their power over time

or do you think that that's a dream and will never happen? - I'm not sure whether it will never happen. There is probably a chance. But my view of this is a little more to the conspiracy side of things rather than the explanation that, you know, people are just stupid and covered and that's why all of this happens, you know,

even if you read about how central banking appeared and all those things, to me it's pretty clear that a lot of such things are orchestrated and managed probably not by, you know, the proverbial cabal where, you know, there is like a centralized authority basically, right?

10 people just meet in the room and decide the fate of the world. I don't think it's like that. Of course, it's probably more complicated. There's different factions, different forces competing against each other, sometimes aligned with each other, so depending on the situation.

But in general, these forces, these factions, the so-called elites, they have been doing it for, not for years, they've been doing it for centuries, right? They have, they literally have generational experience in how to screw over the world.

That's their, you know, that's what they're good at. That includes-- - It's very good at it. - They're very good at it. That includes all kinds of things from revolutions to, you know, to monetary servitude, to media, to propaganda, like they know all of this stuff.

They are the ones that actually created some of these fields, right? So thinking that just because now there's a hard money and they will go away, you know, I think it's a little bit naive.

Well, first of all, if you're, you know, if you're someone who literally has control over the money printer, right? And then a better money comes along that, I guess you cannot control. You will try to control, but let's say you understand eventually that you cannot control that hard money, which is Bitcoin.

Well, you have the money printer. So what you can do is you can literally print a lot of money because when they print a lot of money, first that money doesn't go to retail, to the broad money, to the circulation, right?

It first goes through the,

it goes to the people who are closer to the central banks, right? And the bankers and then, you know, huge hedge funds can take pretty much free loans and all of this stuff. So when you're close to the money printer, you just print enough money to, or keep printing money to buy up as much of this hard money as you can.

And they say, you know, and the critics of this kind of thinking say, well, as soon as they start printing money, that's basically inflation. And that will basically just, you know, make hyper Bitcoinization faster.

And I agree with that. Yes, I agree with that. But the thing is that they can do it for years and years before hyper Bitcoinization itself happens. So during those years of printing and buying Bitcoin with their fake money over and over again.

And then, you know, crashing it on the market because the Bitcoin market is not liquid, right? And they have all the money in the world. So why can't they just crash the price and then scoop up even more cheap coins on the way down, right?

That's just pretty obvious to me. I've actually seen it done by some relatively small traders, right? So they can do it because they have unlimited money. So they can do it over and over, over the years.

So they don't need to have direct control over the Bitcoin protocol because they can't because it's based on math. But they can still amass quite a fortune in Bitcoin. Let's say they hold a few million Bitcoins, right?

Out of 21 million? That's a lot. So if you imagine these people who have been amassing for generations, who are probably worth trillions of dollars if you think about it because, you know, they have unlimited money, they have unlimited resources, they probably control the militaries in the media

and all that stuff, they post hyper Bitcoinization. They will also control a huge amount of Bitcoins. So I don't think they're going away. They're not going away. They'll be just forced to play on a slightly fairer field, I guess.

But the resources that they have amassed over centuries, most of them I think they will still keep, you know? And that is, like I said, that's all kinds of resources. That includes probably all kinds of military technology.

That probably includes all kinds of technology that we haven't even heard about, right? We actually don't know what's out there. We literally leave off of the picture on the screen that we see every day, and that's our understanding of the world, I think, which is completely false.

I think that's the Plato's cave, right? That's the world is completely different. And we can't really verify it because, you know, we just have to get out of there and verify everything with our own eyes, and the planet is not so small either.

So yeah, you know, I think what I mean here is that they will still stay there. They will probably have a slightly harder time controlling people. They will have a harder time confiscating assets from people, especially if people start converting their assets to Bitcoin on mass.

But they won't go away. And because they have a generational wisdom in terms of controlling the populations of the world, they may come up with other creative solutions on how to do it even without being able to confiscate people's wealth, right?

But we'll see where it goes. Some people will say it's kind of a black pill. It's not really a black pill. I'm just trying to think a bit rationally here. I actually agree with you. And I know a lot of people won't like hearing that, but I do agree with you.

I've said for a long time, like, no matter how much you dislike these institutions and these governments, people will often say, oh, they're just fucking stupid. They're all idiots. And by saying that, you're proving that you yourself are an idiot, because they're not.

There are stupid people within the organizations, and they do things that may seem stupid at times, but there are very, very smart people. Like you said, people who really understand how to control, and they've done it a very, very long time.

And to think that all of these governments are not stacking, that they're not holding. I think it's very, very naive. What I do think, though, is that long term, they will lose that ability to continuously print.

And so long term, it does, like you said, create more of a balance, more of a level playing field. And they will not have that tool at their disposal anymore. And it's quite a powerful tool, because it means that they have no accountability, really, for anything.

Because they can just magic value out of the air by sealing from everyone else. And when they lose that ability, it will make things harder for them. But yeah, they're not going to be going anywhere.

I think the ones that will lose out, I think there will probably be a lot of people who are currently fiat wealthy. They've allowed themselves to get really comfortable. They've allowed themselves to not think.

And they have settled into routines that they think will go on forever. And I think that there will probably be people who will go from very wealthy to very average or poor over the coming years, because they won't adapt to this change.

But I don't think it's going to be the governments. - Yeah, yeah. And we know some of these people, right? Some of these people are around us, the pit co-owners, the remnant, they all want to get into those positions.

They want to wait patiently until they have enough resources to actually make an impact in this world. And a lot of them are good-hearted people who really want to affect positive change in the world.

We can also remember some of the earlier conversation about changing the world. But again, I guess there's that. They always have to not lose sight of their private lives and what's happening in their heads, when they are planning to do such things.

So because, of course, there have been, throughout history, people who pretty much single-handedly changed the world and quite successfully so, right? And there will be more people like that or groups of people.

So as they say in Russia, flag into their hands. But, yeah, we just have to see, because people like that think that hyper-pig colonization can happen within the next few years. So other people think that it probably have to wait for 10, 15 years.

And they all have different levels at which Bitcoin is going to be when they consider themselves ready for such action, whether it's 1 million per Bitcoin or 10 million per Bitcoin. Obviously, 10 million per Bitcoin, some of these people are pretty much billionaires in dollar terms.

It's that, in their minds, with their billions, they can do great and good things. So if you're, as opposed to other billionaires who do bad things, right, it doesn't matter at this point, whether they are forced to do those things or they do them voluntarily, they still do them, right?

So, yeah, it's just, I guess, Bitcoin will help us restore to an extent the balance of powers out there. Yes, the money printers won't be able to print that much money anymore. We will just see how creative they will become in terms of control over people, because, of course,

while there is a negative scenario of the future of the world, there is also a positive scenario of the future. And maybe there is actually a biblical battle that's going on right now of good versus evil, and maybe good will actually take over and win.

And the pendulum is basically swinging in the other direction. Everything in this world is cyclical, right? There is a time when good prevails, then there's a time when evil prevails, and so on and so forth.

It just happens. It goes on forever. That's just the will of time, right? You can't eradicate evil, because without evil, there is no good, without good, there is no evil. So we just have to accept that these people and this type of evil will exist pretty much forever in this or that form.

So I would caution people against getting mad at it, right? You're basically getting mad at nature itself. And you don't get mad at a dog barking, because that's what a dog does. It just barks, right?

It's designed to bark. It's supposed to bark, so when an evil person does evil things, you don't really get mad at them, because they are just, you know, that's what they are. They're designed to do that, and they're supposed to do that.

What you do is you focus on what you can do in your situation with the cards that you were dealt, right? And just move through the, you know, speaking a little more, again, exuterically, what you can do in this incarnation, right, to teach your soul a little more wisdom

in this life experience, so that maybe it can graduate into a higher world next time, because if you don't, and if you just are a lager throughout your life, or a lazy person, or you essentially don't follow your calling, don't follow your, let's say, thing that you're supposed to do, and you just don't do anything with your life,

you're just going to repeat it according to some teachings, right? Or forever and forever until you really understand that this is the hell and there's no other. And to graduate, to heaven, you actually have to do something.

And yeah, that's, that's, I think, really important to understand. For some people, obviously, if this is total heresy, so don't listen to me. Yeah, do you believe that there is an afterlife or that you do get reincarnated?

Or do you think that it's sort of like heaven is realising that you don't have control over everything and then accepting yourself and feeling like you've done your best? Do you think that it's sort of like something within?

Yeah, I mean, this is like a theological kind of a conversation. And I think what I like to do is to know, rather than believe, right? When Carl Jung at the very end of his life, almost at the end of his life, was asked by a reporter, do you believe in God?

He said, no, I don't, I know, I don't believe, I know, right? So that was his answer. And basically, you know, this talk of reincarnation is just something that has been repeatedly mentioned in so many different scriptures all over the world, which basically always talk about the same thing

just in different languages with different names for very, very similar characters, right? Which kind of points to a hint that maybe all that spiritual teaching was kind of the same and global in the world before.

And it was just, you know, later kind of translated or splintered it in different versions of languages with different names. But what I want to kind of pay attention to is that life itself is eternal or immortal.

And the material world and the physical world is sort of the one that is, well, they call it, corrupt, right? So only matter can be corrupted. Life itself cannot be corrupted. So the belief is that, essentially, the physical body can disintegrate, but it's a life that is inside that body right now in the form of a soul, right?

It lives home. And, you know, the body is a vessel, just like you get into your car to drive from point A to point B. That's basically the car becomes an extension of your body in the physical world.

The body exists for the purpose of your interaction with the material world through the senses. But who is that? Who is interacting with the world, right? That essence, that creature, I guess, that thing lives on.

And, you know, in traditional-- traditional, I don't know, it's not traditional, but in today's Christianity, whether Catholic or Orthodox, there's obviously, you know, also a concept of the soul, where the soul goes to heaven after that.

Even after you die, right? Even they basically say that you don't actually die, you just go to heaven, right? Or to help to be fried on some internal fire, yeah. Yeah, so pretty much none of the belief systems, except for maybe atheism, denies this fact that, you know,

life actually goes on in this or that form. Only the atheist belief-- and I wasn't atheist before, too. It kind of-- it thinks they think that, you know, you die, and that's it. It's over.

There's total blackness blackout. But once you ask such a person to even imagine that blackness and what it feels like or what it's like, no one can say right. No one can say-- no one can answer that question.

So, yeah, that would be more of a short answer to this question, because this is a very-- [LAUGHTER] It's such a dense topic. But it's one that I found is-- has a lot of similarities with the big point where there's quite a lot of people who are religious.

And it's also something that I've sort of thought about a lot more, especially over the last probably 18 months, two years. I was also completely like atheist. I went to a Catholic school, hated it, didn't believe anything was really, really against it, really opposed to the idea.

And as I've spent more time thinking about it and as I've sort of experienced life more, what I found is that I, myself, have changed. It's almost like there are different people through different parts of my life.

If I look at certain versions of myself and I look back, I cannot relate to them at all. It's almost like that person's died and there's a completely new one. And that's happened two, three times.

Major, major, complete changes. And so then I think, well, is it really that much of a stretch to think that we can move into another body or that something different can happen? And also that how arrogant am I to be so sure that there isn't something, that you cannot prove it either way.

And I kind of think, yeah, it's just like an arrogant thing to think that we know because everything around us is just so fucking complicated. And we understand so little of it to try and draw conclusions from the tiny bit of information we have would be a bit silly.

That's where I'm at. And I don't know is the answer, but I certainly don't scoff at people or look down my nose like I honestly, I used to just think, oh, these people are a bit fucking stupid if they believe that.

And now I'm like, well, we're all stupid. And I have no idea. Exactly. And I think that's what the attitude should be. I mean, I don't claim that I know the truth. And all I have is the desire to know the truth.

But I guess what I know is bits and pieces of truth here and there. But at the end of the day, the ultimate truth, if you know absolutely everything, all the truth in the world, in the whole universe, you basically know the whole creation, which it means.

You basically know God, right? And again, you cannot even attempt to get to the level of God, right? Because it's completely incomprehensible for a monkey brain that the human has. Even though human is pretty much a son of God, right?

Made in the image of God. It's still pretty far off, as they say. As they say, in some Gnostic Christian texts, a human-- that was actually in the Hermetic text-- a man is a mortal God. And God is an immortal man.

So yeah. So I guess you just have to-- yeah, you have to go with-- about life, the feeling that you don't really know anything, you know, some things, but you don't know much. And that gives you a certain freedom.

It gives you freedom to not be condescending to people, right? Because you understand that just 10 years ago, maybe, I was at the same level or even worse than those people. And if they open up their mind a little bit, they may also learn some things.

And 10 years from now, they may be completely different individuals. Yes, a lot of people don't. And they just live their lives. So kind of dancing on the same spot, right? But that's how life is.

It's quite natural, too. The bell curve, the distribution, is such that few people actually are-- just like few people are leaders and most people are followers, it's the same thing with, you know, spiritual growth.

Very few people are actually doing something to grow spiritually and get, quote unquote, enlightened. While the vast majority, they kind of stay in the same spot, on the same spot, right?

So yeah. And in many other areas of life, it's the same thing. And that's the concept of the remnant that Francis likes to talk about. Francis and Alex as well. It's just, you know, there are people who just get it.

They get it. You don't know where they are, but they are there. And sometimes you meet them, and you pretty much understand right away if they're remnant or not. Because, you know, they get certain things, and you get certain things.

And you don't have to know all the things that they know, and they don't have to know all the things that you know, because you have absolutely different lives, different life experiences, and probably different aspirations and goals too.

So why would you even be identical individuals, right? You don't have to be. But there are certain things that are common among the so-called remnant. And I think that's what people need to understand about that concept too.

Yeah, and, you know, we're never going to get to the bottom of all of this stuff that we're discussing in this conversation. But one thing I will say is that I am noticing that there are a lot of parallels and that this sort of very Bitcoin world, how to describe it, that the difference between Bitcoin world and fiat world

and the people I interact with is that the Bitcoiners seem to be much more aligned with some of these more religious themes and ideas and principles without necessarily even knowing it. And it's almost like they are rewiring themselves in terms of, well, what do I really care about?

Is it a stupid fucking Lambo and some Bimbo with big tits? Or is it actually that I want a family and I want to care for them and I want to be a better personer? I want to actually improve myself and I want to reflect and I don't want to treat people badly.

I want to, you know, all of these things seem to naturally happen without people really thinking about it. And I can only see that that makes the world a better place, whether they are religious or not religious.

It seems to be going along the same lines and they seem to be becoming better people, which is a theme that I'm very happy to see. I think naturally is the key word here. Bitcoiners slowly but surely are learning about the laws of nature.

And the laws of nature are, you know, eternal and they're always there, they've always been there and they will always be there. And what the modern world promotes pretty much all the time right now is very unnatural things.

If I think most people have noticed that too. But they are so unnatural that, you know, to someone who is in that state of mind that you just described, it's very repulsive, right? And Bitcoiners are trying to go in the other direction.

And, you know, so yeah, if at some point Bitcoiners are deemed terrorists, that's only because they decided to follow the laws of nature rather than succumb to the unnatural ideas that are being promoted by the, you know, world elites.

- Well, Yuri, it's been fascinating speaking to you. We didn't talk a lot about Bitcoin but it's been interesting to hear some of your thoughts and it's nice to go down one of these rabbit holes 'cause it's something I've been thinking about more and more.

And I just want to say, you know, firstly, thanks for coming on the show. Secondly, thanks for everything that you do with your show and I really enjoyed listening and I suggest to anyone here to go and have a listen.

Could you maybe let people know where they can find your writing and where they can find your podcast and I'll put it in the show notes as well. - Sure, the website is sitadelium.com and you can find me on Twitter as well, sitadelium_ and I also do exclusive content on Telegram.

The channel is sitadelium and right there, you can also see a link to the chat. So we have a chat with almost 300 people there. We're chatting about all these topics, you know, quite easy rules as long as you don't shit coin promote spam then you're welcome there.

Yes, and I'm happy to produce more content. I really liked it that I get some feedback like that. - Awesome, well, yeah, thanks for coming on. - Really nice to speak to you and I think at some point we should get you on the mesh to Dell, maybe with Sol X and Chino or Untapped Growth or someone like that and go a bit deeper

into some of the citadel ideas but yeah, really enjoyed it and hope to speak soon. - Sounds good, speak soon. - Cheers Yuri.