BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 371: Bitcoin: Investing Fad or Final Bullet to Fiat Currency?

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Asking for Bitcoin explained is like asking how a rocket works; it's a little complex. A digital currency is valued at a certain amount of dollars (or euros, yen, etc.) and is used to pay for goods or exchange for other currencies. That makes sense. But things can get complicated as we go deeper into Bitcoin and the blockchain. There's no need to get overwhelmed; we brought Saifedean Ammous, economist and author of The Bitcoin Standard, onto the show to explain. Saifedean, like many investors, was skeptical of Bitcoin at first. He thought it was merely a fad that would pass away in a few years. But, after researching the history of money, the rise and fall of fiat currencies, and the standard that Bitcoin was built on, Saifedean changed his tone. Now, he's a huge proponent of this new "digital gold" and has spent years of his life warning others of fiat currency's faults and the opportunity behind Bitcoin itself. In today's episode, Saifedean explains what Bitcoin is, how it works, why the blockchain is needed, and why saving money isn't enough in today's fiat inflationary environment. You'll also hear why "hard money" like Bitcoin beats "easy money" like the American dollar and why the latest cryptocurrency crash isn't as bad as mainstream economists think. So if you've thought of snagging a bit of Bitcoin, this is the best place to start. In This Episode We Cover The history of money, fiat currencies, why rare, hard money is always the most safe The dangers of easy money, debasing currency, and the fallacy of required inflation How Bitcoin solves the fiat problem and why it can never be inflated or over-printed The blockchain explained and why it works for Bitcoin and not other applications like real estate Cryptocurrency's latest crash and why fluctuating Bitcoin prices are more typical than they seem Whether to bet on businesses, real estate, Bitcoin, or all three when investing And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Scott's Instagram Mindy's Twitter Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Subscribe to The “On The Market” YouTube Channel Listen to The “On The Market” Podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, BiggerPockets Check Out Mindy’s 2022 Live Spending Tracker and Budget Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-371 Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Check out our sponsor page! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast where we interview Safedine Amuse and talk about Bitcoin. It's the one money that ends all money. And the reason for that is that it is the one money that's going to have the lowest supply growth rate ever. And it's currently at around 2% per year. But it's going to continue to go down until eventually it hits 0%. And so the truly astonishing and unique achievement of Bitcoin is that this process was set in motion. The creation of Bitcoin was set in motion and the network continues to grow. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my dad joke telling co-host,

Scott Trench. I don't know about dad jokes, Mindy, but I can be a Bitcoin. Oh my God, that was awful, Scott. It's the worst one yet. Scott and I are here to tell terrible jokes and to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. That's right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, going to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or attempt to understand the investment thesis behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, we'll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.

Scott, I am excited to bring in Safedin today. I am on record as saying I don't particularly we care for Bitcoin. I think I've been a little bit more harsh in the past with my assessment of Bitcoin. But I thought today's episode was very interesting and I learned a lot about currency in general and the history behind it, the specifics around Bitcoin specifically. I do want to say that today when we are talking about Bitcoin, we are talking about actual Bitcoin, not using Bitcoin as a generic term for cryptocurrency in general. We are specifically discussing the cryptocurrency called Bitcoin. And also a little disclaimer here.

This is not an endorsement of Bitcoin. Saifadeen is an incredible thought leader, philosopher, really has a deep understanding of this and has constructed a very compelling case for Bitcoin. But I'll share with you my personal philosophy about why I do not invest in Bitcoin towards the end of the episode and in the outro as well. Yeah, I have said many times.

I don't understand Bitcoin, so that's why I don't invest. That is the bottom line why I don't put any money into Bitcoin. And I am okay with that statement. I don't think you have to invest in everything. But this episode opened up my eyes to the reason behind Bitcoin, which I think is important. Okay, before we bring in Cipharine, let's take a quick break. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks,

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achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves the needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all in one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code Pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at Monarch.com code pockets. I love Matt, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun? Calculating quarterly estimated taxes. But somehow every small business owner ends up doing it. Your dreams of creating, selling, and growing, get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices, and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write-off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of managing money. It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices, and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside money for business goals, Control spending with virtual cards and find tax write-offs you didn't even know existed. It saves time, money, and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five-star reviews from owners who say,

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Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leen or Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for Parenting Perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful as its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more. All accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. And we're back. Saifidine Amuz is a renowned Bitcoin economist, investor, and the author of the Bitcoin

Standard Standard, the Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, and one of the most eye-opening books I've read in the last couple of years. Seifidine, we are so excited to welcome you to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Scott. It's a pleasure to be here. Awesome. Well, I was hoping we could walk through your thesis, really, as the word I'll use to describe it, around Bitcoin as a future currency of the world. And I'd love if we could start from the beginning way back to the history of money itself and how that grounds your thesis for Bitcoin. Could you walk us through, give us an overview of that? Yeah, so writing the Bitcoin standard, when I wanted to write it, I decided, you know, this needs to be a book that explains Bitcoin from scratch.

And because it's a topic that attracts people from all kinds of walks of life. It's not just something that's there for economists or for programmers. So you're going to be getting all kinds of different perspectives on different questions and issues. And it's the best way to tackle it is to just start. from scratch. And so I started digging into the history of money and I started digging into lessons and metaphors that I've learned over the years as an economist to try and explain Bitcoin in modern terms. And I came to the idea that really the best way of understanding Bitcoin is

to try and understand the importance of the hardness of money. And by hardness of money, we mean the difficulty of producing money. So term is very familiar to people who live in economies with bad currencies where they use the term hard money to refer to dollars or euros, currencies that are very difficult for people in their country to make, whereas the term easy money refers to the local currency, which the central bank and all of their friends and cousins can produce essentially at will or very easily. And so this, you know, this was my motivating idea for understanding why Bitcoin matters. And as I started writing the book and researching the history more and more, the more I'd look into it, the more I'd found this was a very powerful

frame with which to analyze monetary history. And so the overarching theme of the first few chapters of the book is the idea that the hardest money wins, that whatever is the hardest thing to produce ends up being used as money in whatever society. Obviously, it needs to be a liquid good, something that is divisible and portable, and it needs to have other properties, but a lot of things fulfill those properties, and among the things that fulfill those properties, what ends up becoming money is the thing that is the hardest to produce. So we see countless examples. We look at examples of an island in the Polynesian where the island did not have limestone,

but a nearby island, which wasn't very near, it's required you to get on a boat and go significant distances. They had limestone. So the island that didn't have limestone, which was called YAP, they used limestone as money because it was very expensive to get limestone from the other island to this island. So as long as you had some limestone, you knew that it was very scarce

and very difficult for people to make. And so it was a good store of value. It was a good form of money that people were using. And you see the example of West Africa where glass beads, they did not have the technology for making glass. And so glass beads were very hard to make, and so therefore glass beads were made as money.

And historically, we see all kinds of different goods were used as money like seashells, rare sea shells in particular, salt, cattle, things that are difficult to make. But as these things become easier and easier to make, because technology advances, what ends up being used as money are the things that are harder to make. So we move to the era of metals, which were hard to make, and they were used as money. But then as metallurgy advanced, then we started being able to make more and more metals. It was only the precious metals that were used as money.

So still among the metals, only the hardest metals to make were the ones that are used as money, in particular silver and gold. And then within silver and gold, we also find that the one that ended up being used as money was gold because it is the hardest. It's the hardest to increase the supply of gold. And that comes from the fact that gold is very scarce on Earth to an extent, but more important than the fact that gold is scarce on Earth

is the fact that gold is indestructible, which means that as long as it is being produced, it cannot be consumed. So there's no way of consuming gold that stops it from being gold. You heat it, it cools down, it's still gold. You mix it with other things, you can take them out, and it's still gold. So all of the gold that we've been producing for thousands of years have been accumulating

so that even though our technology for gold production continues to improve year on year, it never is able to generate a very large amount of gold to increase the stockpals of the gold that exists. In other words, we continue to add onto this growing pile, and that pile never shrinks because we're never consuming the gold. And so therefore, if you look historically, you see that annual production always adds up to around 1.5 to 2% of the global supply per year. So that's the supply growth rate for gold. Every year we're increasing the supply of gold by about 1 to 2%, which is the hardest naturally occurring substance on Earth. That's why it's the hardest money. And that's why I argue in the book, that's why it ended up being the world's money at the end of the 19th century.

I think it's an extremely compelling argument. I've heard no coherent counter argument for why the hardest metal to produce, the metal whose supply is the hardest to increase, the one with the lowest supply growth rate. Why that would become the money other than the fact that this is the most important property in money, or at least one of the most important properties in money. So why not silver? Why not copper? Why not nickel? And the answer is that gold is the one that has the lowest supply growth rate. So historically, we see many examples that support this.

We see that when a money that is hard is interacting with a money that is easy and it's a certain society, the easy money gets destroyed. The value in stored and the easy money gets destroyed. So we saw this with the seashells in YAP Island. once modern technology came to Yap Island and there's a story of an Irish-American captain who gets shipwrecked on that island and then realizes why those people are using limestones as money, I could use modern technology to produce a lot of limestones

and come and buy everything on this island, buy all the coconuts that they have and make a good fortune. And so he goes and he produces a lot of the limestone, he comes to the island and he's able to get a lot of their coconut and it destroys the value of the money in the island. In fact, there was a movie with Bert Lancaster done about this. It's called His Majesty or Keefe, which I also mentioned in the book. So we see these examples over and over and over again.

We see it in West Africa when Europeans started coming to West Africa. They saw that they were using glass beads as money. Europeans could make glass beads cheaply and easily in Europe, so they would fill up entire boat hulls with glass beads, go to Africa, West Africa, and use those glass beads to buy all the resources there. and because those things were rare in Africa, they became money. And so Europeans were able to buy everything in West Africa, including eventually slaves. And that's why these beads are known as the slave beads, because they were effectively money

that the people of Europe could print and go to Africa and buy everything that West Africans had. And so we see these relationships happen over and over and over again. Easy money gets destroyed when it comes in contact with harder money. simply because people who put their money in the easy money witness the value of that money decline over time because more and more of it is produced. And the people who put their money in the harder money witness the value of their wealth grow over time because nobody has an easy way of making more of it.

And so just for folks that, you know, to hammer it home one more time, this concept of hard money is money that cannot be easily mass produced, right? And gold, again, just to reinforce the points that you shared here, is the ultimate hard money. from a natural recurring resource standpoint, right? Because it's hard to mine. It's rare. You cannot produce it. Alchemy was this whole obsession for countless people throughout the ages, and nobody's ever been able to manufacture gold. It can't be destroyed. It's easy to manipulate, getting large quantities and small quantities. So it's a nearly perfect, naturally occurring substance to be used for money long term, although it has no, you know, real intrinsic value. There's no use for it other

than money in a lot of applications. Walk us through the, you know, I think one of the things you point out in your book is the dangers of easy money for, you know, look, there's, these are horrible outcomes that you just articulated with easy money destroying local currency, allowing outsiders to take advantage of locals. But there's also dangers you point out in debasing of currency and making money easy for civilizations. Can you walk us through some of those examples? Yeah, absolutely. And in the Fiat standard, my second book, I get into this in a little bit more detail. I think the way that I would understand it is this. Human progress is inextricably intertwined with the increased hardness of our money. In that as we advance our technology, we find harder and harder monies. And as we find harder and harder monies,

we're able to store our future wealth in these harder monies for the future more effectively. the harder the money, the more likely we are to get, to maintain the value that we store in the money for the future. And so therefore, when we have a process where our money keeps getting harder over time, which is what has historically been the case, we're constantly able to provide for our future at an increasingly efficient rate. And so this is a huge deal. You know, we start realizing, oh, wow, we can provide for our future. And if we can provide for our future, we start thinking about the future more. We start discounting the present, discounting the future less.

And so that's the concept of time preference. Time preference is the degree to which you discount the future compared to the present. And everybody discounts the future compared to the present. Because the present is here, it's real, it's certain. You're in it. You need to experience it. Whereas the future is always uncertain. There's always a risk and a chance that the future might not come about because you could die.

And so everybody discounts the future to an extent. but progress and civilization is our struggle to discount the future less and less and less and less. We're still going to discount it, but we keep discounting it to a lesser degree, and therefore, that allows us to provide for it more. And so the harder our money, the better we are able to provide for the future, the more we are able to think of the future, the less we discount the future, the more future-oriented we are, the more we progress in civilizational terms, the more we save for the future,

the more we accumulate capital. And the more we save and accumulate capital, the more productive we become. And so that's really what lowers our time preference and expands our horizon for economic decision-making. Rather than just being animals that focus on satisfying our immediate needs, we curb our animalistic instincts and subjugate them to our reason,

subjugate them to our mental ability to think about the consequences and about the future. And we prioritize the future. So you don't just do what feels right at the moment you do what is better for you in the long term. And that's really human progress. So all throughout history,

we're moving toward harder and harder money and making our monies harder, which is allowing us to provide more for the future, allowing us to save more, allowing us to invest more, allowing us to bring interest rates down, because interest rates are determined by the degree to which we save or by the degree of our time preference. And so human progress is this process of money getting harder, savings going up in value, capital becoming more available, interest rates declining,

people becoming more long-term oriented, and therefore becoming more peaceful, more cooperative, more civilized. That's really the process of human civilization. And that's all of human history up until the early 19th century, early 20th century. And then early 20th century, we take an incredible, inexplicable, due turn and decide to start heading back. And that's why the subtitle of my second book, The Fiat Standard, is that slavery alternative to human civilization. If Bitcoin is an alternative to central banks, fiat is an alternative to human civilization

itself. The process of human civilization is we constantly move toward the harder money and become more future-oriented and more capital accumulating and more civilized. Fiat money has reversed that because it's taken away from us the ability to use a money that is growing at only one or two percent per year, which is gold, and replaced with monies that grow at around an average over the last 60 years of 14 percent per year. So we've roughly 10xed the monetary supply growth rate in the 20th century. And so 14 percent per year means. that you basically lose half of the money that you have stored in a form in your money.

You lose half of the value stored in your money in about five years. And so that's the average globally. So some people obviously have it better where their money only increases and supply at around six, seven, eight percent per year. And that's, you know, the economies like the U.S. and Switzerland and Sweden and Denmark, the best performing fiat currencies only increase at around 7 percent per year. And then, of course, the worst performers increase at 100, 200, maybe 500% per year. Examples like Venezuela and Zimbabwe and Lebanon currently.

So between these different modes of operation for the Fiat standard, we see the average is about 14% over the past 60 years from 1960 to 2020. And at 14%, that massively compromises your ability to provide for your future. and that destroys your ability to think of the future. The future becomes more and more uncertain because you have no easy way for providing for it. You need to go out and invest. You need to become an investment expert.

You need to figure out an investment thesis. You need to become an expert in all kinds of different industries in order to be able to just provide for your future. This is why I think perhaps the worst thing about fiat money is that you have to earn it twice. You have to earn it first when you do your work to earn it. And then you have to earn it again by investing it in a way that beats inflation so that you can continue to maintain it.

It's money that you need to work for twice. Even though it's the same money, you know, you've already, say you're a dentist, you went out there, you fixed somebody's deed, they paid you. You can't just save that money for five years from now. You can't say, all right, well, I'm going to retire five years from now and I'd like to have this money available for me. Because in five years' time, for the average fiat user, half of that money is gone. now you need another job on top of being a dentist of figuring out how can I keep this money

valuable five years from now. And so that involves studying and understanding stocks, studying and understanding bonds, real estate markets, commodities markets, doing all kinds of different investments, diversifying your portfolio, which is another job. And so it's very difficult for you to be a dentist and also an investment professional. And that's why we see everybody loses the ability to save. Everybody needs to become an investment expert at the expense of their job. like you to define fiat currency for those listening yes so and what we what the term fiat means is decree it's it's something that is true because of an authority's decree and so fiat money is money because government says this is money government decrees that you need to accept it and government

decides the market value that you can pay for it so this is the distinction the distinction is between fiat money and sound money sound money is money that emerges out of the market's choice. In other words, people freely choose to use this thing as money, and they freely choose to accept whatever price they want to accept for it. That's sound money. Fiat money, on the other hand, is money that is not about your choice. It does not involve your choice. You do not choose to make it your money. It is enforced upon you by coercion. So the difference is between peace and coercion, really, and the differences between money that emerges because of its properties because of its suitability as money, and the money that is imposed upon you because of

its suitability to the people imposing it on you. And that's the term for government money, basically. In the context of fiat currency, one of the arguments for fiat is this concept that a little bit of inflation, 2% increase in the money supply, for example, on an annual basis, encourages economic investment and use of proceeds rather than just accumulation and hoarding for the future, for example, and that there are dangers associated with deflation from a truly hard currency for the economy. Sounds like you would not agree with that premise. Could you share your thoughts?

No, absolutely not. I don't just disagree with it. I think this is one of the most catastrophic and downright criminal pieces of propaganda that have been foisted on humanity in the 20th century. It's absolutely insane that the idea of people saving for the future is vilified as the cause of economic problems, when in reality it is the only reason that we can have any form of economic growth. The only reason we have any kind of economic improvement is because people defer consumption, delay gratification, choose to invest their resources, and therefore these resources become available

as capital resources for investment, allowing for increasing productivity. So the natural market process is to choose, as I was saying earlier, the thing that is money is, the thing that is the hardest to make. That's the natural process of the market. We take for whatever is money, the thing that is the hardest thing to make, simply because that ends up being money, whether we choose it consciously or not, just because it appreciates more over time. So the people who use it as money benefit at the expense of people who don't. So it's natural that money would appreciate in value slightly compared to other goods. Other goods are easier to make. We always make more cars, more homes, more everything, every year, more computers every year. And

their prices declined compared to money. And that's how it should be. And that's what it is in advanced technologically important fields. You know, your computer keeps getting cheaper every year. Your phone keeps getting cheaper every year. It keeps getting better and faster per dollar that you pay for it. Is that a bad thing? Has this been detrimental to the computer industry? You know, is Apple suffering from the fact that their laptop this year is much cheaper than what it was 10 years ago? No, it absolutely is not. In fact, it's only getting cheaper because of the increased productivity and Apple is only becoming profitable

because of its ability to offer you better and faster and stronger computers every year. So it's simply the process of economic growth. Deflation and a drop in prices is just simply economic growth. We get more things rather than more money and so therefore the value of the things compared to that money declines. And so for a consumer, for a saver,

this is a very good thing. The money that you earn today, you can save it for the future and it would appreciate more and more, and that would cause you to be able to buy more with it. So that incentivizes people to save more. And that, in turn, allows for more capital to be available, which in turn incentivizes people to produce more. And therefore, with the increased availability of capital,

with the increased saving, we have an increased availability of capital, which leads to an increase in economic growth and an increase in economic production. So therefore, it's really the increase in the value of money is nothing but economic growth and the process of civilization. And the idea that we need to destroy the value of money in order for consumption to happen is astonishingly idiotic. And people need to consume because they need to survive. People don't need to consume because they need to keep this magical monster called. the economy alive. This notion that we have this god of the economy that we need to sacrifice by destroying our money's value for is truly idiotic. And it's it's it's it's absolutely insane

that it gets taught in universities. And it's if you were taught this stuff at the university, I'm sorry you got scammed out of your youth and your money to be taught this stuff. But the notion that a decline in prices is detrimental for an economy is completely absurd. And again, we look at the example of the high-tech industry. Everywhere around us, we see prices continue to drop and we see the industry continue to grow. I mean, I ran the numbers on this. If you wanted to buy a 10-Magabyte hard drive in 1981 or something like that, 10 megabytes of data cost $3,500 today.

Today you can buy 16 gigabytes of data for something like $10 on a thumb drive. So the cost has gone down more than a million fold or so. And yet we witness enormous growth in the high-tech industry, enormous growth in computing power, enormous growth in the productivity of computing, and enormous drop in the prices. So the process of lowering prices is just the process of economic growth and productivity. and we do not need to be saved from it. In fact, the only reason anybody could possibly believe something so outlandishly stupid

is that they benefit from it. And that's why, you know, if you look at all the supposed economists who support this ridiculous idea, you will notice that without exception, every single one of them gets paid their salary from inflation. They are hired by universities that receive their money from governments through inflation. The universities are subsidized both by research money from government and subsidized loans for students who pay their tuition from government. So it's entirely down to self-interest that anybody could possibly believe something so atlantic. Well, remember in the early 80s when VCR's first came out,

they were like $800 or $1,000. Now you can go to, well, I was going to say Circuit City, they're not around anymore either. Now you can go to Best Buy and get one for like $20. It's just as you get better at making them as you have more competition, everything goes down in price, like all of these, like technology wise. So that just seems like a silly argument. Oh, Apple's not going to do well because their computers are less expensive. I'm sorry, aren't they sitting on a giant fat watt of cash like billions and billions of dollars in just cash sitting there waiting to be deployed? Yeah.

And how, you know, if, why don't they? move to Venezuela, like if they want higher prices, ask yourself, why don't Apple and Google and all these enormous companies that are constantly suffering from a reduction in the prices of their goods, why do they go to Venezuela where inflation can keep up with technological improvements and their laptops will become more expenses of every year? Somehow, the high-tech industry in Venezuela has not succeeded in using this inflationary advantage to their benefit at the expense of the high-tech industry in countries with relatively decent. currencies. Interesting, isn't it? Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people

actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your tax refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop.

Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code Pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves in Edle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code Pock at Monarch.com for half off your first year.

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to all customers. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money free. Let's talk about hard currency and Bitcoin in general. How does Bitcoin solve this hard currency issue? Bitcoin is like the end solution to this and it solves it in a way that is just it solves it and it stays solved. It fixes it and it stays fixed.

There's no, we're not going to suffer from this problem forever. That's basically the idea. with Bitcoin because it's the one money that ends all money. And the reason for that is that it is the one money that's going to have the lowest supply growth rate ever. And it's currently at around 2% per year. But it's going to continue to go down until eventually it hits 0%. And so the truly astonishing and unique achievement of Bitcoin is that this process was set in motion. The creation of Bitcoin was set in motion and the network continued to grow. But the supply of Bitcoin is fixed and the total amount of Bitcoin that we have available is completely fixed.

And there is no way of making more and more of it. There's no way of increasing the supply that is out there. And nobody has found a way to increase the supply in the 14 years that Bitcoin has been around. So this is truly astonishing because we've had this piece of software running for 14 years. And it had a schedule for Bitcoin production. You know, a schedule that said every 10 minutes we're going to be making this many Bitcoins. initially it was 50 Bitcoin every 10 minutes for the first four years and then it was pre-programmed to drop by half from 50 to 25 in the second four years and then the third period the third four-year period

we'd have the drop from 12 and a half from 25 to 12 and a half and then in the fourth period which is now the fourth four-year period which is where we are right now it dropped from 12 and a half to six and a quarter Bitcoin every 10 minutes and it's continues to drop by half every four years until eventually the new supply goes to zero in about 100 years from now. So this has been the schedule that was laid out for Bitcoin's operation from day one. And the network is more or less abided by it. And we are at a point right now where more than 90% of all of the Bitcoin that has been, that will ever exist has already been mined. So the way that this is skewed is that there's a heavy production at the beginning, very fast production at the

beginning and now we're already, we've already had the first 90% of production in the first 10 years, and then the next 100 years or so are only going to have the last 10%. And then the majority of that is in the coming few years as well. So the supply growth is constantly declining. And that in turn means that the monetary asset that is Bitcoin is going to become the hardest money in the world. It's roughly around the same range of hardness right now as gold. In other words, the supply of gold increases it around 1.5 to 2%. Bitcoin currently increases it around 1.8% per year. But in 2024, it's going to drop by half, so it's going to be increasing it a little less than 1% per year. So we're going to have about 1% per year supply increase, which we've never had a

form of money that increases this little, that has this little of an increase. So because of this, you know, Bitcoin is built to be a living refutation of the idea that we need prices to rise in order for the economy to work. So the Bitcoin economy continues to grow. We have currently more than about $350 billion worth of Bitcoin. The size of the economy and the size of the daily transactions continues to grow in the long term. There's high volatility and oscillation day to day,

but if you zoom out, you see that the picture is just continuous growth over time. So the economy continues to grow even though the supply does not grow. So if I were a mainstream economist who believes, that we need an increase of the money supply in order for the economy to grow, I'd be asking myself questions at this point. But of course, you know, if you wouldn't make it as a mainstream economist, if you were honest enough to ask yourself questions,

you have to just basically repeat what the central bank pays you to say. And so that doesn't include asking honest questions. So it's already refuting this, and we're seeing that it continues to grow. And if it continues to grow, there's no reason why it should stop at any point in time. I think the point that I make in the first few chapters of the Bitcoin standard is that money is an all-conquering technology. It's not a technology where you can just decide, you know what, I'm going to use this thing. Like if everybody wants to use a Mac and like 10% of people want to use Linux, Linux can survive. But money is different.

If 90% of people end up on a form of money, the other 10% are not going to have their own money. They're just going to be destitute and their money is going to be destroyed. So with money, there's no, it's not optional. You need to choose the technology that is the most suitable for the role, because if you don't, then the money will be destroyed. And what we're seeing is basically, if you understand this dynamic and you look at how the world has worked over the last century or so, you see that basically we're witnessing the process of the monetization of Bitcoin, where more and more people are using Bitcoin,

and the more people use Bitcoin, we can't make more. Bitcoin for them. The only way to meet increasing demand is for the value of the Bitcoin to increase. And so we're witnessing a very rapid rise in the value of Bitcoin and a decline in the value of all other monies. And I think this is a trend that's likely to continue into the long term. Can you walk us through what, why Bitcoin is hard? Give us one level deeper, maybe five minute explanation on that and how the blockchain specifically is a tool that is useful for Bitcoin. And to set this up, this is a two-part question. So your thesis that I found very interesting was that the blockchain is really relevant

only to Bitcoin or only to the true long-term currency that that is the hardest. And it is not useful in other applications. So could you walk us through your sentiments on that? Yeah. So, I mean, I imagine the best form of skepticism here is to ask, well, what guarantees to us that Bitcoin is really 21 million. And this is, of course, the major issue that I had with Bitcoin when I first heard about it.

And incidentally, the most expensive mistake of my life because it led to me dismissing Bitcoin for the first few years when I heard about it when it was very cheap. And then, you know, just being the kind of smartass who comes up with objections rather than read about something is a very expensive mistake. It's very easy to just say, oh, well, it's just code. and if it can be programmed to make 21 million,

then it can be programmed to make 21 billion, and then you can change the code to do anything you want. And so I'm not going to bother read about Bitcoin and learn about how it works, because who cares about all of this nerd stuff because I'm an economist, and I know that if you can change the supply, then the whole thing doesn't matter.

Well, you know, years go by, and Bitcoin continues to refuse to die, and then you start digging into how it actually works, and then you start realizing, oh, I've made a huge mistake. I should have studied this thing from the beginning. And the answer is really, if you look at how it works, you see that Bitcoin is not so much code. It's also the unique process that this code has taken

and the unique path that this code has taken since it was initiated since it was first released up until today. There's a series of serendipitous perhaps, or maybe by design, accidents or developments that have happened in certain ways, which allow us to have Bitcoin in the current shape that we have it today, and without which we wouldn't really have it functioning in this way. And so the main and most important thing about Bitcoin is the fact that it is immutable

and that it is not an individual's liability. So it's not somebody's private currency, that they can just change the supply for. The most important thing, really, is that nobody can change it. So why is that the case? And why has it not applied to any of the other digital currencies is perhaps the crucial point you need to understand about Bitcoin? And this is why, in my opinion, the only digital currency that matters is Bitcoin.

I think every single other digital currency, every single one, and I mean that definitively is a complete waste of time. every single one of them is completely doomed. Could you share the professional term that you use to describe these other coins? Bitcoin's. So there's Bitcoin's and then Bitcoin's. Exactly. Digital currencies are divided into two categories.

Bitcoin and Bitcoin. That's just basic science. Perfect. Walk us through the mechanism by which Bitcoin prevents supply growth. Yeah. So the reason, the way that it happens is that the person who released Bitcoin, they released that software and they allowed anybody online to download it and run it. And then anybody who downloads that software becomes a peer on the network equal to all the other peers.

Now, again, you can do this with any form of software, but the difference is that with Bitcoin, the person who did it kept themselves anonymous and then disappeared a year after he released it. And who knows what has happened to him, you know, maybe he's with us, maybe he's dead, maybe he's gone. Maybe he's changed his name and is still somewhere out there. right sold all his bitcoins maybe potentially who knows but at this point it doesn't even matter what has happened to him because the thing is far outgrown him you know the the frankenstein has left the lab and it doesn't matter if the lab owner goes back to the lab anymore frankenstein is not in the lab and they can't control it anymore they can't carry out experiments they can't hook it up into things

so um bitcoin grew even though the owner disappeared and it grew in a system where it had no admins it had only users. And so this is really why it's a little bit of a Frankenstein in that it's something that grew to have a life of its own, just like Frankenstein, and that, you know, it was just a bunch of organs which you could tie together in a lab. But once it clicks, once it has a life of its own, then it's no longer just a toy in the hands of the manufacturer. It's just its own thing.

It's its own living creature. And so Bitcoin is kind of like that. It's this form of digital life, if you want. it's this program that operates only with users but no admins. And this is truly remarkable when you think about it because we don't really have anything like this. You know, when you think about the major computer networks that you use, Facebook has an admin. Apple has an admin. You know, you could wake up tomorrow and you realize your phone no longer does this thing because

the people in charge of it have downloaded an update to your software and now your software can't do this. That app is removed. or your account is closed for whatever infraction that you've carried out. So there's an admin in the Apple network and you're just a user. And there is a very clear distinction between the two of you. It seems true for Amazon, for Facebook, for Google, for all of these major digital networks of our age. Bitcoin is the only one that only has a user. So it's a purely peer-to-peer network.

And so this is a software thing. but the unique thing about Bitcoin is that it is the only one that has truly managed to truly make the claim that there is nobody in charge. There's no string puller out there moving this Frankenstein monster. This Frankenstein monster is really moving alone. And the reason for that is that if you look at all the others, it's absolutely trivial for you to find out who the string pullers are. There are no other Frankensteins.

They're just dolls and they have strings and there's somebody out there. and that somebody is just out there trying to convince you that if we just, you know, if we keep pulling strings hard and long enough, eventually this Frankenstein doll is going to turn into a Frankenstein monster as well. And he'll be just like Bitcoin. It isn't. Bitcoin truly became unique because there was nobody in charge and the guy disappeared. Now, after Bitcoin came into existence, anybody who's looking for a form of money that

doesn't, that isn't under the control of anybody, anybody who's looking for a form of money that is free of an admin, anybody who's looking for a phone with money that's truly neutral, is going to use Bitcoin. And they have no reason to go use something that's nascent, that doesn't have the track record of Bitcoin, that's untested, that's untried, that has a smaller network. So the only way that another network can compete with Bitcoin is if it has active management, is if it has a small group of people behind it, advertising it, promoting it, working on coding it, protecting it, allowing it to grow and preventing attacks to happen to it. In other words, once Bitcoin was invented, not only is it difficult to have another Frankenstein.

It's practically impossible to make another Frankenstein that just doesn't get completely ignored and drowns in the sea of irrelevance because we already have a working Einstein, Frankenstein, and everybody wants to use the most secure one. nobody has any use for a less secure Frankenstein, for a less secure network. So therefore, there's no natural organic market demand for a less secure Bitcoin. It's natural that you would only just go to the most secure ones.

So the only demand can be manufactured by promoting it, by marketing it, and that requires centralization. And the result of this is if you look at all the digital currencies other than Bitcoin, you see that they've all got, foundations and important individuals. They all make updates to the network that happen on a very regular schedule.

And these updates are constantly being pushed forward from the admins to the users. It's a lot more similar to Apple or Google or all these other networks. Now, there's nothing wrong with the centralized network of admins and users. That's perfectly legitimate. I'm not saying that everything that centralized is bad. Centralization is just the division of labor. But in the case of money, it is bad because we have an alternative that, and you don't need the central manager, all you need is predictable rules.

And so with Bitcoin, we've managed to create a form of money that doesn't have any authority, that doesn't have a master key, that doesn't have a backdoor, that is completely transparent that allows you to know exactly how many coins there are at any point in time, and that allows you to be very, very, very confident in the fact that nobody's going to change the total supply of the coins or take away your coins or do changes to your coins that might affect you negatively. You can be sure of that because you're sovereign over your own node and over the own code that is in your node. And that basically is the best thing that you could do with money.

You don't need anything more with money. You don't need a money supply that increases. On the contrary, you need a money supply that is not increasing and you need a money supply that can't be increased. So all the other digital currencies are betting on the fact that adding an admin to your Frankenstein will make your Frankenstein faster or stronger or better. But the whole point of having this monetary Frankenstein is that you don't want to have anybody in charge. You don't want to have anybody string pulling it. So the only reason Bitcoin is valuable is precisely because it isn't anybody's liability. It's because nobody controls it.

It's because it's a digital commodity and not a digital security. which is a very, very important distinction if you think of securities law. Bitcoin is not a security because it's never been offered as an investment contract by anybody. There wasn't ever anybody who sold Bitcoin in an ICO or an IPO. Bitcoin, you just, somebody put out the code out there for people to download it and then anybody could download it

and anybody could make those coins and then send those coins. And then at some point, people decided to start trading those coins for money. that's when Bitcoin became a commodity, but it was never a security. With all the other digital currencies, they are securities because they were offered for sale initially, and there was a pre-mine where the people who produced them got a part of the coins,

and they sold it for Bitcoin or for other forms of money. And so there is an investment contract there, and so there is somebody in charge. And if there is somebody in charge, then you're just dealing with credit. You're effectively dealing with somebody's personal security. And so that's a completely different ballgame from Bitcoin. And I don't have a problem with securities.

I think securities are a good idea. And I think there is value for securities. But I definitely have a problem with all these digital currencies pretending to be currencies when they're in fact securities. And I believe this is just fraud. And I don't believe that they will ever have any kind of value because they are using an extremely elaborate and extremely expensive and inefficient way of running a security in order to pretend to be a commodity. That's why they are completely worthless, in my opinion.

So let's dive in on that point. The blockchain is an extremely expensive, but also insanely secure way to have a decentralized ledger for a digital currency like this. And you argue that the only practical application of the blockchain is for Bitcoin. And it's not a useful tool for title, for example, on housing or medical records or these other things. Could you explain that for a noob? Why is that the case fundamentally? Yeah, absolutely. This is, I think, a very important point which I made in my book, and it was kind of tangential to the main ideas of the book, but I think it was important to make it. And initially, you know, it was viewed as being extremely controversial and extremely unreasonable. How could you look at a world of 20,000 digital

coins and just decide, nope, only one of them matters and all the rest of them are garbage. But that indeed is the case. All the rest of them are, in fact, garbage. And the reasoning is, I think, ultimately, the only reason that you need this structure that is a blockchain is in order to make it so that you can transfer titles for the coin of the blockchain itself without having to resort to 30. parties. So it's a peer-to-peer mechanism of transferring money. But it's a peer-to-peer mechanism of transferring money that only works for the native token of the network itself. You can't transfer

other things because there's no mechanism of enforcing the link between that other thing and the blockchain. So the only thing that a blockchain can tell you, you know, the only thing the Bitcoin blockchain can tell you is who of the addresses on the network own which coins. So So it's just every 10 minutes we produce a ledger of this address has that many coins, that address has that many coins, that address has that many coins, every 10 minutes, we produce a new ledger of these, and we get that number of coins and transactions produced in order to update. That's the only thing that it can say.

Now, it cannot tell you anything about the real world. So if you wanted to say that each one of these coins represents an ounce of gold, you've not done anything more secure or more efficient or more reliable than just having a database in the hands of the person who has custody of the gold. Ultimately, if there's actual physical gold backing that blockchain, where is that gold? It's in somebody's vault. Who is that somebody? How do we know that he's not lying about the gold?

How do we know that there is, in fact, a gram of gold? for every single one of these coins that you have on the blockchain. You're completely reliant on them. And so then all that you're doing is just making things much more inefficient than if they just issued a security for that gold. You know, issued an investment contract where it said, yeah, you get this digital entry on my spreadsheet and that entitles you to redeem it,

that can be redeemed, that can be redeemed for a specific amount of gold. You're trusting them. And so adding a blockchain is not adding anything at all to that operation. It's not making it more reliable. It's not making it more transparent. It's not making it faster. In fact, it's making it more opaque, more expensive, and less efficient. It's just an extremely elaborate thing that you're adding.

And it serves no purpose. And the only people think it serves any kind of purpose is just, again, laziness. People don't really understand what's going on. And they reasoned by analogy. They reasoned by just, you know, what would be nice. Like this sounds like a nice compromise. Ah, well, Bitcoin, hmm, that looks like it's too extreme and too crazy. But, hey, maybe we can just, you know, bargain with this reality wherein we take in, oh,

just let's use the technology behind Bitcoin and then use it with gold or real estate or whatever, and then we'll have this. It's like a form of bargaining that's completely meaningless. It's like saying, you know, oh, well, all these cars have engines. Yeah, these engine things look really iffy. But I think maybe if we got an engine and we put it inside the horse and then that will make the horse a little bit faster, then we don't need to get rid of the horse-drawn carriage.

We'll still have a horse-drawn carriage, but we'll have a surgically inserted engine inside the horse that'll make the horse that'll make the horse faster. and that will then, you know, we'll just run the horse on an engine and then the horse won't poop everywhere and that would give us the benefits of moving to an engine without the inconvenience of saying by to the horse that we love. So let's just stuff an engine up the horse and see how that works. This is the equivalent.

This is exactly what it is when people talk about putting gold or real estate on a blockchain. You are always reliant on whatever mechanisms exist for enforcement of, contracts on these assets, whether they're homes or gold or whatever it is or commodities. And so therefore, adding this kind of decentralized circus on top of it is just an excess cost. And it's something that's been done now for eight years or so. People have been riding this hobby horse of blockchain technology is going to change this and it's going to change that and it's going to change everything. And we've not seen a single commercially viable use case.

We've seen so much money being spent on, oh, you know, J.B. Morgan are studying using a blockchain for this or that. And Goldman Sachs are studying and using blockchain for this or this or that. They spent a lot of money, generates a couple of press releases. None of them has ever gone anywhere. And I will bet you none of them will go anywhere. It's just always going to be the case that the only thing that you can do with the blockchain is just run a trading, run a peer-to-peer transfer mechanism with the native token of the blockchain itself. So I have waffled over the years about buying, owning Bitcoin or not.

After I read your book, I bought some Bitcoin. And I lucked out because I bought it like 16 or something, I went up to 35. And then I actually don't own Bitcoin anymore. And I'll explain why in a second here. But what I, what the profound, in addition to the very compelling argument you've given around hard money, the profound concept that the blockchain itself is only purpose built to handle, the central currency of the world long term because of the way it's structured, because of the computing power requirements that go into it, and the ever, the insatiable demand for more and more

energy, which can only be efficiently deployed to one purpose, right? Because if you don't have all that energy going toward that, then a single source of computing power could take over the real estate, you know, a blockchain, for example, or even the gold block chain, those types of things, which would ruin the decentralized aspect of it. So I thought that was really fascinating. I'm sure some blockchain nerds will be out there thinking about that one and noodling on it and probably arguing with it and look forward to having that discussion. What's the ultimate value of Bitcoin long term? And how do you explain the recent fluctuations like the huge drop in 2022? Well, we've had a huge drop before. So this isn't anything unique. We always see this with

Bitcoin. So we get this halving where the, which I mentioned earlier, where the daily supply of Bitcoin drops by half. And then after that, we get a big spike in price because there's a shortage of the new Bitcoin. Let's say there's usually a certain amount of money that comes in on average per day, you know, new Bitcoin buying per day. And then there's also the new Bitcoin production per day. So supply demand will meet at a certain point. And they settle around the price. And then when you drop the supply by half, the only way to meet the demand, the excess demand over the supply is for the price to rise. And so then that causes the price to rise, which then causes people to pay attention to Bitcoin. So people start piling into Bitcoin.

So the price keeps going up more and more and more. And then that in its own then, you know, the price keeps going up. But that just makes the new Bitcoin that is being produced become more and more valuable. And then eventually we get the opposite dynamic where the value of the coins, becomes so high, the new production is so high, that the new buying can no longer keep up. But then at that point, we're at the leverage mania point where everybody's borrowing in order to buy because everybody believes it's going to keep going up forever and everybody's foaming in.

So there's a lot of money that goes in and the price keeps going up and a lot of the money is leveraged. But then once the money that is coming in can't keep growing at the same value as the new production of Bitcoin increases in value, then the price starts. to drop and then that liquidates everybody on leverage and then that forces the leveraged buyers to turn into forced sellers and then that exacerbates the drop even further so you get all of these liquidations so we've had this happen three times before but the interesting thing is that even after it happens you know bitcoin settles down at a level that is much higher than what happened

previously so in 2018 you know we dropped from uh late it was about 17 18000 19,000 dropped all the way to 3,000, 4,000 in 2018. And now here we are, you know, we've dropped from 64 to 18,000. So the lows continue to go up and the highs continue to go up. So there's a lot of oscillation along the way because the supply is changing and demand changes in unpredictable ways and because of leverage. But the long-term trend is that it continues to go up. So the long-term answer is, you know, what is the end kind of value for Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is basically Bitcoin continues to go up for as long as there are other monies with which to measure it. Once that transitional period is over and there are no other monies left, then the value of Bitcoin just goes up compared to goods and services slightly every year. Every year we have more apples, more oranges, more computers. And so computers and oranges and apples become slightly more affordable every year compared to Bitcoin. But the value of Bitcoin continues to go up because it's the hardest thing ever. So is it fair to say that the thesis, taking it to a logical extreme, is that Bitcoin will ultimately be worth 1.22 millionth of the world economy in the ultimate long term, because

there will only be 21 million or 22? 21 million. It'll be worth 1.21 millionth of the world economy in its end state. And so that that would be the long term ultimate value? I wouldn't say the world economy, it would be worth 1 over 21 million of the world's cash balances. because the world economy is more than just cash. So, you know, think about it. Your portfolio would be, let's say, 15% cash, 30% real estate, 50% bonds and stocks, or stocks, let's say.

So it won't be 1 over 21 million of your real estate and your stocks. It'll be 1 over 21. One Bitcoin will be 1 over 21 million of your cash balance and everybody's cash balances. That's, I think, the end state. I don't see any money surviving in the long term next to Bitcoin. I see Bitcoin basically measuring all other forms of money. And so everybody's cash balances are going to end up in Bitcoin. That's how I see it in the long run.

There's a number of arguments that I love the premise that you have here. And I agree that if there's going to be one currency that takes over, it would be Bitcoin. There are a whole bunch of challenges around, hey, can the governments stop that? how long going to take, all that kind of stuff. If one of the big challenges with Bitcoin is people lose it, right? And, you know, unlike gold, when you lose it, it's kind of gone, right? You're never going to be able to log in and access that, again, on the blockchain because of how secure it is.

Any thoughts on the deflationary effects of Bitcoin in the sense that not only are we going to have a limited supply, but it's actually going to dwindle over time as people lose their keys. Yeah, I think that's also very good for anybody who doesn't lose their keys. I mean, it's just constantly appreciating more and more. And yeah, I think, you know, for me, the reason that I found Bitcoin so fascinating is that before Bitcoin was invented, from the perspective of the Austrian School of Economics, which is what I follow and what I write in that tradition, the Austrians would say that if there was an ideal money, it would be a money whose supply is fixed and we wouldn't have way of making more of it.

And that really is, in my opinion, the most important litmus test to distinguish a proper economist from a central bank propagandist, which is that the central bank propagandist has an endless number of questions and an endless number of reasons, rationalizations for why the money supply needs to keep growing. None of them hold water. None of them are, none of them is coherent. none of them is justifiable. You don't need the money supply to increase.

You want the money supply to not increase. And the less you can increase it, the better. And all of history is humanity's struggled to find the money that is harder to increase. And so, yeah, over time, you're just going to, I mean, you're just going to see the value of Bitcoin continue to increase over time. But having said that, I think over time also we're going to develop more reliable ways of maintaining Bitcoin, having backups so that in case anything gets destroyed, there's always a backup that prevents things from going badly.

I think we're going to get more efficient at these things, so likely we'll see less and less losses happen. Saifidine, thank you very much for your incredible philosophy, thought process on this, your knowledge of this, making it accessible to people, and helping folks understand with the why behind why Bitcoin is a potential future currency, for the world and why it has such inherent advantages over both fiat currencies from governments

and coins that exist out there in the thousands or tens of thousands. So we really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Where can people find out more about you? My website, safeddin.com, where you can get chapters from my books as they're being written. You can read the draft of my fourth coming book, my third book, Principles of Economics. And you can also find me on Twitter at Seifidine.

And you can find my books basically on most online and some meat space booksellers. All right. That was Seifidine Amuse. Scott, what did you think of this episode? I really enjoyed learning from him. I've really enjoyed following him for a couple of years and reading his book. Again, the Bitcoin standard. Even if you're not interested in Bitcoin, it's a great overview of the history of money,

fiat currencies and all that other stuff. And I think that's what we got out of today's episode is really a masterclass in that Austrian School of Economics thinking and this way of viewing the world from a lens of having hard money instead of centralized banking. So I think it was fantastic. So I believe that at least as far as one can learn from Seifidine and his philosophy, that I understand what's going on in this space from a cryptocurrency perspective. And I think that's important. I think folks dismiss it or invest in it without really understanding what it is they're doing. When you invest in Bitcoin or when you buy Bitcoin, you are purchasing a currency, a currency that is designed to not lose value, right? I think that's reasonable from a crypto. I believe that Bitcoin over a long period of time may retain its value pretty well. I'm less confident that it will become, adopted by most of the world as their currency and that the long-term ultimate value of Bitcoin is one-21 millionth of the global money supplier, at least the global cash balances. I think that a lot of things have to come true for that to happen very quickly.

And like the collapse of the United States government, for example, which I am not ready to bet on as an individual. And furthermore, because of that, I think that Bitcoin is a potential great way to store value. For example, if you wanted to have a five-year cash cushion, I think that would be a great idea to put some of that cash cushion in dollars, because you want to spend dollars. We live in the United States. They're not going to accept Bitcoin at the bakery most of the time. I'd put some of it in gold and maybe some of it in Bitcoin. I think that would be a very reasonable way to allocate funds.

And I would do that if I ever wanted to build that five-year reserve across a couple of currencies. I think, though, however, that I'm willing to take on that second job. that we have to do in an inflationary society, which I thought was a great framework that he brought together. I want to do the job as CEO of Bigger Pockets and investor and steward of my wealth. And to that end, I believe that real estate, stocks, small businesses, those types of things are better investments than currencies. So I may miss out if the coin does in fact become the global reserve currency worth $1.21 million of the global cash balances or $1.21 million at the global economy. But I believe that I'm going to do better overall if I invest in

appreciating assets that become more in demand in real terms like real estate. I tend to agree with you in this statement, Scott. I can understand why someone, after listening to this episode feeling like they have a better understanding of Bitcoin, because now I do feel like I have a better understanding of Bitcoin, I'm still not raring to go out and just dump a bunch of money into Bitcoin. If you think that this is something you want to be, I hesitate to use the word invested in. I don't invest in yen. I don't invest in euros. I don't invest in Bitcoin. So I hesitate to use the word investment. But if you want to put some money into Bitcoin, don't dump it all in. When we had this huge drop in Bitcoin value in 2022, I saw people who put their life savings into this.

This is their only investment. And they watched it tumble. It was at 60. And they're like, oh, it's going to go higher. And they watched it now go down to 15. And they're crushed. And I think they're losing money because they don't know what they're doing. They're investing.

They're putting all of their eggs in one basket. they're doing the exact wrong thing when it comes to investing and saving for the future. And, you know, I hesitate to recommend, like, I wouldn't put all of my eggs in one stock basket either. I invest heavily in the stock market, but that's not the only place that I invest my money. I also have my money in real estate. I have my money in a lot of different things. It's all in the United States. I am heavily pro the U.S.

So, you know, I guess in that term, I'm all in one basket there. But honestly, if the U.S. collapses, we have way bigger problems. But I think that if this is something that you want to do, like be cautious when you're dipping your toe in. If you've got $50,000, don't put all $50,000 of those dollars into one thing. Try it out with $100 or $1,000. I mean, even $1,000 out of $50,000 does a lot of money to put in one thing. but try it out and see what happens and watch the price and watch the roller coaster and see how you do with that before you throw more money into it. I'm not totally against Bitcoin now with his explanation, but again, I'm not chomping at the bit to go dump some money in there.

Looks like I'll have a conversation with Carl. Yeah. And so, look, I'll leave this with the part. I think Bitcoin is a, you should think of it as digital gold. That's how I think of it. Right. And I think that's a very compelling take. that's a really powerful thing. And here, here's Warren Buffett on gold, right? If you took all the

gold in the world, it would make a cube roughly 67 feet on a side. Now, for that same cube of gold at the then current prices, it'd be worth about $7 trillion. That's about a third of all the value of all the stocks in the United States. And for that same $7 trillion, he could at the time have bought seven Exxon mobiles, all of the farmland in the United States, and have a trillion dollars of walking around money. And if you offered me the choice between some 67 foot Cuba gold, I'm still quoting him, and looking at it all day, you know, touching it, fondling it occasionally, call me crazy, but I, Warren Buffett, I'll take the farmland and the eggs on mobiles. And I think that's the essence of my position on Bitcoin specifically and gold specifically is, is why would I hoard a bunch

of gold or digital gold and sit on it for a very long period of time instead of, investing in income-producing assets that can appreciate in value like ExxonMobiles, Googles, Googles, apples, and land and real estate that produce income. So that's my position. There are really good arguments against that if you believe that's going to become the World Reserve currency, of course it could appreciate more rapidly than there's other investments that I personally make. But that's how I've backed out into my philosophy from all this. So if you think that Bitcoin is going to become the World Reserve currency and become $121 million for the global money supply, then yeah, you'd make a bet on, or you'd put more,

you'd allocate more to owning Bitcoin than to those investments that I just articulated. But for me, I feel like that's a higher probability bet, and there are still some questions about the speed and whether or not that will ultimately come to pass with wide-scale Bitcoin adoption, at least in my lifetime. I couldn't say it better than you, Scott, so I'm not going to. Should we get out of here? Let's do it. Okay. That wraps up this. fascinating episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying see you soon, Baboon. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple.

And if you're looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash Bigger Pockets Money. Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kaelin Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copyrighting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.