BTC Sessions - AI House of Cards, Dystopia Warning, Bitcoin Mining Wins | Samson Mow & Jeff Booth

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

073: Why AI Mania Is a Trillion-Dollar Trap, Why Freedom Is Eroding Into Real-Time Dystopia, and How Bitcoin Mining Absorbs the Entire Oversupply | Samson Mow & Jeff BoothThe fiat debt system is mathematically insolvent — and Jeff Booth and Samson Mow lay out exactly why the pain is coming whether you own Bitcoin or not. This is one of the most direct conversations on financial sovereignty, AI capital misallocation, and the closing window for individual freedom you'll find anywhere in 2026.You'll learn why Jeff believes the 4-year Bitcoin cycle theory has been broken and what's actually driving sideways price action right now. You'll see how Samson connects AI infrastructure over-investment to a dot-com-style collapse — and why Bitcoin mining is positioned to absorb the fallout. You'll understand the specific tools — Fedimint, Aqua Wallet, self-custody, running a node — that let you exit the system before governments restrict freedom of movement. And you'll hear both guests explain why AI will eviscerate DeFi protocols like Ethereum and Solana, draining funds and pushing survivors back to Bitcoin.⏱️ Timestamps:0:00 - Intro1:09 - Introducing Jeff Booth and Samson Mow2:00 - Bitcoin Four-Year Cycle Theory Is Broken3:17 - AI Driving Capital Rotation From Bitcoin4:49 - AI Mania Dwarfs the Dot-Com Bubble7:47 - Local AI Inference and Oversupply Risks11:40 - Stablecoins Trap Users in Fiat14:34 - Are Cypherpunks Disappearing From Bitcoin?16:22 - Barriers to Nation-State Bitcoin Adoption22:20 - Fiat Debt System Is an Illusion31:17 - Governments Will Restrict Freedom of Movement33:51 - We Are Already Living in the Matrix41:47 - Bitcoin ETFs: Evolution or Centralized Capture?47:54 - Practical Steps to Reclaim Sovereignty51:44 - Fedimint and Essential Bitcoin Privacy Tools54:24 - AI Accelerating Altcoin Death Spiral57:50 - Liquid, Lightning and Aqua Wallet Explained🔗 Links & Resources:• Jan3: https://jan3.com• Samon X: https://x.com/Excellion• Jeff Booth's website: https://jeffreybooth.com/• Jeff NOSTR: [e-mail]• Sovereign Sessions — AI, Privacy, and Bitcoin education: http://youtube.com/@SovereignSessions?sub_confirmation=1📌 Previous Episodes: Simon Dixon and Dave Collum → https://youtu.be/cqQ5l2zZxrA⚡ POWERED by Abundant Mines: Fully managed Bitcoin mining. Learn more at https://qrco.de/bgYKPB🔒 Lockdown your Bitcoin with the BEST gear on the market from Coinkite. Get the 5% Off the COLDCARD visit: https://qrco.de/bfiDBV💡BOOK Private Sessions with Nathan, Gary, or Ben at Bitcoin Mentor: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more. 👉 Visit btcmentor.io Follow Us on X:• BTC Sessions: @BTCsessions• Nathan: @theBTCmentor#Bitcoin #BTC #BTCSessions #BitcoinSovereignty #FinancialFreedom #SelfCustody #JeffBooth #SamsonMow #BitcoinAdoption #AquaWallet #AIBubble #AIMania #BitcoinMining #Dystopia #BitcoinVsAI #BitcoinMacro #BitcoinPodcast #Bitcoiners #MacroEconomics #aistocks

Does this cycle feel different? The cycle theory has been broken. There's no direct parallel. Everybody was saying the internet's dead. And while you're watching adoption go straight up, Bitcoin is as healthy. It's healthier than it's ever been. When we hit 200,000, 300,000, that's when the countries are going to perk up. Governments will start to limit and prohibit freedom of movement.

They will just stop you from leaving. And that has been thrown out there in discourse. We're not that far from being pods in the matrix. It's already the matrix. feeding on your mind now. You are already plugged into it. You just don't know you're plugged into it. AIs are just going to obliterate D5. Ethereum and Solana and whatever. They're all going to be just eviscerated by AI and drained of funds. And they're going to either retreat to Bitcoin or they're just going to be annihilated. There's a misallocation of capital, massive misallocation

of capital. People that don't believe in Bitcoin are probably going to be punished for not believing in Bitcoin. Quick team, I'm not going to ask you like a subscribe, but if you do want to help us keep going, share this episode with one person who you think needs to hear it. All right, so for today, we've got two of the biggest names in Bitcoin, Samson Mout, and Jet Booth, and you've never heard them like this. They go off on the AI-mania trap that's causing a massive misallocation of capital. We chat about the accelerated erosion of freedoms and the real-time slide into dystopia, and we start off by exploring why Bitcoin feels like nothing we've experienced before. All right, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you so much

for joining me today. Very excited to have this conversation. I kind of wanted to kick things off with a bit of an observation I had this morning. So thinking back, during the drawdown since October, we saw a whole bunch of fud narratives hit the mainstream. We had the quantum threat. We had the Epstein controls Bitcoin. We even had the guy from OC floating around and making the round some more. He resurfaced. But right now, it seems like there's nothing, neither positive nor negative. It almost feels like the mainstream has completely forgotten about Bitcoin. So, Samson, I'll start with you. Does this cycle in any way meaningfully feel different. What's your read on the current silence? So I don't really believe in cycles. I think they're all just a coincidence. It looked a

certain way for a four-year period and then it just happened to play out similarly in a few more. But I believe the cycle theory has been broken largely because we hit an all-time high before the halving. And that's never happened before. So everything that's happening now has never really been, there's no direct parallel to prior times. But I understand like people are frustrated right now because it feels like we're going sideways and nothing's happening. And I think that has to do with a few reasons, one of which is it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. People do believe in four-year cycles and they're thinking, well, we're going to hit a low end of this year in November or something like that to match prior cycles. But if it was that easy, you know,

everyone would be a trillionaire by now. And that's just not how things work. The other thing that I believe is impacting price is really just the rotation into capital right now in preparation of a few big IPOs this summer, SpaceX and then a few other ones, like Anthropic, I believe, and maybe a few more. But I think people are trying to prepare maybe they're hedging against Bitcoin going down, which I don't think it will, and they're going out to cash or stables. And they want to buy the IPOs, which I don't think is a good idea because everyone that got in at a good price

has already gotten in and you're kind of exit liquidity. So, you know, the people that don't believe in Bitcoin are probably going to be punished for not believing in Bitcoin, I believe. Interesting. Jeff, I'm curious to your thoughts on maybe attention and capital rotating. Yeah, We got SpaceX, we got Open AI, we got Anthropic. It really seems like AI is sucking the air out of the room, which feels kind of ironic. What's your read on the situation? Yeah, similar. So, again, I'm not measuring Bitcoin in a piece of paper.

I think it's a fool's errand because you're measuring something that's being debased. You know it has to be debased at an exponential rate, and you're choosing to measure Bitcoin in the thing that's being debased. So Bitcoin is measuring productivity and a measurement. measuring prices falling everywhere. It is a protocol measuring that. And so, so, but if you were measuring in pieces of paper, then you would be in every other hype cycle around and you'd be comparing to measure Bitcoin to every other hype cycle and things that are going to blow up cascade enormously bad, right? You'd be paying at the top

for, for SpaceX IPO. And, and these things, these things, these. things are actually probably going to trade down in a meaningful way as the unlock comes, comes in and people can sell their shares. So there'd be a hold period. So these things have to get out. Open A has to get out. And the money that they're lighting on fire to be able to build these businesses can't, is no sense to be able to pay that back. So some of these are going to collapse to the real market later on. And a whole bunch of people that ported from Bitcoin to these things are going to find the money that they thought was going to grow is going to disappear because it's all inside this kind of bubble of more and more manipulated money, whereas Bitcoin is that thing outside of that system. But you add all of what we're saying together.

And so where did Bitcoin start? Started from SaferPunks, wanting to remove money from state. Right. And you have a lot more of those people, too, in Bitcoin, building this protocol that's emerging. But what it would feel like in a world that's transitioning to this is as people came into this and they didn't understand that idea, it would feel like there were fewer of those people because they would be over the noise of alt coins and scams and this and that. and every, what is the Fed going to do tomorrow? What's Iran going to do tomorrow? The noise would just be deafening from the system that everybody's measuring from that is being debased at that rate.

Right. So, so, so I think Bitcoin is as healthy. It's healthier than it's ever been. It appears that there's a smaller group of people defending it when actually there's a really big group of people defending it and building on top of it. And it and it reminds me, by the way, in it. Because I was early in the internet, had a business in the internet in 1999, 2000, when Amazon dropped from $126 to $3, right? And our company almost failed.

It was brutal, right? And I remember going and trying to raise capital and everybody was saying the internet's dead. And while you're watching adoption go straight up to the right, well, people got liquidated by overbidding things that weren't, that didn't, make sense. So I think the same thing is happening right now and it's going to, that means if you're holding Bitcoin in self-custody and you're going to do exceptional. I don't know when the port comes back into this and the out of the other things that Samsung was talking about, but it is going to happen. Quickly, I just want to add one, I want to double tap on one thing there

as well. Because, yeah, Jeff, you had, it was a build direct through the dot com bubble and through the 08 crisis. I'm curious if the AI mania is at all reminiscent of the. those times as well, too, or maybe not. The AI mania is very, it's an order of magnitude, maybe orders of magnitude bigger. But if you think about global crossing 360 networks, so we're laying fiber at the time. Yep. It rhymes a lot with that. It was actually, it rhymes with the circular economy that was created there that things

wouldn't fail because you needed more fiber forever because of the growth of the internet, which caused the collapse of these valuations. were outrageous. And in some of these cases, Cisco, I think, took 25 years to get back to the pre-market price. Wow. Right. So this is all cause, and you can see it in a general condition around humanity. Everybody's short term, betting markets, everything is this, how do I make more money really fast? How do I lever that money to make more money really fast? And it's all because money's broken and they're taking more and more gambling inside the broken money to, and it spins on itself.

Now they're all inside this machine that's telling everybody who's getting rich and they're all measuring against the richness of the broken money. And so it just, it drives, these cycles are so fast and they're happening at a crazy rate. But so AI, it's much bigger than what I saw in 2000, much bigger. Wow. Samson? There's a lot of inefficiencies right now in bottlenecks with scaling AI inference,

and I think that plays into some of the hype. It appears there is more demand and more need than the underlying actually can support. And that is true for now, but these bottlenecks will remove themselves over time. And as Jeff writes in his book, Price of Tomorrow, it's a technology is deflationary. And I don't feel like the people that are really excited about these things are fully understanding that. I think a lot of Bitcoiners that are dabbling in AI. I'm one of them. There's Brad Mills. There's a whole bunch of us. We are seeing that because we value privacy, we're all focused on how you can do local inference on your own devices. And the technology is definitely getting to a point. It's being optimized. You can run an LLM on your MacBook.

at a pretty decent rate of tokens per second. And that's only getting better. And I don't feel like there's been a lot of optimization. It's always been offloading the efficiencies and improvements onto raw hardware and energy consumption, which is really not the way to go. So if you think like you're investing in these AI companies and the thesis is they're going to keep on expanding power consumption,

energy consumption and building data centers in space and all that to meet this demand, I don't think that's the right direction. I think you're going to see a lot of optimization and you're going to see a lot of oversupply come out at the end. And you know, what's going to absorb that oversupply? Surprise, it's Bitcoin mining because it can. And that's the way it's always been. We just absorb the excess. We absorb the oversupply. And the interesting horse in this race right now, I think, is SpaceX because they actually have Bitcoin on balance sheet. So it's like they're well positioned to weather this, more well positioned than I would say the other ones like Open AI and Anthropic, which are just kind of pure play betting on this nonstop expansion. And they don't have Bitcoin.

But again, it all interplays at a very subtle level. I think eventually some of these companies will start to allocate to Bitcoin just to hedge, right? You can grow, but if you're growing and you're keeping your money in Fiat as a melting ice cube, then that's not really getting you anywhere. Same story with Nvidia. You know, they're making a lot of money, but they're still storing it in a defective medium. If you saw AI as a company like Amazon and it was going to be controlled by a central company like Amazon, it might make sense. these valuations. I think that is a crazy wrong pet. AI is more like electricity that is going to distribute and more and more people. Because once you have the model, the model becomes

open source like two weeks later. They reverse engineer it. You run it on your computer. You might have a lag of three months between the latest model and what's available. And so it's constantly getting better and better and cheaper. And so what's going to happen is instead of using a centralized model where somebody else has all your data, you're going to do exactly what Samson did because the free market, you'll do it cheaper, better, faster, and it'll be private. It'll have all this to all this stuff. So there's a, I think there's a misallocation of capital, massive misallocation of capital with a belief that these are, these are resilient companies like the tech monopolies, which will not look like that. Yeah, I never consider that because right now I'm thinking about like, what is it, like, Marathon, Terawolf, who else? It seems like all the big ASIC publicly traded miners have pivoted to doing AI. They've been doing AI and switching because they're essentially just like electricity, arbitrage. They got good contracts.

That's essentially what they're selling. But I never thought about the possibility of the hardware kind of becoming redundant or unnecessary if the models get good enough that everyone's in, it's almost like to take a silly analogy. It's almost like music's gotten very popular. So they're just investing in how to produce more CDs faster, not realizing that they're not going to need CDs very soon. It is a good analogy. Now, the other thing, though, in the meantime, I think this could go on for some time. I'm on the board of core scientific. And I think it could go on for longer than people think because these contracts for the energy are like 10 or 15 years long term contracts with the hyperscalers.

And like Samson said, there's pockets of the market that your short energy for this. and you're having to bid this up and sign secure contracts out a long time. So there is a lot of, there is potential a lot of value capture in the medium term in this, but kind of in the end, this is going to constantly get cheaper, better, faster. That's incredible. That's wonderful.

Samson, I did want to jump back to one thing quickly because I didn't want to get your take on it as well. The idea, so Jeff was commenting how there's more of us actually here, but we're just kind of drowning a lot of noise that makes, it may be hard to see at times. Is that kind of your sense, too? Because I definitely feel like we're losing comrades every now and then that there's maybe less and less of the cypherpunks. Maybe I'm just not hearing us and it is just the noise, but I'd love to get your sense of that.

I think the army of builders is actually getting bigger. I think Jeff, you alluded to that too, but it might feel sometimes like we're losing people, like some prominent person says something. But the actual people building and sticking to Bitcoin, it's, it seems. pretty stable to me. And it feels like we're actually getting more and more builders. And we're able to accelerate a lot of our development through the use of AI tools too. So I believe it's, it's actually going to get better and better as we all adapt and adapt, integrate AI technologies into our workflows because we can build faster. And there's more of us building. And the barrier to building is actually lower too. So if you have the people with the right ideology, then you're

going to have a massive workforce that is going to make Bitcoin better and integrate Bitcoin into the mainstream economy better. That I'm excited for. The Bitcoin return to mainstream kind of economy, I think, is where the attention needs to be. I think it'll be a wonderful place to see some growth. I'm kind of curious, Samson, you'd gallivant all over the world and try to orange pill people and do a wonderful job doing it too. Where are you currently seeing adoption? And similarly within this topic, you mentioned that SpaceX has Bitcoin on their balance sheet. find it kind of odd that something like Anthropic or Open AI doesn't, because it seems to me, like going back to Jeff Booth's thesis about deflationary technology versus an inflationary

money, I kind of feel like they should be the first ones to figure it out. Like they might realize kind of what they're building and the deflationary impacts that it'll have moving forward. But I don't know. What's your thoughts on corporate adoption, nation state adoption? What are you seeing? Well, nation states are really challenging. And that's something we've been learning firsthand for the last few years. We can get meetings. But to get the the understanding of Bitcoin through and to find the right timing to do so where a government is conductive to and able to execute is a very challenging thing. So we're always talking. We're working on projects with governments, but it's really slow to get it out the door.

And the biggest barrier, I think, is they seem to not really understand the gravity of the situation and the urgency to implement a strategy. And that's just because everyone is busy with everything else. It's a direct parallel to your ordinary person. Like if you choose your neighbor, one of your neighbors, and you try to orange build them, that's kind of like what it's like for us. They have their life. They have their work. They have their hobbies and where do you fit Bitcoin in? Between which Netflix show do you fit Bitcoin? So that's the challenge. Yeah, Samson, I just want to build on that because it's the same thing I've seen in a lot of this. Exactly the same.

This is such a paradigm shift in the thing that's driving all the constraints and government and breaking of society. And all of those people needing more money is just the MPs, politicians are like dividing. All of these people need help. All these people need help. And you're getting socialism and fascism. and they're driving further and further around. And you go in with something that doesn't care about any of it and it's something totally different.

It's like their story is completely different. And so if I inserted a story, like if you had a story around it's the Democrats, those are the bad guys or it's the Republicans around the bad guy. And I inserted my thing, here's what I'm going to do. It's way easier to believe the thing than Bitcoin could solve it all. It's way easier to, we align around these stories and you hear something that's totally outside of this narrative. It takes a long time for somebody to understand it and then have the have the will to want to do it. I actually can't imagine.

I credit you Samson for trying and pushing that forward in a whole bunch of different places. But like it's a total battle. I just realized, same thing. I just realized there's no way I can do this here. I'm going to just go build. I'm going to go, like, are you going to fund the builders who are going to build the new system and people will get it in their own time.

Yeah, it's definitely disheartening sometimes, but you just have to keep at it. And I think they will get it eventually. But it's sort of, you know, we've been talking a lot about AI. It's sort of the same thing. When it's, when AI is hot and everyone wants in, then it's a very viable topic.

You know, you bring up AI and, you know, people will listen because everyone wants, AI companies to go there or set up a data center or something there. And it'll be the same for Bitcoin. But I think it'll be when we hit 200, 300,000. That's when the countries are going to perk up and go, hey, well, actually, we're interested in this now, right? It's like all of the memes, they're all true. Like the meme of like the little comic about the two boots. And like Bitcoin at 70K, no one is there. But at Bitcoin at 120, there's a long line up there, right?

It's exactly the same. It's like a fundamental truth that people want something when it's hot, but not when it's an understated underhyped thesis. And that's just the way the world works, it seems. The other counterforce, I feel like it's the difficulty to adopt Bitcoin. So I was in the UK, I was visiting Parliament. I was visiting one of the MPs there. And we sat down to a session.

And some of the other MPs on the floor were discussing inflation. And they're saying, you know, people in my district are suffering and inflation's out of control. And, you know, I wanted to just shout and say, well, guess what? You could implement a Bitcoin strategy. But to do that is actually very difficult. It's like, you know, Nathan, take your neighbor as an example. They'd say they're complaining about inflation and the cost of living. your answer is going to be you should cut your spending, save in Bitcoin, and you'll get a reward

later. But that doesn't really solve their problem. They want immediate gratification and immediate solutions. And that's the direct parallel again to the nation state, which is the nation states are mostly in debt, right? There may be one or two, they're not, but every country is basically broke, if you look at it that way. And what is, the solution. How do you get Bitcoin? This is why the US is trying to frame it as a budget neutral, right? They want to acquire Bitcoin without spending money because it's not palatable to the population to say, we're going to invest in this thing because you know that they're going to get blasted for it by opposition, by media, by the haters, the no-coiners, the financial

times, all those, the usual suspects. Because it is a choice that is a weakness, especially if Bitcoin goes down post-purchase. And not every government politician is able to weather that because it's difficult to weather that, you know, your job basically depends on other people approving of you. And people don't approve of number go down. So you can see how challenging is. It's layers upon layers of challenges. But I think when it's time, it'll just happen. And that's why I really subscribe to that suddenly, gradually, then suddenly thesis. Jeff, I'm curious your thoughts on that. The other one I throw in there, because Samson, I completely agree.

I feel like we're kind of hanging out here until one of two forces. Straight up, number go up, number go up, just tracks everybody. They see it. It gets all the attention. They get excited to come in. And hopefully they'll learn something and stick around for the mission. The other concern, too, is that we're all, we're all Canucks here. It wasn't so great a few years back.

We had the trucker protest and the COVID lockdowns. I worry that the pain mechanism, the, I'm in so much pain I go and learn about it happens as well, too, that we might see things in the West. continue to climb. We might see a bit of unrest or even we're talking really about privacy, further clampdowns on rights, freedoms, all that sort of thing. So Jeff, your thoughts on maybe where you see the West currently headed and if adoption is going to need kind of one of those two two elements. So let's skip it going for a second, right? Just completely take it out of our thing and say the existing system is based on a mirage of debt that people believe is repayable,

that it's not repayable. It's just an illusion and all of their assets and everything, every asset we're talking about is inside that illusion of this debt is repayable. And it's only repayable if you don't allow the free market to work. Because the free market allows productivity gains flow to society in the form of competition with each other to provide more value. So it only works with greater centralization and greater taking of your individual rights of freedoms. No matter what, socialism or fascism, it only works by that illusion of debt, which you think is solvent, and all of the assets inside it that you think are solid. I know you guys are Bitcoiners, so your assets aren't inside it. But anything

inside it, your house, your car, all of your right to privacy and everything else lives inside a system based on an illusion that that is solvent. It is an illusion. It is an illusion. It's insolvent. It only creates the illusion from your willingness to transact in that currency and be stolen from greater and greater and greater. And because your story is aligned with prices always go up, right? And your story would naturally fit into the illusion. You can be stolen from more and more and more and not know that it's happening to you until it's way too late. So forget Bitcoin for a second.

Just that, no matter what, pain is coming at a crazy rate because it's not solvent. And it can only be solvent on the theft of more of your time and energy. And you're giving all of your time and energy to the system that's stealing it. So that is going to create a cascade of it's going to, this story that people have is going to be so broken and so hurt. Sometimes in Canada, the house might be taken back, right? It's going to be redistributed. It's going to be like your belief that you live in a free market is a complete illusion based on that. And it's going to crash into your belief is going to hit physics.

It's going to hit the real reality. And it's going to shatter people. And a bunch of those people have already left Canada like myself. And they're going to leave other regions that are. aren't free markets and it's going to cascade around the world. Now you introduce Bitcoin. We know that that's instability. The instability isn't being caused by Bitcoin. The instability is being caused by debt that is already insolvent that has to grow greater insolvency and centralized faster and faster, right? Control you within it. Bill C-22.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. But again, we react to these things. Like there are big things. things when we know they have to happen. Like, I don't react. They have to happen from a structure that steals your time and energy. It's not good, bad, and everything else. If you're operating in that structure, all of these things have to happen like they've happened in other nations before. Right. And people get to, right? Now you operate Bitcoin that is outside of that system. If you hold self-custody, if you run a node, you're a part of a network that is outside of that system. And you can spend in that. You can add privacy to Bitcoin already. You can build to build on top of this. And you're completely outside of that system. And you watch what's going to

happen in the system. You know for sure what's going to happen in that system. And you try to tell people to move their time. But they're mostly operating, trying to make more money within that system. Right. And so of course, it's going to look like this. And then if you now inserted, I'm going to give you a yield, a lot of people trade their Bitcoin for the yield. And they would centralize their Bitcoin back into the centralized structure. So why this has to play out like this is it has to, it's not Bitcoin that's a change, it's us. You can completely right now, anyone that's watching this podcast can go run a node,

not trust anything I'm saying, go run a node. and go into self-custody Bitcoin and be outside of what I just described. Protect themselves, protect themselves, and then any type of change of Bitcoin has to go through their node. Essentially, they've claimed their agency, but most people aren't. It's somebody else. It's easier to, it's somebody else, Elon will save me, this politician will save me, and they're stuck inside that system.

But they don't have to be. In other words, playing this out how early what we're talking about is, how many people have truly claimed their agency and are building it in this. Now, it's a big number today, but it's a really small percentage of the overall population. It means you can see the chaos that's coming. When I first got into Bitcoin, I was overwhelmed. The jargon, the security risks, the fear that one mistake could cost everything. I remember staring at my screen and wondering, are my keys safe?

Did I do this right? That experience is why I started BTC sessions. For over a decade, this channel has helped millions of people like you learn how to use and secure Bitcoin. But I realized something. For many people, videos aren't enough. Everyone learns differently. Some need to ask questions in real time as an expert walks through their setup, their goals and their threat model.

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It's funny you mentioned Elon. He actually gave up on it, right? He had free reign to implement the Department of Government Efficiency. did a few things and he kind of gave up because there was just no way to to fix it. The mess is too big, too tangled, and just unfixable. So it kind of makes you think. If he had that much power and latitude to try and he couldn't and he gave up and he's just going to do his own thing, you know, it's pretty indicative that it is a, it's in it. It is part of the system.

The system itself is broken. The brokenness is core to the system. And that's why you cannot fix it. Yeah. If you remove the fraud, you have a deflationary spiral. If you remember, so the Empire of State Building was built in 13 months. You couldn't get a permit in 13 months today. So think about how much bigger government has gotten and how worse the performance of what the free market looks like.

Because the Empire State Building, they recollect is still standing, still an iconic building. It's not worse because it was built in 13 months. It was, that's what the free market looks like compared to what today is this abstract, this is this extractive machine that's this regulatory burden over everything. I would add, it's not just about free markets, Jeff. I think it's just freedom, period. Yeah. Like, I think governments will start to limit and prohibit freedom of movement.

Like, they will just stop you from leaving. And that has been thrown out there in discourse. We're worried about brain drain in Canada. What's the solution? We just tax the young people an exorbitant amount so that they don't even think about leaving because they don't have the money to leave. And then, you know, what's the next extension of that? You know, we're not that far from being pods in the matrix because that is the end state. That is the ultimate state.

You know what everyone's thinking. You know where they are physically and they can't move. It's so outrageous what you just said. Like that idea that came from somebody who left Canada to go to Google, who then moved to Europe with all the wealth from Google that talks about what Canadians should do to pay their taxes and stay there. And it's actually being listened to his policy.

It's outrageous. And so do what I say, not what I do. Yeah. But the Overton window has really shifted that it is acceptable to theorize about restraining people from freedom, period. Not just free markets, just freedom. And, you know, C-22 makes that even worse.

So you can't even talk about these things potentially. Samson, you're seeing it, and I think people are seeing it in some of the social media, in some of the, like, they're being penalized for talking about truth. They're being cut off for saying something that is absolutely true, or jailed for creating code or that this, which creates more fear and more people that are scared to death of stepping outside, stepping outside of the control system. Yeah. There was a, there's one I was reading about in the UK where the fact that what he posted was

in fact true. It was all completely true, did not protect him from whatever sort of hate speech laws they were using against him. Like that was the fact that everything that he was posting was not a lie. It wasn't misrepresentative. It was true. But it still fell under the realm that he was, he was, prosecuted for. It's getting absolutely ridiculous.

So that matrix idea is actually a really like a really tied into what is Sam's said. So it's already the matrix. It's feeding on your mind now. You are already plugged into it. You just don't know you're plugged into it.

That's where it's getting into energy from you. There's a new example. Like some person in I think Vancouver was sitting in a cafe and he was evaluated by a psychiatrist, just looking at him, and apparently they deemed him to be mentally unstable, and they can just arrest him for that now. So if you look at the parallels between the matrix and in real life,

it's not that far away. That psychiatrist is like an agent. They can just find you and summarily execute you almost or lock you up for, you know, if it's a lighter sentence, right? But the world we're in right now is very precarious. It's almost like we're teetering on the edge of this dystopia. It's already dystopian, but even more so and more blatantly dystopian. Yeah, I think that's the thing, Samson.

I think it's coming into view for a bunch more people. But just before you joined, Nathan and I were talking about moving to Florida. I have people that are in Canada that think I've gone crazy. And if you're here and you see some of the things in Canada, you go, how are they, why aren't they rising up? Right. But there's so much manipulation in the media that you're seeing a reflection of what you want to see or what the media or what the media wants to see. And from broken money, it has to get worse. There has to be more and more control.

So it is why, so as much as that dystopia is happening. what would naturally be the antidote to it, where we're all building, and why it feels so good and why it feels so positive, it's the antidote to that thing, and you're just early. And that creates a ton of value by being early, by helping. So what is the free market value? Free market values service of other people, helping other people. If you do really great work there, you do better. And so that's what we're building is all of this, which very few people see today.

But it's actually the power that gives this thing to being early. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I think, Nathan, you had some questions about, you know, which country is next and whatnot. But this is kind of why I think there is a high chance that the U.S. really does follow through with its plans to really fill their SBR to pass legislation that allows them to shift onto a Bitcoin standard because there really is nowhere else to go, right? Like in Canada, the concern of the government and some people is like, we're losing people to the U.S.

But if you're in the U.S., like, Jeff, where else do you go? You know, there's eventually nowhere else to flee to. And I think it's, it is part of the freedom is still part of the American. American psyche. And I think deep down, they realize they need to fix the problem. They need to fix the debt problem. They need to fix the economic ruin. And there's just no way around it other than Bitcoin. So I think maybe things will circle around a little bit, but eventually they have to reach that conclusion about adopting Bitcoin in a serious manner, using Bitcoin as money, and rebasing to SATs or something to eliminate the debt, or at least significant.

significantly reduce the debt because there's really nowhere to flee too, right? You can't, there's nowhere else to run to. So this is where I have a little bit of a different, so, so we've always lived in a zero sum game. And in the U.S., the Constitution created the best free market that ever existed. And those ideas propelled the U.S. forward because freedom of ideas had more ideas competing to provide value to each other. And that's what was really the rise of the U.S. until it was captured in 1913 by the Federal Reserve, right, to be able to create a banking cartel over top of it, which slowly essentially is trying to rip out constitutional rights. But what the framers of the Constitution and having essentially

decentralized government in 50 different states provides a real teeth to the states have power, that mean this is going to be messy, right? But I agree with you, Samson, as far as... What would the state want rather than the states? The state would want, I control currency on a new gold back for reserve, which is Bitcoin, but you don't use Bitcoin, you use the stablecoin, which gives me all of manipulation ability around the world, right? That's, I think, where one side is going.

And globally, you have this global adoption of a protocol that's using Bitcoin as money, that it just, that, that, that rips that out and has the first global free market that has actually ever existed. So, so, but I think it's going to be messy because I don't think, I don't think things like clarity act. I don't think they, they may help Bitcoin go up in pieces of paper right away. But I think it's to try to get people to use stable. coins instead of Bitcoin and to try to slowly capture, try to slowly capture what we're talking about. But I don't think it'll work because to work it has to go against a global community building something different that can't be controlled. Yeah, that's interesting. I think people

will also learn that stable coins are not permissionless. They're permissionless for a time. But as that whole ecosystem matures, eventually you'll wind up again right where you started. And it'll be highly permissioned. So I think it's still a net positive because when you're transacting in stables, you are learning that mechanism of how a free flowing digital money could work. And kind of that's our hope with Aqua that you put the stable coins there, you put Bitcoin there and maybe they're using it for stable coins. Maybe they're in Latin America and Brazil, Argentina, they need it. And somehow they, they, you know, trip over the wire and they land in Bitcoin zone and then they understand Bitcoin too. So it's, yeah, I can see what you're saying.

Because if you said, where does the interest come from, where does the stability come from? It comes from guaranteeing losses against Bitcoin. It comes from making more monetary units on top of stable currency or on top of like an asset, just like gold. And then what ends up happening if you do that, because the centralizing system has to centralize, you have to stop people from using the other currency. So you have to be able to block them. And so more of these things. And I'm just talking about a structural thing that is outside of knowledge of most people.

So they're falling into these traps. And so we're investors and lots of companies that use stables and doing but they're training as they're using stables why they need Bitcoin. Yeah. Right. And so there's just an adoption curve that moves more people to Bitcoin. And so and highlighting the risks of the stables. Yeah, pretty much.

One of the things that we're really circling around right now that I completely agree with is the idea of Bitcoin is and used as money, right? not necessarily a digital asset or something, something different, but actually as money. And so Samson, serving with you, I'm kind of curious, sorry, had Ben McKenzie still in my brain. Jeff had mentioned earlier talking about yields and other things as well, too. Do you have any concerns about, let's say, securitized Bitcoin financial products as a centralizing or capture mechanism for Bitcoin? And no is a completely fine answer. I'm just curious to your outlook on it.

I'm not too worried about it. I think some bitcoins are, but I think it's a natural evolution. Similar to our nation state work, we get some criticism from Bitcoiners saying, why are you helping governments try to get Bitcoin, right? But anything that is valuable, a government will want. If it's not Bitcoin, it would be bottle caps, right? If it wasn't bottle caps, it'd be something else, because governments don't really create value.

They extract value. And I think there's going to be these structures no matter what we do. There's going to be ETFs, no matter what we do. There's going to be ETFs, no matter what we do. But I think people will have to learn, some people will learn the hard way that if you use it in this centralized system, it's not really yours. And you can keep it as a bare instrument. And all of us, all the builders, we are building things that will make it easier and easier for them to keep it bearer. But like Jeff is saying, if things get bad, people will learn.

Sadly, people have very short memories. I think if you ask a Canadian on the street, remember the trucker protest and freezing bank accounts? I bet you they forgot the memory. Isn't that wild? Sorry, I had to jump in there. That one drives me insane. Like, that was just a couple years ago.

And it's just business as usual. Like, nobody cares. Nobody remembers what happened. Sorry, Samson. It just, it blows my mind. I personally do. Oh, thank you, Jeff. I'm not alone.

You better. Yeah. Please answer. Continue. But I mean, this is the, these are the masses, right? This is the mid-curve. These are the average people. And average people will do average things.

They'll have average memory spans. They'll have average attention spans. I mean, you know, people were panicking like crazy about oil and hormones. And now it's like, yeah, go ask someone. Like, what's happening now? They won't know because it's not being fed to them in the media anymore or through the algo. So, you know, people will find Bitcoin when they...

deserved find Bitcoin at the price that Bitcoin is at that time. But it's difficult to force change and to force understanding. You have to really have been burned or be very cognizant of the world to really understand things ahead of time. Jeff, do you have a response? What's your view on? This has to look like this because it has to go through all of our biases and our frameworks of what the world used to look like, which was always a lie. We thought it was a free market. It wasn't a free market. We thought it was.

And so it was always a terrible lie, a centralizing lie, that we would go to war to reset and global conflict to reset and then start again and believe in the fairy tale. And do it again because people forget. This has been the pattern of throughout history. So with that pattern through history, if you understand human nature, you understand all of these things have to, it just is. For Bitcoin to withstand all of these, whether they're attacks, whether they're centralizing, whether the ETS, whether the ETS, you've given your Bitcoin to an ETAF instead of you think you have Bitcoin and you have a paper claim on Bitcoin. You're going to eventually get wiped out, right? At some point, because they cannot coexist on the long term. Because one system gains its strength through inflation, which is centralizing.

And one through resilience to that, to neutral currency, which allows productivity to flow to the world. So these two systems cannot, they can coexist for a time. But they can only coexist for a time by if you're trading your sovereignty to the other system to get an interest right. I'll just add this. The older I get, the more I believe in psycho history. No, fair enough, fair enough. Coin kite has been in the game for years creating hands down the best and most secure hardware when it comes to securing your Bitcoin. The cold card Q is an absolute powerhouse.

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term for a second then, too. So we talked about reclaiming our agency. Jeff, you mentioned running a node, but maybe Samson will start with you. If someone wanted to reclaim their agency, if they wanted to get out of system, what things would you recommend to them? What direction would you point them in? And I'll even tee up a little bit. You know, the dolphin card was one of my favorite things. If we maybe could get that back at some point in time. And some lightning addresses for Aqua Wall, it would be very handy too. It's coming. The cards, it's difficult. We learned a lot. We learned a lot through that process. And they're all kind of doing creative things. We're just looking for the best, most reliable, creative thing out there. But it's difficult. If you're running it over a MasterCard and Visa Rails,

then eventually there's, if the program gets big enough, there's a likelihood that it could get shut down, right? It depends on jurisdictional arbitrage and a number of factors. So we are looking. Like, we know people loved it. And we loved our partner for that one. And, you know, unfortunately, didn't work. But it's hard to find a reliable one that will scale. Maybe it won't scale. Maybe we'll just have to replace it every few years with the new provider. But yeah, I think to answer your question, though, to direct them, I would send them to a mobile wallet. That's the easiest way. The barrier and the hurdles to get to a full node running on your own computer or, you know, your node in a box, that's very far away. But if you point them to any mobile wallet, you know, Aqua, I'm partial to

that, or Blockstream app or Bull Bitcoin, you know, this is a good starting place. They can get a taste for what it's like to transact freely without having anyone block you or control you or permission you or gatekeep you. And I think from there eventually you want to migrate to a hardware wallet, you know, paired with your mobile phone. And then eventually you want to validate yourself. But that's a long, long road. And this is why I think we're really early. People that have reached this level of Bitcoin understanding and the ability to be this sovereign to run your own node is not easy. And I think we'll be still years away for the majority of the population to get to that point. But we will get to that point. I'm confident in that. Yeah, I agree with what Samson's saying.

My view here is look at proof of work, just like the network works. You can see in people. So Nathan, you're working at PTC sessions and what you guys are doing to provide proof of work to a whole bunch of people. I always point people to your work. It is a cascade of knowledge. And if you were ever wrong, you would admit you were wrong and then make it make it right. There's there's inside a landscape of people that are doing the exact opposite. Flavor of the day, flavor of the day, flavor of the day, flavor of the day. And so Bitcoiners have kind of been resilient and you can see the people who are saying the same thing and they've been right over and over and over again. And so you would, that's where you want to learn. You want to take signals from people

that have had an integrity through the whole thing and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, how to, how to, how to, how to, how to, how to, how to, self custody, how to start. And your, your, your, your YouTube sessions and, uh, BTC sessions, does a really good job of a whole bunch of free content, uh, for people, but then Samson and, and this entire, uh, this entire network of these builders, these incredible builders, they won't all be right. Not all the businesses will succeed, but they'll point the way to what is success. And that will just keep on emerging, which is what's happening. Jeff, are there any tools that in particular that have your attention right now? I know we've talked previously, I think it's worth highlighting too, that like the idea that you need

it to be Bitcoin to remain secure, decentralized, and private. And so I always think that's a wonderful one to highlight. Is there anything that you think is worth mentioning in that vein or anything else that's exciting for you? Yeah, I think in that vein, Feddy is still early, but it's something that you could take action on right now. You could set up your own federation. And that means your communications and your money are private. And I think it's going to be like for you, think Bill C-22 in Canada and what's happening in the UK. I would do that yesterday.

Right. It is so critical. That means not just your communications are private, but your communications with anybody. who's added to your federation are also private. Your money transfers private. And it won't be, it already isn't. You're being spied on now. You're the money control is. And so it's really important that you, like people wonder why they all of a sudden see an ad for the thing they were talking about. Yeah. You already live there, right? You have to get your life out of there. And so some of these tools are going to be really important to be able to to do that.

Obie said this thing and I think it was really interesting. How do you gain, how do you gain freedom either through control? You're bigger, mightier, have more money than everybody else and you're above the law or privacy. Satoshi could be walking among us right now. Nobody knows them. So you have to have privacy. You have privacy. you have

you have freedom of expression, you have everything you want. So you have to, these tools are going to become increasingly important in the world we're moving into. I completely agree, Jeff. What's frustrating for me is like, there is a real need for privacy

and it's been twisted by, you know, the alt-coin promoters and trying to push, you know, alt-privacy coins again. Totally. A central alt-line. Yeah, it's completely,

it's like there is a real need more now than ever and then they're twisting it to pump their own bags. It's just really frustrating watching that play out again and again. So the wild thing about this and even we don't do ourselves any favors because this has already exists on top of Bitcoin. It already exists and you don't need another coin to do it. It's native to the thing and people could start tomorrow and they can do it. So so it's, but it's, but it's, but it's, instead we're fighting the meme coins and all this nonsense over here when you can just go build go build on the thing. Yeah.

Do you think the, it feels to me like crypto is coming to its end. Are you guys getting that sense at all too? Ethereum? Yeah, okay. Sam said they'll start with you. What's your read on the crypto shit coin space? Well, it was always going to die. It's just the question of when, right?

I mean, every, every time they, they have a new boost from something, it'll die off eventually. Ordinals, I said, you know, it's not going to last. And then it lasted more than three months and they're celebrating. Hey, we're still here. They would retweet me and quote me and say, hey, this guy said, we're going to be dead in three months. And it took like seven or eight. Okay. So I'm off by a few months, whatever.

But the point is, it is a death spiral. It was always meant to be a death spiral because these things are extraction, tools to extract. to extract value, especially Bitcoin. So they serve their purpose and then they're done. And I think what's most funny and great is AI is accelerating that death. So for Bitcoiners, we try to build in the most secure and conservative way possible. If you look at Liquid, right, the way to get smart contracts on Liquid was through simplicity and formal verification, not some janky JavaScript thing that's bolted on. But it took a long time to get that right and to get that done. But now it's here. And I think you're going to see more people building on these reliable substrates. And the AIs are

just going to obliterate DFI because they're good at finding bugs. And all of those smart contracts from Ethereum and Salana and whatever, they're all going to be just eviscerated by AI and drained of funds. And that they're going to either retreat to Bitcoin. or they're just going to be annihilated. Which they have to some extent already as well, too. I was very surprised to see Scott Melker, the, was it, the Wolf of Wall Street? No, what does he call himself?

I'm blanking out. Yeah, the Wall Street. Yeah. Thank you. He put out a video that reminded me of something I would have seen in like the 2020 Bitcoin run. Like he put out like a Bitcoin maxi kind of videos, I think kind of a kind of cun to Jesus moment going,

I'm just going down the Bitcoin right now, which I thought was very telling for the time as well. He's a friend and I've talked to him many, many times about what are you doing? It was you who did it, Jeff. Not just me, but just over time. What I said is proof of work starts to add up. And you have a back channel conversation.

And you said, like, what are you doing? Like, you're promoting something that cannot work, right? And everything else. And so eventually he starts to see. And remember, he got burned badly in Celsius. He got burned in. And he starts to see it in himself. And he changes.

And he adds his voice. right? That's kind of you're going to see tons of people do the same thing. That is actually wonderful to hear. And just quick side, you'd be amazed how many times I find out somebody's a bitcoiner and I'm kind of surprised by it. And then it turns out they're just a friend with Jeff that also is there as well too. I can think of two and it's come up publicly.

We have like the mayor of Vancouver, friend with Jeff. There's also a friend of the show, Steve Sureski. Does a Looney Hour podcast. Friend of Jeff also a fake glitter. He's a, you're probably top tier, top tier orange pilling. One thing that I wanted to add there to Samson, and I'll jump back. I'll start with you, but I know that Jeff was going to say as well is we talked very briefly there about liquid. We know what we're talking about, but the audience, not everybody might necessarily know. We talk about these different layers that we have built on top of. Samson, so like liquid,

lightning, primary right there in Aqua, what are those? What are the benefits of them if you were trying to explain why this would be a great starter wallet to use? Yeah, so liquid is just a base layer for a layer two, right? So there's many different ways you can build a wallet. You can have a direct connection to the Bitcoin main chain, which I think wallets like Phoenix and others do. Or you can have some interim middle layer, which is a bit safer in times of high fees to avoid things like channel closing. So I like Liquid. I was one of the first members when I was at BTC China. We signed up in 2015 to be one of the first Liquid Federation members. But Liquid is a Bitcoin side chain. It has confidential transaction. So privacy was built in, you know, 10 years ago by design. So every

liquid transaction, the amounts and the asset types are hidden. And that's, you know, as we're talking about and Jeff's talking about, that's, we've come full circle and people are starting to realize that this is very, very important now. You also have blocks every minute and it's just lower fees too. So we use that as the base for Aqua because we believe it's a really good substrate. And then from there, we swap out to lightning. So for us, lightning is an interop layer. It connects us to, you know, eCash mints and to Feddies and everything like that. So it's just a way for us to connect. But, you know, there's other things too, like state chains and whatnot. There's so many different ways now to have this substrate that is interconnected with

lightning. And I think this is why we have great privacy. We have liquid. We have eCash. We have fediments, all these things are giving the benefits that people really need today. Agreed. We didn't even have a chance to get into it with Nostor. I know we got to wrap here quick. We'll have to have you guys back on to do a deep dive more into the tech and take a take another look at where you currently are in Bitcoin adoption. But gentlemen, this has been absolutely wonderful, fantastic. Jeff, where can everybody go to follow you and your work? Just jeffreebooth.com is probably the best because then from there, it has the links to any social media. I'm not on X anymore. I'm just on Noster and such. So that's not true. Your bot's

definitely there. Yeah. My bot's there. Yeah. Except for it just got suspended. So of course, centralized. And Samson, where can everybody go to follow you and your work, my friend? I'm on X usually. I'm actually not a Noster fan. I'm happy to talk about it, but you probably don't want me if you want to talk it up. Hey, it could be a good disagreement. Sure. My X handle is X-E-E-X-E-L-I-O-N and at Jan 3-com. Even though X has been getting worse and worse, we're still on X. You know the world is heading down a dark path. Online censorship, central bank digital currencies, a complete loss of privacy, and it's only accelerated. Most people are falling behind with the latest technology. And those that aren't are sacrificial.

sacrificing their data, their control, and their dignity just to keep up. That doesn't have to be you. Here, you'll have everything you need to break free. Over the past decade, I've helped 20 million people take control of their money, their data, and their digital lives. Now I'm bringing everything I've learned to one place. Sovereign Sessions is your home to learn, master, and live freedom tech, Bitcoin, AI, private communications, self-hosted tools, everything.

Each week, I'll walk you through step by step with the most critical tools that put you back in charge. Don't ask permission, take control. Welcome to the Sovereign Sessions.