BTC Sessions - NYU PhD Economist Exposes Hidden Forces Now Accelerating Fiat's End

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

The Bitcoin Boomers Ep. 02: Fiat’s Final Days & AI Job Apocalypse | Larry Lepard, Dr. Bob Murphy, Bob Burnett, Gary LelandDr. Bob Murphy (NYU PhD, Mises Institute Senior Fellow, former Contra Krugman host) joins Bob Burnett, Larry Lepard, and Gary Leland for the most explosive Bitcoin Boomers episode yet. From the very first minutes the gloves come off: fiat’s 100-year Keynesian experiment is mathematically doomed, AI is already wiping out entry-level jobs overnight, robots are on track to rival nation-states, and deflationary technology just made debt-based money impossible to sustain. Larry drops the hammer (“the whole experiment is about to blow the fuck up — and it deserves to”), Bob Murphy calmly explains why Bitcoin proves you don’t need the state to have money, and the crew debates UBI inevitability, spend-and-replace adoption strategies, and why BlackRock & nation-states are suddenly begging for Bitcoin.This is the red-pill episode you send to every boomer, uncle, or normie who still thinks the dollar is fine. If you want the intellectual ammo to orange-pill anyone over the holidays, this is it.Key Topics:Why fiat is now mathematically unsustainableAI silently killing entry-level hiring todayRobots rivaling nation-states in powerDeflationary tech destroying debt-based moneyBitcoin proves you don’t need government to issue moneyThe regression theorem tragedy that cost Austrians millionsUBI is politically unstoppableGreenspan’s private confession: being Fed Chair was “absolutely intoxicating”Spend-and-replace vs pure HODL debateBlackRock begging for Bitcoin — Bob’s biggest 2025 shock20% Bitcoin discount at the CrossFit gym storyWhy the next 100 M users could arrive in monthsChapters:00:00:00 Cold Open – The end of fiat has begun00:01:11 Welcome Dr. Bob Murphy & Bob Burnett00:03:20 Why economics has warring schools00:12:17 MMT exposed00:19:16 Larry: “It’s about to blow the fuck up — and it deserves to”00:26:26 AI already killing entry-level jobs00:33:46 UBI is coming — politically impossible to stop00:39:50 Robots will rival nation-states00:43:10 Deflation just killed debt-based money00:46:48 “Bitcoin proved you don’t need the state to issue money”00:52:31 The regression theorem tragedy00:55:21 Spend-and-replace debate01:00:41 Real-world Bitcoin adoption stories01:04:38 BlackRock begging for Bitcoin01:10:57 “I cannot believe we got here this fast”Guest : Dr. Robert Murphy (@BobMurphyEcon) – NYU PhD, Mises Institute Senior Fellow, Chief Economist at InfinitoWebsite: https://www.bobmurphyshow.com/Hosts:Lawrence Lepard (@LawrenceLepard): Sound money advocate, fund manager, author of "The Big Print" Bob Burnett (@boomer_btc): Bitcoin evangelist, Founder/CEO of Barefoot Mining, former CTO at Gateway Inc. Board member at Ocean with over 40 years in tech and mining.Gary Leland (@GaryLeland): Founder of Bit Block Boom Bitcoin Conference.Supported By:Blockstream Jade: Easy, open-source Bitcoin-only cold storage. Get 10% off with code BOOMERS at blockstream.com.Unchained Signature: Premium custody for serious holders. 10% off first year with code BOOMERS10 at unchained.com/btcboomersAbundant Mines: Fully managed Bitcoin mining. Learn more at abundantmines.comBITCOIN WELL is the best place to buy Bitcoin in Canada and the USA.Visit BITCOINWELL.COM/BTCSESSIONSBook Private Sessions: Master Bitcoin with experts at bitcoinmentor.io. Check Out the Previous Episode w George Bodine: https://youtu.be/vO6J_JEDxKc#bitcoin #bitcoinboomers #fiatcollapse #bobmurphy #bobburnett #larrylepard #austrianeconomics #bitcoin2025 #ai #deflation #bitcoinadoption #soundmoney #btc

Bitcoin is amazing because it has demonstrated to people that you don't need the state to issue money. Fiat is in its death throw. The great Keynesian experiment is coming to an end. I cannot believe we are here today. It blows my mind. We have nation state involvement. We have almost every large financial institution participating. Yeah, I knew we would get here.

I just didn't think we would get here this quick. These AI things came out and they really started getting good. Major companies stopped hiring entry-level position. robots like that. I mean, they're going to be rivaling nation states. I know a lot of people who lost a lot of money because they believe in that progression theorem and it held them back from buying Bitcoin. It was real tragic. All right. Welcome everybody to episode two of the Bitcoin boomers. Today's special guest is Dr. Robert Murphy. I've had the pleasure of knowing Bob for, I think Bob maybe like five years. We've known each other. We've kind of had a weird intersection of life insurance.

Bitcoin and economics and kind of that Venn diagram drew us together. For those I'm not familiar with Bob, he has a resume that is way longer than I could ever do justice for. But Bob always leads with that he's a Christian. I respect that and admire that. And I think that you'll see as you learn about Bob that it kind of weaves its way through everything that he does. Bob has a PhD in economics from NYU.

He's a senior fellow at both the Fraser Institute and the Mises Institute, which if you're not familiar with the world of economics, that's about as good as you can do. He's the chief economist at an organization called Infineo. He's an author, podcaster. I've had the pleasure of being on his show, the Bob Murphy Show, but he also has the Human Action podcast.

has an old show, Contra Krugman, which was absolutely phenomenal. Maybe we'll touch on some of that at some point. So welcome, Bob. Thank you for coming. Well, thanks for having me, guys, and I should clarify, I'm not officially a boomer, but sometimes when I'm in the park with my youngest son, people assume I'm his grandfather. So I do have that. I should have clarified.

I should have clarified that. Bob is not a boomer. But, and not all our guests will be boomers. but I think he certainly knows a lot of boomers and understands a lot of things about the world that we can all learn from. You know, Bob, I thought maybe a place to start for folks is I think the world of economics itself is somewhat of a mystery. And so I'll let you expand on this. But it's maybe one of the few disciplines where you have radically different schools of thought. and you're an Austrian, and I guess I didn't mention this, also a libertarian, which is another, I think,

important perspective for people to understand about you. But maybe kind of given over you, why do these different schools of thought exist, the MMTers, the Keynesians, the Austrians, which, and why are the Austrians right? Okay, so for the first one in terms of like, why are there schools of thought and economics, period, and that's not the only discipline. So if you look around, like, you know, for psychiatry, like there are Freudians or like, you know, post Freudians, things like that. And you can see even like in something like literature or history, there's different schools of thought in the, I think that the dividing line is like in the social sciences, right? Whereas in among like chemists and physicists and stuff, it's not like there's broad

schools. But even to the extent that there is, like in physics, some people believe in string theory and some don't. And so when you say, well, how can this schism persist? And they'll say, well, because we don't have the equipment yet to test the, you know, the theories, right? It's just all math right now. So I think that's ultimately the thing is that in the hard sciences, there's experimental verification. And so, like, it's pretty, they have a pretty clear metric in terms of who's right and who's wrong, at least in principle. Whereas in economics, you know, I can be arguing with Paul Krugman about what caused the Great Depression. And no one can ever be proven right because we would have to go back in time to 1929 and do different government policies and then run the tape

and then compare that to what happened. Yeah, against the irreparable conditions, right? Right. You're always arguing the counterfactual or like the Obama stimulus package or whatever, right? So that's, I think, you know, to answer quite. And then, of course, too, it's so ideological and there's so much at stake. Like in the grand scheme, a lot of people don't care one way or the other, whether string theory is true or not. So that's not like this cutting social issue that's keeping people up at night.

But people do care a lot about, you know, should there be UBI or whatever? Or, you know, should the government give more support to higher education or things like that or snap better? benefits, right? That people really care about that. And so then I guess what I'm saying is economics is rigorous in the sense that the models or the methods you use to explain your position have to be coherent and internally consistent and stuff like that. But you can, there's like a lot of free variables, if you will. You can, you know, you can point to the data and tell some story that justifies your ideology if you're clever. And I think that's kind of explains what happens. I don't want to say people are consciously lying, but I'm just saying when you go in,

with your biases. Oh, no, they are. They're consciously lying. Some are. But I'm saying you need not be lying. In other words, you can just say, no, I know what, and you can just come up with a story to fit the day. And that's what they would say that, you know, my friends and I do, right?

So that's the accusations that we go back and forth. You know what? I appreciate about your answer, Bob. But I think it, I think if we ask the same question to some other economists, they would answer it differently. And part of it is, I think we see it. when we see economists frequently that are quoted and we'll use like say a Krugman, they they often present it with this confidence, whatever their position is,

this confidence that and the MMTers, which maybe you could even explain that world for a little bit. They believe they've mathematically proven a whole bunch of things. At least that's my perspective of it. You may view it differently. yeah sure so uh and also to circle because you had asked me a two part question and one's like why are there schools a lot of why is yours right um and so yeah i i don't want to give the impression and you know lawrence of course i agree with you that a lot of these guys are not honest players that was one of the underpinnings of our that uh podcast contra crewman bob that you alluded to in the intro there

is that we every week we would just take his pot his article in the new york times and just go through and show why he was miss or whatever even though yeah he had that he had to this, you know, this patent of scientific irrefutability. No, I'm just doing math here when, no, there's a lot of assumptions. So just to give a quick example of, look, so I, for example, did not favor the Obama stimulus package. And just to give an example of what I mean to illustrate, you know, this ability that it's like non-falsifiable, but yet I think my camp is right is. So remember, there was a financial crisis in 2008. Obama gets elected in, you know, that election.

So he gets sworn in in January 2009. and they had the so-called Obama stimulus package that was, you know, going up to, hey, we're going to the economies and free fall. And the chair of the economic advisors for him, Christina Romer, and then the vice chair was Jared Bernstein. They had this analysis to try to explain the legislators, you know, why you should vote for this package, the Economic Recovery Act, or whatever they called it. But what we think of is the Obama stimulus package. And they said in there, I don't have the exact numbers off the top of my head, but the structure of their argument was, they say right now unemployment is 7% in change. again, this was January of 09. And they said, if we, you know, do, go ahead and do this stimulus package, we'll

get unemployment is still going to go up. Don't misunderstand, but we'll contain it. Like unemployment will only go up to eight point something if we do this package. However, if we just sit back and let the free market rip, unemployment might go up to nine something. So that's why we should do this, right, everybody? So they went ahead and did the Obama package, and unemployment went up above 10%. Right?

And so you would think what more could happen to show that they were wrong. and the critics were right. Well, no, the Keynesians just all ran, you know, ran victory laps saying, wow, it's a good thing we passed that stimulus package because the economy was in worse shape than we realized. Right. So that's how they handled it. So, you know, to us, of course, as Austrian and libertarian guys, that sounded like, you know, special pleading and crazy. But I mean, you know, you could come up with an analogy in medicine or something where some patient's sick and they, you know, the doctor says, well, we recommend this treatment.

And because otherwise this could happen. And they go ahead and do the treatment and the patient dies. that one anecdote doesn't prove that the treatment is bad. There could be 19 million things going on, right? So that's kind of what happens here with an economics. There's already, you know, there's already 15 million things going on. So you can't do like a controlled experiment. As far as the MMTers, they're a little bit different than the Keynesians.

And the way the MMTers work is, and that stands for modern monetary theory, MMT, they rest a lot of their rhetorical weight on accounting tautologies. And so they'll say, just give you one example. That's my favorite. So Stephanie Kelton, who's like the leader of their movement now, she was an advisor of Bernie Sanders campaign and so on. She posted a chart on Twitter a while ago that showed a graph of the U.S. federal budget deficit and then overlaid that with what they called like the net private

surplus or financial surplus to the private sector. And it was like they were almost mirror images that whenever the government was, you know, had red bars, the private sector, had a financial surplus, almost offsetting mirror image. And so she said all this fretting about the government debt, but the only way the financial sector can accumulate net financial assets is if the public sector has a deficit. Their red ink makes our black ink possible, right?

And so clearly rhetorically, what she's trying to say is all you fiscal hawks wanting to cut spending and get the deficit under control and we're, you know, impoverishing our grandchildren, and you guys are all idiots. You don't understand when it comes to public finances as opposed to like a household. Deficits are actually responsible because that, you know, provides the means by which the private sector can accumulate assets. So not to, you know, go down a rabbit hole here. There is a sense in which what she's saying, she could point to some accounting by which that's true.

But the trick is that the way they do these numbers, like the net, the private sector as a whole, the financial assets net to zero necessarily, right? If you have a corporate bond, that's an asset to you, but it's a liability to the corporation, right? So that's a sense. And so all they're saying with that, you know, insight is the only way that the private sector as a whole can be owed dollars by something that's not just a wash is if some outside entity owes them dollars. Well, who could that be? Well, it could be foreigners or it could be the government. And so, yeah, that's not a false statement, but it doesn't, you know, the private sector, the fact that the government owes us $37 trillion because that's their debt or $38. Yeah. If they snap their fingers tomorrow and that just disappeared, all those treasuries

disappeared, it's not that the private sector as a collective would be that much worse off because how was the government going to pay the interest in the principal? They were going to tax us, borrow it, you know, just roll it over or print money. And so you can see that that's a different thing, that a household old, you know, if foreigners own us that 37 trillion, that would mean something. That would make Americans genuinely wealthier because the only way foreigners are going to come up that is to make cars and stuff and send them to us. But to say the government owns the private sector 37 trillion, so that's net assets to us,

is kind of goofy when you think through, how does the government pay us? It's like if some guy owes you $1,000 and he sticks a gun in your belly, you give him $1,000 because he mugs you and then he pays you right back and says, there you go, we're square. Was his I. Was that really an asset? You know what I mean? So it's kind of like that. So again, that's the thing with MMTers is they'll make some statements that are technically

not false, but they're extremely misleading. I agree with that. I was covered in my book. You know, the fantasy that they live under is that they can continue to print money to cover deficits and that there won't be any impact of that printing. And they concede that inflation has a potential risk. But they also believe that they can control that inflation through taxation and government policies. And anybody who believes the government can control anything effectively or knows how and when to do the right thing is delusional in my view. And the first experiment with MMT was, you know, 1921 through 23. And, you know, and it was called charterism back then.

And there was a guy named Knapp who came up with the notion that the government could never run out of money and that all money was a creation of the government, not a creation of the marketplace, which was just totally false. And, you know, it ended up with hyperinflation in Ymartial. terminates. So it's funny because when I asked her, Stephanie, about that on Twitter, I got blocked. Yeah, I don't know how that shit happens, right? Yeah. We have Warren Moser blocked me, which is weird, because I've had him on my show. It was curdie. I don't even know. Like, he, sometimes there's like lists that go around and people just automatically like defer to someone else's judgment,

block these accounts. Yeah. When I went after, suddenly I had all of MMT world coming after me and I just had a total blockathon. I, I, I X out hundreds of people within days. Yeah, well, that, so Lawrence, you make a good point there, too. I've seen that too where it's, again, Stephanie counts, she's not dumb, right? So in her book, like, if people just say like, oh, you know, money printer go burr, you MMTers, you just think print money. And the m m mtors can, you know, get righteously indignant and say, no, Stephanie says several times in her book, you know, that there's real resource constraints. And if the government runs the printing press too much, then that will make prices right. And yes, she does say that, but

again, like, there's never a time when they say the government should stop printing it. Like, there's clips of her on CNBC. There's no mechanism for it. Yeah, she said multiple times. She's like cash cars. She said we can never run out of money. You know, we've got an unlimited amount of money, just like there's an unlimited amount of cash in the Federal Reserve.

I mean, she is just an outright, complete, and utter fraud. I mean, she's a liar and she's full of shit and she knows she's full of shit, but she's kissing up to the state. You know, and she went to that great college, Stony Brook and got, you know, got a PhD there. I mean, she's just dumb as fuck. I mean, it just... Your statements are more aggressive than me. Larry, tell us like it is.

No, it's just, it's true. I mean, I read her book. I mean, it was such trash. I just couldn't believe anybody reads and believes that crap. I was like, what the fuck, lady? This makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, it was just horrible. I mean, I had to read it because I was writing mine and I had to cover MMT.

So I had to sit down, actually read the whole goddamn book, which I never would have done otherwise. And I was just appalled at what I read. I mean, it's just a piece of shit. You know, why anyone buys it, I just don't understand. I don't know if I'm old enough for this podcast. You may not, Bob, you may not be cranky enough. I mean, we should become the cranky O'Men, Bob.

Yeah, we should have warned you about when Larry gets rolling. Yeah, our last guest might have surpassed me. We had a guy on, who's a good friend of ours, George Boding, and he's probably right there with me. but Bob and Gary are much more polite than I am. I think that's set to scale for us. Yeah. I'm kind of at that point where I'm just so pissed off and I got nothing to live. I just don't give a fuck.

And so, you know, I'm just going to kind of call it as I see. And I think, but I think that's what I think it, I think that's a really sage point because I think at some point you just had enough, right? And, you know, like, so we're well in our, you know, well over 60 years old. And I know you're not, you're not there yet. even close, Bob, but there's a point at which you just say, I'm, I'm just so tired of this crap and this bullshit. And you also realize, like, you have a clock yourself, like, you want to see stuff righted before you pass on, right? And so it gets frustrating. And I think kind of back to that

whole thing of how the different schools of thought, the way I look at it and, you know, correct me if you feel differently, Bob, but I think we're really talking about a whole bunch of schools of thought that think an economy can be managed, that a central authority can somehow pull the levers and make it all right versus the Austrian school saying, no, it, it, you don't want to screw with it. Like let it, let it run its course and it will be much better off than if you tried to play with it.

Yeah, I think that, I mean, for sure that's true. And then I got more of a glimpse in the psychology and understand how it works when I went to NYU, to get my degree. And there, you know, there were some of the professors there. So at the time, it was probably like a top 15th, you know, economics program in the world. So it was a pretty rigorous program. They had an Austrian fellowship.

That's why I went there because it was like, I got the mainstream education, but my dissertation could be Austrian and they supported me. And, you know, so those guys were sharp. You know, they were very good at math and everything, but they just, they didn't, in my view, they didn't really understand how the economy worked. And then also it wasn't just a, like I said, side point because they were so intelligent or because Paul Krugman is so smart. That's why he thinks, oh, I have the ability.

I could run things better than what these clowns are doing. You know what I mean? So this arrogance kind of fuels it. And there was a guy in my program, I was somehow the socialist calculation debate came up. So there's a famous debate that raged in the 20s and 30s between like Mises and Hayek and socialists. And Mises was saying that, yeah, you need market prices.

Central planners don't have the ability even after the fact to say whether the resources have been allocated efficiently. That's why you need, you know, decentralized ownership, money prices, just so entrepreneurs can do profit and loss calculation. That's how it works in a market economy. You don't have the analog in a socialist one. So they have no idea. He said, they'd be groping in the dark.

They have no idea what they're doing. And my buddy in this program, you know, going through the program with me, and he was a sharp guy and a nice guy. And he was just like, no, I mean, clearly the socialist won because whatever the market economy does, the socialist could just mimic that allocation. but if they didn't like it, they could just tweak it. And why was he thinking? Because in his mind, it's just a little model that we just learned in our first year class at NYU.

Like, that's what the economy is. It's just a bunch of equations not realizing to say, oh, just tell the central planners, just start out, you know, basically mimic what the market would have done this year. And then if you see some things you don't like, like inequality that tweak it. It's ironic because we've got thousands of years of history that shows that, you know, the freer markets are the better the outcomes that they provide. And yet, you know, all these Keynesians and socialists, just ignore that. And that's because they want to be in power. And what you're saying, Bob,

kind of reminds me of a conversation that Ryan Lundeen had with Alan Greenspan, where he, after he left the Fed. And, you know, he was a gold bug. Originally, he was, you know, an Anne Rand accolate. And he said, well, you know, when we were running the Fed, we were really just trying to mimic the gold standard. And I just wanted to, you know, spit up my coffee. I mean, it's just like, no, you weren't. You know, you very clearly, you know, blew an enormous bubble. And you were managing to an outcome, which was higher stock prices because you knew that if asset prices went up, you know, there wouldn't be a revolution. And so we engineered a system where asset prices have to go up continually.

And the only way to have asset prices go up continually is to feed them with newly printed money. And that's what we've been doing now for 50 plus years. And the whole experiment's about to blow the fuck up. And it deserves to blow the fuck up, you know. And it's just disgusting, you know, how stupid these people are and the stuff that they've tried to shove down people's throats. And that's why I wrote the book. I mean, I wanted to just try and educate people that, you know,

you've been lied to about all this stuff. Yeah, just to elaborate on that, Greens, I don't remember off the top of my head what it was, but I saw, like, after he stepped down and was no longer on the Fed, and then, you know, he's, you know, this revered man or whatever at conferences. And people are asking him, he wrote some things. And once again, like, the stuff he wrote was pretty reasonable and, like, pretty, you know, sound money perspective.

when he wasn't when he was like before he had the power he was real good such that you know iran puts him in a chapter in a book on you know the virtues of gold and then after he's out of power again like his economics intuition is good it's just huh funny when that guy though is well and i can i can offer a clue on that again he was asked by brian lundeen at the new orleans conference where i just spoke to to come down and present after he left and um brian gets to have dinner and supper with all the speakers you know when they're down there and he told me and private, but I think he would be okay with me sharing. And he said, you know, I was, I was asking me, Alan, I said, Alan, how did it feel to be a central banker for all these years, to be the maestro, to be this? And he said, Alan kind of turned to me in it with a sly look, said, you know, it was intoxicating. It was just absolutely intoxicating. I thought to myself, there you go, right? I mean, it's very honest answer. Yeah, right? I mean, it's all ego and bullshit, you know. Yeah, there was some memory when I did my book on the Great Depression, I came across some stuff about like the,

and it was out who's the diary or whatever, memoirs of some of the guys that were like in Roosevelt's inner circle. Yeah. And the one guy, I forget his name now. He was telling the story like when they went off gold or, you know, in,

you know, gold was locked in and then they, they went off gold temporarily and then, you know, revalued it. But there was a period where it was like every day, Roosevelt was just making up with the price of gold was going to be that day. And like,

and like, oh, yeah, that sounds like a nice number. You know, I mean, like it wasn't any kind of scientific, And the guy, so the guy writing, again, it was a memoir or diary,

something said something like, if the public knew, the method by which we were determining the gold prices, they would have been horrified or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Blockstream Jade is your easy to use Bitcoin-only, cold storage solution made for both experts and beginners alike. Its simple, clean interface makes it a great gift to friends and family just starting down their Bitcoin journey.

The open-source hardware of the Jade, combined with the open-source software of the Blockstream app, means full transparency. Like Bitcoin itself, you never have to trust and can always verify. And at an affordable price, the Blockstream Jade allows you to safeguard your future without breaking the bank. Buy two, three, or four Jade classics together and get up to 25% off this holiday season. Plus get 10% off any Jade with the code boomers. Open source, transparent Bitcoin only.

Blockstream. Peace of mind without compromise. The more your Bitcoin holdings grow, the more complex your challenges become. What started as simple self-custody now involves family legacy planning, sophisticated security decisions, and navigating situations where a single mistake could cost generations of wealth. Standard services weren't built for these high-stakes realities. That's why long-term investors choose unchained signature, a premium private client service for serious Bitcoin holders who want expert guidance, resilient custody, and an enduring partnership. With signature, you're paired with your own dedicated account manager, someone who understands your goals and helps you, every step of the way. You get white glove onboarding, same-day emergency support, personalized education,

reduced trading fees and priority access to exclusive events and features. An Unchains Collaborative Custody model is designed to provide the same security posture as the world's biggest Bitcoin custodians, but for those who prefer to hold their own keys. Learn more about Unchained signature at Unchained.com slash BTC Boomers. Use code Boomers 10 at checkout to get 10% off your first year. Because Bitcoin isn't just for life, it's for generations. Yeah. Well, you know, maybe, and this will maybe a slight change in subject, but I think related, you know, we're kind of in a difficult state. I think we can see the Mamdami election in New York. I think is, you know, great evidence of there's a lot of people struggling, especially the younger generations are really struggling. And one of the things that the three of us face, Bob, is a lot of angst about our generation. People will say, you know, it's the boomer's fault that we are here. And without prejudicing your answer further, and it's okay to say they're right.

But I'm curious how you view that. How would you respond to something like that? So I've seen that too. I mean, it's tough because like I hit along with my parents who are boomers and they retired to Florida and they did very boomer. And my dad golf is probably five days a week and stuff. So they're definitely like in that box. I like my parents, I have no animosity towards them.

They were very nice to me and they have been. So it's, you know, I think maybe in some of these things, like somebody might have a personal thing that then they project. So I mean, the critique where it's coming from that I've seen in terms of like to operationalize and say like, what do you have in mind? I know there's a thing where like rising home prices is a good example. So like, geez, like you're some young guy coming out. How are you, if you're 25 right now, how are you supposed to get married and go buy a house or something with home prices, what they are. that AI is making it like right now entry level jobs are tough right and so that kind of critique and

so then against the mindset of like a lot of people saying like oh we can't deregulate and have more you know like to take away zoning regulations to allow more homes to be constructed well no because that's going to hurt my property value you know and that that's my number one asset for retirement is my house so that's the kind of type of thing when people can be specific about what is it that they have in mind would they say the older boomers don't understand they're like you know pulling the ladder up after him and now we're screwed. Yeah, I mean, I can sure. I understand the situation.

Like, for instance, I bought my first home in 1986 or 87 for $62,000 with a 3% down FHA loan, right? So I put, what is that like $1,450 down or something like that was my down payment? And, and, and, but I, I guess I would love for, because I have kids, I don't even have grandkids now, I would love for them to have that same opportunity. But I don't blame my generation for it. I think it's rooted in some of the things we're talking about earlier. The, the way inflation has, has happened, the way assets have, have appreciated. I'm a sound money guy too, you know, what Nixon did in 71 and certainly the precursors to all that. I believe those are more of the issues. And by the way, the people that made most of those decisions weren't boomers.

They were generations before that. Right. Yeah. So what you just did, I think, is the nail. Like there's a sense in which if something's screwed up with the world and young people coming up and do it, it's the old people's fault. Like there's like it's a tautology in a sense. But when you really want to break it down and say, where are the institutional factors that change and why is it that,

you know, inflation is so much worse now than it was in, you know, the 1920s or something, yes, those, you can point to the specific policies and it's not technically boomers that were in charge of those fateful decisions. So I agree with all that. And then, yeah, given that you're now in the environment where you are, of course your house is going to be your primary asset if you're just like a middle class person, like what else would it be?

And so I get that. If you banked on that and then they come in and tweak things so that now of a sudden your home price collapses, well, that's going to impact you as well. So it is, you know, it is what it is. I think this has been going on a while, though. I mean, my parents bought our house, our first house in 63 for $20,000. Then in 83, I bought my first house for $100,000. And my parents, and it wasn't a great house. I'm glad we don't live there now.

but my parents were having a heart attack going, how are you going to afford this? Oh my gosh. And I said, well, we're going to make it work. You know, so it's not like it's something new. That's a, what, a five fold in 20 years. You know, so I don't know what the average house is. And it wasn't that great of a house.

Well, right. Yeah. So, I mean, even there, they're like Nixon going off gold in 71, you know, the big inflations. That's what I'm saying. I think it was the 70s that really destroyed the, and Bob, you know this like from the life insurance world that, it used to be the case that in Mises and some of the older Austrian works, you know, as a matter of fact,

we say that people save through like, you know, bank savings accounts and maybe some, you know, safe bonds and then life insurance. Whereas nowadays that the idea of people like saving in their life insurance is still kind of this quaint thing that's making a comeback because in the 70s, that just seemed to be stupid that, you know, with what inflation was doing. So I, anyway, and also, too, like there was like the rise of no load mutual funds and things like it, it is, I think the 70s is really what pushed a lot of people such that the average American

household thought, okay, yeah, I need to be in the stock market and, you know, I need my house to go up over time. Otherwise, how am I going to, you know, have something at the end to give to my kids? Yeah. I think that the human tendency to want to be able to blame somebody as maybe, you know, at root cause here. And also just we don't educate people, right? So, I mean, I, to the degree, I, I have knowledge in the spaces that we're talking about. It's all been self-education, you know, even, even though I actually studied economics in college, like, everything I've learned is I've had to seek myself. And, you know, we, I think we live in a world where I think it's, it's harder and harder. You've obviously published a lot of books, Bob, trying to help and

educate people. Larry's book, which is, I think, I'll if this is right, called The Big Print. What was that released? Maybe six, seven months ago. February, yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, there's attempts and we're doing these kind of podcasts, but it's really hard for people, I think, to get information. And when I look at, like, the Mamdami election,

I mean, I just, I cringe because I think the people that voted for him, I understand why they voted for him. But I feel sorry for them because I don't think they understand how unlikely it is that this will be successful. Oh, yeah, I agree with all that. And also, too, like on the right, the big, you know, populist upsurred with Trump and so on. And so, like, it used to be standard among, you know, right wing conservative to like fans of Rush Limbaugh, let's say. Like, oh, yeah, free trade is the default position, low tax is to the. And then, you know, Tucker Carlson and guys like that, Pap Buchanan challenging that and saying, no.

this is while the jobs are going overseas. So I'm saying that, yes, for sure, when everybody is acknowledging something is screwed up with the American economy since, you know, the 90s at least, like it just keeps getting more and more screwed up. And that tends to hurt, you know, the economically vulnerable more. So young people who have no assets or anything, they're the ones that are going to be the most ones bear in the brunt of that. And then, yeah, the right has its prescriptions and the left has theirs. And to the extent that I would say they're not, you know, correctly diagnosing exactly. what went wrong, then yeah, those things are going to blow up in their face. But unfortunately, again, going back to what we said right at the top, it's hard even

after the fact looking backwards to say, why did that not work? You can always come up with a story that's consistent with the observations. And so they'll say, oh, we didn't do socialism hard enough. That's what happened. Or it's those greedy rich people that they all moved out of New York City. So now we can't tax them. Otherwise, it would have worked. You know, they're going to say, wait, maybe capitalism is great.

Anyone who voted for Mount Downing is not going to say that. no matter what happens. Right. Hey, Bob, I got a question which is changing, maybe not changing that much to subject. With the AI going like it is and the amount of jobs that are predicted to be lost over the next 10, 20 years or whatever, do you think that they will come out with UVI? And if so, how would that affect the market? I could just see them going for that with all these people out of work.

We discussed this last week, you know, that I think people would be right. in the street if there's no jobs at all. Right. So if you're asking me, like, what's my prediction about what's actually going to happen? Yes. Yeah, I think there's going to be some kind of UBI. Maybe they'll call it something else to like make it go down smoother. But yeah, I think there's going to be that that's what's going to happen.

And so as a, you know, market fundamentalist kind of guy, I don't think that would need to be the case. In other words, we just had a society that, you know, voluntary contracts and things like that. And there was no big welfare state. I don't think AI would spell doom for 50% of humanity. It's like to me, no, that's kind of like how you get to live in the George Jetson kind of world. Like that's what that looks like. But it is true that right now, I mean, there's lots of statistics.

You know, you can go and look and see that it's hard to disentangle because like the Fed started raising rates too, right? When ChatGBT came out with, I forget which model it was like in 2022. So some of this stuff, it's hard. But if somebody wants to make the case that right when these AI things came out and they really started getting good, major companies stopped hiring entry-level positions. You can show a lot of graphs that seem to back that up. And that's also the advice.

Like I know people who specialize in, you know, consulting with companies about how can you use these large language models, you know, to integrate in your work floor to flow to get efficiencies. And I mean, that's what they're doing. They're saying, how can you do what you're doing now without having to hire new people? And they're not going to be laying off, you know, the 20-year-old manager, they're going to meaning 20 years experience manager, it's going to be the entry level things. That's the easiest thing to get rid of first just to have the established person using AI

to do the jobs that normally they would have hired four new people to do. So that's all happening. And again, in the long run, I think normally the market would have adjusted and those people can find new things, you know, the cliche, we don't need as many people growing food as we did in 1800. It's so they just went and did something else. But in the short term, that is painful. And I think it's going to be easy. plus two with all these big companies getting, you know, trillion dollar plus market caps because of AI,

then it's going to be so obvious to say, oh, we'll tax them in order to fund, you know, these support payments to the people that are displaced. And so I don't see politically how you could possibly stop that, given that both the left and the right now are kind of populist and like looking out for the little guy against these fat cats. And so what, isn't they going to really kind of just, add tons of money to the deficit? Oh, yeah, sure. So it's, again, it's tricky, though, because I think Peter Thiel made this point recently on an interview that somebody was asking, you know, they're asking all kinds of stuff. It was the one where he got really weird and was

talking about the Antichrist, if you saw that. But anyway, one of the points that, yeah, that was not, you know, too out there that I thought was good, is they're asking about Elon Musk. And he said, well, it's weird because on the one hand, Elon is warning about, you know, the deficit cliff and how the big beautiful bill is going to destroy the country and everything. But on the other hand, he says by, and I forget what you was like, by 2035, we're going to have 50 million robots working and, you know, doing mid-level jobs. And so he's saying, so which one is it? So in other words, he was saying there's a sense in which, you know, if this predicted thing

that some people, and I think this is very plausible that, yeah, there's a sense in which it'd be like a bunch of aliens showed up millions that who can do all these jobs and everything and they're willing to do it for a dollar an hour. Like in that kind of framework, if the government can just figure out a way to tax them just even a little bit, they're going to have tons of money flowing in. And again, that's what would make it so hard to deny people who say, well, then why don't you give some of it to these humans now who can't find work?

It's going to be a hard problem. I made a tweet about a week, week and a half ago. And one of the things I said was it's my advice to basically any developed nation in the world to radically shut the door on immigration. I'm not saying 100%, but, and plan for a labor shortage in the short term, like just deal with it because we have no idea what the effect of the AI, the robotics, the drones, the self-driving vehicles, like all these sorts of things I think are going to have a radical impact.

And the last thing you want is a massive amount of new people coming into the nation, especially unskilled ones. I think what Trump's doing to flush out a lot of the illegal immigration is a very positive thing because I don't really know. And I think all of us understand AI as a technologist, I look at it. And I see improvements that are exponential. Like even compared to a year ago in my own life, I can see radical change in my efficiency because of it. And so, you know, that really worries me. Like how do we do all this?

And I guess I'll, I love your comments on that, Bob. But the second thing I'll say and let you expand on it is Gary asked about you, but then you mentioned things like, oh, we'll tax, we'll tax the, the, um, the organizations that are that are winning essentially, right? The invidias of the world or the Teslas or whoever is winning. Um, do you, how do you see that happening and, and, like, do you see things like, uh, tax on, uh, unrealized gains being a, something that, that maybe gets chased. in the not too distant future, especially in Western worlds. Yes, everything you just said.

I agree with all that. That it's, in the immigration stuff, I'm agnostic in the sense that I want to decentralize everything. Like I think that in the long run, like in the U.S. context, I've written in favor of Texas seceding and things like that because I just don't see how at the national level this stuff can work. So anyway, I'm just saying that's, you know, my crazy views on that stuff in terms of they're like making the decision making instead instead of people in

Washington deciding the immigration policy for the whole thing instead like you know breaking it down like more local people like decisions about that area but in any event um yeah i i just in my own work it's the stuff it's incredible we happen to use claude at infineo and you know if i need to do so especially something that involves like some quantitative modeling and things like that whereas before i would have needed to like try to get some grad students somewhere to do it. And it would have taken a week to, you know, make the arrangements to send him the thing to get the feedback.

And then we would have to pay him a bunch of money because he's got an opportunity cost of this time. And I can do it, you know, in a one hour setting with Claude and get results. And yeah, and it's not perfect. And sometimes they'll give me nonsense. And I'll just say, hey, what you just said that doesn't make sense because of this, right? And they'll say, oh, yes, my apologies here.

And they'll go ahead and do it. And it's crazy. So, like, fortunately, I'm not worried about Claude taking away my job. In other words, they need me at the helm. Again, also assessing whether or that outputs nonsense. That's not what I asked for. But in terms of, you know, would that make us less likely to hire a bunch of interns or something? You know what I mean. Entry level analysts and things. Yeah, at least for right now. And that's kind of what I'm saying to other businesses, too, is just if you don't see the potential of this thing, just look at your workflow and what your

employees currently do and just see. So with a lot of this stuff, it's more like you can do things that you otherwise wouldn't have done. So I think, you know, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit there where it's more that companies are going to be able to do so much more than they otherwise would have because the AI is doing a bunch of stuff that it would have made sense to hire somebody to do. So there is that element. But yeah, I think for plenty of places. And again, you're seeing this was like, you know, Amazon and so on a lot of places are just saying,

yep, we're either laying off or a lot or just, you know, have a hiring freeze. And again, the thing that's, I hate to use the term game changer. I can't stand that term. But I think the thing that's really going to be the inflexing, point, I'll use another buzz term, is when they, because the robotic technology keeps getting better. I don't you guys like watch these things from these conferences and stuff where the robots are going. I mean, it's got to the point where I have to look and see, is this a parody? Is that really a human inside of suit? Or is that really a robot? Because it's.

It was just yesterday. I mean, we're by the recording this on November 7th for, for those listening later on. But Tesla just had a conference yesterday. And the optimist, which is that, their robot was doing exactly what you said, was dancing and doing it in a really elegant way. And the dexterity of this thing is amazing. They're producing them for $20,000 or the retail price on these is $20,000. They're going to have a production capacity, I believe, of $10 million per year. And the robots are building the robots. Right.

Like it's mind-blowing, right? Yeah. So me just like my vision like I think because I've also said things that I think like the U.S. is not going to be the superpower in the year 2050. Not that China will be, but just I think it'll be a more multipolar world and stuff just because the relative shifting. And I think we're going to see just like multinational companies rising like, you know, if you have 50,000 robots like that, I mean, they're, they're going to be rivaling nation states

in terms of like just people not messing with them and doing what they. you know what I mean? So I think that you're going to see all this kind of stuff. And especially given if the U.S. government, its finances just keep getting worse. And yeah, it's going to be more powerful than any one particular company. But if you do have these other companies that have, you know, 50 trillion dollar valuations or wherever. And then the U.S. government is 60 trillion dollars in debt. And we've hit the point where unlike the MMTers would say that, no, if we just start running the printing press, the dollar is going to crash because, you know, bond investors around the world now have gotten their appetite full. That's going to be a different thing.

That it's these companies that people run these companies. And maybe it'll be like the CEOs board plus the AI engines that are, you know, GPT 9.0 helping them make decisions and things. So I think you're going to see a lot of that where it's not just one thing, but all these different trends all kind of coming together. And the world 30, 40 years from now, I think is going to look a lot different from today. Like just like it's hard for us to even imagine. Abundant Mines is an Oregon-based husband and wife owned Bitcoin mining company, making Bitcoin mining accessible to investors of all ages and experience levels. They're fully managed, white-gloved service allows you to own all of your own equipment

and earn steady Bitcoin-denominated income without lifting a finger. Whether you're starting with $10,000 or $10 million, abundant mines is your one-stop shop. No overseas call center. No surprise upcharges. With one-on-one onboarding, consulting, and help navigating both Bitcoin and the Bitcoin mining space At every turn, you can rest easy while Bitcoin flows to you 24-7. Learn more at abundant mines.com.

Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply have. head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC sessions to sign up today. And you can share your own personalized referral link to earn commissions. I agree. And you touched on something I've spoken some on myself, which is I predict the exact same thing, which is in a lot of cases, these very powerful multinational corporations, Tesla is probably a great candidate to be one.

Or SpaceX, actually. Or maybe the blend of those, too. gets difficult to distinguish from the nation state and maybe even one and of themselves and the ability of traditional nation states to control them could get very difficult. And so it, like you said, kind of a mind-boggling thing. And it could go really bad. It could go well to it. you know, we could, we could go toward utopia or dystopia, but, you know, it's hard to, uh, the middle, the middle ground is probably less likely than, than the two ends, right?

Yeah, I mean, my prediction on that stuff is it'll be kind of like when you're watching the movie The Matrix and how like it's sort of scary and dystopian on one hand, but on the other hand, like, oh wow, like they're flying around in a space, like in the real world part. Like, so that's some cool technology. Like I think, you know, the tech, just like if somebody from the year 1950s saw the U.S. today, I think they would be both amazed by the technology in certain aspects, but they would be horrified. Like, you let boys and girls use their bathrooms. What are you nuts? You know, just some stuff that would be inconceivable to them.

And so I think it's be the same, you know, from our vantage point, looking ahead that, yeah, there's going to be certain innovations and certain respects in which, wow, that's amazing. I can't believe humanity's achieved that. But on the other hand, I think, like certain social patterns. And the most notable part about that, as you guys both know, is that if all that comes to fruition, it just totally destroys the Keynesian credit-based financial system. Do you know what I mean? You can't. I mean, all these technologies are enormously deflationary.

They do more with less and they create efficiencies. And we have a monetary system where money is debt and the money supply and debt have to continually grow or else it collapses. And so, you know, the two just can't coexist. this is Jeff Booth's point with his seminal book. And I'm pretty sure I know which one's going to win. You know, the Fiat world is, I mean, I think Fiat is in its death throws right now. I mean, the great Keynesian experiment is coming to an end. And AI and technology are helping with that.

I mean, it's helped already because it created the Internet, which disintermediated the lies at the media. Yeah, I totally agree with that, that part of my vision there that I sketched a minute ago, that all these big, you know, multi-trillion dollar from our perspective, corporations or whatever is what's a big thing that, oh, they'd be like mining bitcoins. You know what I mean? Like that would be a big, and that, yeah, their transactions vis-a-vis each other because in a world where the U.S. dollar is no longer the global reserve currency and it's just splintered,

I think you will see a return to, you know, Bitcoin, things like that, but also even like, oh, gold that's custodied and that, you know, it's on the blockchain, you know, on a blockchain. how they all keep tabs so that it's sort of, you know, in a world where there's no global authority, and it's just all kind of decentralized, obviously the type of money and financial transactions they're going to use. They're going to have to be on things like blockchains because otherwise, how are they going to trust each other? Yeah. You know, this may be a good transition. Bob, you wrote a, I don't know if it's a book, booklet maybe we call it, Understanding Bitcoin.

Yeah, probably booklet. And it was an early book, you know, I looked it up before we started and was published in 2015. And I read it several years ago, but I pulled it back out. And I want to just read a little something. And it's on this very topic. It's from very early in the book, there's a section called, why do we need privately created money?

And I'll just read a few sentences from it. But it says, we the authors of this guide, are extremely skeptical of the modern state, consider it a threat to both civil and financial liberties. The most obvious pitfall of state-issued money is the danger of hyperinflation. Moderate inflation entails the transfer of wealth from people holding the currency to the institutions given the power to create it. Proponents of this system sometimes argue that wages and prices adjust to make it all wash, but consider if someone offered you a printing press that could make legal tender notes,

wouldn't you see how that would slant things in your favor? Central banks are able to spend more on both the welfare and warfare than their subjects would ever support through open taxation and private lending because the central banks are waiting in the wings to issue new money and absorb the government debt. I skipped a few parts. But I thought that is, so this is kind of in the setup of your book kind of to get to Bitcoin.

And so, So I see comment on anything in in that section that I read. But how do you view Bitcoin in and you mentioned it a little bit in kind of this future state? And you know, how big of a help can it be in that world? Well, sure. So in terms of like how does it affect what I've been doing in turn of my career that, you know, I was an academic economist and then I'm now, you know, more like, writing and speaking to the public, things like that.

And I'm in the financial sector too, of course. So in that respect, just from that narrow dimension, Bitcoin is amazing because it has demonstrated to people that you don't need the state to issue money. So to go back to what Lawrence was saying, like a big trick that the MMTers try to employ to make it look like their position is inevitable is to say like, oh, we wouldn't even have money if it weren't for the government. So what are you guys talking about? And just historically, this is not true.

Right. But so that's what I, like and um and i think jeff dice might have been the one that made this analogy but saying that uber and lift did more to show the public like the virtues of decentralized private ride sharing than any you know dc think tank white paper on hey let's get rid of the medallion system for new york cabs or something you know what sure cares about the but to see it and to know the difference like no i've taken rides in uber versus you know a yellow cab in new york and the uber's way safer and cleaner and that's right so that's what i think that's what i think

with Bitcoin that yeah we obviously in this Austrian tradition and other economists too can explain the dangers of inflation why commodity money was so much better than government fiat money and everything but it still just seemed inevitable well yeah but there's the government's in control the money and what are you going to do and so now Bitcoin you know gives this alternative to show that yeah this this could happen you don't need a state to issue money so that that's I think huge just you know just to show people that possibility and then in terms of in practice I mean, I'm sure you guys are familiar with, you know, the debate over the, the block size and things like that. And that, yeah, right now, Bitcoin can't, you can't buy cups of coffee with Bitcoin.

That's not going to work. And so people are like, well, it could be like, you know, sort of like gold, gold bars stored in a vault somewhere. So there's debates over that type of thing. But certainly the idea of being able to lock up value and transfer it to people just with an internet connection. I mean, that's, that's, that's huge. That's going to be the underpinning of, I think, what's going to happen with. the global financial system going forward. Bitcoin was just the first example

showing blockchain per se. And that's what, like at Infinia, we're putting life insurance on the blockchain, right? So this is not just about Bitcoin per se, but this technology really opened up a whole new, you know, arena and commerce. Well, and that coffee thing is, that's coming. I mean, that's the Lightning Network and layer two.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's very good. I use it all the time. And I realize I'm not everybody, but but it's very good it's it's very good Gary Gary runs a conference you can see it in the bit bop boom and you know all through that conference people are transacting and utilizing it and

you know but but and I know Bob you have you have some um expertise in you know what is money how does money develop like all those sorts of things in it in it you know it's not maybe maybe the way I would phrase it is, you know, money is not created by the government. And it, it has to be a good money. It probably has to be created organically, which means it has to go through a process to get to a certain point. Would that be consistent with the way you would think? Well, sure. So in this, if we take a moment as a detour here, perhaps that I hope your viewers will be interested in.

Originally, there were some diehard Austrian fans who didn't like Bitcoin. And the thing that was tripping them up was that Ludwig von Mises, who's a giant, the Austrian tradition, when he was pioneered a lot in terms of monetary theory. And he had this thing called the regression theorem. And so what that, I don't need to get the full blown details of it. But the idea was to explain the purchasing power of money, it involves, it's kind of weird. Like, why are you accepting money today to give up your car or or something. It's because, oh, you think it's going to have purchasing power tomorrow.

Like, that's ultimately why would you accept something today? You know, it's because you think it's going to have purchase power. They said, well, where'd that come from? How do you, where your expectations coming from? And they'd say, oh, because you observed its recent history. And so you saw a sense and, oh, yeah, this money has a certain purchasing power. So I'm willing to give up my valuable stuff today for it. But then the critics said, oh, doesn't that they lead to an infinite regress, right,

that you're explaining today's purchasing power ultimately by yesterday's. And doesn't that just go back forever? you haven't really explained. And Mises said, no, because you can go back. There's a logical stopping point when these commodities, because Mises was writing at a time when it was still gold and silver, that, you know, there was a state of barter and people just liked gold and silver, you know, because they were pretty or they use them for some industrial purpose or whatever. And so that's why, you know, so in his framework, he needed that just to solve this logical objection that he was using an infinite regress. And so, and Mises even went further. And he said, for something to be a medium of exchange, it must have first been used as a mere commodity because otherwise, how would anybody know what, you know, what relative valuation to ascribe to it?

So he was pretty. And so when Bitcoin first came on the scene, there were a lot of people steeped in that tradition who thought, well, you know, you can't use Bitcoin's to make a sandwich or to, you know, build a building or so like, how do we know how much it's supposed to be worth? So this is crazy. This is all. But the point I made is kind of a technical one is once it. got off the ground and it was worried like that objection if anything that would have stopped anyone from accepting the first bitcoins period but since you know given what the 10,000 for the two pizzas it's like well there you go now people saw that and then they have a basis for figuring it out

i know i know a lot of people who lost a lot of money because they believed in that regression theorem and it held them back from buying bitcoin it was really tragic because what they should have done has gone back a couple of austrians beforehand and consulted manger who basically said money is the most liquid good and all value is subjective. And my view has always been money as a ledger. It's valued based on its qualities. And as long as it's scarce and immutable or scarce and defensible, I mean, gold, you know, doesn't tarnish and last forever. Bitcoin, you know, the network is immutable or basically immutable. And so, you know, it's got great monetary qualities and obviously it's emerging as money.

My kids and grandkids are going to be transacting in Satoshi's like my guess is, Bob, that you would agree. But, yeah, the regression theorem hurt a lot of people. I mean, I had several very good Austrian friends who just couldn't get to Bitcoin because of it. And it was too bad. Yeah, and I want to clarify. So I agree with what you said. And yeah, I think in the year 2100, there's going to be lots of people holding, you know,

carrying the fact that they're the ones that the blockchains, you know, point to and say that they're the ones who control those Satoshis, that that's still going to be a big deal in 2100. That my point was, I wasn't even saying Mises was wrong. What I was saying, though, is to the extent that you think that there is some issue there, it would have stopped Bitcoin from becoming a medium of exchange, right? Going from me of exchange to money, it's just a matter of degree, right? But so that that was my, but we know that some guy gave up two pieces for, what was 10,000 bitcoins or something.

So there you go, somebody, you know, in other words, it would have stopped him there because he would say, well, how many, you know, should I ask for for these pizzas? Well, he did. Okay. And that's what happened. So, so market got created and, you know, and it became a liquid good. and the value of the pizzas was subjective. Now, as it turns out, you know, the guy who gave up the Bitcoin made a bad trade.

Right. I think he did that, though, several times, Bob, so he wasn't too upset about it, obviously. Well, he probably, if you can give up 10,000 Bitcoin, you probably have some others behind it, would be my guess. I doubt it clear. Yeah, and the pizza could have been good. We don't know how good the pizza was. Yeah, excellent. Well, and remember, too, the cost of production at that point was trivial.

So, which at that time, it was the only actual. method, which was to mine it, to create it. And it was, you know, pennies essentially to do so. If I could just be giggy for a second, it's just funny because I was having this thought the other day driving around like of a silly short story where like somebody goes back in time to the early days and then knows to just hoard Bitcoin. But because he did that, it never takes off because he's just hoarding it. And then it's not getting out, you know. So yeah. You know, it's interesting. you say that because one of the things I talk a lot about Bob is, you know, Metcalf's law, which is the network, it's, it's a value of an equity is equal to the square of the number

of users of the network. And one of the things that I harp on within the Bitcoin community is I tell people like, if you, if you just hold Bitcoin and you don't participate in using Bitcoin, you're, you're defeating yourself because you're, you're stealing the network. effect. You know, we need users of the network for the thing to propel. And there's secondary issues like the way the security budget is and funding the miners and all the sort of stuff. But fundamentally, it has to be used. Otherwise, it doesn't have, we don't get the benefit of the Metcalf effect. Yeah, my view is spend and replace. Jeff Booth feels this too. I've talked about it. Spend and replace is a very important part of it. It's not just digital capital. It's not just a store of value.

It has to become a widely used source of money. money. And it's, and it is, but it's just, we're so early days on the, on the medium of exchange side. So is cashing in Bitcoin the same as spending Satoshes as far as the effect it has? Say that again, Gary. Is cashing in Bitcoin for Fiat the same as spending its Satoshes as far as the, Yeah, I think good it does in the network? It is. I mean, and, and I think that's one of the things, too, is, you know, the hoddle culture. And I'm not against hattling.

Like, I want people to acquire Bitcoin and, and grow their stack. However, I don't think there's anything wrong with using it. I don't think you use it frivolously. But, but like if I, if I decide, Lola and I want to get a new house and a bigger place or a nice place, and we use some to do that, it's okay. I understand what I'm, you know, what I'm, giving up the future, likely future value of that money. But hey, I'm 61 years old and I want to have some nice things and I want to live in

us. And I think it's okay to do that on occasion. I think spend and replace is an important part in my view of creating wider adoption. I mean, I often with waiters and waitresses at restaurants, I often ask if they know about Bitcoin and most don't. And then I say, okay, I'm going to give you your regular tip. And then I say, I'll give you an little additional tip if you'll download this strike wallet and I'll basically flip you some Satoshis. I just think the more people know about it,

the faster it gets adopted, the better it is. You know, and I don't miss those Satoshes and I refill I refill my bucket, you know, every couple weeks when I need to. So to me, so I should start asking my waiters if they take Bitcoin and tip. There you go. Well, you go, stay and shake and they take it. We know that. That's a big step forward. I mean, look, it's amazing everything that's going on in terms of adoption. I mean, you've got, it's just, it's stunning. I mean, I think if you'd ask Bob or myself or Gary probably you too, Bob, you know, a couple years ago, did you think Bitcoin would be where it is today in terms of knowledge and understanding and widespread acceptance? I mean, it's, it's stunning, you know, and what's interesting, though, to me is that the price doesn't always move linearly with that

happening. And, you know, everyone's crying the fact that right now the price doesn't move as much as they like, even though it's up like 40% year over year. And, you know, a lot of some of the whales are selling and they say that's the reason why it's maybe that's so, but, you know, great, let's get more fully distributed. You know, some of the people who invested early and have the foresight, if they want to take profits on it and spend that somewhere else, great. I mean, we need to have a broader base of holders and that's, this is a natural process by which that happens.

So, you know, I view this all as very, very positive stuff. Yeah, and just to circle back on some of those. points that I guess going back to Gary's distinction there, I suppose that, you know, narrowly speaking that right, if what you're trying to do, like, hey, I go around and, you know, I share the gospel with people and I do this and I teach them free market. And then also I want to do my part to kind of bolster familiarity with Bitcoin. What's the best way that I guess if you're going to, you know, if you find merchants that would accept it and then you have a preference for like buying things by sending Satoshi's to somebody.

And then you say, yeah, but I'm trying to stack. But you could, again, if you get your paycheck and fee it, just in other words, instead of having it and you're going to your checking account and something you find online you use by your conventional bank, if you find someone who accepts Bitcoin, then you just, you know, pay them the Bitcoin and then transfer from your conventional bank to, you know, replenish your stockpile. And that's a wash from your point of view, you know, unless there's a price change in the interim. But I think that does more, it tells that business you are right to accept Bitcoin, right?

Because that's a decision merchants have to make. And if they don't get many sales, then they might say, this is not worth it. But I think, you know, on the margin, if you're thinking like, hey, I want to evangelize that helps, as opposed to just you selling for cash, that might just mean that, oh, somebody out there now who's looking to add more to their stack buys from you, because, you know, you're selling Bitcoin for money for dollars. And that, you know, that hurts. who's already stacking on the margin, they're already a fan of Bitcoin, whereas like the merchant or something. Yeah. So it's funny you should mention that, Bob, because I've got a perfect example that I'm in Naples, Florida. And I just went over to my CrossFit, Jim. And he's a, the guy who owns as an avid bitcoiner. And he's offering a 20% discount on gym memberships and drop-ins for anybody who pays him in Bitcoin.

And 20%. Wow. That's a lot. Right? Yeah. It's a good deal. I mean, I just signed up for a month and saved, you know, I don't know, $30 or something, whatever it was. It was a big number. And same with drop-ins. And I'm going to tweet that out. And my guess is that Bitcoiners traveling to Naples, they're going to find this guy, right? And I asked him why he's doing it. And he said, I'm just doing it because I want to see the thing spread.

And, you know, this is incentive for people to, you know, to become smart about it. And he's got a lot of regular people who are probably just paying him by a direct deposit. But he's telling them they can get a 20% discount for doing this. Wow, how many of those people do you think are going to figure out how to get a strike wallet and do it, right? Yeah. So, I mean, it's like, Bravo to the businesses that are helping out, you know, on this stuff. Well, I need to get more aggressive in asking people if they take Bitcoin, it sounds like, which I'm not. Well, I mean, a question for you, Gary.

I mean, when you sell, you know, tickets for your show or your conference, I mean, is there a Bitcoin discount, pay in Bitcoin discount versus regular payment? No, it's just regular payment. Yeah, but worth something worth considering, right? Yeah, yeah, it is worth considering as far as helping the. economy of Bitcoin. Now, I get maybe 10% of the people pay in Bitcoin, but 100% of them are Bitcoiners. I get it. I get it.

But again, just for those who aren't, you know, it's incentive. Like I said, at this gym, there are a bunch of members who are definitely not Bitcoiners. If I remember a gym and I was paying a monthly fee, I don't know what it is like 150 or some month. You know, somebody said, you can get 20% off. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting.

I hadn't even thought of that angle, in terms of, before I was thinking of it, like businesses do it because they like Bitcoin and want to get it, but in the sense. Well, this guy likes Bitcoin and wants to get it too. But I mean, and obviously like Bob said, 20% is a big, I mean, that's a big economic number. But again, I think you're saying to get people to get over the hurdle. Yeah. I think that's the thing. Because that's like, yeah, I don't know how that works. I think he just, I think he just wants to help the network. And by the way, he probably will. He gets a lot of drop-ins. There are a lot of people who have a parent that lives in Naples and they come down to visit their parent and they're, you know, across, are from any, I mean, I see him there all the time. They're from some other part of the country. They come down here and they come and they drop into his gym. Well, and there are four CrossFit gyms in Naples, so people have a lot of choices.

But guess what? I'm going to go to the one with the Bitcoin guy running it, right? Bob, a little bit off of the payment side. You wrote this book in booklet in 10 years ago. What has surprised you the most? So you had some expectation. and optimism for it, obviously, at that point. What surprised you or maybe,

and maybe what's disappointed you, if anything, in that 10 years? Okay, good. Yeah, good question. It's hard to remember exactly what my mindset was back then, but I think that this is true that I think I thought back then that you were going to see more widespread adoption and that Bitcoin was going to spread more in terms of just like smaller businesses accepting it and just more and more people, especially if they already had like a libertarian,

you know, bent to them, just using Bitcoin more and more in their daily transactions. But I didn't think it was going to percolate up to, you know, major investment banks and stuff. Certainly, I couldn't have imagined the president talking about it and like people wanting to have a Bitcoin strategic reserve like that. So that's kind of what surprised me is that the, and the one kind of explains it that because the large institutional adoption, I think that pushed up the price. and then, you know, that made it harder, you know, to just justify, you know, in terms of day-to-day commerce. But in any event, that's, I guess that would be my answer, that it's the adopt, how commonplace it is now.

Like, I can remember, you know, I'd be on a plane reading a book on Bitcoin and the guy next to me would be like, yeah, what the heck is that? And that wasn't that long ago or they didn't even know what it was. And then now it's like, you know, on CNBC's website, you know, they just got the crypto tab just like you can look at bonds and FX. Yeah. Yeah. S and B, it's just normal. Not like, oh, that's an asset class. What are you talking about?

So that kind of surprised me how fast that happened. And now all of a sudden it's not this crazy thing. It's like, oh, yeah, that's just normal. It's like gold and silver and, you know, commodities and crypto. And do you see when you look at like the valuation right now, do you have in your own head some way where you say, hey, that like $2.5 trillion market cap that makes sense? to me or like I'm shocked it's there now or it should be 20 trillion or like how do you have any

feelings like that I mean I've done back of the envelope calculations at infinio in terms of like what long term if you just got global adoption and it really was sort of like the backup thing that you know everyone's still using their day to day currencies at their government issues but like everyone now holds this as a backup kind of thing and I've done things like that just to see, you know, what could be what could be plausibly in terms of the, you know, and I still think you could get like 15% growth for, you know, decades. And, you know, that that's totally consistent with, you know, normal assumptions about if people just kind of got out of their own thing and got into Bitcoin.

So it's hard for me to say, like right now is a correct. So I'm, I'm extremely bullish. So in that sense, I think most of the world has not yet caught on to what to me is obvious, if that's one way of answering your question. But on the other hand, I think a lot of stuff, and I'm looking around saying, you guys are all idiots. Well, that's the common theme of this show.

Everybody else is an idiot. That happens to me every day, Bob. So, I mean, again, if you're like you're saying back when I wrote that booklet, would I have guessed what the market price would be now, I honestly don't remember, like, what I was thinking back. I thought that this was good. You know, that's partly why my co-author, Silas Barton,

I wrote that. And he was a guy, like he understood, the mechanics of it, like he had built an early mining rig in his, in his coffee, you know, in his family room. You know, he just had the thing like back when it was, you know, he had like fans going on it and stuff so it wouldn't overheat. But that's how early he got into it when it still made sense. You could do it in your house. And then, you know, so I knew the economics, the monetary theory. And he knew like, this is really how, you know, the cryptography and the private public keys and all that work. So that was a point of us writing that. But the reason we

did that was because we realized, you know, this is going to change the world. You're right. It was visionary. And when you look, Bob, at, you know, you mentioned your parents are boomers. And, you know, one of the problems with boomer, by the way, is it's too big of a generation, right? It's a, you know. And I think there's this term now coming about where they're taking the second half of the boomers and they're calling them Joneses. I don't know if you guys have heard that.

But it's kind of, so my ear, I was born in 64. I'm the very youngest boomer. but they're kind of kind of going back, I think, to 55 or 56 and saying, you know, that, that era is the Joneses and then the ones before that were the, were the actual boomers. But regardless, when you look at your parents or somebody, you know, in that generation, how would you talk to them about Bitcoin? Do you say like, hey, you should, you should have a little bit just in case? or just, you know, ride it out. You made it this far. You don't need it.

Ride it out. How do you think they, what's your advice to them? I know you're not giving financial advice, but we're maybe to your parents who are. So what would you say? You know, it's funny. So I think, you know, I definitely have them, you know, they over the years asked me what I think about what they have going on and stuff. And, you know, they paid their house off and everything. And I explain that in terms of, that's like the mortgage payment, you know,

It's just coming to you every month in a sense. It's a lot. Okay. And they, there's, as you know, Bob, with the life insurance stuff. So they have some, you know, well funded, paid up life insurance that's just sitting there that they can do if they need. And then a big exposure to gold. And so I don't remember.

So the, to my knowledge, they're not sitting on a bunch of Bitcoin. And I think I can't remember if years ago I brought that or just decided that's going to, you know, that they're going to say that they don't get how it works and we'll know. What if we lose the thing or, you know, that it's just. to wear. So I don't know that I push too hard on that. I'm going to see him in Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll bring it up to see. But the gold, they're going to say, I mean, the gold has done so awesome. They're thanking me, yeah, thanks for getting us in the goal. Yeah. So there's a Bitcoin. So. Yeah. What about, you know, for for them, and this is very

controversial in the Bitcoin world, but you know, do things like the like an ETF, like a little ETF exposure or something like that make. Is that more? It was certainly. Yeah. It was, yeah, so 100% that would definitely, you know, if in terms of the standard thing they have right now, just to say, hey, you know, you've got like a mining stocks or why don't you just take a little allocation and put it over here into this CTF in that framework, sure, to get some exposure. And in fact, yeah, I definitely can have that conversation. And that's partly, you know, to go back to what you said before about the institutional adoption, like it was a fairly quick turnover from when Bitcoin was still this weird, crazy thing that only ideologues or like computer nerds talked about. And then all of a sudden it just became like, yeah, this is normal and all, you know, Black Rock and all these guys, they're all getting into this stuff and this is normal. And there's ETS and yeah, you can put it in your, you know, your IRA or whatever if you want

exposure that way, it's no big deal. Yeah. I mean, to me, by the way, answering my own question from earlier, that's even, even, I think Larry alluded to this too, even three or four years ago as a guy heavily involved, I cannot believe we are here today. Like it it blows my mind that you know we have nation state involvement. We have essentially almost every large financial institution participating. I just I'm blown away by that that we were we were facing such headwind, such resistance, both from the financial community and the political community. And this flip

was just amazing. And, you know, it could be that that ETF was maybe the, certainly an inflection point, if not the inflection point. And I know that it was still resistance, right? Gensler was trying all he could to delay those things. But, but. Yeah, if just a comment, I mean, I think, again, with all this stuff as counterfactuals, we don't know.

But, I mean, that was. I know there's lots of the things that I don't like about the current Trump administration, but I mean, that was just huge in terms of this shift in the mindset. I mean, as you guys, I'm preaching the choir here, but I mean, it was just like, even at our company, like we were thinking we were going to build stuff, you know, for foreign markets because, you know, the regulatory climate. And then Trump companies is like, oh, they, they want us to build here. Oh, that's, that's refreshing.

Okay. Maybe we will. So. Yeah, I knew we would get here. I just didn't think we would get here. this quick. I mean, eventually we would, but this is like overnight, really, to me, compared to what I was thinking. Yeah. But, you know, a certain thing, we talked a little earlier about like exponential adoption. And I think you guys all know, I live through the personal

computer world, and we've seen the internet, and we've seen cell phones. And the pace with which when things are on an exponential adoption curve, that really is the phenomenon, right? that old gradually then suddenly phenomenon like um like i saw this thing recently it said you know if you if you had a bottle and um you had a bacteria in the bottle and you know every every second the um the the the bacteria replicated right it doubled you know i mean you you know let's say it takes an hour to get to the whole bottle being filled well one second before the hour, it's only half filled and two seconds before it's a quarter filled. And, you know, so when you're there, even two minutes before the hour, it doesn't look like

anything's happening. And yet, you know, boom, you're, you know, you're there. And it's hard for us as humans to grasp, to grasp those sorts of things. When I was at Gateway, that was part of my job, I was the chief technical officer and as a technologist. And I would try to find places in the world where that was happening with technology. And I remembered two incidents that left a mark on me. One was I started hearing about this massive change in the gaming market in Korea. And I flew over to Korea just to observe it. And what had happened was Korea, this would have been like 2000, 2001. Korea gaming had gotten so popular that there were now TV stations dedicated in 2000, 25 years ago, just two games. And they would broadcast live first person shooter games.

And the best players in the world and the games that were popular were like the Michael Jordan. They're making millions of dollars a year. Every week there were weekly broadcasts. They had, as the games were going on, they were. They had analysts giving, just like a football game, right? You had a color comp, a play-by-play guy and an analyst. And it was just, it was fascinating. And I said, well, you know, why is this happening?

And what does it mean for the rest of the world, right? And what he basically found out was what had happened was in Korea because you have these really dense populations. They have all these skyscrapers. And South Korea had invested in five. Gary just talked about getting fiber here in 2025. Well, in the late 90s, they had fiber everywhere. And so what we saw was the effect of high-speed internet everywhere, right? And so remember, at this time period, like the Xbox is basically like just being invented,

but they were already there. And then second thing occurred in the same time frame. I went over to the Philippines. I found out that at that time, the average Filipino in the year 2000 was sending over 22 text messages per day, but the average America was sending one. And I thought that was weird, right? But what we were foreseeing was the change of the cell phone from a calling instrument to a radically different, you know, communication.

instrument. And the reason I tell you those stories was sometimes to see the early part of the growth, I mean, you got to really go, you know, deep and navigate. And if you want to get ahead of one of these curves, you want to be early in developing around them, you've got to be able to spot them at the right point. And so, you know, obviously Bitcoin's not at that point anymore. We're further along the adoption curve. But what could happen from here, hard to tell because the next 100 million or billion people could come in in a matter of months. Well, I think actually we're running up probably toward the end of our time here. Hey, Bob, is there, tell us like what, you know, what are some of the things you're working on right now.

Yeah, so I have different hats. I would point people so by like sort of day job as chief economist for Infinio, as you said. So our website is infineo.aI. And for them right now, a big thing that I'm looking at is ideas of making a stable coin that's backed by the cash surrender value of life insurance policies. So that's a thing I'm sort of like doing the theory of that. And then we're looking at practical applications and how to implement that. The Genius Act makes it a little trickier because they have to have the treasury backing. So that's one main thing I'm doing there. And then I'm the host of what's called the Human Action podcast at the Mises Institute.

So for people who like just more pure Austrian economics and analysis and controversies and things like that, in that realm, I would point him to that. And then at Twitter, I'm at Bob Murphy Econ, which is kind of like the clearinghouse of all the things I got going on. Well,

we'll close it with that. And hope, please, please hit the like button and subscribe button and all that good stuff and support us. We're, we're very, very grateful.

Hey, you. Yes, you are watching the Bitcoin. price movements and the latest exciting news. It's awesome to stay informed, but the real power of Bitcoin comes from taking control. Don't just watch, take action. Head over to btcsessions.ca slash learn for free step-by-step tutorials that guide you through every major skill you need to know, plus full video playlist for deeper dives on any topic you like. And if you're ready for the

ultimate fast track, scroll to the bottom and check out Bitcoin Mentor.io for premium one-on-one experience with my team of Bitcoin experts to ensure you get it right the first time. Don't wait, secure your Bitcoin future today. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen. If you enjoyed this episode of the Bitcoin Boomers podcast, please do like and subscribe and check out the previous episode with George Bodine.