BTC Sessions - PayPal Mafia EXPOSED — Musk & Thiel SECRETLY Stacking Bitcoin! | Quittem, Crider, DJ Val

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

The PayPal Mafia has just been exposed—Elon Musk and Peter Thiel may be secretly stacking Bitcoin behind the scenes. In this explosive discussion, Brandon Quittem, Crider, and DJ Val JOIN BTC Sessions to reveal what could be the ultimate power play in global finance.FOLLOW TODAY’S PANELISTS:https://x.com/JimCriderTXhttps://x.com/Bquittemhttps://x.com/djvaleriebloveFOLLOW BTC SESSIONS on X/Nostr: x.com/[e-mail] private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted.https://bitcoinmentor.io/—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL - BUY BITCOINhttps://qrco.de/bfiDC6COINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://qrco.de/bfiDBVAQUA WALLEThttps://qrco.de/bfiD8gNUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://qrco.de/bfiDARHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://qrco.de/bfiDCpCRYPTOCLOAKShttps://qrco.de/bg5Dvo#btc #bitcoin #crypto

are two PayPal mafia billionaires, including the richest man on the planet, quietly stacking Bitcoin. And if so, why now? Elon Musk just liked a tweet suggesting he's secretly buying Bitcoin. If it kind of makes you ask, was PayPal always just a prototype? It was a failed attempt at free global money that Bitcoin is now making a reality. Let's rewind a second. Musk's journey with Bitcoin has been chaotic, to say the least. In 2021, after some coaxing Tesla and SpaceX bought Bitcoin.

But then Tesla sold some. And then they stopped accepting Bitcoin payments. And critics screamed Elon doesn't get it. But quietly, over time, Tesla has begun to accumulate Bitcoin again. So though Elon might not have understood in 2021, maybe he does now. especially as he turns his back on Trump, calling out deficit spending and throws his support behind Thomas Massey, a congressman who himself was orange-billed after reading the Bitcoin standard, spurring him to create a bill to end the Federal Reserve.

If Elon's waking up to Bitcoin's true purpose and decides to actually use his extensive influence and $410 billion net worth to support it, this could change things a bit. Here's the twist. He's not alone. Another PayPal founder is also making moves this week, one that might be even more strategic. Of course, I'm referring to billionaire Peter Thiel. And his current moves in the Bitcoin space have ties to a financial disaster going back to March of 2023. And we'll discuss that in a bit. But for now, we have a powerhouse panel ready to break this all down and discuss many, many more bullish topics. We've got Brandon Quitum. from Swan Bitcoin. Author of Bitcoin is The Mycelium of Money. We've got Jim Kreider from

intentional living, helping families achieve true financial freedom, and of course the lovely DJ Valerie B. Love podcast hosts building a more prosperous and peaceful future. Smash that like button. This one is going to be good. I am Ben with the BTC sessions, and this is your bullish session. All right. I want to bring in my guest, welcome to the stage, Brandon, Val, and Jim. Thank you guys so much for joining me. And let's chat a little bit at the topic at hand. And then we're going to dive into why you guys are bullish. So I want to show you guys the tweet. I'm going to get you guys some of your thoughts, some of your general takeaways from what we're seeing and maybe a delve into

Elon's mind and the debacles that have happened this year. But let's take a quick peek here. So this was the original tweet here. So Vandalay BTC Industries tweeting, has anyone noticed how Elon Musk talks a lot about things like overspending and debt and bad government decisions in general, but has completely stopped talking about Bitcoin, the most sane path out of this mess. It doesn't add up.

What's he hiding? And coin joined Chris from Cidor, awesome dude, replied, maybe he's stacking quietly. And he included with the screenshot, a screenshot of Elon Musk liking his tweet. Now, a lot of people were saying, hey, you know, no blue check. This is BS. It's faked. But don't trust verify.

He went in and screen grabbed him going through the tweet, clicking on the likes, and then going down to the like from Elon Musk and clicking on it and seeing that it's actually his account. So indeed, Elon did like that tweet. And then on the other side of things, I was alluding to Peter Thiel, just because in the vein of former PayPal co-founders getting into the Bitcoin space. So Peter Thiel is joining forces with Palmer Lucky, I believe is the last name. And launching a new bank and kind of fill the gap left by. Silicon Valley Bank, which blew up in 2023. And that bank famously banked a lot of the Bitcoin and

crypto startups. And partly was a victim of some of the choke point 2.0 stuff, which seems to have now subsided with the new administration. So, you know, seems to be maybe just strategically positioning themselves for a gap in the market that can be filled now. But, Who knows? Maybe also a little bit of recognition around the importance of Bitcoin. So with that, I want to get your guys' thoughts. Is Elon finally getting it? Is he continuing to stack? We know that Tesla has added back some of the stack that they sold from filings.

But yeah, anybody who wants to dive in? What are your thoughts? All right. I can kick us off here. First off, Elon runs what, like 10 companies and he somehow finds time to play Diablo five hours a day. He's on Twitter at least five hours a day, mining the depths of the posts for some obscure Bitcoin posts and engages with it. That's just absolutely nuts. I'm not surprised the man's stacking, right?

He had a big bag for a while now. I think he understands it well enough to own it, but I do not have any illusion that he, went deep on this thing. If you remember in 2021, he didn't understand proof of work. He does understand the difference between a monetary asset and a currency. And I don't expect him to understand those things. But what did change is he went deep into the belly of the beast, tried to change the government from the inside out, cut things here, there with the doge, right? And he came to the obvious realization for Bitcoiners that there's no difference between political parties, nothing this train, meaning that you got to print the money, right?

We built a monetary system that demands ever increasing supply. There's no way around that. And we find ourselves now at the end of the long-term debt cycle. Also in the middle of a fourth turning, when we're in these type of conditions, you can, you know, you have too much debt. What do you do about it? Well, you could have a decade of austerity, tighten the belt, but guess what? There's no political energy for that.

you could totally just default and just not pay back all the countries owning our debt, but obviously that's not going to happen. So the only thing left is to try to grow your way out of it. So Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary a few days ago, admitted straight up, hey guys, we're printing money and we're going to invest it well, and we're going to just hope to outgrow the debt. But what that means for investors is that long-term government debt is going to be lower than the long-term interest rates for 5, 10, maybe longer.

So essentially financial repression for a very long time, try and get the debt under control, and try to shoot the moon with AI reshoring industry. I don't really have high hopes and all that kind of stuff. So the net effect here is buy Bitcoin and watch the world burn around you and do your best to save your friends and family. Yeah, that's where I'm at. Yeah, I'd echo the, you know, once you're in the belly of the beast and you see, I mean, some of the stuff that he found, let alone just the, what was it, there was multiple computers around the country that, you know, before we understood there's a process to money creation.

And this just didn't observe, it didn't even observe the absurd system we already had. It was just like it would just pay debts with newly created money literally from just these individual computers around the country. Yeah, and to tie on that, there was another point around essentially government agencies asked for a budget. And they say, hey, government, here's my budget. The people who can send the money just auto send the money. I'm not sure if that's the same thing you're talking about. I think so. Yeah.

No one reconciles it. No one says, do you deserve this amount of money? What do you do with it? Nothing. It just auto pays every invoice, which is obviously our tax dollars going to who knows what. Yeah, that's fun. Val, I'm curious, again, as somebody that's along for the ride and, you know, you're, you're talking regularly with, you know, people that they get Bitcoin, they're experiencing,

you know, this stage of fiat, that, this age of fiat that we're in where, you know, lives have been really, really affected by it. you know, what's your reaction to not only kind of the age that we're in, but also seeing people go and try to fix things and then realize that it's just insurmountable? The word rock bottom is, you know, the phrase rock bottom is the thing that I think a lot of us look at with, you know, when people are going to start to understand Bitcoin. when they're going to start to understand their health and wellness, when they're going to start to understand relationship issues.

If we're living in this kind of, you know, marshmallow fluffy zone and everything's kind of okay, like there's no incentive for us to go change. And we're doing okay, but we're not like, you know, thriving, but we're still kind of in this middle zone. And, you know, for me personally, like when I'm, you know, doing my women's groups or when I'm working with the kids or whatever, it's like unless there's a pain point that is so devastating, you know, and you look at like,

you know, marketing 101, business 101, you know, your job as a business owner is to, you know, find the pain point and create a bridge from A to B. And if people are in this, you know, um, numb, dumb, scared, sick and broke mode, they're not going to, you know, have enough energy to try to go learn about Bitcoin. They're overwhelmed. They're like, fuck off. Like I want to go, oh, sorry, am I allowed to curse on here? Anything you like. Don't worry. I've already been banned before. And I'm so glad you got back, Ben. I'm so happy. Like, whatever the heck happened there, I mean, I imagined it was an AI bot that got you. But, you know, and that's obviously

something we have to think about. And that's a whole other conversation. But for me, like, even just yesterday, I had a two-hour conversation with somebody who they, they, just they want to understand Bitcoin. They want to learn it, but they're so afraid to take a step. And I'm like, I'm going to send you, you know, 20 bucks in Bitcoin and download this app and it's super easy. And we'll start from like, you know, custody to self custody and the whole thing. And there's this, you know, layer of fear and resistance. And I think until there's enough pain, you know, and I think that's why obviously El Salvador and these other countries and obviously we're looking at all sorts of, you know, countries within the continent of Africa that adopting Bitcoin means like life or death,

you know, but when we're looking at, you know, Canada or the United States or other, you know, first world countries, we're not, there's not enough pain yet, you know. I don't think we have enough pain and not that I wish we would have pain, but the reality of us stubborn humans in these little things called our egos, like we're not going to go jump into something until it's like I have to, you know? And so you kind of look at that, you know, the bell curve. It's like most people, you know, and I really thought we were here to talk about creatine.

And here you are, Brandon, you know. There we go. I'm sure this is right before he jumped on, Richard. But you know what I'm saying? Like most people, until there's like a, you know, a thorn in your shoe, you're not going to pay attention to what's going on. And it is what it is, right? And so I think we just have to not resist what human nature is.

But we also have to like, instead of trying to like bang people over the head who aren't ready, like let's redirect our focus to the folks who need it the most and whose lives depend on it. And so that's where I see all these circular economies showing up, you know, and I'm talking with them. Hermann from Bitcoin and Kazi and, you know, Mike at Bitcoin Beach and all, you know, we're talking about doing a circular economy tour next year. and working with Alana who did on banked and Desi. And it's just like, how do we show the pain points that create the need that is so great for Bitcoin? And then showing like how is it working in these micro communities, right?

And so how are we showing, how are we orange-pelling, you know, the vendor on the papusa or, you know, the yoga studio or whatever? And so anyway, blah, blah, blah. I can go off on a tangent on this all day. But yeah, I think, I think, unfortunately, there's not enough pain yet. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Jim, I want to get your quick thoughts as well on on on again, the the rift that, you know, gradually developed, well, not very suddenly developed between Trump and Elon and, you know, is he, is he starting to maybe figure some stuff out or or do you think now? Yeah, I mean, Elon in probably almost airy capacity is way smarter than I

am. And I reckon that after venturing deep in the belly of the beast, he's come to terms that he cannot fix the numerator. So he's been forced to reconcile the denominator. All right. Well, I think it's probably that simple. If this is, if this is accurate, that's probably why. Numerator's broken. If you're going to fix the equation, ask me what's under the line. And that's what he's trying to tackle. Yeah. Yeah, fair. Well, I mean, I guess, you know, anybody that really gets a good peek at how things work, you know, unless they're benefiting directly from it. You know, it's pretty quick. It's an easier task to sell them on Bitcoin. But nonetheless, let's wrap on the Elon stuff. He gets enough attention as it is. And let's get to the meat

of the episode, which is why you guys are bullish. And so we're going to start with our first guest here. And Brandon, again, you've been on the show before. I've really enjoyed every time we've gotten to chat. It's always great seeing in person as well. But I'm curious, what is top of mind for you this week? Why are you bullish? Absolutely. Can I share the tweet with you or you pull that one up from Stefan? Yes. Absolutely. Actually, if you can drop the, you dropped it to me on Twitter if I'm I'm saying, oh yeah, here it is. Hold on. You got it. Let me pull it over and get it on my screen here really quick.

Here we go. Sorry for the delay there. Boom, boom. That's the one. There she is. This is an absolute banger from Stefan here. I'll just read it for those who might be listening in the audio only. You think NGU will make Bikwiners sing kumbaya together.

We're 4% down from all-time high. high probably less now we've got all kind of arguments going ossifiers versus the soft forkers knots versus core trustodial l2s are treasury co-shik coins or ponzi's multi-sig vendor lock in spend versus hoddle mining decentralization it never stops see you in valhalla and first of all amazing tweets defan well done but the reason why i'm bullish about this is because it shows to me that the bitcoin community is not getting too complacent right i think there is a long-term risk of Bitcoiners, especially the early core, who's much more ideological, but what happens when all the ideologues who are fighting for the network, the cypherpunk energy,

what happens when they all get rich and they go get a citadel and they maybe don't fight anymore, right? Going back to Val, this is human nature, right? This is what happened. So it's a very real risk. And even with NGO happening, people making money, punting on Treasury Coes, all this crazy stuff, We still have people fighting the good fight and Bitcoiners are still chirping on Twitter, right? And if you just scroll Twitter quickly, what do you find? You see NGU. It's all NGU. And guess what?

Every single cycle, both cycle at least, is dominated by NGU. That's human nature. There's no way around it. But if you look under the hood a little bit, the cypherpunk tools are still being built out. One to mention that caught my eye was Cali, BTC, there's many others, of course. but he was building some cool stuff with the e-cash protocol and ways to scale that out. I think that's amazing. It gets no love relatively, but it's happening.

And the other thing is that the social layer of Bitcoin, we come from different backgrounds, extremely different backgrounds, and yet we have this shared monetary protocol that we're all surrounding, right? You can call it a shelling point. We didn't just get online and create a cult and say, join the cult. No, no. We all found Bitcoin through our own ways. and although we display cult-like tendencies,

we all have our own little reasons for being here. And that rag-tag group of people from different backgrounds fighting over stuff passionately is a very good sign of this stage of adoption. So that's why I'm bullish. I love that. I'll try and comment quickly and I'll let Val and Jim chime in. But the passionate Bitcoiners are numerous and growing, in my opinion.

Now, of course, you know, as anything gets popular, you're going to have an influx of kind of the, you know, normy mindset coming in as well. I think a lot of those people, again, will end down that path of freedom and self-sovereignty as well. Not all, but I think there's a good chance that's going to come to fruition. And the reason that I would echo that is, you know, I just had an awesome time here over the weekend in my hometown. And we had the Bitcoin Rodeo was just a local conference that we've been doing for a few years here.

But we also had the Sat Market, which is a local Bitcoin circular economy we've established. And then I did a Bitcoin survival workshop that I hosted in the Rocky Mountains the day after. And so we had people coming together to Calgary from all over the place. Like, you know, people came in from, you know, all over Canada, all over the U.S. Some people flew in from Europe to be here. And like, you know, Central South America. We've had people from all over come up. Obviously, it helps that we have the Rocky Mountains.

here. It's beautiful. But also the community was great. And so we have all these people, all these merchants that are working on actually, yes, saving in Bitcoin, but actually also being able to use it day to day peer to peer with people that you've actually forged real relationships with, which I think is so valuable. We had lots of, you know, with the Bitcoin rodeo. They're working so hard at bringing in not just Bitcoiners, but people that are in, you know, a lot of freedom movements. We have a lot of, we'll say, independent Alberta maximalists here in Alberta

that are looking for smaller, more local government, which I think is incredibly bullish. We've managed to find a lot of those people, as well as some of the gold bugs and in and around and precious metals people, and turning them on to the idea that Bitcoin is a step towards the goals

that they had originally wanted with, precious metals and the culmination of all this and then to cap it off with this incredible group of people in the mountains where they were learning the tools of self-sovereignty again getting to the crux of why bitcoin because you can be self-sovereign you can secure it yourself you can use it you can be censorship resistant it's just it's so so bullish seeing people actually care about the tools and what they what they give to you so um enough of my ranting val jim and jim feel free to chime in whoever wants to first go for it jim yeah um brain i like the way that you is the your verbiage around it i think it's important uh then you mentioned the word as well like

passion it's important that we have uh there's a there's a distinctive between passion and simple hype and what we're hopefully will continue to see is actual passion that's informed by something of substance and depth rather than just you know hype that's passing and and more of a fad based off of simple short-term number go up a lot of time that's by people who are not educated and understand what they own versus passion is generally uh root in something deeper of course passion itself is not substantial enough to be adequate uh especially to make sure there's there's educated passion in there. That's why that's why there's these debates, you know, uh, core and knots. Like that's, I could go in there. I'm a moral

when it comes to anything tech wise. I could be super passionate and insanely misguided, but I'm, I'm glad that we have people who are way smarter than I am in these fields who are, uh, educated and passionate. And, uh, this will continue to drive. You know, there's so many fields and areas this can touch from helping people adopt Bitcoin, spend Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin, secure Bitcoin, all these things. And, uh, and they, They all have their niche areas of passion, the different people they want to help, the areas that they want to bring further resources to. You know, and if we have really smart people and really passionate people, and those people, those smarts and those passions align, and you find a tribe to run within that, like, this is really going to go places. So, yeah, right now, I like, I like your bullish bit.

I love it. Val, I'll toss it to you as well to give some feedback to Brandon's topic here. Well, I think, you know, just dovetailing on passion, you know, I, you know, I don't know if you guys know what Ikigai is. And so it's like a, you know, yeah, right? And so a lot of us are thinking like, how are we going to make a difference in our world? What's her meaning? How do we, you know, show up? I've been listening to a couple other, you know, people who aren't Bitcoiners yet. But they talk about being obsessed, like passion versus obsession. And I think most of us bitcointers who are the four of us at least, you know, and I know a lot of folks who are watching this and all of our friends and folks, like I think I would take it a step further and say that we're actually obsessed.

Like we are obsessed with the future. We are obsessed with making a world the better place. It's not like, yay, I like, you know, the Dallas Cowboy. boys and I'm passionate about them. It's like, no, I'm fucking obsessed. Every morning I get up and I can't not think about Bitcoin and how it's going to make the world a better place for, of course, myself, my children, my children's children, my neighbors.

And it's just, it's such a unique social network that it's completely like, you know, Brandon, you were saying we're all different, you know, and we're not, we all come at Bitcoin from different angles and lenses and stuff, you know. And somebody posted this morning about, you know, just a lot of people have, you know, they put their little snarky comments about, you know, have fun staying poor or, you know, you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve it. And I'm like, yeah, that's cute and fine to sit behind a tweet like that. However, the reality is, like everybody on my block, I want them to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. I don't want them to be sick, dumb, and broke. And so Bitcoiners, even though we're snarky, and I'm, I'm, I'm the queen of

snark, you know, like, I don't want my neighbors to be suffering in any capacity, you know, and I think that's something, you know, we, we kind of balance our little, you know, ha, ha, ha, I'm so cute and funny on Twitter. But, like, the reality is, like, everybody on my block, like, I got your back. I don't want you to be suffering. And, and, and, and, and, and, this is not how we operate as human beings. And I think Bitcoiners, for me personally, in my humble experience of being a little pleb with all of you, it's shown me like the capacity for humans to love each other,

no matter where we come from, no matter if we're blue, green, red, no matter if I'm brown, white, or yellow, it's like we're all orange, you know, and that makes me really happy. And so anyway, so, yeah, That's my little nerdy riff on that. Well, that's, that's fantastic.

And I love then when we get down these little rabbit holes that lend themselves to Bitcoiners leveling themselves up as well. When it comes to, again, reaching out and taking their self-sovereignty serious and actually using the tools. Like, again, the tweet from Stefani's talking about, you know, forks and knots versus core. L2s and multi-sig and all these different, all these different things. But the most important thing is that you know what's available to you and how to use it. And so, again, whenever I get the chance, I pop up like, hey, like, go use the tutorials. So you can, you know, there's, I've got a single page that will take you through like a whole bunch of different skills that you can level up. But if you don't, if you don't take the time to learn, it's great.

These shows are super fun, right? We get to hang out and talk about how great Bitcoin is. But you need the step that comes after, which is using it, right? You can sit around all day and say, wow, this thing is so great and it's changing everything. But like, are you changing yourself? So, you know, use the tools, go study, go actually experiment. And yeah, reach out and grab that self-sovereignty. Yeah.

And can I just dovetail on that bent? Because like what you guys are doing with, you know, Bitcoin mentor and a lot of people, you know, it's like, okay, cool, I can go watch a video and learn how to use a treasure. Fine. Most new people, you know, unless you're like a nerd and, you know, excited about, you know, tech, you're not, you feel kind of alone, right? And so what you guys are doing with BTC mentor, with Bitcoin mentor is supporting people even after they go into that step of let's go. watch a video. And so, and I did that, you know, and this was several years ago when I was first learning about Bitcoin. I was terrified. I had like, you know, whatever, 500 bucks of Bitcoin on Coinbase. And I was like, I don't want to fuck it up. You know, that's a lot of money for me. And so I literally hired a good guy biker from Canada for 100 bucks. I'm like, well, you make sure that I don't mess it up when I stick, you know, transfer it from Coinbase to my little treasure. and just the human interaction and touch points are so, so important because it does feel weird and lonely

out there. And it's kind of like, again, for those of us who aren't, you know, I mean, you know, just super techy, it's scary. And we don't want our life savings to accidentally get, you know, poofed, you know. And that's why I think a lot of folks are more comfortable leaving stuff on the exchanges. And so what you're doing, I think, is ultra important. And, And we need more of that. And I want everybody to just realize, like, whether you go to Bitcoin mentor or you're next door neighbor, like, Bitcoiners are so happy to help. Like, we are, like, obsessed, as I said.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. No, that's great. Again, a great community. And I think when Bitcoiners see somebody who's who's curious and willing to learn, they're more than happy to dive in, you know, we spent years having nobody. want to listen to us that when we see the opportunity to talk our faces off, we will more than

more than grab it. Totally. And obviously, Brandon at Swan, like you guys do such a great job there, too, with onboarding and making people feel like I'm a human being and I'm going to hold your hand through this process, you know? And I think it's very, very important that we all understand that. And Jim, I'm just meeting you. So I'm, you know, I'm sure whatever you're doing is amazing. But I just think the more human interaction we have with this new world technology is going to make it more accessible to folks, you know, especially, you know, little plebs like me. Yeah. One quick plug for the socially isolated who want to learn more thread here is find your local meetup. Yeah.

I remember one in Minneapolis. I'm a little biased here, but shout out to Bitcoiners and Minneapolis crew. You guys are great. But these really are the backbone of this whole movement. And if you don't have one in your town, send me a DM. I'll send you my little playbook on how to bootstrap these things. They're not challenging to do. It doesn't matter if you're in a small town.

I guarantee you you have hardcore bit corners sitting around wishing that there was a meetup. Yeah. And I'd say that because that's what happens every time I hear about meetups. That's what happened to Minneapolis. I was going to all the shit coin meetups for years. And I could not stand another put lettuce on the blockchain conversation. So I just made my first meet up in Minneapolis, Bitcoin only, and make sure it says Bitcoin only, because that's how you're going to filter out the people who want to come. If you make some generic

thing, the hardcoreers won't show up. And so just do it. It will enrich your life in ways you can't possibly imagine. And we've been meeting now since summer of 2019 every month, 350 members, people fly in for it. It's pretty wild. And we built real friendships. And we have the core group. Now we have a bit devs in Minneapolis doing the technical discussions in Socratic format. There's Bible study, there's book club, there's meat sourcing group, there's a Nostra group. And yeah, we're training each other and sharing what we learn and we cheers in the bull markets and we commiserate in the bear markets. And our spouses and our close friends are thankful that we can get some

of that Bitcoin energy out in a group of people who want to hear it rather than annoying those around us. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. And again, to your point, Brandon, you know, if there's something that you want to see where you are, I think people often discount the, heavily discount the importance of starting local and realize that I think a good rule of thumb is thinking along the lines of if not you, then who? There's always got to be a person that takes the action. And if you don't see somebody that has done so where you are, you are that person. You are the one. If you're sitting there and you're like, God, I wish there was a meetup. You're the one that is going to pull the trigger and make it happen. So be that person.

Build your community and you'll be so thankful you did. Yeah. Seriously. Like you can just do things, right? Like you can just start a fucking meetup. You can just start a women's group or a devs group or Bitcoin. beef, you know, like any of it. Like you can do any of it. And that's what that's, I mean, we're permissionless. That's the thing that when people, we forget, like people think they

need a permission slip to do stuff in life. Bitcoiners do not think we need a permission slip. We just do the stuff, right? We show up. We're going to go do a meetup. We're going to go do a retreat. We're going to go do a barbecue. We're going to go do a sailing adventure, you know, whatever it is. And it's like, when we see other people doing that, that's actually the permission slip, hopefully for the rest of us to go, oh, well, I guess I can, you know, have a knitting guild and talk about Bitcoin. Not that I like knitting, but, you know, whatever. Yeah. Anyway. That's awesome.

Well, I mean, again, fantastic topic. The passion in Bitcoiners on, you know, preserving and building out the social layer as well as the technical layer, I think, is still strong. despite the fact that there can be noise. And yeah, so with that, we're going to go, we're going to take a brief breather, and then we're going to come back. We're going to find out why Val is so bullish. And then we'll do the same with Jim in the subsequent section. We shall hear. We shall hear.

If you're enjoying the show, please do smash the like button and give it a share wherever you're watching. Shout out to people watching on Rumble. If you were here last week for the news show on Thursday, you'll be aware that we got banned midstream. And nine years of a YouTube channel disappeared with the flick of a button or more likely the random calculation of some sort of algorithm. It was reinstated after 10 hours, but very clearly it is important to divert.

diversify and try and get content in places that won't be so willy-nilly with their policies. Either way, if you're happy that we're back, please do smash that like button, give it a share, and subscribe if you're not. We'll be back in just a minute to find out why Val is so bullish. See you guys soon. Keep your lightning wallet's handy because we're going to give away some stats on the other side. Ooh, exciting. 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 head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC Sessions to sign up today. And you can share your own personalized referral link to earn commissions. If you've been around Bitcoin for more than a minute, You've definitely seen something made by crypto cloaks. Since 2017, they've been the go-to for badass 3D printed Bitcoin gear, from custom home mining rigs to sleek hardware wallet bounce that make your setup look pro.

I've been stacking cloaks gear for years, and most recently I grabbed their gamma case for my miner. Let me tell you, it turns some heads. You can customize everything, and of course the legendary Bitcoin grenade, yeah, that's them. Hit the link in the show notes or scan the QR code to visit CryptoCry and stack your own custom cloaks gear today. Debify is the best and easiest way to borrow against your Bitcoin in a non-custodial way. Funds are held in a multi-sig escrow where you hold a key and the platform allows for excellent

hardware like the cold card mark four and the queue. You have access to flexible conditions, the best rates, and institutional grade liquidity. If you're looking to make use of your capital, Don't sell your Bitcoin, borrow against it. You can head over to debify.com to check them out or simply scan the QR code on the screen. All right, we are back in. We're going to give away some stats real quick and then we'll find out why Val is so bullish. And so I'm just sharing my screen over here on Well really quick.

If you have a lightning wallet, all that's going to happen is I'm going to toss a coin in the Bitcoin wishing well. And whoever scans the QR code on the screen first, we'll see you'll see a little bit We'll steal the sats from everyone else. And there will be, let's find out how many stats it is today. All right, we've got 494 sats. Whoever's faster on the trigger finger will snag those from everyone else. If you snipe the sats, let us know in the chat. We'd love to hear it.

Either way, we are going to continue on. And Val, I am going straight to you. Why are you bullish? Oh, my gosh. My God, how many minutes do I have? Because I could go for 10 hours, why I'm bullish. Give me a time limit so I don't accidentally barf on everybody. You know, give me a good, because we want to riff on it together too.

So give me like, you know, your good like five minute rant on what you're excited about. And then we'll ask you some questions about it. All right, brilliant. So back in March, you know, I was driving down the mountain. I live up in the mountains here in Colorado. And I was asking God, universe spirit, whatever you call it. I use the phrase God. And I was like, God, am I doing enough with the gifts and talents and the resources that you've given me?

And I'm like, what else should I be focusing on? Obviously, I'm focusing on Bitcoin. I like spirituality. You know, I like personal growth, et cetera. I'm an empty nester now. But like loud and clear, I got this, you know, human trafficking thing. And I'm just like, fuck, you know, and I know about human trafficking. I've learned, you know, been aware of it for decades, actually.

I have a lot of sexual abuse in my history as a child. And I was just like, are you sure? Like me? Like, why would you put that in my, you know, field? And I got the message that, like, you've been training this for this for your whole life. And I was like, okay, literally within 12 hours, a friend of mine in El Salvador, who I hadn't talked to for a minute, but she's somebody who I met at the first adopting Bitcoin conference that I was really lucky to get to MC and, you know, DJ and play at. She's like, hey, Val, I'm at an orphanage and they're helping kids with getting out of human trafficking cycles and they're pregnant teenagers, you know, and these girls have been abused, abandoned, and trafficked. And I was just like, oh, okay, well, I guess I'm going to keep, you know, using my two ears and

my one wealth. And so just little dominoes kept falling in my path, you know. And obviously, El Salvador, as we know, is, you know, the mecca of Bitcoin adoption. And even, you know, it was just, huh. So I just, I was like, well, maybe I should come down and visit the orphanage and just kind of see what y'all are up to. So I ended up, you know, connecting the orphanage with Raina and John from me, Premier Bitcoin. We started setting them up with, you know, how are they going to start teaching the children how to save and sats?

How are we going to teach the orphanage itself how to receive sats? What's their treasury look like? What's the, you know, and, you know, how can we start enrolling bitcoiners in, you know, supporting these, folks. And so, you know, because I like to, D-Y-O-R, I got to go down there. I stayed at the orphanage for several days and I got to hang out with Julie, who is Francis's wife from Bull Bitcoin. We ended up doing a workshop with Cold Card and teaching them how to, you know, get their, you know, their cold storage together with the Bitcoin store. And so it was, it was just like little bits of layers and layers and layers, you know. And so we're also starting.

to work with Lightning Piggy that we want to help, you know, how do we support these young people to saving Bitcoin? And so one of the things that we all realize, right, is like, it's nice to go in and raise your hand and be a volunteer and yay, I did this thing. And then you go home and life is back to usual for you, but like what happens to the folks who are boots on the ground? And so I got to go tour this place called Merf's Life. I don't know if you guys know Merf's Life down in El Salvador. Right? And so this dude, I swear to God, I don't even know how he has as much energy as he does. He's just making like, he's, he's to me like Steve Jobs of like a philanthropy and foundational work type stuff. But so, you know, going to see what's going on in Merf's life, seeing what they're doing up there with regenerative ag, what they're doing with, you know, buy one, give one kind of thing for the folks who are living on their like big retreat center. And I'm just like, Like you guys, we have to come up with a system, you know, that's duplicatable in different parts of the world. And we open source it and we create kind of this open source playbook so that, you know, if you want to support people out of whether it's domestic violence, whether it's human trafficking, et cetera, how do you learn best practices?

How do you deal with the government, you know? And we're starting to put together our little, you know, open source playbook to do this. But then I thought, like, well, but what are the steps involved for not just the orphanage and the organization, but what are the steps for the individuals who are experiencing abuse and violence and trauma? And so we put together a four-step plan. And I was really grateful I got to speak at the Vegas conference with Bob, who's a founder of the House of Life, which is the orphanage down there. And then Alejandra, Miss El Salvador, she was my roommate. And we were talking like, what are the things it needs to happen so that we're not just dropping donations on people? Because that doesn't work.

We know that. We've seen that in all over the world, not just our countries. We need to give people a pathway to sustainable sovereignty. And so, number one, we need to rescue them. And we need to identify that these people are in a situation of violence. Number two, we need to give them rehabilitation. number three, we need skill development for the 21st century, not just let's go make papuces on the side of the street or sell my body because I can get more money for my body than I can,

you know, working an hourly job. But number four, and this is where Merce's life came in and it got me excited, is where do they live after? You know, when you're coming out of a place of domestic violence or abuse, it's like you don't want to just put people, if you've rehabilitated them and given them some, some job skills, you're not just going to throw them back out in the streets and be like, high five, good luck. Where do they go? Where do they go live? Where are places that feel safe and that feel like I'm not going to get taken advantage of? I'm not going to get hurt. My child is not going to get

hurt. And so Merse Life has an interesting kind of buy one, give one model that he's working on with his land development and stuff. And so the people who work on the property with him, it's like, cool, they're going to build these little casitas so the families can live there. And then on top of it, they have an Airbnb. And so they get to start owning land, and they get to start owning, like, a business model

that feels empowering to them. And they're part of a community. They're part of a community that cares. They're part of a community that not only cares about each other, but it cares about the land, it cares about the community. And to me, my whole life has been just completely like uprooted since March because of this. And, you know, so now we're working on these different, you know, circular economy projects, et cetera, and we're trying to figure out, like, you know, how you talk.

Because, like, the children who live at these orphanages are wards of the state. They don't have the privilege of just, I'm going to walk out the, the gate and go down to the store and get a soda because I want to and it's three o'clock in the afternoon. Like they're literally, I don't want to say in prison, but they're in this like tight zone of not having freedom. And so our job, I think, is Bitcoiners, is to continue to share and teach them using Lightning Piggy, using ZapRite, figuring out how the heck are we going to like show Bitcoiners,

you know, yeah, this is how we can stop the cycle of abuse and trafficking. And, you know, like what Mike did, obviously Mike Peterson at Bitcoin Beach, he launched the whole circular economy because these kids were like abandoned, you know, and they're looking at their little cell phones and going, well, I can get more of something today than I could yesterday because I have this little thing called Bitcoin. And, you know, and so as Bitcoiners, I think, you know, it is our imperative. It's our duty to make sure that we are using the gifts that we've been given, you know, from God's spirit universe to make the world infinitely better than we found it. And I see that happening every single day. And it's like, it makes me want to cry all the time. And so what's really neat is what happened. So I went down to El Salvador in April. And I was just like, you know, doing my little due diligence thing. And I was like, y'all should take advantage of me while I'm

down here, like, let's have a party and I'll DJ for you, you know. And, you know, I'm retired. I'm just do this for love and fun at Bitcoin conferences and stuff. So Will from Club Cochal that's down near Elzonte was just like, heck yeah, come down here to do it. And, you know, and Alejandra, Miss El Salvador, which is a whole bunch of us, we're always like, let's have a party. Julian, who runs a place called the Bitcoin Mansion, which is like a fucking mansion, and it's like the seven-bedroom, like rock star mansion, he's like, I think I'm going to give you guys three sets of three nights, and whoever donates $10,000 is going to get three nights at the Bitcoin Mansion.

And you can have, you know, a party, you can have a retreat, you can have whatever. So far, we've got two of the. those three spoken for because of the Bitcoin conference and we were able to do the talk. And it's just like, all you have to do is ask. Like, hey, we need this help. And like, people come out of the woodwork because they're just like, yeah, I got this. Like, we'll donate us. So it's hit its whole oceanfront property for us.

The next door guys, Satoshi's bar right next to the club Kukal was just like. Like, okay, hey, guess what? It's Mother's Day. And all the girls and their babies came down to the beach at Club Kokal at Will's Place. And Carlos from Satoshi Bar right next door was just like, I'm comping you guys everything. It was almost $1,000 worth of food for these kids and all of us volunteers. And we can just do things. And it's just like so cool. So, So anyway, so you guys inspire me. Everybody here who's doing this stuff inspires me. And that's why I am bullish.

I love that. I mean, the Bitcoin philanthropy thing, that angle is incredibly bullish because, you know, you've got a subset of people that have recognized one type of injustice in society through the the siphoning of people's hard-earned savings and everything. But, you know, over time, those people, as we've seen, have more and more runway to change a world, change the world in the way they see fit. And some of those people decide to take that wealth and, you know, their new found position in life to, you know, some build businesses, some, you know, set off into the,

sail off into the sunset, but others stick around and genuinely put that money to use building communities and helping others. And I think that's an incredible thing to see. So I'll let maybe Jim chime in here and then we'll follow up with Brandon. But Jim, thoughts here around Val's bullish reason. Hmm. I mean, money, money itself is, uh, simply a means to an end. It's not the end itself. And I think a lot of times with Bitcoin, we can get caught up in, a lot of times it's altruistic. We get caught up in Bitcoin being the, the end itself, uh, because we see it as such a solution to so many things. But we forget that Bitcoin is simply money, just the best, best one of money ever been created or discovered. Uh, but still it's a means to an end. It's a, Money is a means of communicating what you value and a tool to help you do as important to your life. And yeah, of course, like my wife and I, like, we certainly, like, we try to save aggressively and grow net worth. Like, a lot of that so we can be generous.

And I'm hoping that as we have this wave of people who come into substantial wealth will use that to serve others. You know, gosh, maybe I'm butchering. I believe it was Hal Finney, who tweeted like crazy early who said, hey, well, we will be a, we're going to be a people with a lot of money. We should go ahead and start thinking about how we're going to steward this well. That's incredible that he had that foresight. That was like when Bitcoin was quote unquote worthless. There was no monetary value at that point.

So, yeah, just something to continue to chew on and distill down like, okay, how important this is, how is this useful, not just for me. but a way of actually stewarding this versus just spinning it. Yeah, exactly. Brandon, I'll all toss it to you as well. Yeah, on that last point, Jim, Bell, I think there's a huge change in who allocates capital in the future, right? The people who have money today, they earn that from various different ways.

Obviously, we have an incentive system that rewards playing Fiat games and getting an unfair advantage, getting closer to the money printer. So you're essentially telling society if you want to get wealthy, you need to do some deals with the money printer guy. So you get an advantage. And so in the Bitcoin land, how do those people get wealthy? While they're forward-thinking people, they took a big risk. And that's going to create a very different type of game in the future where the Bitcoin folks are very wealthy. And so it is no surprise to me that people like Val are using their position in life to make the world a better place.

and I foresee a huge wave of that in the future. And so I think that's pretty special. To Val's point directly, the thing that I took away, first of all, great story. I'm glad you're doing this. I'm not surprised you're swept up in this. And I love how you're thinking about it holistically, systemically, right? We've all seen the amount of aid we send to developing countries here. We just airdrop some food.

And yeah, that's great for a week. But it's only temporary. and it doesn't create self-sufficient communities. It doesn't empower people to take control of their life. And so that type of aid is fleeting. And so obviously it's better to teach a man to fish, as they say. And so I love how you're thinking about each step and how it starts with the present. You know, you're in a serious situation.

You need to be rescued immediately. And that's step one, but I don't know the statistics. I'm assuming a large percentage of people who get rescued out of conditions like that. They don't have a path forward. they end up back in the same spot. Yep. And so thinking long term, teaching them the tools to use Bitcoin and cold storage long term, that is a great path for them to get out from under their circumstances.

Simultaneously, I think the financialization or the monetization phase of Bitcoin, aka when the number goes up really fast, that period is going to end at some point. And if you didn't figure out Bitcoin before that time happens, you're not really going to ride this thing up. Obviously, there are still positive externalities to having a good money, so everyone will benefit from that. But how cool would it be to give tools to people like this, give some Bitcoin to people like this who wouldn't otherwise maybe find this thing? And they might watch their material wealth go up in the next period here and, you know, change their life for the long term and their kids. And, you know, who knows how far that impact goes.

Do you mind if I come back on that? And Brandon, it's so right, because like, we're looking obviously just in general as all of us, you know, we're looking at AI coming into the realm of being employees for companies, right? And so how are we training our young people, whether it's our kids, whether it's these folks from the, you know, orphanages, whether it's ourself to retrain, you know, like I can have a whole marketing department for $30 a month using AI versus, you know, my $30,000 a month that I would typically pay. And so, you know, we're going to see a lot of displacement of people. And, you know, I think what we have to continue to focus on is like, how are we focusing on our hearts, but how are we truly like, because people don't want to feel

useless. One of the most important things that people want to feel is useful. Like you want to die living a useful life. And yes, there are some people out there who are parasitic and they don't care and they just want to be consumers. But for the most of us in the bell curve, like, there's something in our soul that wants to create and give and make the world a little bit better than we found it, you know? And so as as technologists, as entrepreneurs, as Bitcoiners, it's our job to continue to like push on those boundaries and figure out like how, how that's, you know, the heck are we going to, you know, meet those needs of being a human, you know? And so like right now, just as, you know, at stage three, you know, we've got our little stages, we're starting to partner

with Grand Canyon State University, which is over 100,000 people, and it's a Christian university in Arizona, and we're going to start doing mentorship programs for the kids down in El Salvador. And so the kids are doing entrepreneurship up here, and they're going to come start to visit, you know, everything down in El Salvador. We've got like obviously leaps and bounds of how people can move themselves forward in these developing countries. But like it's so important to like engage ourselves and not feel like again, here's the handout. Like we don't want that. We want people to feel skilled, whether they like to sew, whether they want to make birthday cakes, whether they want to do, you know, fancy nails for girls, whether they want to go write code like BTC. Dada devs in Africa. You know, like we have,

to meet people where they're at with their obsession and we have to give them tools to move forward. Otherwise, we're going to have violence and frustration and addiction and depression and anxiety. And so I think, you know, looking at this from a holistic lens is it's life or death, not just for these kids, but it's life or death for our communities, you know, because we're going to see all this stuff happening in our own communities if we're not paying attention to folks who feel displaced and that they're not contributing to society. And so I think this is a macro problem, but I think we can solve it within our own little, you know, our street or zone, our city, or county, whatever.

And yeah, so anyway. Val, to kind of round this out, but giving people a place to go and an action to take, where can people find the project and how can they can. tribute, be a part of it, how does that work? Totally. So I sent you the link. It's mecasaKids.org. There's many ways you guys can contribute.

You can obviously, you know, send some sats. You can send, you know, Fiat, you can send whatever you want. One of the neat things about the facility at the house of life, you know, Mikaa Kids has three houses. So there's a boy's house, a girl's house, and a pregnant teen's house. So there's three orphanages there. the house of life where the pregnant teens are has a separate building that's kind of got dormitory style housing and that's where I got to stay. It was, you know, on site. So if you have a church group,

if you have a Bitcoin group, if you have a creative group, you can come down there and stay there and be on site and do workshops with the kids. You can do regenerative agriculture. You can do art. You can do lightning piggy, you know, whatever we want to do with the folks. And so Julie and I did a vision board with the girls. And it was so important that we did this because I came down there and I had my whole giant suitcase of like canvases and glitter and glue and pictures and all the stuff. Guess what the number one thing that every single girl had on their vision board? Throw it out there. Give me a guess, guys.

A husband. Keep going. A family themselves. They wanted a house. They wanted a home because they've been displaced. Now they're in an orphanage. They wanted to feel like I want to have my own little cubbyhole that's mine. And every single girl that was like the centerpiece of their vision boards that they did.

And so that's where stage four comes in. And that's where people like Merf's Life are helping to support this with the buy one, give one and the Airbnb on top, et cetera. And so most people in these developing countries and certainly even here in the United States, you can't even, I know people who are like ultra successful in kicking ass. And they do not have enough money for a down payment for a house. So they're constantly in this state of, I got a rent, I got a rent, I got to move. I'm subject to this guy raising the rent or whatever.

And so stability, especially when you're a mother, when you're a mother, you do this thing called nesting. You know, you want to put the feathers in the nest and you want to make things like, I got this, my kids are safe. It's a natural instinct in our DNA. And so our fiat system is so broken and fucked up that mothers do not have an opportunity to create a safe, stable, consistent nest. And so what was really, really beautiful just across the board is these, you know, young ladies, these girls who are between 12 and 17 years old, their children, they all wanted to have a nest, and they all wanted to be able to feel safe. And so when we can fix the broken fiat system using Bitcoin instead, we have an opportunity to create more mental health, more spiritual

health, more physical health, more relational health, more family health, and more community health for everybody around us because again we don't want to have broke angry violent neighbors because of what's going on in the fiat system and so so bitcoin fixes this and this is why i am so fucking bullish i love it uh if you're watching right now i did drop it in the chat as well but uh micasa kids dot org um i just shot off a lightning donation donation to the donate page, but I encourage you guys to do the same. If you go to the donate page, there's a Bitcoin option. And easiest bet is shoot off a lightning donation here,

House of Life at blink.jsv, or you can just scan the QR code right there. And if you want to learn more, then, of course, check out the website. Peru's around. But, yeah, show some support. I think Bitcoin philanthropy, if Bitcoin's been good to you, use Bitcoin to be good to others. God bless you. Thanks, Ben. No worries. And everybody, if you've been enjoying the conversation so far, if you love the cause, please do give, drop a like, share this wherever you're watching it. And we're going to take a brief one minute break here. And on the other side of it, Jim, are you feeling bullish over there? Oh, yeah. Okay, perfect. Because we're going to come back. We're going to find out why Mr. Jim Kreider is feeling so bullish on a wonderful.

wonderful Wednesday evening. So we'll see you guys in just a moment. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua Wallet has you covered. It's user-friendly and puts you in full control of your Bitcoin with secure cell custody. Aqua also supports lightning and liquid network, making fast, cheap Bitcoin payments and asset transfers easier than ever. Plus, it even supports stable coins giving you ultimate flexibility. Build on open source code, Aqua's transverse. transparent, trustworthy, and perfect for beginner and pros alike. Ready to upgrade your Bitcoin experience?

Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen now to download Aqua Wallet today. Securing your Bitcoin doesn't have to be complicated or invasive. With Nunchuk's Honey Badger Plan, you get state-of-the-art multisig with built-in inheritance planning and no KYC required. Nunchuk is trusted by users to secure billions of dollars in Bitcoin. The Honey Badger Plan offers 204 assisted multisigig. guiding you step by step on mobile or desktop. It works seamlessly with hardware wallets like TapSigner, Cold Card, Jade, and plenty of others. So you're always in control.

Plus, with non-KYC inheritance planning, you can ensure your Bitcoin goes to your loved ones. No private info needed. Take control of your Bitcoin today. Click the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on the screen to check out the Honeybadger plan. 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 and my daily driver, and it's ideal for newcomers and advanced users alike.

The tab signer gives you a low-cost, user-friendly option for those just getting started or for convenience when traveling. You can head to coincite.com and use code BTC sessions for discounts or simply scan the QR code on the screen to get started right away. All right. We are right back in and we are on to our final reason for being bullish. Jim, team up here. I'm excited to hear it. Why are you bullish tonight? So I all day, every day talk with people about money. And part of that is a lot of my job is orange building families. And we do everything with people's money, investments, taxes, all those fun things.

for the last five and a half years whenever I try to talk with someone about Bitcoin, it's sort of, it seems like it's out of left field and generally is a several stages of roadblocks to overcome. And it sort of seems like it's, yeah, you have a phone or tinfoil hat. I don't feel like that's been the case the last, I would say the last few months. It's interesting. I was actually talking with my other advisors today about, you know, maybe it's just a small sample size. But the last few months, I feel like the people were talking with when we bring up Bitcoin for like our first time, and we bring up things like we should own Bitcoin and here's why.

Or things about our current broken money system, our current debt system, we're not being met with like skepticism or the thought of that doesn't make sense. or a general, I'm not seeing, I don't understand why. Like used to, people, we talk about like, people need to see the issue for them to understand that there's a solution that's necessary. So now that used to be the problem was it spent so much time having to help people understand that there's a problem that Bitcoin is a solution to. And I'd say over the last few months, it's, that's less of a problem. And I think that comes with things like Moody's downgrading US debt.

So when I bring up like, hey, something's wrong with our debt system in the US. That's like US bonds, maybe not the best thing. It's no longer like, oh, well, my grandparents owned bonds for 80 years. It's like, oh, yeah, I think you might be on to something. And I think it's, I think that's awesome. Again, maybe it's a small sample size, but I mean, I talk with, I talk with normal people all day, every day about the money. And yeah, it feels like just a general sentiment.

It's starting to wake up to something's broken. And I bring up Bitcoin. Like, that actually seems like a valid solution, which is totally different than it ever has been for the people I've worked with. So pretty awesome. I like this angle and I also like this angle on the given the fact that we've got Brandon here because one of the things that happens in a fourth turning is a dissolution and trust in our institutions.

And what you're describing here seems like, you know, people just took for granted the things worked before and now they're recognized the cracks more more than cracks the crumbling that has taken place and a lot of these things that have just been mainstays for people just a given this is where you put your money and then you make it to retirement and you're fine and a lot of people are realizing i'm just am i retiring you know like that's that's kind of the sentiment and so i feel like this is a good kind of uh softball over to brend here because you've talked a lot about fourth turning and maybe Brandon do you want to if you can because there's going to be some viewers that may be unfamiliar with the fourth turning but first

off like do you think that this is something that is coming about because of a fourth turning that recognition that our institutions are maybe not serving us anymore yeah absolutely do do a quick and dirty intro to that yeah yeah I think that'd be good for anybody unfamiliar you're about the fourth turning. Okay, I'll try and keep it tight. This is like a 30-minute intro to properly pitch it, but we'll give you the cliff notes. A book written in the 90s by two historians and demographers. They studied American history going back, let's say, 500 years, and they were just learning about history. And what they found was that they found this repeatable cycle that happens every 80 to 90 years. At the end of that cycle, we essentially look around and, oh,

man, all our institutions are failing. Obviously, we create them about 80 years prior, so they start to decay, they get corrupted, or their purpose sort of just fails, and they're not serving our country, our populace anymore, and things start to get bad, and we don't trust our institutions. So what do we do? We collectivize, usually due to war, sadly, but that is a catalyst strong enough to mobilize the people. And then what do we do? We make massive change. We redo all our institutions and we sort of reset the cycle and we go forward from there. Embedded in his thesis here or the author's thesis is that generational archetypes persist and they repeat in a predictable pattern as well. Essentially, we're all born. Let's assume we're all millennials. We're all born at the same time.

The context in which we grow up is relatively similar. So then we're we grow up and we're sort of this this new generation forged under the context in which we were born. And that generational cohort essentially forges our identity maybe 18 to 25. We sort of leave the nest, we immerse ourselves with our peers and we're stamped. And then that cohort grows up and then we enter a new stage of life. Let's say we become middle age and we have more power in the world. Well, we sort of push back on history in a predictable way, again based on how we were brought up. So without going in too much detail, the constellation of those archetypes, right, is the hero archetype in middle age, is the profit archetype in older age, sort of as the mentors. And based on that, you can sort of predict the mood of society and you can predict how we respond to catalysts.

So that's a quick and dirty, fascinating stuff. Zooming in a little bit to Jim's point directly on trust, well, we've been tracking this for around 100 years now and we're at an all-time low in trust. since we've been tracking this. I think it's around like 20%, maybe even below 20% of Americans would say that they trust their institutions. So that's obviously a bad sign. On the Bitcoin side, what does that mean? We see money printer going on. We see, hey, what's going on with the Fed? What's going on with politics? And every time those things show up in our lives, it brings more people to start looking for solutions. Obviously, Bitcoin's one of those solutions. And a little inside baseball from Time at Swan is during the COVID money printer era, we noticed a massive influx of

boomers coming to Swan and buying Bitcoin for the first time, right? They look around and say, wait a minute, something doesn't feel right. Is my retirement safe? And they start looking around. They find some content like this, maybe on Ben's YouTube channel, and then they find their way to Swan, and here we go. And that same impulse is happening right now in politics. So we just saw the the New York governor. They wanted to vote in a socialist. What's going on with that? And you see sort of reactionary comments on Twitter. We're saying like, how can these people be so dumb? How do they come to that conclusion? Obviously it doesn't work, which is true. But you have to look at it from young people's point of view. Young people believe that the ladder was pulled up behind them.

They're locked out of the economic system. They can't buy a house. They can't do the things that they were quote promised under our social contract in our country. So what do they do? do. They identified a real problem. The economic system is broken, but they came to a faulty conclusion, which is that capitalism must be the problem. So let's try some socialism, some communism. Right. Obviously, that's not going to work, but that tension's real in every single fourth turning. The previous fourth turning was 1929 to 1945. So you have the Great Depression into World War II. and during that period the same tension was going on. The intelligista, how do you say that word, intelligentsia,

they were all flirting with communism as well. And so this is a normal pattern we should expect it. And hopefully we can steer towards free markets for the good of humanity. But just want to bring that up. And then let's see. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. Like every time the state screws up, every time there's pain, people look for solutions.

summarize Jim and, you know, Bitcoin's having its day, and I think it will for a while here. Yeah. And to me, again, to Jim's point, there are many cohorts that I've noticed that did have, you know, kind of a deep trust in our institutions in years prior that are now realizing that something is up and that, you know, in many instances, Bitcoin may be, you know, the thing to replace that institution in some way, shape, or form. You know, again, with this event here in Calgary over the last weekend between the SAB market and the Bitcoin Rodeo and the Bitcoin Mentor Workshop that we did, a lot of people are kind of maybe my age, some boomers, you know,

kind of millennial Gen X and boomer age. that are saying, oh, geez, I can't do the same thing that has been done previously. And, you know, a lot of gold bugs coming in, you know, that already understood, you know, that you kind of have to take the bull by the horns. You kind of have to make your own destiny. But they're coming to Bitcoin. And, and again, Brandon, maybe if you want to just quickly mention after a fourth turning, what comes about.

Yeah, absolutely. So I expect us to continue this chaos that we're all feeling right now. I think we're still ramping up to the climax, unfortunately. All previous fourth turnings had a total war, World War II, Civil War, Revolutionary War, and all total wars have happened during fourth turnings. So high correlation doesn't mean we're guaranteed to have a total war, but that is a sufficient catalyst to get us to mobilize. So expect things to get crazier.

Expect the divide in our country, hopefully to repair itself and focus externally on a bigger problem. Otherwise, we could have some type of civil war here. But after all this chaos happens, what do we do? Well, in the last second classic human nature, we redo all our institutions. So I would expect a massive shift in how we do politics, how we do the money, how the geopolitical order is structured. I expect all that to change. And if you're wondering, hey, what kind of things might change? If we go back to the previous fourth turning I mentioned, we created deficit spending for the first time. We created Social Security. Hey, you lost all your money. Don't worry, we got you.

We create FDIC insurance. Hey, the banks failed. Well, guess what? We'll create a central bank of central banks to bail them out type thing. We created the World Bank, NATO, IMF, right? Pretty much all the structures that we take for granted now are created then. And so I expect the same thing to happen in this fourth earning. And once we're sort of sick of fighting, we redo our institutions, there's this feeling of exhaustion in society. We're sick of fighting. We want to go back to raising a family and doing boring things again, not having to worry about where the bombs are dropped and who's doing this or that. And so in the first turning, it is kind of a renewal period. We become more family-oriented. Culture takes more of a muted, boring, conservative, traditionally conservative value set usually takes over.

And that's a period of, you know, the previous one would be like white picket fences, leave it to beaver, think 50s and 60s. And what happens then? The children born into that sterile environment. What do they do? Well, like all good children, they push back on their parents. And those kids grow up and they create the civil rights era, the psychedelic 60s, a period of internal transformation. We were like, what the hell is going on? Our parents are boring. Let's go sex drugs and rock and roll. And so in our lifetimes, I would expect us to have a 20-year period of sterility and relative economic equality. And it will get boring for a while for those of us who like some weird stuff. But then our kids will grow up and they'll rattle our cages and we'll be

old people watching our kids do all this crazy stuff. So you're just a describing the classic like whatever like we good times make yeah or whatever like here's that's the four iterations of this exactly right yeah there's met if we go back in deep history this type of cycle is probably inherent to social species like humans we can't seem to help it there's this weird pattern why does it happen I don't know but I think it's built into having a social species and that's one way way to explain it. Another way to think about it is the cycle is roughly one human life. And so we don't ever go back to total war if half the population viscerally remembers World War II,

right? All the wars up until now have been little skirmishes. We're not really going all in. And now that we have the World War II folks essentially gone from society, guess what, we sleepwalk into war again because no one's around for it. So our human faults playing out at a civilization scale. Val, I see, I see you have, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I've always like how to write down the shit so I don't forget it. I think what we've got here in addition to the fourth turning and our, you know, weak men make, you know, bad times, et cetera, we've got something new that is like throwing a wrench into the equation, which is called AI. It's also called implantables. And so I'm a mother of a 17 and a 19 year old kid.

And I asked my children and I, of course, ask their friends, you know, because I like to have, you know, their friends over and just learn about their life and what's it like to be, you know, a kid these days. And I was like, you know, how many of you guys take Adderall? Hands up. Lots of them. How many of you guys are on antidepressants? Lots of them. Would you guys put an implant in your brain to get,

get a competitive advantage so you can get a better job. Lots of them, not all of them, you know, but we're going to start seeing something that we've never seen before in history, which is this singularity, as Peter Diamandis likes to talk about it with technology and humanity. We're not, we have nothing to reference that, you know, in a historical perspective. And so when we start to see folks, you know, like, for example, if I'm like, I'm going to do the thing and I'm going to outperform all of you guys on my Bitcoin and my trading or my, you know, creatine consumption or whatever the fuck I'm doing, right? Let's go. when you're in a life or death situation and when you're looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and you're trying to get yourself up the ladder so that you can participate in the system that is

fucked up and broken, like you're going to make choices that might not be necessarily great for your health. However, they're going to propel you forward. And that's why people take Adderall. That's what we saw the whole FTC thing with scam bank, freed, you know, or whatever. And so we have a lot of variables, I think, that we need to pay attention to and not just get in this narrative of like, yeah, it's, you know, this and that from the past. Obviously, you know, but we are going to be accelerating into another place where, as we're looking at as an entrepreneur, right? Like, I can go in and hit chat GPT or Claude or Grok or whatever, and I can come up with

the marketing plan that I would have had to pay $25,000 for a year ago. And I can literally do it in 30 seconds. And so when we start seeing that level of acceleration, our hearts, our minds, our spirits are not accelerating at that same rate. We don't know how to keep up, you know? And so then we're going to feel this like sense of uselessness and powerlessness and hopelessness, you know, and like, where do I fit? How do I belong? And then you're going to see even more addiction, more violence, more problems with society. And so I think we need to pay extreme attention to this as Bitcoiners, you know? And anyway, I just, I think it's super duper important to like have all this great empathy

and compassion towards the folks that we're talking to about Bitcoin. And then we're getting propelled a few meters forward, you know, above a lot of. these folks and so I just want to I don't know I just I'm not afraid for the future I'm excited for it and I'm also like I want us all to like remember red rover red rover send val right over like we need to be fucking holding some hands so nobody's breaking through this barrier you know what I'm saying and so um I don't know Bitcoin is kind of that blockchain that holds us together and yada yada I'll shut up. I know whose hands I'm holding when we do Red Rover at the next conference.

I think Val's going to have a strong, strong grip there. No, dude, let's go Red Rover. Send right over. Can I add onto that one, Val? Yeah. I mean, of course. So technology inherently creates unequal outcomes. Technology is leverage.

If you adopt the new tools, you have an advantage over your peers and you reap the benefit unequally the more you apply that leverage, right? That's just true. AI might be the longest lever in history of all time. I know, right. And so what does that mean? It means an incredible amount of value is going to be created in the world by the people wielding the tools. And it's going to flow to an increasingly unequal pocket, right? Yeah. That's my base case on all technology. I think AI is the same. And so that brings up a big question is what do we do with the people that are not been from the longest lever in history. Right.

I don't have a good answer for that other than hurry up and buy as much Bitcoin as possible before AI takes all our jobs. And so start with that. And then we'll have to get a little more elegant for those who don't have Bitcoin to figure out what we're going to do. On the other side of technology, just to steel man the opposite position is that technology also makes the world cheaper. Yeah. And so if we're living on a Bitcoin standard rather than a Fiat standard, the gains, the gains that we bring into the world through technology also will make the cost of living go down for everyone every single year. And so there might be a world where we don't need as much economic output

per person to at least have our basic needs covered. If we have a $5,000 or a $10,000 Android robot who does all your chores around the house and mows your lawn, does that then free up time for people to create value in the world that they wouldn't have had time for otherwise? And so obviously it's a complex system, both are true. But we are entering a brave new world and these questions need to be answered. And maybe AI apocalypse might be part of this forturning. It's accelerating very quickly. I think we probably have another five to seven years left in this thing. It history repeats. Things can get a lot weird during that period of time. It's about to get weird. I think so. Nothing surprises me at this point. And I don't know.

I would just say strap in, plan as much for the future as you can, stack those sets, create value for others, spend less than you earn, saving money nobody can print. It's a pretty decent recipe to live by, I would say. But everybody, I am conscious of time. We're going to round out here. This has been fantastic, but I do want to give you all a quick final words here. if there's any last thing you want to tag in, but also let people know where they can find you and what you're up to.

Jim, I'm going to go to you first since we're just on your topic. Do you have anything else you wanted to tag on? And also, where can people find you and what you're up to? Yeah. No, I appreciate you. Let me be here. And all of your resources I've watched and referred to countless of your videos. So thank you.

Yeah. I think I've said this on other times I've been on the show. Like, very bullish just on. bitcoins themselves sort of tagging along with what Brandon said initially like such a great community we're doing awesome things so glad to be part of it in a very very small way I'm on Twitter it's a Jim Kreider TX is in Texas I own a financial planning company we help people with all things money a company is called intentional living FP as in financial planning go to websites intentional living up p.com

If you have any questions, there's a calendar on there for 15 minutes. Even if it's a one-off, you don't want to hire me. That's also more than happy to help you in any way I can. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I should have mentioned everybody's handles are down on the show notes. So please do. If you're not already, give everybody here a follow and make sure you check out what they're up to.

But Val, I'll go to you as well. Any final thought you might have if you do. And also, where can people check out? You can give them that website again, but also where they can find you. Well, first of all, I'm so glad that you're back in action, Ben, and that was just nonsense last week. So I'm grateful for the Bitcoin community that came to your, you know,

let's not like this nonsense happen. And so I don't know, I guess my final thoughts are is like when you have this interesting community that cares about a purpose, like we can do great things together, you know? and I'm just like constantly humbled and stoked to be a part of it and feel like a little you know sparkly pleb so I'm really grateful and thank you so much for having me and yeah check out micasa kids.org if you guys are interested in participating with the orphanage down in El Salvador and the reality is like you don't have to go to El Salvador. There's a fucking orphanage on every block in every city. Every block. Okay. Every single city has an orphanage. Every single city has a place where there's a domestic violence shelter for people who've been hurt, whether they're men or women. So as we talked about earlier, start local, you know, and if you feel like you want to get out, great, go for it.

But anyway, just like every single thing you do matters. It really does. And you guys can, I'm at D.G. Valerie B. Love all over the place. It's funny, I'm a retired DJ. I'm a financial person. I used to run a fund, a nine-figure fund, and be a CFO of a company. A lot of people don't know that about me

because I'm just kind of chill. But I just want you guys to know me as DJ Valor, it would be loved. So anyways, come say hey. Love it. Well, thanks for being here, Val. And Brandon, I'll toss it to you last. Any final thought you might want to throw out there. And more importantly, where can people find you and what you're up to?

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having me on, first of all. Super fun hanging with you guys. Yeah, back to the point that Bitcoiners come from all walks of life and you don't know what we're doing. Val is a great example of that from CFO to DJ Val below stuff you do now. So great example illustrating that. Final thoughts for me, if you are having trouble making sense of the world, it's accelerating. Things are crazy.

You're worried economically. Why is everything political? I do encourage you to read the book, The Fourth Turning. For me, at least, it made a lot of sense. I found that in 2020, Manick cooped up in my house in Minneapolis, two miles away from George Floyd. And this book did help me sort of make sense of the world. Whether or not we can actually make sense of the world, it at least gave me the illusion that I had some sort of control over my destiny and help orient my life in a way that's been productive.

If you want a Cliff Notes version, I wrote a thread on Twitter. It's my pin tweet. Just check that. There's an essay linked in there. So it's like a 40-minute version of the book through a Bitcoiners lens. and sort of my takes on it. That's that. Let's see.

Professionally, I work at Swan. I've been there for five and a half years, very proud of what we built. It's a Bitcoin on ramp. You can buy and sell there. You can buy in your retirement account. You can use our vault product, which is a two of three collaborative custody. If you're a high net worth individual, you can get a private rep who kind of helps you through on your Bitcoin journey and fancy research events, stuff like that.

Personally, find me on Twitter. all my essays are at brandon quidum.com and my DMs are open come say hello uh yeah thanks for having you guys good hanging awesome awesome well I appreciate all of you joining me getting bullish on a on a Wednesday evening with you guys it's always a lot of fun I do want to yeah again you know val alluded to it but I do want to say a big thank you again last Thursday channel on YouTube got banned mid-stream might I add, we were also streaming to X at the time so people got to kind of watch the reaction thereafter. But yeah, very interesting. Again, like nine years of making videos and it can just,

you know, snap, disappear like that. Of course, I do have everything backed up. I'm, you know, I'm not the dullest tool in the shed, so I do have everything backed up. But the, I will say that the response was wild. This was the original post. A million. views on the tweet and the amount of shares and tags and all of this stuff. I've been banned three times now. The other times each took days, if not a week, to get the channel back. Because of the stink that everybody raised, I had the channel back inside of 10 hours, which was pretty wild.

So thank you, everybody, that just poked and prodded and made sure that things were corrected. Now, if you can, please do go find me on Rumble. I'm over there. I'm fleshing it out and kind of getting some stuff up there. Take a little bit, but the live streams are going there now. I will have tutorials going there, ASAP. And of course, you can find the website, BTCSessionist. orgia, lots of stuff there, the learn page that I showed you guys with a whole bunch of stuff, and of course, upcoming events and stuff that'll be at and all kinds of good stuff. But there's a there's a newsletter there. So if anything ever happens and you're on that,

you'll be able to find me wherever I go. So yeah, just wanted to quickly say that. And then finally, I'll just mention as Val so graciously already, you're basically my cheerleader of this episode, Val, thanks for that, but she already sheilled all the things that I was going to show.

But if you do need some extra handholding in your Bitcoin journey, if the tutorials are not quite cutting it, and you need additional help, reach out to myself, my team at Bitcoin Mentor.io. We can make sure that your setup is rock solid and that you're confident in building your generational wealth for yourself and your family. So anyways, with that as Bitcoin Mentor.io, I want to say a huge thank you to Brandon, Val, and Jim.

You guys absolutely rock. What an incredible conversation. Thank you guys. And yeah, that is it. and we'll see you guys soon. Thanks so much, everybody. All right. Aloha.

Thanks, you guys. Cheers, Ben. Bye. Yay. Thanks, you guys. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys.