BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Bitcoin Brendo, Stacking Hats, Josh Terry ep217

Episode Date: November 20, 2021

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Wasabi wallet and fairly private. What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. It's Friday. Another episode of Why Are We Bullish. We've got all new guests this week. This is my first time chatting with them outside of Twitter. And obviously, their first time on the show.

So it should be, it's always awesome to get new faces in the room. So I'm very excited about this. We'll get chatting. We'll do some intros. I've got my reasons for being bullish. I hope this dip doesn't have you down. A dip is just a sat stacking opportunity. And one in doubt, zoom out, friends.

The world has never needed Bitcoin more. So I'm very, very excited for that. As always, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. Okay. We'll do it live.

Fuck it. Do it live. I can, I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. If you have not already, please do hit, like, subscribe, share. All those things are really important and they really do help. Let's get bullish on a Friday, friends. I am Ben with the BTC sessions.

This is your daily session. All right, before we bring in our guests, let's really quick take a look at where we are in the market right now. I'm pulling up the Bitbo.com. We're sitting at $57,837.37 per Bitcoin. 58K gang back in play. They're all smiling ear to ear, 58K forever. So if you're on that Twitter trend, Dennis, I know I know you're feeling good today. They get to attack 58K from both ends.

Of course, we are sitting at what, 1,729 sats for a single dollar. Stack them while you can. 89.89% of all Bitcoin have been mined 90% within the year. And in terms of fees, next block around nine sats per byte, if you're willing to wait an hour, one sat per bite should still do you. So it should be fine. Of course, shout out to sponsors the show, shape, pay.com. If you're in Canada and your stack and sats, check them out. Super easy.

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let's stop my rambling. Let's get our guests in here. That's what you're here for, right? So I'm going to pull in Brenda. I'm going to pull in stacking hats. I'm going to pull in Josh Terry. Welcome to the program, gentlemen. Let's do a round of intros so that people get to know you more intimately. Let's start with Brenda. Let people know who we are, what you do.

Hi, guys. I'm Brenda or Bitcoin Brenda. So I have a podcast with stacking hats. It's called Two Bit Idiots. And I don't know why I'm here. I'm glad you are. There was a, there was a really good, how long was that pod? It was about 30 seconds, maybe less.

Yeah, well, probably 30 seconds of talking, if that, and the other half was just the intro and outro music. Yeah. That was a good. Yeah. It's a solid episode, quite possibly the best Bitcoin podcast I've ever heard. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you'll have to look back. Maybe you guys can retweet it at some point. Yeah.

And people can see what's up. Uh, let's move down the line. Mr. Josh Terry, can you introduce yourself, let people know who you are, what you do. Yeah, hi, I'm Josh. Uh, I am a writer, content creator, investor, Bitcoin enthusiast, uh, musician. So those are kind of the, the main things that I'm into in life. And, uh, I've been focused lately on mostly a Bitcoin mining project and a book. So that's, that's, that's my, my center of focus at the mine moment. you're a busy man. What kind of musician are you? I'm curious. I went to school for classical violin performance, but I like just alt rock, basically. That's kind of the place I like to play. At the moment, I've sort of paused it. I was a music teacher for like eight years, but I'm setting aside music at the moment for writing in Bitcoin mostly. I sang in an a cappella group for 15 years because I could not play an instrument. So you are much more talented than. I have. Well, you and I are on the flip side of the spectrum then. I've signed a little bit. But, but yeah, I mostly focus on the instruments myself. Oh, awesome. Duet coming up, I think. Solid. And I heard you on Princey the other day. Oh, yes.

You admitted that you're an in sync fan. So, yes. The best boy band of all time, dare I say, indeed. Yeah, I grew up. on a I don't know what it was maybe I just saw women throwing themselves at boy bands all through the 90s as I was growing up and it was but then yeah I got into the performance side of things and and it led me down down that rabbit hole yeah if if anybody hasn't listened to that interview with Daniel Prince it was a fun one so check it out let's uh let's intro uh mr hats mr stacking hats uh welcome let people know who you are and what you do although it's been spoiled by your counterpart Hey Ben, how you doing?

So I am a, well, I'm not musical at all, so I'm the only one in the room who can't play or sing. I am a 2015 bitconer who started learning properly in 2018, started a website about 18 months ago maybe and started the podcast with Brenda about, about, well, how long was that, Brenda, two months ago, three months ago? Well, maybe 15 episodes, I think we've done, so very, very new. We're about that. Seven listeners. That's about right.

That's about right. Yeah. That's perfect. We're all in the ready starts. Yeah. That's great. Well, gentlemen, welcome to the show. And everybody watching, welcome.

If you're unfamiliar, this is why are we bullish. Really simple premise. We go by the three R's. They are, somebody's going to give, number one, a reason why they're feeling bullish. Then together, we will all riff on that reason. And then once we round of that topic, we will, number three, rotate to the next person. Really, really simple. And I'm going to kick us off.

So I've got a reason for being bullish this week. And I actually uploaded a clip to accompany it. So there's a quote, I think it was, I think it was Gandhi actually. But it was it was first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. And I think that we're kind of straddling the line and stepping over. into the Then They Fight You phase. And I say that because of this clip that dropped today, this is, and I'll just play it here, this is Hillary Clinton.

Take a listen. And then one more area that I hope nation states start paying greater attention to is the rise of cryptocurrency. Because what looks like a very interesting and somewhat exotic effort to literally mine new coins in order to trade with them, has the potential for undermining currencies, for undermining the role of the dollar as the reserve currency, for destabilizing nations, perhaps starting with small ones, but going much larger. So when we think about this new environment in which we find ourselves that we've been discussing for the last some minutes,

We can't just think about nation states. So she's basically saying that, you know, Bitcoin stands to destabilize and undermine nation states and their currencies. And to me, it kind of sounds like, well, nobody's ignoring it at this point. By and large, the laughter has gotten more sparse and has quieted down a lot. And we're starting to hear a lot more of these higher-ups and legitimate people start to look at this some favorably, but others as a legitimate threat. And you know, you see examples of people on either side of the fence here. Here you have Representative Warren Davidson referring to Hillary's quotes of undermining currencies. And he said, Bitcoin didn't do this.

And he's got the chart of the M1 and M2 money supply from the Fed just skyrocketing as of 2020. And beyond that, you have other people that are starting to, again, take this as a serious threat earlier today. Or, yeah, what that was today, the ECB talking about how, and silly them thinking that they can just digitize their currencies and they'll be able to compete. but they're saying that, hey, if we don't offer it, people are going to get it elsewhere, not realizing that what people are trying to get away from are their terrible monetary policies. And then, of course, we have people like Brad Sherman who, he actually, as ridiculous as he is, he does get it. He does get that Bitcoin is meant to remove the power of the state to control currency.

And so I think that we're definitely starting to step over that line from laughing at us to fighting us. And although that is kind of the scariest phase, it is followed by then you win. And it could be a tough fight. But all Bitcoin needs to do is just not die. And it wins by default. And it was Guy Swan that said that a couple of weeks ago. And I really liked that. But if it can just survive, if it can just be there as that off ramp,

it just, it offers a peaceful alternative to just step out of the hamster wheel. So I wanted to open it up to you guys and get your thoughts on, one, what Hillary said there. do you agree with the general premise that it will challenge all of those institutions? And two, what does the then they fight you phase look like? So I'll leave it open to you guys. Whoever wants to jump in and comment on that, feel free. Go on then. I'll give it a go. So I agree with you, Ben.

I think that's exactly where we are in terms of the institutions, at the straddling the laugh at you then fight you stage. I don't necessarily agree with you. And I don't think that's the same for everyone, I think, in your personal life, your friends, your family are probably still at the laugh at you stage. But the institutions are definitely coming in now. The narrative that they are trying to tell

is that Bitcoin is going to be the thing that caused the problem. Bitcoin isn't the thing that caused the problem. The legacy system is the problem and the Bitcoin is the solution to the problem. So I think it's hilarious when the ECB or whoever it is come out with some post on Twitter and they get absolutely ratioed by Bitcoiners below. So I generally think that the power of the people in that sense is going to beat the institutions easily. The problem is the vast majority of people are not on Bitcoin Twitter.

This is a sort of echo chamber that we all sit in. So I guess the challenge for all of us is to bring the story out to my story out to my own. more people. So I guess my question then to either yourself or the panel is how how persuasive would the narrative coming out of institutions like this, the government institutions, higher ups like Hillary Clinton talking to people, the ECB, all of these, all of these, all of these different talking heads, how persuasive will there, are. be in the face of people having their savings debased?

And at what point does it become too much where people just, they don't listen anymore? And they say, well, that's terrible advice because previously it's gotten me screwed. Like, what level of debasement do we need to see? I noticed the other day, I was just going to say, I noticed the other day, Ted Cruz said something like, there's only probably five members of the U.S. Senate that might actually understand Bitcoin. and yet they're trying to regulate it anyway. So like nowhere in that Gandhi statement is there, you know, they first they laugh at you, ignore you, laugh at you,

then they try to understand you. They're just like, I also tweeted a thing about, you know, it's almost like those alien movies where an alien race comes to save humanity, but the governments just go, shit, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is bad. And that's basically where Bitcoin is, I think. you know where humanity or the the the wiser ones going yes we need this we need this um and it's just too threatening to governments and people are in power so it's got a long rate ahead of it

i think so even though um even though it's come so far yeah josh what about you what are you thinking there's a wildly unsettling thing when you see a person in power speaking a sentence where you can tell one or two of the words are new words to them. And it just doesn't quite sit right in their mouth. It gives you a sort of an unconscious warning bell that starts to go off. It's almost the same thing as, you know, the teenager hearing the parent use whatever the modern teenager colloquial word is of that, that generation. you know, a high school word that, you know, makes the high schooler kind of, you know,

cringe and feel uncomfortable. There's, there's a funny sensation that I feel when I, you know, hear a politician talk about Bitcoin in the modern world. It's very similar to that. Is this sensation of just, oh, that, that word is new in their mouth. It's, it's not something that has been, that's been polished and experienced. And to me, that is, it's connected to these ideas of the fighting net. Because a lot of the people that have adopted Bitcoin, you know, they don't just buy Bitcoin. It's something that becomes familiar to them, something that they learn. I mean, some people, you know, develop podcasts around it.

Some people write about it. I write about it. And, you know, some people set aside everything to learn about Bitcoin. And then, you know, Bitcoiners are on a spectrum, of course. There's some that, you know, just learn a little bit. But there's a familiarity that comes from exploring the space. And I think it's really easy to forget that others don't have that familiarity. really easy to not realize how valuable it is and how dangerous it is to not have the familiarity. And the folks that are in power, for them to not have that familiarity,

I think it may have been hats that brought this up, is that is the recipe. That is the recipe for blame is when you don't understand a thing. That's the thing that gets blame. And, you know, we saw this with teenagers and video games, right? So adults, you know, blamed the next generation of teenagers for, they blamed video games for the teenager's problems. And most of those problems were parenting problems. they weren't problems of the kid playing video games. But we like to blame the new thing.

And I was recently listening to a video of Simon Sinek, who was talking about Uber versus taxis, right? And the taxi industry naturally wants to blame Uber for taxis going out of business. It's Uber's fault that taxis are going out of business. of business. This is not true. Taxes aren't good. That's what happened. Taxes aren't good. And Uber provided something good. So the people that are familiar with Bitcoin are realizing that it's useful. It's good. It's valuable. But the people that are unfamiliar with Bitcoin don't have the knowledge to establish that point. So it's a perfect. recipe for placing blame i it's it's interesting have you seen um there were some clips and and you may not

be familiar i think this may have been even in in canada somewhere but there were clips of of taxi drivers and they were they were angry that uber was in their city it might have even been in like toronto or something but um they would they would look and they'd all be on the street and they're all yelling and and having a protest and everything and they see a car drive by and it's got the Uber like symbol in it. It's Uber and they're trying to like throw things at the car and smash out the window. It was crazy. This was just not long ago, a few years ago.

So imagine the most powerful government on earth throwing those rocks. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's and that's kind of what we're seeing. But at the same time, all of those taxi companies that had entrenched, you know, they had deals with airports where like were the exclusive taxi cab. company and we've got all these special allowances for us, deals with the city, all this stuff.

Even that couldn't stop individual people over time from realizing quite quickly, to be honest, oh, this is way better. I can hit a button on my phone and there's a car in front of me and I can go where I want. And the parallel here, even though, yes, it's a centralized company, it was, they, they didn't give a shit. They just went in with no permission whatsoever, started doing it. People got a taste. And then when when cities started saying, no, Uber here, people were like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, I have to go back to waiting on a street corner for 30 minutes for a cab to show up during busy times. That's insane. And so the, the market now in places is

demanding Uber or an equivalent in the market. And if your city is, isn't doing it, it's, it's, I don't know, it's, I don't know what you're doing at that point, but does it get to the point where they just, or what, what is that threshold where they just lose that control where it's like, well, I need, you know, do we have to buy this and back our currency with it to, to regain the trust of people and maybe pull the peg later? Like, what's the playbook? I think, I think another point with the taxi analogy, too, is that, um, people didn't realize it was and I mean it wasn't a broken system it was just inadequate compared to Uber so the same

with Bitcoin you know especially you know a Fiat standard nobody knows any different that's what they used to and if they're downtrodden and they don't have any money all that kind of stuff that's just their lot so yes so Bitcoin is that superior alternative but and eventually people will see that and people are seeing that but the rollout I think is going to be slower than something like Uber because it's such a devastating change to feed it. It's our entire lives have been built around this existing system. And throwing that out is going to devastate a lot of aspects of our lives. Everything has to be rebuilt.

I was speaking with the guys from in Canada here, the guys from Shake Bay. And they're doing like the one of the Bitcoin cards that you can utilize your balance and everything like that and earn stats back. And they were talking about as they're testing, realizing how antiquated the existing system is, like because there's no incentive for Visa or MasterCard or, you know, just the banking infrastructure to go and streamline things so that they make sense. And so, you know, if you've got a card that they're using and you go to, say, buy gas or something, it'll, it'll pre-off for the total amount. And then it'll stay on there as like a hold for days. And then you'll get refunded the full amount and then recharged for the lesser amount if you didn't fully use the 50 bucks or what. And it's the same for a lot of these different weird infrastructure things in the background. and it highlights the lack of transaction finality

and just the backwards way, the poll payment method that the entire thing is built upon and the debt-centric, I'll owe you this later kind of ideology, which is just the total inverse of Bitcoin. Changing all of that is going to be, we've got our work cut out for us, that's for sure. You, go ahead.

Now, all I was going to say was, this system has been broken since the peg was broken in 71, right? You could, I mean, I'm coming to the thought process now is that we literally have never had money, right? This is the first money, right? That has taken me a long time to get to that point. But really, we have used things to exchange for goods and services, but we've never really had the money. But the money that we know, the money that we've been using, has been broken since 1971, right, since we came off the peg. So that's 50 years. Basically, NMD, most living people, anybody who's just retired,

their entire life has been based on a fraud. That's really, really difficult for people to accept. It was really difficult for me to accept. I'm not a retirement age, not yet anyway. So for people to come to the acceptance that it's not that they're a fraud, is that the system they've been working within was a fraud. So until people can accept that's going to be really difficult. And any politician, going back to the politician's angle, most of them are nearer the retirement

age than starting their career, right? So most of what they have gained through their life, they believe it's through their own hard work. Some of it maybe is, but a lot of it has been based on something that's just a fraud. So to have, but they're going to have to accept this in the public eye. Like personally, I came in here about 2015. as I said, didn't really understand it and didn't even try to start understanding it

until about 2018. And then it took me another two years before I was willing to speak out about it. Really, I mean, I would tell friends and family and stuff, but I never did anything publicly. I never had a website. I never had a podcast. So that's five years. It took me five years.

Now, politicians are going to have to do this on the fly in the public eye. And that's why I totally agree with Josh. I mean, they're going to come out with words, you know, they're going to start talking about Bitcoin. and havings and cryptos and all the... It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to watch,

but it's totally understandable that it's happening. Because they're having to learn in the public eye, and they're going to look stupid. And I think... More stupid. More stupid, yeah. But people are going to see through this stupid. I mean, it's easy...

I was thinking about this other day. If you're still watching the mainstream media, or I don't know who coined the corporate media term, I quite like that. If you're still watching that, it's very easy to feel like the smartest person in the room, right? Because you're like, oh, my God, what are these people talking about? This is clearly nonsense. You have to step.

And then once you step outside of that box, there's this whole other thing over here. You step into Bitcoin, you very quickly think you're the stupidest person in the room. Because you are, right? So, but the stupidest person in the room is going to be a politician in the public eye. And we're, I mean, that is what Hillary Clinton looks like right there. She just looks like the stupidest person in the room. You're very right that when you come into the into the Bitcoin space, you effectively are the stupidest person in the room until more people join the room.

And then you look smart in their eyes. Maybe that's a pyramid scheme. It's just a hierarchy of dumb stumbness. If there are any pyramids games that I'd want to be involved. in it would be a pyramid skinny myth of more knowledge yeah yeah exactly this is probably the best way to go to bounce off of the the the the um the idea of the stupidity i mean i for anyone listening i can't recommend enough the sovereign individual which is a book that i've been going through and one of the the primary arguments of the sovereign individual there it is is is that the disrespect of the church

that occurred, you know, a century or so ago is being mirrored in the modern day disrespect of the government where the stupidity and the closed-mindedness that started to occur in the church and that the dysfunction of, you know, Catholic masses turning into orgies and like just drunken revelries, you know,

that the wine ended up, you know, instead of being a thimbleful, was, you know, thousands of gallons at a single, you know, church event resulted in this just overall despise of the function of the church. And the argument is that that's happening to the government right now. That it's where we're just having a general disgust for it. And I, to just for a moment beat the, the parent-child analogy that I brought up again. You asked about what is the fight going to look like?

And I think maybe a good question to ask is, what can a parent do to a rebellious child? That might be what the fight looks like. You know, what happens when the child is, you know, dysfunctioning because the parent didn't parent well? and then they're sitting there playing their video games and the parent comes in and says, oh, it's because of the video games. Okay, first we're just going to say video games are off limits. Okay, now you're grounded. You know, okay, when does corporal punishment come into there?

Somewhere along the line, eventually, you know, the parent loses, loses patience. And, okay, now, now, you know, the manipulation of, you know, bribery, right? you know, trying to convince you. So, you know, bribery ends up being, you know, maybe potentially some sort of tax incentive, tax incentive even to not hold Bitcoin. There's just every option that a adult who feels just utterly helpless with a child, you know, an adolescent child that they know something's wrong

and they know they need to get a different behavior out of it, but they don't know how to do it. Every aspect of that to me is terrifyingly, all of the potential options open within, you know, what happens with adoption. I am very bullish on it. I think it's happening, but it is a little terrifying. It's going to be a challenge. So as the, sorry, can I just quickly go in there? As the child, so your role, like if you, I don't know, you're playing Mario Kart, it's to play two-player Mario.

car and get your dad on board it's if you're taking a taxi or if you're taking an uber bring your grandpa you know and show them how good show them how good it is somebody who said that old people love a good deal right they'll have a good deal so get get them an uber and tell them it's you know 32% cheaper um you know that's what you need to you need to show them you you know it's not it's difficult for the 10 year old child possibly but we should be capable of it yes yeah well i'm I mean, enough people. It sinks its tendrils in everywhere. It's starting to, and like it's seeping into government, right?

We see people in government actively defending it, although, albeit a smaller percentage because, you know, those are the people that have actually used it and understand it. But those numbers are growing and people are seeing the potential here. And they're seeing the destructive capacity of central banks. And inherently everybody just wants to preserve their purchasing power for the hard work that they, for the time and effort that they spent for the fruits of their labor. So while I do think we do have a bit of a fight ahead of us, I think it's inevitable that that people come around.

And yeah, things are going to be interesting over the next little bit. I think for this topic, we'll say we don't know. We don't know what the fight looks like, but it does look like we're moving into that territory. So we shall see, let's round this one out. And everybody that's in the chat,

of course, thank you for being here. Keep those comments coming. I'm going to start trying to pull them up more now that it's not my topic. But we're going to rotate. We're going to move to our next topic. So I'm going to toss it down the line. We're going to go to Brenda and do.

I'm going to ask, what has you feeling bullish this week? I am increasingly bullish. Look, I've only been to Bitcoin since February 2020. I have hats to thank for that. Obviously, everybody when they jump in, or even before they jump in, and what prevents a lot of people from jumping in is just thinking that they've missed the boat. So I jumped in, thankfully, just thinking, okay, well, let's see what happens. But now, you know, what, 18 months later, I mean, other than the fact that I'm on a freaking BTC sessions pod, that's fairly indicative that I am bloody early, it's, yeah, I don't know.

It's just just having that perspective, a bit of a Zen mode, I suppose, now in that, you know, when I first started in February, then March 2020 hit. So I put some money in and then it crashed and I went, oh, okay, shit. I wasn't terribly disappointed because I didn't have a large amount in, but it did come back. And as it goes on, and even now, I feel like I've kind of leveled up to the point where number go up, great, number goes up, number go down even better now. I think I'd prefer it when there's a dip. Like right now, I'm like, yes, come on, cheap sets, cheap sets, cheap sets, cheap sats. So, yeah, it's just pretty astounding to me.

me that normies don't get it. Bitcoin twin, as we've said before, it's a bit of a circle jerk because, you know, everybody's in, everybody's obsessed. But if you just step away from that, no one has any idea. Back to the Ted Cruz thing, you know, like there's all these legislators and politicians trying to regulate something that they don't understand. Eventually they're going to realize that Bitcoin is entirely different to the, to the crypto space, the digital assets.

space. When that happens, I don't know. I saw it. I don't know. Can I share my screen? Yeah, if you share it, then I just approve it. So yeah, bring it up and all. So there's this chart I saw the other day, which really kind of made me go, holy crap. Like, if I thought I was early, I'm really, really early. It's funny because it's at any, any person that comes into the Bitcoin space, they always feel late. But anybody, who comes after them always feels like that person was early. It's a, it's a, yeah, totally. Musical chairs.

Yeah, look, this isn't actually sharing, but I'll just describe it. So basically what it does is it spells out from 2008, 2008, all the way to 2140, each kind of four-year bracket or halving and then shows you the block reward. So if I look at that, there's this huge long list of how long it's been around, what the block reward is. So I'm sitting at obviously 2021. So that's between 2020 and 2024. I'm fortunate enough to have actually been there for a halving.

So 6.25 as a block reward in what, 2032 to 2036. So what is that? That's a little over 10 years. The block reward is under a Bitcoin. 0.78. That's astounding. Yeah. It's crazy.

Like was it 90 on? On Bitbow, it shows the percentage. Oh, future Bitcoin supply. Here, I'll show you this really quick, just to your point. So on Bitbo, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, it shows like when the certain percentages of supply will have been mined. December 14th tentatively this year is 90%. 99% mined by 2035 and 99.9.9.9.9.9%

mined by 2048. So it's going to take 13 years to get the last like 0.9%. And the final like 0.1% is going to take literally 92 years to get. So the incoming mined Bitcoin are going to get very, very scarce. and miners will no longer and are kind of already are no longer the primary cell pressure. That's flipping. It's changing so that cell pressure is literally just going to come from people that hold it. And if they're, you know, if they're, if they don't get it, so it'll rely solely on,

on the sentiment of those that are holding it and their reasoning, which is, it is a signal that we're very early if that can actually influence large swings. I'd say we're no longer early when people understand what it is and they're and they realize that, oh, I don't, what am I going to exchange this for? Yeah, that's right. I mean, and moving, moving from, say, Bitcoin to Lightning. So most people have heard of Bitcoin, just about no one has heard about Lightning. fact that that's emerging and seems to be emerging really, really quickly.

I think it's pretty, pretty amazing. Like Jack Dorsey and Square, I mean, he's got probably hundreds of millions of point of sale devices in businesses all around the world. I'm not sure how he's potentially rolling out sort of Bitcoin payments on those devices, whether it's firmware update or if he's going to create new ones. I don't know, but holy shit, strap in. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely there's, there's, and Bitcoin is early in different senses.

Like in terms of general awareness that it exists, it's no longer early in that sense because, yeah, everybody's heard of Bitcoin. Most people have heard of Bitcoin. There's a, there's a halfway decent percentage of people that have owned some amount of Bitcoin,

but most of that would be very minimal, like in dollar, terms like how much Bitcoin is, you know, a lot of it is like, oh, I got 20 bucks or, you know, I put in a couple hundred bucks, but like not a meaningful amount to that person. It's a very small percentage of people that, one, fully understand the implications on a global level of what this thing is and two, have allocated enough of their net worth to it to actually reflect that. And beyond that, it's also very early of the people that are seeing it and understanding it,

they're likely understanding it in just one sense. It's like, oh, the store of value aspect. Like you said, lightning. People haven't even begun to really realize the implications of that. It destroys the transaction per second narrative of, you know, most alt coins that, went down that route. It destroys the Bitcoin transactions are too expensive and too slow. It destroys the Bitcoin can't scale argument.

It destroys all these arguments that are still pervasive, that people still believe. And so there's so many things that can be done on top of Bitcoin. And those things aren't priced in because the existence of Bitcoin is widespread. knowledge of the existence of Bitcoin is widespread. The idea of Bitcoin is a store of value is starting to proliferate in some, in some like on opposite ends of the spectrum, people that are experiencing hyperinflation and are just trying to do anything to protect the small amount of money they have.

And people that are managing billions of dollars for millions or billions of dollars for others and are realizing that where else do we put money? I've got a responsibility to protect this capital. It's kind of coming from those ends, but the people in the middle have not yet come to the realization of, oh, I need to get out of dollars. And that's going to take some time. But I mean, I'll let other people, I've been gabbing too much here.

I'll let other people come into the aspect of us being early. Like in what ways do you think we're early? In what ways do you think we're not? In teaching music for so many years, there's an interesting observation you get to see in the way a person absorbs information. And I don't have the perfect English to describe this, but the way I think of it is there are things that we perceive sort of as objects in our environment and things that we perceive as our environment and things that we perceive as our environment, right? So a really, really obvious example of this is a baseball on the ground is an object, and a hurricane coming toward us is an all-encompassing thing that is our environment. And the baseball is something that you can choose to address or not, and the hurricane, you don't

have a choice. It's just a thing that is a part of your reality. And in, you know, In teaching music, you could present an idea to somebody. And you could tell that when they first looked at the idea, it was much like an object, where it's like, well, do I want to integrate this idea or not? Do I, do I, you know, is my teacher right? Kind of a thing. You know, that's being asked. And over time, it becomes known to them to the point that they want to integrate it. And now it's just an aspect of reality that they have to navigate.

And when I look at Bitcoin, I see something that for the people who have really learned about Bitcoin and played with it a lot, they've gone through essentially an integration process where Bitcoin seems to be an aspect of their environment. It's really quite funny to I was I was working with a client where we were talking about just various financial things. And it popped into my head. I realized, wait a second, we were using Bitcoin as our S&P 500 standard. According to this particular set of thinking that we were doing, Bitcoin had become the mental standard for how we were looking at. performance of the various things that we were looking at. And it hadn't been on purpose. It was, we'd learned enough about it that we thought of it as a fairly stable structure to

mentally riff off of them. It was the thing that wasn't going away. The other ideas that we were considering, they could be there or they could not, right? They were variables. You know, other potential investments, for example, things like that. And to me, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the culture assumes that the Bitcoin standard, not not, not, well, the Bitcoin standard is, you know, a, a whole theory, but let's leave that aside, but just Bitcoin itself is, uh, just an aspect of the environment that must be navigated. It must be known about and, and, and, uh, it's, it's, it's not something that.

that you take or leave, right? And there are many aspects of one's financial health that you assume to be this way. Like, you don't assume that it's optional to know about how a savings account works. You assume that you need to know how it works. You assume that you need to learn about checking accounts. You assume that you need to learn about digital wallets. These are just an aspect of your living environment as a human in the modern day. And I think to me, that's what widespread adoption looks like is when it's it's not a optional well you could learn about this or not it's it's a no this is just like one of the set of things that are just standard right and uh we're far from that we're very far from that and and that that definitely points towards early i like that it feels

like my personal bitcoin journey of of basically now earning bitcoin and and thinking of I want minimal exposure to the Fiat world. And so the interaction with Fiat becomes like, well, my bills are denominated in Fiat. How do I limit how much Fiat I have to have around, you know, save as much as I can,

spend less than I earn, and then convert in whatever form I see fit to pay those bills is, it feels different. It drives a lot of very different. behaviors from living on a Fiat standard. Hats, I saw you unmute, so feel free to jump in. Yeah, just a quick question on that, though.

Are you 100% on a Bitcoin standard now, Ben? Do you live on your Bitcoin? So I do, there are, well, I won't say 100% on a Bitcoin standard because there's a couple of things where I receive dollars. One is YouTube itself, right? Like, if you monetize your YouTube videos, like they're not going to pay me out in in sats unfortunately but I would take it in a second but for the most part other than like if I do a private session with somebody and they they aren't

into Bitcoin yet and they need to pay me via like an e transfer or you know some sort of a bank transfer or whatever PayPal God forbid but you know like they're going to pay me through some method I will do that but I also know what my bills are every single month and And so when I see those dollars coming in, I'm like, okay, well, obviously, I'll just leave those in dollars and then those bills will come out. The rest of it that I get in Bitcoin, if I know, okay, well, I'm shy on dollars, I need to convert this much to cover everything this year. Then that's easy for me to just go and do. And so effectively, I'd say most, God, I'd say 80 to 90 percent of my income. is Bitcoin only.

And then the rest is dollars. And so and there's various methods that I use to pay bills. Like in Canada, there's one called bull Bitcoin. And you can pay basically any biller with Bitcoin, including lightning, which is awesome. Same thing. I use like bit refill for gift cards for gas, grocery, stuff like that.

And soon, I just got the, little nod that I'm going to have access to the again the shake pay card so I can use the dollars that I have but then earn sats back as I'm using it. So, you know, a variety of different methods. Whatever ends up with me holding the most Bitcoin at the end of the day is how I do it. But by having most of my income in Bitcoin, it makes me save more. Yeah. Do you have I mean, we are in Canada? We don't. You know what? Will Reeves? I have been pestering him. for the better part of two years to get that damn card here.

And he always says two weeks, trademark. So we'll see. We had Matt Center from Lolly on the show a couple of weeks ago. And Matt, we were trying to make him come to Canada to Australia next, but apparently he's going to Canada next. So there you go. There we go. That's great.

That's awesome. Well, thanks for trying. and I'll let you know how it goes. That's awesome. No, it's, it does. And I'm sure you guys have experienced too, like depending on how exposed you are to Bitcoin, it does make you reconsider some of your financial decisions.

But I think it extends out further than that. I think, and it'll be interesting how, given that we're so early, it'll be interesting to see those impacts on the behavior of, society as a whole if it proliferates through the entire world. So I guess we'll see. Because Bitcoin still feels to, oh, sorry,

go on. Go on, Brano, go on. Bitcoin still, sorry, that's my puppy dog. Bitcoin still feels to me like,

um, it's like your, stop it, uh, like your favorite underground high school band, um, but no one really knows about. And then when you find somebody else in,

you know, on the surface world that, um, is into that band, you almost feel like a stone mason, like you need a little secret handshake and a wink and there you go. Yeah. Or this bit. Yeah, I mean, and everyone's going to, it's slowly hearing the tune of the Bitcoin, I suppose.

Yeah. Hats. Yeah, no, I think it makes you, well, for me anyway, it makes me question every single financial decision. No. So if you really want to If you want to solve a consumption problem in the world over consumption What better than something that makes you question every single financial decision?

Right It's Jeff Booth's line, right? Jeff Booth of like if you want to address the idea that we're screwing up our planet You know you can't square the idea of environment mentalism with a monetary system that demands forever growth, right? Like we can't even take a breath. So yeah, you're right. Like when you're more conscious about what you do with your capital, knowing that it's

limited, people will make better, less wasteful decisions, I'd imagine. The flip in psychology is fascinating. I when I was at a sort of a rock bottom period of my life I amongst other things I had a very strong sugar addiction and it was fascinating that I was in the process of getting my finances and my diet in order at the same time and it was so fascinating to me that I had started investing at that time and I realized that in it it it just kind of shocked me the degree how powerful it was I couldn't look at a Snickers bar at the grocery store checkout aisle

and tell myself oh it's bad for you you shouldn't eat it that was not enough of a driver I also couldn't say you shouldn't spit the money on it that was not enough of a driver but I could tell myself

you know what go home and invest that dollar 50 or you know whatever the price of the Snickers was at the time i i could do that and and i the difference in my uh my ability to to to control my urges was absurd between oh it's bad for you i'll just save the money and actually invest it and the i i mean i think the reason why is because investing felt future oriented. And that concept gives you essentially hope, right? It gives you an idea that things could be better. And most of our, you know, typical behaviors around things like, you know, sugar or drugs or whatever, they're usually built on some element of hopelessness. Because if you don't have hope, you might as well.

well enjoy what you can, right? And that played out to a T where if I, if I was just simply telling me myself, oh, this behavior is not so great for you, that gave me no reason to actually stop. Because at that time in my life, I didn't have a lot of hope. And I was in pain and I was not happy. so I some part of my brain somewhere said well to hell with it you might as well just have a good time you might as well just have that simple pleasure right and but but when I flipped to no no no you can invest that money I started to think more about my future and a totally different set of

decisions became available to me and I to me some of the things you're describing about about you know, utilizing a different, you know, utilizing Bitcoin as a way of transacting day to day. To me, to me, it gives you a little bit more of a future oriented position that enables you to make decisions that you might not be even capable of making otherwise. Yeah, I'd say, I mean, without going straight into the Bitcoin is bad for the environment argument, what you can say about it is that what Bitcoin does. do is disincentivizes consumerism. So, you know, that's ultimately going to be good for the environment because people are buying

less shit and just storing that wealth, that value instead of having anything but a chair. Yeah, yeah. Well, and even chairs are a scam, right? But it does bring us back. That guitar there is a cardboard cut out, by the way. I think it does bring us back to. a time of of buying

quality items and when things break actually fixing them instead of tossing them in the trash and buying the next breakable thing that will be in the trash in another few months right? It gets rid of that mentality of everything

is replaceable and directly incentivizes of you know spend the extra on a a high quality thing that will last you, potentially your life. You know,

like, you know, I've noticed it a lot in the way that I approach purchases. Like that, you know, I moved, you know, we've been in a new home for about a year and a half now.

But, you know, we were looking at just like kitchen tables. And we're thinking, okay, well, we can, let's get one of these and we look and it's kind of like a,

you know, still like cost a fair amount. but it was crappy material, wasn't great. Instead, what we ended up doing is spending extra money, but getting a local friend

who is an expert in, you know, he does flooring, he does all these different things. We got him to build us a table out of solid oak and get a slab of granite on the top. And he literally built it for us.

So now it has personal meaning. It's way higher quality and it's literally going to last us for years. our kids will probably keep that table. But did you pay them in sats? You know what? I did.

You did? There you go. I did. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, no, he's he's stacking the sats too. So yeah. So I mean, it does.

It changes your behavior. And it'll be interesting, again, given how we're early, we kind of are with that mentality to see that take hold of everybody. I think it'll be a pretty interesting. shift in the dynamic of how the world works and one for the better. So I think what I'm going to do now is I'm going to keep us rolling if that's okay with your. Can I have one more thing on the early? Yeah. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. So this is everybody, whenever, whenever he else goes high brow, I'll go lowbrow. So, um,

what do we, who do we think are the, you know, the most convicted bitcoins out there, right? They're the, they're the, they're the, they're the, they're the maxies. The maxes you see on Twitter, right? So, and what do all of those maxis have in common? Or not all of them. percent of those maxis have in common. Right? They've all got laser eyes on the profile. Okay. What the laser eyes?

Here we go. What the laser eyes signify? What does it signify? Laser eye. Laser ray to 100K. Yeah. Right? A hundred K.

If your ambition is 100K, if the Bitcoin maxi's ambition is 100 K, where we're so early, it's unbelievable. Yeah. I do like that. We'll have to have some. What's, what's, I mean, everybody's saying, we should have laser eyes till Fiat dies or something like that. I think laser eyes.

I'm good with that. I think, I don't think laser eyes go away. Although, you know what? So here's, here's what I'm actively probably going to get done is I want to have, when we do hit 100K, I want to get the, the song I can see clearly now. And I just want somebody to like put laser eyes on everybody and then they gradually disappear and then people are seeing the sun and yeah So I want that to happen. That's definitely I can see clearly now the rays are going. Is that what you said? Yeah Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think I think that'd be a a solid contribution to Bitcoin Twitter. So if I don't get to it first and somebody else should do it I'm going to keep it rolling though. Brenda, great topic. I agree early in many senses and I can't wait to see

when we're not early anymore. But Josh, you are up next. I am curious to hear what has you bullish this week. Take it away. I decided to go with essentially, this is going to be about symbology, but it's essentially Bitcoin has the best story, is the argument here.

I primarily do a lot of short form content, but I'm experimenting finding what sort of long form I want to stick with. And I've been working on some essays to put on a podcast. This is an essay that I've been working on, is this idea that the story and the resulting symbols that come from that story are wildly underestimated in the modern world. So to dive into it, basically we live in a culture,

where we are currently destroying a lot of old symbols, right? So we have social movements where things that historically were once praised, we now vilify them and we tear down statues, right? That's a thing that happens with fairly common regularity in the modern day. we look at, you know, founding fathers of different sorts. And, you know, we find faults that we once didn't. We, and they might not be wrong. It might be correct.

But it's more about the fact that we're in a phase of the world where this is happening. And the result of this is less symbols, less icons for us to hang on to. And symbols and icons, things. like past people that we believed in, something as simple as a brand like Nike. One example that I bring up a lot all the time is Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a symbol. So Elon Musk is a person who did enough things in a specific area that he now stands for something.

He stands for innovation. He stands for the human progress in certain ways. And the result of that is many people flock to him, right? And they flock to him for a lot of those reasons. And these symbols can't be underestimated. They're an aspect of how we see the world. The Bible, religion, all of these things are full of symbols. and they're essentially shorthand for navigating the world.

We can't live without them because Earth is too complex to process at face value, right? So that's why when you look at a chair, your mind doesn't measure the dimensions of the chair and decide that it's a safe thing for you to sit on based on your knowledge of physics. your your brain looks at it and goes, does that match something that resembles a chair that I've sat on in the past? And so there is a symbology for a chair, right? So when we navigate the world, that's what we're doing is we're constantly looking for the lowest calorie count

version of how to understand the world. And culturally, we're destroying those things in a lot of ways because we're saying we didn't do quite as well as we wanted to. We want to do better. I'm not happy with where I am. I want to be in a better place. And that results in us as wanting to break things and then build them back up in a way that makes sense to us again so that we feel like we can move forward. And that results in people without religion. It results in people without traditions.

It results in people without a home base. It results in people that have a lot of desires to do good, but they don't even have a definition of what good is. It results in people that are willing to flip ideology at the turn of a hat. And it makes people very uncomfortable. So, you know, we scream out science, but the reality is science is too hard for day to day. It uses too many calories.

We say, oh, give me a scientific study for everything. But the reality is we need this, this approximation tool that is a symbol. And with Bitcoin, we have a story. And the story is an anonymous person with all of the charismatic elements of a leader that is intelligent, selfless, has an ideal, believes that there was a wrong in the world that he would like to write. he constructs a codified tool

for others to use the Bitcoin Protocol, the Bitcoin Network. And then he sends it out and he disappears without a trace and selflessly never uses the Bitcoin that is in his name.

And a lot of people argue that this is a marketing fiasco, the fact that we don't have any core central figure, that this story is so strange, and should we be nervous about this character? But the reality is it's exactly the mystery that I believe everyone is dying for right now. Because what it is, is it's an incomplete thing. Satoshi Nakamoto, the idea that is Satoshi Nakamoto, is full of gaps. And whenever there is something that is full of gaps, that enables another person to put their own meaning into it. It enables people to put their own story into it.

And this is what happens with symbols. The story of Jesus Christ, it's not complete. We don't know everything that happened there. And as a result, when somebody that isn't within that religion, how they relate to it, is they tie their own life story to this thing. And there's a funny story of Bob Dylan who had a fan walk up to him, who said, Bob Dylan, I'm such a fan of your work. But I have this one question. He says, what is it? He says, what is blown in the wind mean?

And Bob Dylan, bless his heart, said the right thing, which is means everything's blown in the wind, man. In other words, find your own meaning. And that is why the songs of Bob Dylan were so iconic, were so symbolic, it was a calorie efficient construction that had gaps that enabled people to put their own meaning into it. And this story that is the story of Satoshi and Akamoto and the story of the Bitcoin network, It has all the key elements that we need to create a calorie efficient symbol, but it has all of the gaps that enable us to create our own meaning and relate to it and find a way that we believe this to be important to ourselves.

And that is, to me, something that modern culture is actually desperate for psychologically. I believe that our modern world is actually craving symbols that they can hold on to. So we've been screaming about science and how science is so important and math and all of these structured things. And, you know, you have to have a scientific study. We've been screaming that for several decades now. And here comes a symbol built out of math and science. and I think that that is a recipe for a massive cultural shift. I love that idea.

I like the idea because you feel it as a Bitcoins, right? You this disillusion with the current state of the world. And then a lot of Bitcoiners that I encounter, they've latched on to Bitcoin. and again, I guess not made it a part of their identity, but ascribed their identity to the story of Bitcoin and how it relates to them. And it's a very, I personally was lacking that previously.

I was lacking that optimism. And Bitcoin with its competitive. compelling story and the compelling story that Bitcoiners together have kind of extrapolated out of what's possible through this. It gives you, again, that symbology of what you're striving for. And Bitcoiners are now huge. I mean, what you're saying on a lower level, it also kind of plays into the meme culture of Bitcoin, right? Like everybody loves making memes. Like money printer go burr was a meme that it like it wasn't exclusively Bitcoin in any way, shape, or form.

That that has proliferated into normy culture more or less. It's a known thing. You know, to the topics earlier, stacking hats talking about laser eyes, you know, as as bearish as 100K is. That meme, again, proliferated. through mainstream media and Normie culture, they see it. They know what it is and it's there. And it's staring them in the face with laser eyes. And it's those those symbolologies along with with the Bitcoin story.

That's it's very, very compelling. What I'm curious then is we've seen from different interpretations of in general the same story, we've seen a lot of conflict and war come from things like that. If Bitcoin were to become kind of like a center, a central point of which we base our society on, the different, I mean,

we've seen this early on with kind of the deity like, the deity or sacred text treatment of of the white paper versus the scientific reality of actually scaling the network. And luckily, the reasonable scaling approach versus the treating the white paper as dogma one out. But will that always be true? And it already seems like we're having sex of Bitcoiners kind of split off into their areas of expertise, but also like niche things, like, you know, the, the carnivory thing or the, you know, like there's there's like a whole subsection of like religious bitcoins tying that together.

There's, there's, you know, atheist bitcoins that are like, don't trust verify and, and on that realm, do we see kind of these subdivisions of interpreting Bitcoin and do those things come to a head in a very real way on a Bitcoin standard? That's my question to either you, Josh, or anybody. Yeah, it's first of all, it's, it's funny about the carnivore thing. I was a carnivore actually before I was a bitquiner. And I was really amazed to see how many carnivores were in the Bitcoin community because, you know, it's a fairly rare thing. But, yeah, I just, I think it's a thing that we kind of have to hang on to.

There's a painting on the wall in the back. You can't really see it that well. But it's from one of my favorite artists, it's who does a unique style of watercolor anime. It's a very rare thing. And it's it's just somebody with a, you know, sort of some messy bandages on them looking over a cityscape

with the sort of video game buttons of continue yes, no. And it's beautiful, but it has much. much more meaning to me than that. When I look at that, I think of it as I think of it as a reminder that, you know, well, this life thing that I'm playing is it's a game that I can choose what parts I opt into and what parts I opt out of.

And, you know, the artist didn't mean that. I mean, maybe they did. But it was, it was, it's probably accidental. You know, I established that meaning in my own mind. And that's what the gaps in the story of Bitcoin provide to us. And to your point about the dogma is, yeah, that is a concern of mine around the Bitcoin world is we really underestimate the extremes that a human can go to. And particularly that a group of humans can go to. And I am very excited and optimistic about the Bitcoin world.

At the same time, I think there is a dystopia where people become just as extreme about Bitcoin as people do about anything else. And I think there's a danger there. I'm not sure if that answered. I think you brought up a specific question, but those were just some things that were on my mind. if you want to bounce back to where you were going. Yeah, just a general question of do we come together and then split apart again in a broader sense of the term? Yes, I think we do. I think we do.

I think that is an element of how humans navigate the world is they go through a process of polarization where they tie into groups and then somebody comes up. with something and that polarizes that group and they break apart and they do it again. I think that assuming that that is unhealthy would be misguided. I think there's an aspect of that that's natural in human development. But also it's super dangerous, super stressful. It's caused a lot of the tragedy in the world. But yeah, I do think that it will continue. Brenda Hats, have you guys read the fourth turning?

No, I haven't. I haven't. I haven't yet. Josh, have you read it? I have not, actually. I'm familiar with the idea a little bit. I think what you're talking about in terms of, and kind of what I was asking you, this like coming together and then polarization

and that cycle is effectively the idea of the fourth turning and the idea, the general premise is, is hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times. And it circles around and depending on, and when I say men,

I mean people. But it basically cycles around where depending on what part of that cycle you're born into, you're a different kind of archetype of person. You're more likely to act in a certain way. And it's not necessarily that it's not that there are a preset of conditions of how this cycle works,

but it's more about the individuals, the time they're born into, kind of dictates the most likely response that they have to various stimuli. And right now, we're kind of seeing that polarization just everywhere. And the extremes in response to stimuli, which I won't get deep into the naming those stimuli on this program, thus risk demonetization in any form. But regardless, the extremes in response to that kind of stuff

and the polarization across a whole host of different topics, I think that does repeat over time. But I think that that unraveling and that fourth turning as they deem it is kind of upon us, but we're about to come. into hard times create strong men and strong men create good times. I think we're kind of forging that now to hopefully create something better for our

children and grandchildren, but it will change again over time. I think we cycle through that. So any other thoughts, comments, particularly Brenda, or hats, if you want to tag in there or anything before we move on to the last talk. topic feel free. It's just, well, I guess I wonder with that is whether, whether Bitcoin breaks that cycle of, of those stages. I mean, does it create, are we, yes, we're going into harder times for a lot of people and yes,

that should bring, that should breed the strong men. But if we, once we have that static, that static thing that we can all look at from our different perspectives and our different groups, that's what we have that. So, a couple of things. So back, I used to be a public procurement guy back in the, early 2000 or 10 years I did that for. And quite frankly, I mean, I think most people went to jobs like that because they want to do good and slowly the system breaks them.

And some people last and fight it for their careers. Some people lose and they just stay there because they feel they've got nothing else to do and some people leave. So, I mean, I was eventually became a person who couldn't hack that anymore because I could see that wasn't helping anymore. so I had to leave. But what I did, so looking back, that's about 2000, you know, back in 2008-ish, nine. But that ties in with banking crisis, whatnot.

And my behavior back then was to, well, I'm Scottish. I'm living in Australia now, but back then it was, so the bank that was in trouble then was the Royal Bank of Scotland, big bank. But my thought process was the government won't allow this to fail, the too big to fail thing. and so I but what that did to my behavior was once the share price of the Royal Bank of Scotland plummeted to like sort of six pence or eight pence or whatever it was I jumped in and I jumped out at 15 and I jumped out at 18 and I jumped out at 21 and I jumped whatever I did I made a little bit of money but it didn't make me feel good there was nothing about what I was

doing that was good I was just benefiting off a broken system so going to sort of Josh's point I mean, I think we need, people need purpose. They need meaning. Once you have purpose and meaning, you have hope and you can see that. You can see sort of better future head. And I think that Bitcoin itself is the symbol of that. So if that's the thing that gives you hope, back into another story. So I used to see a physio, right?

And a physio used to speak to me about pain. And what he said was think of it as a sine wave. You know, we all have good days. We all have bad days. and if you're on the good days you're at the top of the sine wave at the bad days you're at the bottom of the sign wave and at the bottom of your sign wave you hit into your pain threshold your tolerance for pain so and and we all hit that well we all have bad days right

we all hit that but if you have a chronic issue if you have a chronic pain issue what you do is just get into pain more often so I mean I just once I think if you can give yourself something that makes you feel like you have some hope. And it doesn't matter what it is if it's Bitcoin. Like we all need a parent. We all look to our parents or a partner or job or health or something is our static in life.

And that allows us to go on and take further risks. And I think Bitcoin is that, so the wealth side of it has been broken because the money is broken and a lot of people are feeling the pain of that just now and don't know why. But if Bitcoin replaces that, it gives us something else to build from

and you no longer hit this pain threshold problem. I realize that's two different stories smashed together. But it's just, you know, from my personal experience, it's like if you have, yeah, it's amazing what hope will let you do. It makes you, like, Ben, you're a, what are we, Friday night for you? We're Saturday morning in Australia. Why are we doing this in our own personal time? Like, we're doing it because we think there's a value for ourselves.

We're doing it because there's a value for somebody else. And none of us, I certainly speak from myself, but I don't feel like this is work. This is something I want to contribute to. It doesn't take my energy. It's not energy sapping. It's energy giving. So, yeah, I think the idea of hope is incredible. And I think if Bitcoin is the symbol that provides somebody the hope to tie it back to just the original point.

The more people we can bring in, the better. and then if we then go off into different groups, I think that's perfectly healthy as well. I think it's actually natural that we're going to go off into different groups. So I guess I'm going to ask one more question of Brenda, maybe to round out this topic. And I don't know if you have thoughts on this or not,

but if Bitcoin ends up being the thing that kind of helps fix this polarization that we're currently seeing And it does that through bringing about kind of an economic clean slate, for lack of a better terms, or, you know, it flattens out the economic hierarchy in a way that makes people, it makes it easier for people to make a living and so and so forth. but assuming that perhaps that cycle of polarization continues, what do you think the next thing will be that we have to grapple with after fixing, you know, we, you know, separating money and state and making it just an open network where, you know, it's, it's no longer an issue.

What comes next? Marrhodes. Marrows. So, yeah, that's a really good question, one that I don't know the answer to at all. I mean, I'm at a stage now where I'm hoddling, not so much for me, but for my kids. I'm in it for the long game. I think most Bitcoiners, certainly Bitcoin Maxis are. How it looks on the other side, I couldn't begin to imagine.

I mean, you're going to have, you know, your kind of game. down toting guys off in the bush protecting their kingdom. You'll have obviously Bitcoin businesses services like any other financial service provider, I suppose. Oh man, that's too abstracted. That's like breed level abstraction for me. It's like a space-faring society deciding, you know, figuring out how to, you know, colonize and, you know, We solve our economic problems on Earth and then start looking to the stars for inspiration of what's next. I have a couple of thoughts on that, if you don't mind.

In regards first to something that Hats mentioned of breaking the cycle, I get a natural, like, cautionary feeling when I hear something like that. because it reminds me so much of the religious ideas of, you know, the coming of Christ and everything's fixed. And it makes me feel cautious. But at the same time, I firmly believe that things can be unimaginably better. I think that things can be improved on an exponential scale that are like beyond our imagination, which is essentially breaking the cycle. it's just that as you're saying about what comes next, there are still going to be problems.

There are still going to be things that need to be fixed. And one of the things that I've been thinking about that I think we may be coming to is I believe we are about to hit a era of invisible people that is beyond. Tragic. When the pandemic initially hit, I was very easily switched to remote. And I didn't really have to worry about anything. Thankfully, you know, things went really well for me. It was pretty straightforward.

And I just stayed in my house for several months, I think, like besides groceries. Like, I just didn't, it was no sweat for me. And after several months, I decided to take a drive. I'm an introvert, so it took a while for me to care. But I decided to take a drive around Austin, where I live. And Austin is a super populated city. And there's a pretty large homeless population. And I drove around Austin and first I drove to the downtown area.

And one of my first thoughts was, oh, my goodness, there's no homeless people here. What happened? It was very strange to me because there's normally quite a few in that area. And it was pretty obvious, oh, there's nobody to hand out anything. There's nobody to ask for resources down here because the downtown was the party area and it was all shut down. So I drove around a little bit more and I came to these overpasses underneath the highway and they were completely full in a way that I'd never seen in this city. They, I mean, every area of the overpass was full of tents and mats and just,

you know, just people surviving, right? And the thing that's, you know, the thing that is, that struck me the most about it. I mean, I mean, it's a rough situation no matter what, but the thing that struck me the most about it was, wow, nobody knows that's there. Nobody knows. At that time, it was several months and still, the traffic on that highway was halved or like a quarter of what it usually was. I mean, we have famously bad traffic, and traffic was great. It was easy to drive. But, but, uh, I think that it's easier and easier for people to be invisible. Because if you can take care of yourself, you don't have to see the world now.

You can order food delivery. You can get all of your entertainment online. You can have your network with three to five friends and sustain yourself and go to, you know, pay cover charge parties and all of that. And this has always been true. I just think it's more true now. And I think that we're getting to a phase of great tragedy for people that we have no idea that there is tragedy. Yeah, I could definitely see that.

And that could be a future divide if it's a purely more digital world. My hope is that from what I've seen culturally, many bitcoinsers, they're pushing back against the idea of like living in the Metaverse, right? So they're pushing back against the, the get in your pod and eat your bugs kind of thing. They want, you know, families and human interaction and they're, they're very against. So hopefully that kind of divide, you know, hopefully Bitcoin fixes that. I don't know. I agree. I think there are forces pushing back. I think I, I, I, when, again, I think things can be unimaginably better.

But when you speak about the future and future challenges, I think that's something that we will have to address. I think we can also. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think that will be definitely a challenge because once you fix the money, then you've got to get to fixing the world that the money had broken previously.

Correct. Well, let's why stop now? Let's roll on down. and hats you're up you're going to round us out with the final reason for the week what has you feeling bullish friend okay so I'm

constantly bullish I don't ever become not not bullish I totally understand where you come from Josh but I think that's the reason why you're doing your writing Ben's doing a show we've started the podcast you know that every we're reaching out to people

to try and I said this to Brenda the other week you know it feels like we're sitting on the lifeboat of the and the titan panic's over there and we're screaming to people get on. And a lot of people are still dancing in the ballroom and we're screaming on them to get on. So I think if everybody can try their best to do, you know, get one person or two people or 10 people or, you know, how many you, whoever many you've got on by now, Ben, is we're, that is us doing our bit and I hope everybody does their bit and there are more and more people

trying to do their bit. So I'm really positive about that. My actual point and my bullish point is that the underdog just keep. keeps winning. And what I mean by that is the barrier to entry is lower. I can't think of a circumstance previously where the barrier to entry is lower for the little guy than it is for the big guy. The four of us can once we decide we can go to wherever it is Bill Bitcoin or Swan or Amber or Bitteroo or wherever we can just make that the decision in a day and by the end of the day, we can own some Bitcoin.

Right. Whereas Michael, Michael Saylor, even as a bullish of Bitcoin as he is, he bought for himself first before he bought for his company. And why? He did it because he did it because it was easier. Well, maybe he wanted to front run himself. And that's just smart, right? But he bought for him, he did it because it was easier, right?

it's almost laughable that you know like Dave Diamond Hands on Twitter can buy Bitcoin before the richest man in the world it's easier for us right you look to El Salvador why are they first well they're first because excuse me well they went off their currency in 2001

excuse me the Colon in the Salvadoran Colon in 2001 and why did they do that well they did that because their currency was weak and they went to a stronger currency so they picked the strongest currency that there is right So, but in the past 24 months, the printing of US dollar has made everybody poorer, okay, other than a very few at the top. Now, we could argue of the people in the US who lost out the most, right? You know, if you got a stimulus check, you got a bit of the stimulus, right?

So you could, you then just have to look at yourself and compare yourself to everybody else. Did you do better or did you do worse? but I tell you who did the worst. Is anybody who's in a country who is either using the US dollar as their only currency or as their proxy currency? Because they got no benefit from it. They only got poorer from it. So why did El Salvador go first?

Well, they went first because they had nothing to lose. There was literally nothing to lose. So they are the little guy. They are the underdog and they're going to benefit massively from it. So, and I give you another little example. A friend of mine has a 16-year-old son. His son, I've been at my friend for literally years now. And he owns Bitcoin, but he's not a maxi by any stretch of the imagination.

His son has sort of heard us, his son 16, he's heard us speaking about it and that's really all. He keeps bees, right? And so I thought, well, I'm going to buy my honey from. my friend's son, right? So I used to buy the honey from the friend's son in dollars. And a few weeks ago, or a couple months ago, maybe it was now, I went with my dollars and with my blue wallet, right? And I said, right, you choose. I'll give you the dollars or I'll give you Bitcoin. And he chose the Bitcoin. And I gave them and I paid them whatever it was, 30,000 sats. And it was his, it wasn't my choice. I just gave.

him the choice and he chose the he chose the bitcoin and why did he do it he did it because it was easy because he was a little guy and he could right and it took us about 10 minutes to excuse me download a wallet transfer him some sats and he understood it now since then those 30 or000 sats he has been watching exactly what that means right so it's gone up to you know as 20 dollars has gone up to 30 dollars and come back down to i don't know 25 but still more he is interested. And why is he interested? Because he can see a future that it has a greater value than it does in the present. And he is a little guy. We also spoke to a Turkish gentleman called Fisini on Twitter on the pod recently. In Turkey, the published inflation figures are 19%, which is

brutal, absolutely brutal. What he told us was that his personal inflation was he has, he has estimated somewhere between 40 and 45%. And it was regular that you would see a 10% increase in prices month to month in the supermarket. Right? That is frightening. But it's a horrendous situation for these people to be in. And some of those people will end up underneath your overpass. And unfortunately, we're going to lose some of that people.

And that breaks my heart. But we have an obligation to try and save as many people as we can. And people that in a situation of hardship where we can put the right information in front of them and let them make their own decision, we'll do this first. And those people are the little guy. The little guy isn't going to purchase an ETA on an ETA. They don't care. They're going to go to their friend and buy some Bitcoin from their friend. Or they're going to go to a Bitcoin-only exchange, buy some Bitcoin there because it's quite easy now.

So, yeah, the reason I'm bullish is because the little guy is going to win. and the little guy's going to keep winning. I like that. And part of the reason there's two aspects to it. Number one, Bitcoin over time will flow to those that are most productive, right? Many of the people that got Bitcoin very, very early, they would never be able to purchase the same amount of Bitcoin now

with their jobs, with the dollars that they bring in. It's literally impossible. It's just that they took a risk early on, or maybe they didn't even perceive it as a risk if it was early enough. But they saw something early on. And if they held on to it, then, you know, they were rewarded. But to your point about the little guy getting in first, just to go down that rabbit hole a little bit, to that point, there are people, there are individual. people that got into Bitcoin early enough and held on to it that, as I said, would never be able to purchase that amount now. You now have corporations coming in and institutions buying Bitcoin.

And some of those institutions would never be able to afford buying the same amount of Bitcoin that individuals managed to get their hands on early. and the same thing is going to play out with nation states. And again, the little guy is coming first. Because who were the first people doing it? It was individuals that just happened to stumble across it. And then companies start coming in. And those companies can't buy as much as the early individuals. And it's usually the most mobile and agile companies and family offices and stuff that can get in first before the bigger institutions.

That's going to play out. over time, but then we're seeing the littlest guy on the nation stage get in first. We're seeing Al Salvador first in line to start stacking sats. And the crazy thing is that this nation state could not buy as much Bitcoin as some of the first individual bitcoins just happened to get their hands on early. And we're going to see the same thing play out where, where, where, the last nation states to get in are going to have a very hard time

obtaining Bitcoin through the traditional means of which they're used to obtaining assets, which is printing dollars. Because pretty soon those dollars won't be an effective way to purchase Bitcoin because people won't want the dollars. When it gets to the point where the U.S. says, yeah, we need to start buying Bitcoin. They better be doing it under the radar because if they're not, it's not going to go well for the value of the dollar.

It's a very interesting dynamic where the last people to the table are going to be the ones that are, if they want Bitcoin, they're going to have to bring actual productivity and value for that Bitcoin instead of just by virtue of being a nation state obtaining it. So anyways, I love that topic, hats. You're right. The little guy gets first dibs. I don't know. Brenda, do you have any thoughts on it?

I just like that it's almost that David and Goliath story, you know, like there's the little guy holding the little orange rock or orange pill perhaps. Swinging it around and just taking down these massive governments or at least front-running big governments in nation-states. So, yeah, super exciting. Certainly in Australia, we love an underdog. And I think, as Hats has said, it must be a Scottish thing as well. Every Scottish guy has got a chip on their shoulder, man.

Absolutely. And how about you, Josh? What do you think of the dynamic of the little guy kind of getting in early? Some people don't like the idea of, oh, well, you just stumbled into it early, quote-unquote. You were lucky, quote-unquote, and why do you deserve it? but do you think the dynamic of you can't you basically have to spend it to enjoy it unless you're more productive um do you think that evens it out or is there an issue there first of all hats eloquently said i really loved that um and second of all yes i i love the

incentive structure of uh the the way bitcoin is set up it really does seem to incentivize productive work. It seems to incentivize being useful to the world. And that's, I mean, I think that's probably one of the more noble things out there. You mentioned Robert Breedlove earlier. I recently had him on my podcast. And he referenced work as a sort of a holy practice. where it was the most noble thing that a person could do is to be productive and and and

create you know create good things for the world i think it's beautiful um additionally um in regards to the little guy uh yeah so i mean earlier i mentioned this idea of the invisible people and uh the the little guy's really suffering uh and uh And I mean, hats introduced the flip side of this, which is there's now more opportunity for those people than ever. And I think in, I think the modern decentralized world, whatever that looks like, in my mind, it looks like the tragedy is, the potential tragedy is one of ignorance, not one of oppression. Today, you can, you can be ignorant and do quite well sometimes. You really can. It's okay. But in a world where the rules are a little bit more codified, you know, there's a really solid structure of incentives, you can't be ignorant of those rules.

You do that at extreme risk to yourself. So when I think about those invisible people, I think of the idea of it being a tragedy of them not knowing what they could do. The beauty of it is that they could do so much, which I believe is what hat's getting at is there is there is, there is and there is going to be more capability, more options, more potential for the little guy than ever before. It's been moving that way over the past 100 years for sure, but it's it's accelerating in a way that is incredibly exciting. Awesome. That's such a positive note

to, I think potentially a positive note to start wrapping up on. You know, because Bitcoin, as the meme has become. Bitcoin is hope and all of us are here and are much more hopeful versions of ourselves than we likely were a few years ago or prior to Bitcoin. I definitely in having myself, having a family and kind of seeing the trajectory of my life since I came into Bitcoin and started understanding it, even just, not just from a financial perspective, but from a values perspective,

it couldn't be more polar opposite than when I first started. I feel those, those, those, those fiat tendencies dissipating over time. So I think what I'll do here is I'll just get a round of final thoughts from each of you. And as you give any final thoughts, of course, let people know where they can find you. And also, uh, everybody watching, everybody's Twitter handle is in the show notes down below as well. So Brenda, I'll toss it to you.

Any final thoughts that you may have for this show and again where people can find you? No major final thoughts other than thanks obviously for having me on. One of the things I love most about Bitcoin is that I'm constantly learning. And I think anybody can say that from your Stefan Lavera's down to anybody. You're constantly learning. So it's a huge well of, knowledge that you can tap. And I don't know a single Bitcoiner that's not pretty damn obsessed with it.

So yeah, anyway, I'm Bitcoin Brenda. So as I said, we're doing a two-bit idiots pod with stacking hats. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Dude, it was a pleasure. Thank you for being here. Let's jump down the line. Josh, any final thoughts and let people know where they can find you?

You can find me at Josh Terryplays.com or Josh Terry plays on any podcast platform. And Josh Terry plays on most social. In regards to final thoughts, in some ways, this is just to echo, Brenda, essentially, is just from a different perspective, is we are at a time of change. So no matter how this shakes out, change is happening. Right. So let's imagine a world where Bitcoin doesn't succeed. Let's imagine a world where Bitcoin does succeed. Either one, massive cultural shifts are afoot.

And I think Bitcoin is moving towards success. I am certainly bullish myself. But to me, there is an underlying thing that's happening. that is that Bitcoin is one element of. Our world is moving in many big ways. And as you mentioned about the fourth turning,

this is a thing that happens cyclically. And one thing we know about these shifts is anytime the world shifts in a big way, the overall return on investment, if you will, on education is higher. Anytime everything is moving, if a person pushes forwards during that time, they win at an absurd level.

When the pandemic originally hit, one of the commitments I made was just to push hard. I didn't really know how I was going to push at the time, but I knew that something moved so substantially that just if I pushed, if I just tried to move forwards in a significant way, I would be paid off in outsized dividends compared to what would happen in normal day-to-day life.

So when there is massive cultural shift, there is massive opportunity that comes with it. And if you commit to learning and commit to pushing during times like these, you have opportunities that are beyond your imagination. Awesome. Great. Great, great final thought there.

And let's toss it to hats. Dude, again, any final thoughts on our, any points of the conversation, anything you want to say, and where can people find you? So I,

Josh, I wasn't aware of your content before we knew we were going to be on this show together. So I've consumed quite a bit since in the last few days. I really enjoy. it so I'm glad to meet you. Ben, I mean, same sort of story. I've been, I put it out in a tweet before, long time, long time, listener, first time caller. So, thank you very much for all the content that you've put out there. And I think it's really helping people. It's certainly help me. I've been watching since you looked a bit uncomfortable when you were saying,

and that's your daily session. And now it just slips off the tongue. So it's been good to watch that progress. And in terms of, yeah, in terms of us, we've got the, I'm, So I'm stacking hats on Twitter. We've got the website. We've got the podcast Two Bit Idiots. You go on 2bitididates.com. You'll find all the links to the podcast there. Yeah, I'm just really bullish on everybody that's out there trying to do whatever it is that they think they can do to help.

Because it's going to, everyone's going to strike a chord for someone. I hope we strike a chord for someone. If you hate our content, just don't listen. There's plenty of other things to listen to. but but yeah i mean should emdy wants any questions or anything i'm more than happy to help so DMs are open on twitter and um yeah i look forward to to doing this again sometime awesome well thank all of you guys for joining me today uh it was it was a good long conversation

and uh and we got a lot of interesting points in there um yeah just solid all around so uh you guys are welcome back anytime of course and everybody watching, be sure to follow them all. Their Twitter accounts, as I said, are in the show notes. And you can find everything else that they're doing, I imagine, from their Twitter profiles. So gentlemen, thank you so much for your time this evening. Awesome.

All right. So I'm going to bring these guys out. Everybody watching, how was that? That was a hell of a conversation. I really, really enjoyed that. Thank you, everybody watching for being here. everybody that's been in the chat. I see everybody talking out. I want to shout out to a newcomer in the chat that I see right now goes by the name Old Fart. Welcome. Welcome to Bitcoin.

And I hope you were asking some questions in the chat. And I see a lot of people were responding to you. And I promise you, they are giving you good advice. There's a lot of fantastic resources out there in and around Bitcoin and why specifically Bitcoin. And it's it is, there's just so much great information. And I encourage you to ask hard questions. I encourage you to be, just don't take everything that people say to you for granted. Don't trust, verify is the ethos of Bitcoin. And we encourage it a lot here.

So again, thank you everybody for being a part of the show. As always, like. subscribe, share, all those things are really, really important. They really do help the show. If you want to help the show in another way, you can check out the sponsors that I mentioned down below, Shake Pay, Leaden, Bit Refill, Keystone, Bill Fottle, all of them are in the show notes. And if you really liked what you saw, you can always drop me a Bitcoin tip at my strike. At my strike.me page, that is strike.m.me slash BTC sessions.

You get there, you type in any amount you want. You hit the tip button. You'd be graded with a lightning invoice or if you tap to the right, a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, guys, I am out. have yourselves a wonderful Friday evening. I'm off to see the new Ghostbusters movie. Hopefully it's good.

I don't know. I was a Ghostbusters fan as a kid, and that's what's up for me tonight. I'm going with my wife, date night. Anyways, guys, thank you very much, and I will see you guys next time for your daily session.