BTC Sessions - WHY ARE WE BULLISH? Kinetic Finance, BTC Trading Cards, Zac Guignard ep368

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

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What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. Another Friday, another episode of Why Are We Bullish. Got a good group of friends joining in for the show this week, a return guest, and a couple brand newbies to the Friday show. So very excited to have them all. We'll dive into that momentarily. Now, of course, this is live. Anything can happen. So I defer to my friend Bill here. We'll do it live. We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The fucking thing sucks.

If you have not already, please do hit that like button. It's just below the screen there. Hit it now. It really does help please those algorithmic gods. You can also like and share and that helps a ton and subscribe, of course. Anyways, let's get this thing rolling. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. is your daily session.

Before we bring in our guests, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is timechain calendar.com. Currently, we are sitting at $27,017 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will snag you 3,701 sats in terms of fees. Ah, not too bad, actually. four sats per byte priority or any time. And Memple is purging anything below about 1.37 sats per B byte. In terms of Bitcoin mined, 19.51 million of them, which is 92.92% of the entire supply.

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You don't have to give up your personal information. And finally, shout out to Start 9, your plug-and-play, sovereign computing solution. These guys have their devices that you can plug in and run your whole Bitcoin stack. Core, Lightning, Mempool. You can also host your private data, files, passwords, photos, Noster Relays, and clients, all of that stuff. They've got everything from entry level up to what I'm running, which is the Start 9 server, hear so check them out start nine dot com anyways guys enough of my rambling let's get in our guests and get bullish so welcome to the show back to the show julian and first time to the show

jack and aladdin from btc trading cards very excited to have you all thank you so much for being here and i think let's start oh and actually we got to give a shout out to of course the most important guests of the show the chat so i'm going to bring that up on the sides of us all the messages from here on in. For better or worse, we'll be live stream for the world to read. So we'll be seeing you in the chat, everybody. We can get those messages rolling now. Anyways, let's do a round of intros.

Who are you? What do you do? So I'll toss it to Julian, aka Kinetic Finance. Take it away, man. Let people know. What up? Thanks so much, Ben, for having me on again. If you don't know me, I'm Julian.

also go by Kinetic Finance. I make videos. I'm always messing around with all sorts of different videos, trying to orange pill people in 60 seconds, doing documentaries all over the world about Bitcoin adoption, sometimes live streaming, anything and everything I can do to try and orange pill people in new ways and also learn some cool stuff on the way.

Awesome. Well, dude, I'm glad to have you back. And congrats on you recently had a video that blew up that was kind of post-a. it all over the place and it's you know in my opinion long time coven because of the quality of your of your content that you put out so uh hats off to you for that one thanks man just trying to wrestle rustle some feathers as usual right awesome we got to do yeah absolutely awesome well let's do uh drop down to aladdin dude uh can you give yourself a little intro for everybody for those

aren't familiar. Yeah, Aladdin, Bitcoin trading cards. I founded the company. We've been working on it about five years and we launched almost a year ago. Got a couple days away from our year launch and we're trying to orange pill the world and as fun and creative a way as possible. And yeah, we've just got started. So we've got a lot planned. That's awesome, man. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's, is that a Genesis pack from Pacific? Yes. Looks beautiful. I got to do a quick show and tell here. Hold on a sec. So, I have to tell a story. I was at Bitcoin, Miami earlier this year.

And first of all, you put me on a card, which, like, I'm so stoked about. So, because I, yeah, there we go. Nice. I love it. So I collected Marvel cards as a kid. and, you know, so this is right up my alley. But anyways, in Miami, Sean Harris, he pulled my foil card with all the reflective stuff. Nice.

Everybody's got him. And so Sean Harris pulled my foil card. And then I was very sad to find that later on in the evening, somebody, one, swiped a credit card out of my pocket. but more importantly, too, swiped my foil card out of my pocket along with it and probably discarded it shortly thereafter because they probably didn't care about the card. They just wanted the credit card. But I was very upset about it. So I jumped in the telegram chat for trading cards.

And I was like, hey, does anybody have a foil card? I'll trade you for something or whatever. And one dude was kind enough, and I don't want to, like, docs who it is or anything. but one dude was kind enough to be like, yo, I've got your foil card. Actually, two, two. Two guys were like, I've got your foil card. And one of the foil cards I received, which is here, and it's all fancy and cool. And I put it in a little thing because I just think it's the best.

But this is number one out of 500. Wow. Yeah. So I've got my one of 500 foil card that's just going to sit up here on my shelf. forever and ever. Love it. You got your book hand. Yeah.

Yeah. So I thought it was super cool. And again, hats off to the whole pack stacker community. Everybody's awesome. So thank you guys. But with that, of course, I want to toss it down to Zach. Dude, I kind of, we've kind of crossed paths on Twitter and everything. And I thought you'd be a great addition to the show.

And so, yeah, can you give yourself a little? intro. Yeah, for starters, thanks for having me on the show, Ben. Big fan of your content. For those of you that don't know me, my name's Zach. I'm an economics major at the University of Victoria in Canada. I'm about to complete my bachelor's of economics. I also run the Bitcoin Club there where we're working on bringing Bitcoin awareness to campus in the local community. And I also help steer education and content at Thea Bitcoin who provide a streamlined to multi-sig setup, self-custy for your Bitcoin, all through a simplified app. That's awesome, man.

And I met Smeat down in, in L.A. just at the B. last weekend. So I'm chatting with him and, yeah, kind of finding out what's going on with Tha, which is awesome. So, yeah, man, good to have you. Thanks for having me. No worries, no worries. So we're going to dive into the show now.

First of all, anybody watching that may be unfamiliar. This is why are we bullish? Really simple premise to the show. Each one of us comes with a reason for being bullish in and around Bitcoin. And it can be anything. It can be a current event. It could be a personal experience. It could be an app, a book, a device, really any sort of new development.

it's really up to whatever your little hard desires on the show. And so the flow of the show is pretty simple. Somebody's going to drop a reason why they are bullish. This is their chance to rant and basically lay out their case. Number two, altogether, we're going to riff on that reason, questions, comments, whatever it may be, whatever rabbit holes we want to go down. And then number three, we're going to rotate to the next person until we've all had a turn. So reason, riff, rotate, simple.

So first off, I'm going to get us started here with my reason for being bullish. And my reason for being bullish this week, it kind of stems from right now SBF is on trial. And there's some interesting little tidbits of information coming out in and around the trial. in particular they had Carolyn, his we'll say partner in crime up there on the stand. And there's some pretty wild stuff that was coming out of her mouth. But one of the interesting pieces that I honed in on was when she was saying that he basically advised her to, number one, they were selling customer funds to keep themselves afloat. to support FDX token and do all these crazy things. But basically SBF told her like, hey, you got to, if it's above 20K, if Bitcoin's above 20K,

keep selling. And this kind of got a, it got spun a little bit as they were purposely suppressing the price, but it sounded more along the lines of like they were just saving their own asses to like prop up the price of FTCs and all of that. or FTT rather, the token. But nonetheless, the effect was the same. They were basically selling customer funds in order to save their own asses, which was suppressing the price.

And furthermore, during the course of the life of FTX, whenever somebody actually, when there was actual consumer demand for Bitcoin, and people would give them fiat or alt coins or whatever it may be and would say, I would like to purchase Bitcoin and they left it custodially. Well, FDX just would not purchase the Bitcoin. Like it just wasn't there. It was like, thanks for the dollars. We're going to write this little number into your account here.

And then it would just no purchase was made. So the demand was not actually. reflected properly in the price of Bitcoin because the demand was not actually causing buys to happen. So this was obviously to the detriment of everyone else, anybody who was holding Bitcoin. It also screwed a lot of miners. Bob Burnett, Barefoot Mining was tweeting about how pissed he was about this because it literally, you know, it put people, other people out of business. because of them basically not being bad actors and not actually executing buys that their customers were demanding for, not holding the assets and basically just creating paper Bitcoin. They're basically papering over their own malfeasance and mismanagement. So a couple things here.

Number one, it shows that the demand for Bitcoin in the bull run. of 2021 was much stronger than the price indicated. And had FTX not been doing what it was doing, there's a good chance it could have been significantly higher. And the other thing about it is that it kind of shows that you can't fight the reality in Bitcoin and the demand for Bitcoin for long like you can and fiat land like in fiat land you can just paper over paper over everything and if you screw up bad enough

then the government comes in and they'll just you know we'll just print off a few trill and make it all kosher for a period of time um and so historically we've kind of seen this play out in bitcoin before um kind of this fuck around and find out um cycle that happens you know we saw it with um Mount Gox, they tried to lie about, you know, missing Bitcoin and everything and tried to just maintain a fractional reserve while, you know, that didn't go so well. We saw the same with Quadriga and Canada and another smaller exchange called Einstein. We saw BlockFi. We of course saw FTX. We're now seeing, I think I just saw rumblings on on Twitter of Genesis shutting down withdrawals or there's something funky is going on with Genesis currently. Who knows what, but

Nonetheless, it's been a series of larger catastrophes because people stubbornly refuse to change their Fiat behaviors. They think that they can get away with the same kind of crap in Bitcoin that you can in Fiat land. However, Bitcoin is incredibly efficient at destroying immoral and dishonest entities much quicker than it would be with legacy. finance. So I guess I'm bullish in a roundabout way because the speed of fuck around and find out in Bitcoin is so much more efficient. And even with these large entities coming in and, you know, the fidelities and the black rocks of the world, you've got this backstop, this reality backstop that, you know, they're bigger. They might be able to paper over things longer. But I think at the end of the day, nobody escapes the fuck around and find out equation of Bitcoin in the long

run. And I can't wait to see what that does to legacy finance and central banking. So that's why I'm bullish. So I'm going to, I guess, throw that out to you guys and get your thoughts in and around this. Whoever wants to jump in first, I'd love to hear what you have to say. I'd love to tap in here real quick. I guess this sort of kind of all just points to what Bitcoiners were kind of saying all along, right? You know, we had the situation where we were talking about FTCS suppressing the price at the top and then also making it go lower in the lows. So I think, you know, like would 20K be possible without this? What 100K would have been possible? But yeah, I do love the idea of how the whole process of fuck around, find out kind of just happens much quicker in Bitcoin.

And I think that's because you have a digital bearer asset that just moves so much quicker than anything we've seen before. So people who are messing around kind of they bite the dust much quicker. Yeah, you love to see it. Yeah, I think, I mean, I love that and I hated about the Bitcoin space because everything, everyone always goes out with a bang, it seems. Like there's no subtle exit stage left moments for people in this space. they either make it or they go down in quite a beautiful plumb. But, you know, it's just, it tells you what the fiat world is all about, which is not only manipulation of price signals, but almost manipulation of time itself, right?

Like the time that these companies can last, the time that zombies, the time that insolvency, things that would fall apart if there was any, you know, tiny level of transparency, they go on for so much longer than they naturally should because you have a ruler. that is just broken, which is Fiat money. And it's like, you know, right now, I don't want to get like too into this stuff, but, you know, we're in the middle of now two wars seemingly that seemingly could go on forever. And it's just you can't do that when you have provable scarcity and money. The same way that you cannot run Ponzi's when you have provable scarcity and money.

They can run for a day or two or a couple weeks, a couple months, but not for years and years on end, not for decades. That is something only Fiat money enables. So, yeah, Bitcoin just brings sunlight to everything a lot quicker. And kind of kind of have to embrace that, you know. Love it. Aladdin. How are you feeling around some of the stuff with, you know,

finally seeing SBF sitting up there in front of a jury of his peers, you know, sunlight shining upon him. Do you have emotions? It's almost like the sunlight exposes the clown face. So it's like one of my favorite Twitter accounts is clown world. And like until we had Twitter, or not Twitter, until we had Bitcoin, we didn't really have anything outside of like the Fiat world that we could really get behind. And now that we have that, it's like all of the really strong-minded, like value-oriented

people are starting to flow towards Bitcoin and it really helps expose the amount of clown world. Like you watch FTX, Sam Bankman, you watch Caroline. I mean, could you get me dumber? Sorry, but it's, it just exposes like how stupid these people are. And then why am I bullish on your point? Like, dude, if that's our competition, like, get ready. We're going to bring it because that is not competition. that's easy knockoff right there.

So good point, then. I think that's a major reason to be bullish right there. Yeah. It's, I think everybody's trying to play by the old rules. Because, you know, in traditional finance, that's the kind of behavior that gets you rich over time, right? That mentality, that mentality, that, that mentality of siphoning wealth from others and then and then gambling with it is is what built

you know a lot of large entities out there and that and that's kind of like the the backbone of how our current economy functions is is siphoning wealth from others and and you know speculating or allowing people to speculate and encouraging people to speculate and then just like you know taking in a cut of every transaction that happens in the process of that. And I'm not so sure that's going to be a recipe for wealth as we move, you know, as we jump forward by a decade or two decades, you know, it won't be as consistent of returns. And there's the, the major thing there is there's a real,

there's actually tangible risk now because in Bitcoin, there is no lender, of last resort, it's you implode. And, you know, I think the world needs more of that because when there's no risk, it incentivizes just absolute degenerate behavior. And, you know, it'll be good for the world to be rid of a good chunk of that. So anyways, gents, I'm not going to take too much time on my topic here because I want to hear what you guys have to say. So I'm glad that we got that one through quickly.

And I want to do a rotation here. First up, I'll say everybody that's in the chat, of course, keep those messages coming and smash that like button just to the bottom of the screen there. That helps a ton. But we are going to do a rotation. And Julian, I'm going to toss it to you first. And I'll cue you up with the question of the evening.

As usual, why are you bullish? All right. I'm going to copy you. I am bullish on taking risks, but not quite the same way, not you know, messing around with customer funds or building Ponzi's or yield and all that stuff, but taking risk on a cultural and a creative level when it comes to talking about Bitcoin. So I had a moment. I had my little 15 minutes of fame last week after a solid year, year and a half of making like 60 second videos, half of them being like trying to orange pill people on 60 seconds, the other half just talking about economics. I post one and then all of a sudden it just blows up on Instagram. I got like four million views. And it was the whole

video is just about me railing against like, you know, who the left blames and who the right blames and how really when we're all having our money stolen through inflation, that's something that maybe we could unify around. And it's been a year of taking. risks to try and figure out what connects with people. Like I have taken an immense amount of like creative risks and gone outside of my comfort zone as a presenter as somebody who covers certain topics delving into things, trying to talk about things I don't really understand too well and I'm just trying to learn but doing that out in the open. And I came about success of that and now I feel like I have a bit more of like a track on how to move forward with the type

stuff I'm talking about, but it's not just about me. I had the chance to go down to Pacific Bitcoin last week, met most of you guys down there. Zach, you'll have to come next year. But the whole conference, I was surrounded, you know, I was with the Bitcoin trading guys that got to know Aladdin really well down there. But the really the most interesting stuff that happened down there was meeting all the different entrepreneurs building stuff in Bitcoin that were not, you know, wallets or exchanges, but all the peripheral cultural products that are massive, massive risks because you really can't quite figure out how many bitcoinsers out there will want to part with their fiat or their Bitcoin to buy a trading card or a piece of merchandise or an energy

drink. But entrepreneurs are going out on a limb and they're feeling the waters and they're feeling that there is a distinct Bitcoin culture forming. And Bitcoiners really like to, you know, show off the things that they have. show off their pride in Bitcoin, try different products to orange pill their friends and family, T-shirts, cards, whatever. And all these entrepreneurs now, this is the first time I've ever seen it in Bitcoin, especially this year. And you can probably agree with me on this, Ben, that all of these entrepreneurs have built atop this social and cultural layer of Bitcoin. And now we're seeing the fruits of the first type of non-selling Bitcoin, Bitcoin products out there. So not wallets,

not exchanges again, not yield products or anything, but just cultural homages and references to Bitcoin. And they're finding real markets for them. The Bitcoin trading cards like Aladdin, you've just impressed me so much getting to know you over the last few days and weeks. And like I had no idea how big the trading cards thing is. But Aladdin has created a market. There are markets of people who are bidding for these cards, who are watching the

streams to see certain polls who are looking for rarity. You've created a market from basically nothing. and you filled a demand that most of us had no idea was there. And I think there's so much more underneath this Bitcoin rock to uncover when it comes to that. Energy drinks, merchandise, other forms of collectibles. And it's all been in the middle of this like terrible crab year on Bitcoin 2 or it's just gone nowhere. I don't think, you know, any of us have met a Bitcoiner that was minted in 23.

I met one at the conference down there, but most of us are holdovers from 21, 22 or before. but we keep building these awesome apps and products for all of us to use within our own ecosystem. So I am bullish on the risk takers in this space trying new things. And yeah, I'll let you guys run with that. I love that. I'm thinking of something that Madex or Space Bowl said to me on one of these shows that he's been on. I mean, he's talking about because he's an artist and he makes a lot of really cool shit. And he pours his blood,

sweat and tears into his art. Quick, quick plug, I am working on the Madex documentary. That'll hopefully be out in a month or two. Awesome, awesome. I don't know why my camera,

when I do it like a thumbs up, it literally does like a lame and then freezes. So anyways, so we'll just, we'll just not give thumbs up anymore. But anyways, yeah, Maidx is, you know, he makes some really cool shit. And he made a good point on one of these shows.

He was talking about how, you know, of course there's going to be those that just they make a product and they slap like a Bitcoin symbol on it. And then they sell it. And some people will buy it. But you've got people that have sound money that they appreciate the value of. And when they buy products, they actually care if the product is good. And so his point was if, you know, initially sure, that you might have gotten away with that,

but we're getting to a point where you will not get away with that anymore. Because when people, he basically said, if you make a crappy product that you marketed at Bit Corners, you will and you you kind of just exploit the the Bitcoin brand to try and you know market your shit and it's bad you won't retain customers beyond the first sale because the second they realize that your product is garbage you're no longer worthy of their sets whereas people that actually work to make something quality and then hone in on on the Bitcoin or circles even if the product itself isn't directly related to Bitcoin but just like good quality and the people themselves have like a good ethos of understanding the relationship between sound money

and quality lasting products, then you're going to have lifelong customers that will give you sound money in exchange for the value you're offering them. I think that's huge. I think that's super awesome. And yeah, it shifts the dynamic of how we transact and how we build and how we create and market products for the rest of the world as we shift onto a Bitcoin standard. That's my takeaway from your topic here, and I think it applies everywhere. Gentlemen, feel free to dive into Julian's. I think that's a really awesome point. Just the idea of like making sound money kind of encouraging the production of more quality

products because we see with Fiat money how it seems like everything is just like designed to break, right? And you got to replace it, kind of reinforcing that consumerism culture. But yeah, to your point, Julian, I think kind of like coming out as a Bitcoin or publicly is also a really big risk that a lot of people take. But I also think it's extremely rewarding. Yeah. And yeah, yeah. Awesome.

Awesome. I'll toss to Aladdin as well. I mean, Aladdin, you're you're kind of living this, right? Like you have a lot of attention to detail and you're passionate about what you're building. Does this, obviously, I imagine Julian's topic speaks to you. 100% to the point where I think I maybe told Julian why I'm bullish, and that's why he took my, why am I bullied? So I don't want to say too much on it because mine is so similar to Julian.

And again, getting to meet Julian over the last week and spent a lot of time with him. Yeah, I don't, if I go into it, then I'll give up mine. And it's so similar to that. so I'll just hold off and tell that's all good comes around. That's all good, that's okay. I mean, I want to add like one more,

I want to add one more point onto this, and I've been on a bit of like a tirade, a crusade about this, but I think this extends to Bitcoin companies a bit. And it's, it's, I've gotten to know quite a few CEOs of Bitcoin companies here in Canada and the US and how those business models work. And they're very much correlated,

two, you know, volume of Bitcoin, how much Bitcoin is being transacted on a daily basis. If it's not a lot, they don't get much revenue. And if it's a lot, they have more than they know what to do with. And in those up cycles, it's easier to justify taking risks because you have some excess capital, you can, you know, you can FAFO or whatever. But we're going to get to a point where I think we're not going to have this pretty clean cut. You know, the two years after the halving are boring and then the year leading into it and then one year after is clean. I just don't think that pattern can just go on forever. And this lulled complacency of like, well, we'll take all our risks in a year and a half

and then we'll just lay low for two and a half years. I don't think it's going to work. And I'm working with companies right now that in the middle of a bear market have structured their businesses differently and so they can take different creative risks. And I think you're going to start to see, you know, not just me, but the other creators in this space who align themselves with these companies who have different models that are not just reliant on the price of Bitcoin going up, producing some of the best content and media and stuff in the Bitcoin space.

And it's going to be a big wake-up call to some of these people. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with like, you know, talking macro and podcasts, but that playbook of we'll just have a macro podcast and spaces, you know, once a week. And that'll be how we pull in new customers. That's not going to work, in my opinion over the next five, six years as the sole way that you build your audience and you get new customers. You're going to have to take risks just like every other company in the world does on different types of creators.

You're going to have to delve into the controversy a little bit. You're going to have to try some different forms of marketing. And now the creators are here to actually provide some of that risk taking. So I'm excited to see all the new stuff that's going to be birthed over the next few years. I really think the dynamic for the first time in Bitcoin's history is changing in that regard. So yeah. I like that you pointed out what, you know, the companies that are building during the bare market. And you're right that, you know, just the formula will change.

And it's already, you know, we've got a saturation of just general Bitcoin content, right? We've got a saturation of just, oh, yeah, we're just going to, we'll have somebody on to talk about why money's broken. And then we'll, you know, we'll chat for an hour and a half. And then we'll package it up and chip it off. And we'll get a ton of use. Right now, if you go and do that, you're competing against the people that have been around doing it for years that have a dedicated audience. And unless you're doing something incredibly different, or you just. somehow stack your guests like no one else, then you know, you're, you might do all right

for the time being, but like that it's a losing game. And I think you're going to see like a almost like a specialization of labor in terms of types of content, right? You've already got the general macro stuff and people will just go there and listen for that. I think the people that hone in on specific areas of Bitcoin, the people that, like you said, take a total departure from the regular Bitcoin stuff and have some sort of a niche that they hone in on, that maybe it's even like a really odd pairing. But we're starting to see even just in terms of content and the types of people discussing, it's like even like the Bitcoin veteran thing that they were doing down there. Like it's just you've got a specific type of people that will that will listen to that type of stuff and hear a certain type of perspective.

But you're going to have a lot more inventive stuff. You're going to have people specializing in on like, oh, this is specifically about lightning because there's so much stuff happening within Bitcoin that just like a generalized Bitcoin show is is probably not going to cut it. Whereas you're going to need to like hone in on like the super technical stuff or like certain aspects. of the privacy podcast or whatever it may be. And yeah, like you said, just thinking even outside of that, just totally outside of the box and seeing what sticks because, damn, there's a lot of Bitcoin podcasts as I say this on a Bitcoin podcast. But nonetheless, you know, building in the bear market and all of these companies

that are creating things and that survive. the bear market and what is probably a worst bear market because of my reason for being bullish with all the SBF shenanigans those those are the companies that stick around and can you know build off the previous cycle to make themselves basically to completely reinforce themselves but with that i think uh we'll maybe put a bow on this one and do a rotation if we're good with that unless anybody has any last minute things to tap in, but otherwise, I'm going to do a rotation, and I'm going to toss it down to Aladdin first, man. I'm just going to go right for you, and I'll cue you up with, again, question of the evening. Why are you bullish?

Excellent. Well, we'll just push into where Julian got us started in a way. I've got some other little points to add to it, but meeting Julian, let's just start it off with made me even more bullish. So why am I bullish the people in Bitcoin that I'm meeting, the people working in Bitcoin, but the people that are just here in Bitcoin. I grew up in a tiny little town where everybody knew everybody and there was a lot of really good people. But after spending a solid 30 years around that area, I left out of hundreds of friends, I left with about three or four solid friends. And honestly, it can even bring that down to maybe two. And it was really hard for many years wondering if I was ever going to meet people that I felt like were going to be these best

friends, friends for life kind of people that we just have this same energy see so clearly on so many things. And you don't have to agree with everything. But just certain key fundamentals that people have that just bring us together and create those friendships. And when I've been in Bitcoin since 2016, but I really just was stacking stats, I couldn't afford to go to conferences. And so I held back. And even though I was working on this project for many years,

I waited and said, when I'm ready and I launch, then I'll jump into the conference and do it. So I've only really been meeting a lot of bitcoins in real life for about a year now. And I've got to say, at least 20, 30 people that I feel like will be my friends for the rest of my life. Like, we'll be calling each other at least once a month checking in. That was something I never imagined would happen again. And that many people in one year to feel that connected to.

I mean, there's a bunch of people in the chat right now that I've got to meet a lot of these guys in person and just amazing people. Panties for Bitcoin, if you haven't met Pablo, oh my God. Like him and his family are some of the most beautiful people on the face of this earth. And it kind of goes back to what you were saying, Ben. Like, our competition is shit. These guys don't know anything. They have no values whatsoever. And we're going to wipe the floor with them.

Because as we meet more and more Bitcoins and see this incredible value that everyone brings, and it doesn't have to necessarily be even someone working in Bitcoin. It's just the value of their character alone. And knowing that they're on our side, they're on the team of working towards making this world a better place with Bitcoin. I don't know how you can't be bullish. And after meeting a bunch of Bitcoiners, and thinking about the Citadel and being a creator, I've had all these ideas over the years of what a Citadel would be and designed many different ideas of what a Citadel would look like. And the more I meet Bitcoiners, the more I'm like, it's us.

Like, we are the citadel. That this community is a citadel. It's not a place. It's not a building. It's this community that we're building together. And it doesn't matter how big and badass the building that you're hiding out in. If you don't have a community to back you up inside of there or you don't have a community of people that you get along with well enough, you're going to be jumping over

the fence, trying to get out of that community. So I couldn't be more bullish right now after Pacific Bitcoin and getting to hang with Julian for the week and so many other people. It's incredible. Like we have the best community on Earth. I say it all the time, but we really do have the best community on Earth. And when the newbies and the normies and everyone else start discovering our community and start meeting more and more of these Bitcoiners in person, it's going to be really hard for them not to want to jump in. You can say it's a cult. It's not a cult.

it's a family. Yeah, I love it. Would you say that the real Citadel was the friends we met along the way? 100%. I know there's a catch to that somewhere. I'm trying to think, did someone write a song on that? I'm missing. No, that's just like, what was the, I don't even know what that's from originally,

but it's like, just a general, people would be like, oh, the real treasure or the real whatever was the friends we met along the way. But I mean, it is when people talk about, you know, the idea of the Bitcoin Citadel. Like, you know, obviously it conjures up these images of, you know, some fortified enclosure where all the Bitcorners have gone away with their stats and everything. But I think, again, the real kind of in practice, the Bitcoin Citadel, is pretty much everywhere because as a bitcoiner, you can waltz into any city on the globe right now. And if you have a line on the bitcoins in town, you've instantly got some

friends. And that's a pretty unique thing when it comes to any niche community. I think it's probably exceedingly difficult to, you know, jump into any other. type of, you know, passion project and then just walk into a city somewhere on the globe and be like, hey, where are the people who love crochet at? Like, it's going to be a little bit, where are the knitters at? Where are that like, you know, it's going to be a little bit more difficult to like conjure up a bunch of friends that you know you have some shared values with. but in practice, I think Bitcoiners have a much easier time just being like, okay, there's a meetup, there's something going on,

there's a group of people that I can hone in on, and we can build a relationship. And when it gets to the point where everybody is using Bitcoin in some capacity, then I think we'll have a more kind of a local, localized existence in the first place in that you'll get to know your local rancher. You'll get to know that people building things in and around you because you'll look for true value, not trinkety crap shipped to you from halfway across the world. You look for true value and you'll want to support people in your community that are

building quality things. And so, yeah, you're right. It's this unique family because we have these shared values with people around the world. And it will turn into, I think, down the line, a local family for everybody that is on the same wavelength where they will create value for each other. I think that's kind of where we're headed. But, Zach, I'm curious to get your thoughts in and around this. Totally. Yeah, Aladdin, I couldn't agree more with you. I think the Bitcoin community, the Bitcoin family is one of the best parts of becoming a Bitcoiner really. Like it's, you know, some people say that Bitcoin isn't backed by anything and, you know, eventually it'll collapse in value because there's nothing backing it.

But I say that Bitcoin is backed by the community. And I mean, as long as there is this strong group of people behind it, I don't see how it can, it's basically unstoppable. But yeah, it's really like meeting other big corners is just great. And I've made a lot of friends and a lot of acquaintances in this space in the few years that I've been in it. It's kind of like when you go to a concert and you get along with people there because you all like the same kind of music or like that same artist. It's like you always have that that common point to start at. And then it all kind of just goes from there. Julian, I'll toss it to you as well if you want to tag on to Aladdin. Yeah, I totally agree.

I live in one of the most like drenched in complaint cities in the world, which is Vancouver. Like you do not, you do not meet another Vancouverite with inevitably getting into the conversation of how much you can't stand the lack of culture, the expensive housing, all this nonsense in the city. And I've found ever since I just started to go into Bitcoin meetups, I don't have those conversations with people. We just don't talk about it. Like it's the last thing on our minds when I'm out of Vancouver meetup is how expensive the rent is in this city. But as soon as I'm with other people, it's like, oh, that always becomes the dinner table topic or whatever. So, yeah, Bitcoiners radiate positivity. And it's amazing to me because I think you would think that people who, you know, maybe it's a little talks highly of us.

But I think Bitcoiners would describe themselves as people who can see behind the curtain and have been able to see a dose of reality and have taken the orange pill and all that. And you would think that exposing yourself to, you know, the truth behind how our institutions, work and the theft that's going on would make us all pessimistic, would make us all, you know, doomers. And there's a lot of them out there. But Bitcoin is the guiding light that we see as basically getting us through all this stuff. And Jeff Booth talks about this a lot that right now what the Bitcoiners are doing is they're building in this parallel system. And actually, the more time we have to build it, the better before, you know, whenever this inevitable fiat collapse happens in one unpredictable form or another. And we're making strides. It's not slowing down. I always fear in

bear markets that people just dip out and the building stops, but they have that saying, building happens in bear markets. I didn't feel that way in 2018, 2019 when I went through that cycle. I felt like a lot of the energy and momentum was sucked out of the room completely. And I really don't feel that way this cycle. And maybe it's because I didn't do conferences back then or something. But the momentum is here. It's only going to get better in the bull markets because we'll have more resources to include more people and things. But yeah, the friends are here to stay and all those wonderful sappy things we can say about that. I totally agree with Aladdin. Like, I mean, I stayed down there with with you and a bunch of us in a house and I basically never met any

of you guys and we're like instant friends. And I'm surprisingly a pretty closed off person when it comes to making new friends, but having that link and having a shared set of values that most Bitcoiners share is amazing. And then, you know, even just before the show, I did a live stream with a boomer rules broken on Twitter. And we were talking about oil and how we both have like two completely different views on the future price of oil. And we like vehemently disagreed. And it was all live streamed. But no bad blood, right? It's all good in Bitcoin land because we see the future pretty clearly. And we can align on on that set of value. either way.

So yeah. So I think in general, seeing, oh, Julian, can you mute for a sec? I'm getting a weird. Oh,

we got it. Awesome. So I think also, because I see a few comments in, in the chat about like, again, mostly from inspired, inspiring formally as Bitcoiners have no share of set values.

Go out. outside. Yeah, and that's the thing. So I think it's entirely different Twitter versus in-person bitcoins. This is where you need to draw the differentiation. People on the internet is a shitty place. I'm just going to say it. The internet, like the discourse between people on the internet fucking sucks.

But the discourse between bitcoins in person is totally fine. Like when you actually interact with people person to person, you can actually get a gauge on tone and intent and all of that stuff. You can actually converse with people. So it's really tough to gauge, you know, how people interact with people and how easy it is to, I guess, relate and build. relationships when your litmus test is online, right? Whereas over the past number of years, I've, in interacting in real life with people, I think I've gained some of the best lifelong friends that I will have. And a lot of that comes from, and again, a lot of this is people I vehemently disagree with on a lot of different things. But I think,

the difference is knowing that the people that I'm interacting with have, have, you know, at least at a base level of like, hey, this, there's a, um, a reason why things are broken. And we've come together on a solution for it. It may be that we see it playing out differently or we see or we pull different positives from what will be the implication of Bitcoin. But in general, we're both kind of working towards the goal of like, hey, Bitcoin will improve the world in some way, shape, or form. And so through that, you know, there's a bit of a, you know, Bitcoin has its roots in, you know, some libertarianism. So I feel like that's kind of an underlying, even for the people that lean right or lean left. There's still also

a degree of live and let live underlying a lot of Bitcoiners mindset. So of like, hey, I should, I should be able to live my life the way I see fit. And most people should also be able to do that. we should leave each other alone and be able to kind of have a free market and provide value to each other. I think that there's a much higher degree of that mentality in Bitcoiners than perhaps in other facets of society. And so we can kind of come together on that. And I've got friends of mine that, you know, lean all different types of ways. We have progressive bitcointers. We have right-wing bit-coiners. We have deeply religious bitcoinsers.

We have atheist bitcoins. And you know what I've seen over time is that all of those types of bitcoins have in person been able to come together and agree to disagree on things. I'm going to give a perfect example. Canute Svanholm is staunchly atheist. and and I would say early on was almost kind of like myself was held like an animosity towards religious people. And I grew up going to Catholic school. So maybe it was rooted in a little bit of that, just like, you know, not liking some of the ideals that I was seeing come out of some of my teachers and kind

like the just general mentality that I was seeing there. And then I met a bunch of religious bitcoins. I met, like I went to, I got invited to come speak at thank God for Bitcoin, which I found ironic given that I wouldn't say that I'm a religious person at all. But what I, what I was greeted with was a group of like gracious, kind, wonderful people that completely throughout the window, my impression of religious people that I had before. And so it was Bitcoin that brought us together

and that made me question my assumption about a large group of people and made me open up to that. And conversely, I think some people may have thought of, you know, atheists in some sort. And I wouldn't say I'm necessarily an atheist, but I definitely wouldn't say I'm religious. But some of those religious bitcoinsers

I think are more, you know, maybe accepting of somebody who's not particularly religious. And to my point about Knud's Vanholm, he, it was probably a few months ago, and I didn't expect it out of him because he always basically, he had not kind words for religion. But he, even on Twitter, he's like, you know, I've discovered that I can actually get along with and appreciate, you know, religious. just Bitcoiners that are, you know, have a moral framework and see value in that in Bitcoin as a moral money. And, you know, I thought that was a unique thing to see and an interesting shift in mindset and proof that Bitcoin can bring people together that previously may not have been in the same circles. And so I think, yeah, we're kind of being all drawn together, again, progressives, right winger, religious, non-religious.

A little mix of everyone is all coming to Bitcoin. We're going to disagree on a bunch of stuff. But at the end of the day, you know, I love my progressive bitcoins. I love Troy Cross and Jason Mayer and Margo and all of them. I think they're great people. I also love my right-winger bitcoinsers and there's plenty of them out there. And I love my religious and non-religious bitcoiners. I think they're all fantastic people.

So end of the day, yeah. I would disagree. And I would say that Bitcoiners do have an underlying thread that will bring us together. And I think it's great. I love it. I don't know if we want to wrap there. One of the things I'll add to that real quick. I'll make it short.

I think so I do everything I can to orange pill just about every single person that I meet, every chance I get. And I got to say, skip the starting with Bitcoin and go straight to freedom. and almost every time I at least get them to show their interest in Bitcoin. Because in the end, it's not about the gains for most people. It's about the freedom, freedom of choice, freedom of expression, freedom of religion. It's really just us coming together and for once in history having true freedom as a human race. And that's the opportunity that Bitcoin brings.

And like my dad wasn't, he doesn't care about, he's a lot. farmer the gains the technology none of that means anything to him but when he started learning about what bitcoin is doing for third world countries around the world he got really excited and most people i speak to about bitcoin that know very little about bitcoin it's the freedom aspect that brings them along so that is that glue that kind of brings us together and if you're someone that is like anti-freedom you're not going to fit in bitcoin very much well and like to everything you were just saying if you believe in freedom then you believe everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe so from

religion to right or left or whatever it is it really doesn't matter as long as you respect the other person's beliefs and their right to have their own beliefs and that to me is gonna be what really makes Bitcoin more powerful than anything because it's really bringing out the the passion for people to to embrace their freedom. So you're spot on. I agree. And also shout out to, you know, we just got finished talking about people that you make lifelong connections with. One of them's in the chat right now. Adam Meister, the Bitcoin Meister. He's been around doing his shows for ages. He was one of the first shows that I ever got invited onto. And, you know, I don't get to see him

in person often, but as soon as I see him in person, it's, you know, it's like, again, this natural kind of bond that's there. And I appreciate everything that he's done. And what an awesome guy. And he's so full of energy all the time. And I don't think he drinks coffee either. He's just like, he's just so full of natural energy at every waking moment. And, and I don't know how he does it, but I love him for it. So Adam, thanks for popping into the chat. And we've got to get you back on the show soon. So, Legend. Adam gave me my start. He is the man. Adam. Yeah, he's awesome. I love him. Awesome. Well, gentlemen, I think it's time for another rotation after our love fest there, which I enjoyed. But we got to get to Zach and his reason for being bullish. So, Zach, I'm going to cue you up again. Last ask of the show. So same question as the others. Why are you bullish?

You're bullish. Zach, just real quick, you have to give us something depressing now to balance it all out. It's reason to be bullish. You can't be depressing about that. Well, I'm going to take it a little bit different, a little bit different of a direction, I guess, and a bit more broader idea. But I am very bullish on Bitcoin and Gen Z. And this kind of stems from my role as president of a Bitcoin club and being on the ground with my generation and talking to them about Bitcoin. and seeing their open-mindedness and engagement around this brand-new technology.

And I think it's really important to realize like a perspective that a lot of people I know have is kind of this perception of hopelessness with so many sort of global challenges coming at us at such a young age, whether we're talking about economic problems like high inflation and really bad wealth inequality and burgeoning debt or social issues or environmental problems like climate change. What I really love is Bitcoin's kind of multifaceted nature gives it the ability to sort of address a lot of these issues simultaneously, right? And I'm not saying it's necessarily going to fix everything in the world, but it definitely can help us kind of bridge the gaps that we currently have. And I think like kind of the key here really just becomes education, right?

I see a lot of sometimes on Twitter a little bit of too much negativity towards younger generations, and which I don't really understand. I think we need to be focusing on bringing them in and educating them because these people, they're looking for solutions. They recognize, they have a very global perspective. They recognize the problems that we're facing. And I think if we were able to bridge that gap to Bitcoin and help them understand how Bitcoin can, like, address these problems,

they will flock behind it with their support. And so that's kind of been a goal of mine as at university is just bringing Bitcoin awareness and helping people understand, not only how Bitcoin can help them individually, but how it can kind of help them as a society. And then to add to that, right, Gen Z is the first digitally native generation to ever grow up on this planet. I mean, I can speak from experience when I say that since I was born and throughout growing up, we've watched the launch of every social media platform that now exists. We've watched the formation of the largest tech monopolies, you know, Google, the apples, the Amazon's,

on my ninth birthday, the first Bitcoin block was mined, like all of these crazy convergences of technology and just the digitization of everything. We've seen our music, our TV, our mail, our shopping, our photos, everything has become digital. And so going towards Bitcoin and the ability for Gen Z to kind of embrace Bitcoin is really a natural next step, like the digitization of money is totally natural for us and really doesn't come as a surprise at all. I'd like to add to, like, I think Bitcoin is a really great entry point to increasing financial literacy as well. So I can speak from my own perspective here. Going through the public education system in Canada, they don't teach you anything about finance or economics at all.

And I really was only exposed to this when I decided to study economics at university. So I think Bitcoin kind of is a really great entry point to learning basic financial literacy and kind of asking those really important questions that we're always talking about, you know, what is money, learning about how our current financial system works. And, you know, when you ask these questions, you start to realize, right, that the money's broken. You come to these conclusions like, okay, the financial system we have actually doesn't work for everybody. It's it's benefiting the few at the expense of the many. And I think those are those are

really important conclusions to come to and then kind of also point to Bitcoin as that solution. And then finally, just kind of seeing Bitcoin as a really stellar investment for for my generation. I mean, in our lifetimes in Canada, at least housing prices have quadrupled since I was born. Of course, incomes have not kept pace with that to any degree. And then we've also witnessed just like massive asset inflation, whether we're talking about stocks or whatever. So in a lot of ways, we've been we've been priced out of markets like housing. And I think Bitcoin kind of presents itself as a really stellar investment opportunity for my generation to actually build wealth. Now that we're kind of becoming adults and we actually have savings and money to invest.

Bitcoin really, really presents itself as like a very undervalued with a very high return potential compared to investing in really, anything else. So yeah, I am, for those reasons, I am very bullish on Gen Z and Bitcoin. Yeah. I, I think you're so right that there's this shifting of the tides in terms of, you know, how does this generation navigate? You know, right now there's a lot of questions. Like, if somebody gets a retirement, how are they going to navigate that? Because it's not, and now it is a question of if, if, if. things continue down the path that they're in, that they're on. And, and I think Bitcoin, you know, for the average person, becomes that, right? The boomer generation, you know, grew up,

uh, with a situation where, you know, you could, you could just easily kind of, you know, get, get a decent job, get a regular job and just, um, you know, buy your home and, and, and the, It was a little bit more obvious over time how to just build yourself into adulthood. And now that that cookie cutter answer of how do you invest for retirement and make sure that you make it there, it's totally called into question, like this typical 6040, buy a home, all these things. it doesn't appear that that's going to be the tactic that works moving forward. But I think you're right in that the tactic that will work and that people will be able to capitalize on is, is number one, be good at something, get a job where you can create value for others.

Number two, learn to spend less than you earn, which in today's environment is, difficult. It hopefully can be navigated over time. Hopefully things will normalize a little bit. And number three, saving Bitcoin. And it takes a lot of the additional steps of previous generations out. It takes the current environment of you've got to be, you know, you've got to be a part-time investment expert in order to navigate this crap. Or you have to defer to somebody else and give them a huge cut over the course of your lifetime. Now it can just be good at something, provide value, spend less than you earn, and just save your money, which will be Bitcoin.

And that will be enough. I think that's a godsend. That's to be able to just say, I don't need to worry about it. I've got a job. I've got a regular job. And I've reigned in my spending, so I'm not being stupid. and I have a little bit of savings each time I get paid. And that's it.

That's all I need to do. Just save. And my savings will increase some purchasing power over time. Eventually, it'll get to a place, I think, where it's just like a mild deflation. And it's reflective of, I think it'll be reflective of two things. Number one, obviously the constrained monetary supply versus the ingenuity of people. and the ability of us to create more stuff with less effort. And it'll also be a function of population as well,

which I'm hoping with optimistic Bitcoiners, population will get back on track to growing so that there's more people to innovate more and be able to create more with less. And I think with all those factors, we could see, again, this kind of, I guess after the fourth turning a new you know a new um again a new turning where where there's once again optimism and abundance for everyone um and yeah I look forward to that

so I'll let the other gentlemen tag in on anything they want to add here Zach, to your point, I think, because I have like a lot of friends who are Gen Z, I'm on the cutoff. I'm basically just millennia, but I'm basically Gen Z if I was born a couple months later. I just was looking up a stat because I'd seen it before, but I wanted to get it precise here. Vancouver, third, fourth biggest city in Canada, you need a $250,000 annual income to, be able to be approved for a mortgage for the average single-family house in Vancouver. And that's, I believe that is post-tax income. So realistically, your salary as an individual and your wife or partner is going to have

to have a matching one would need to be about $160,000, $180,000 Canadian a year in order to have a shot at even just getting a mortgage for a house, let alone, you know, actually be able to buy one outright. And so it's it's frustrating because like people go to a university and they, you know, they expect to get a job, but they don't actually run the numbers. They don't do the math in their heads. They don't realize to the deflimate, like the inflationary aspect of money and how the wages never really keep up to the price of property. It's $250,000 annual income needed this year. It's going to be 300 and a couple years, 400 and a couple years. Who knows? Maybe there's a recession. The point being, though, is what what is really important, I think, and what you're tapping into is

that people go into university with hope and they exit, you know, feeling a little bit drained because maybe the job prospects aren't as good as they think they are and things radically change within a few years. And Bitcoin is that hope for a generation. And I think almost the best way to really start orange-pilling young people is to expose them to more stories of people who didn't just find Bitcoin and made it rich, but used it as a savings tool because if I was a student and I learned that there were people out there who didn't just buy Bitcoin at $5, now they're a millionaire, but just stacked sats and they were able to

afford property within five or six or seven years. I don't know how many stories like that exist. That would be super compelling for me to go down the rabbit hole and start learning more because it would show me a provable way of exiting the Fiat rat race rather than, oh, here's another example of somebody who made it big as an entrepreneur, here's a reason that I should feel bitter about it. You go on a university campuses. Everyone blames everything on capitalism. But you show them a tangible way to actually make it happen. And I think you start turning heads a lot more. And I'm, I'm super bullish on your reason. I think all this stuff, like I really wish somebody came to my campus and talked about Bitcoin back in the day. I know we had like a blockchain club. I was just getting

into it as I was graduating. But you having the opportunity to bring this to kids in their first year who can actually start doing a little bit of financial planning before they graduate, that's going to make a world of difference. So that's awesome, man, that you're a part of that. Aladdin, you want to jump in here as well? Absolutely, no, Zach, you're on point. And being the father of two Gen C teenagers right now, they're getting ready to graduate themselves.

I see a lot of it firsthand. And I think that it's as the world's been moving over the last, last 10, 15 years is a major difference in the way of these cell phones that we hold in our hands and we take this technology everywhere with us. One of the things that I really dove into over the last like 15 years is propaganda and really studying that as deep as I could go. And it goes into the red pill, really hardcore in that one. And you can really see, like when we were kids, you spent a lot of your time outdoors and you spent some of your time indoors and some kids spent a lot of their time in front of the TV.

But the problem we have now is that TV goes everywhere with you. So what that means is the propaganda goes everywhere with you, and you can't leave the propaganda. And this generation, it's really sad to see how much of that propaganda is just shoved down their throat daily more than any generation has ever had it. I think this one has a hell of a battle. But on the flip side, what this technology is. has created is the opportunity for entrepreneurs, like never before in the history of human beings.

Like, you got kids that are 10, 11 years old. If they got the drive, they got the will. And as Julian said in the beginning, they're risk takers. They have the opportunity from their home from anywhere of the country. If you have internet access, you can immediately become an entrepreneur. I think that is one of the things that makes me so bullish on this next generation is they really have the ability if we can start to battle their propaganda. So the definition of propaganda is marketing and advertising basically. So that's what they're getting is some really evil and vile marketing and advertising, giving them the complete opposite of what the truth is. So it's up to us, Bitcoinsers, freedom lovers, people that are out for the embederment of the human race to

start battling back. And we have to start trending with what we have. And most of the generation, Most people are good people. They just haven't been given the good information. And once they can start to reach that and receive that really good information, they're going to be way more fired up to do good than they ever would bad. So we just have to start balancing that out as a human race and pushing as much as we can to give them the correct information and get it trending. And it will trend. I mean, what did Mr. Beast do to make it so far? He was very, very, generous and he went out and like those those videos are addicting to see him walk up to houses and ask people a couple questions and pay their rent right there on the spot things like that that like i don't cry in movies when it's sad the tears come down when they're happy moments and i think most people are that way we're so desensitized to the sadness but when we see joy and happiness something sparks on us like nothing else because sadly most of that is shut down by the mainstream media so like pushing that part the beauty is really going to be what inspires people more than

anything and I think this generation like you're talking about like they want good they've seen enough of the shit the wars the garbage the crap that's happening their parents that through 2009 the collapse so many young kids lived through that and saw what their parents had to go through, there is a massive opportunity for this next generation to jump in and be that catalyst that starts pushing the true beauty of human kind. It is so beautiful. We're just given the crap. The news is the bad news. How come we don't have the good news show? I thought about that even when I was a young kid. I'm like, it's always bad news. Where is the good news? So if there's a way that we can really start to work together as a society to put out the good news, to start giving that hope

back to the kids, it's amazing what we're going to be able to accomplish once people have that hope back. And I think Gen Z is just waiting for the catalyst to give them that hope to start fighting for all of our futures. I mean, it's up to the next generations that are going to take care of us and take care of my grandchildren and so on and so forth. So I think he really hit amazing one there, Zach. I'm fully bullish with you. Zach, I got a question for you. Um, because obviously, so I'm, you know, I was born in 85. So I'm like directly like millennial. And so I kind of, you know, I've had like an interesting kind of sway to and fro on the, the political spectrum over time. And then Bitcoin kind of just like,

tore me away from, you know, leaning necessarily one way or the other on the politics spectrum. I mostly have realized that I never trust a politician is kind of my takeaway. But, you know, when I was, when I was younger, the, the mentality that I grew up with was, was, was everything was A little bit more on the conservative side. That was kind of the, I would say, you know, the, it was more of that than kind of progressive early on. Or at least I perceived it as the, I was always growing up going, oh, these damn conservative people want to censor everything. They want to prevent me from seeing and hearing different things because everything was like, oh, we can't, we can't let the kids see this.

We can't do this. We can't do that. We need to take these people off of the TV or we can't release this movie because people will see it. And I kind of grew up in a mentality of like, okay, well, why don't you just let people decide what they want to listen to, watch and all that stuff. So I grew up in a time where I perceived kind of the right side of the political spectrum as being the ones who would censor. And then, I guess, coming into adulthood, I stayed, I guess, leaning left because of that mentality. And then over the past decade or so, you know, I had a shift where I started to see the left end of the political spectrum as, as,

I guess they kind of were gained more power. I saw the same tactics exhibited from the left as well where it's like, okay, well, now we've got the run of the place and we're going to try and censor certain types of topics and things. And so it came off to me as a, you know, just whoever has power is the one that would kind of try to control whatever narrative they wanted to get out there. And it took Bitcoin to kind of tear me out of that left and right mentality and more so question individual topics.

And I think the reason it pulled me out of that line of thinking was realizing that wherever I got my information, you know, the first time I ever saw Bitcoin reported incredibly poorly. The first time I ever saw, and it was Mount Gox when that collapsed, I had done enough research to know that when the news said that Bitcoin got hacked and had failed, that I was like, well, that's like, that, you know, I could have understood that maybe like a few days into. looking into Bitcoin and it's being reported as fact as that that's what has happened. And so over the years, I continue to see very poorly reported things, even today with like Bitcoin and how it interacts with energy. You know, I see a lot of reports about that that are just blatantly incorrect. And it makes me go, well, if the news that I was taking as,

fact, is this wrong on something that I've spent some time actually researching? Is it possible that the news in many other topics could be equally wrong if they've come across the wrong information and just report it as fact? So my question to you is, again, kind of being born like a decade later than myself, how have you perceived kind of this push and push and pull politically? And do you think that Bitcoin gifts Gen Z with the ability to think critically for those that understand it? Do you think it pushes them into that mindset?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I can speak from my own experience. as a teenager, I definitely think I leaned a little bit more left. And I think Bitcoin also had a really large part to play in my political journey in the sense that it made me much, much less political in general. I think there, I think, I mean, really, I just do not align with any ideology anymore. And I can't really fall into that anymore because I think that it's sort of just two sides of the same coin. As you were kind of saying, like with the censorship thing, whoever's in power is going to be the one kind of doing that. So right now it might be the left, but, you know,

if the right was in power, we might be saying the exact same thing. And I also find it a little amusing too when people kind of believe, kind of like put a lot of faith in politicians and think that, oh, you know, if my party gets in, everything's going to be okay. But really, it's, it's pretty much going to be the same and we're going to have a lot of the same results. And I think that's because, one, like a lot of the issues we're facing are systemic, right? They have to do with the way our system works, the way our money works, et cetera. And that's not going to get fixed just by a political party that is, you know, trying to change things in four years and then have another political party come in and then

undo everything that they did. So, I mean, another big concern a lot of people have from my generation is just like the political stagnation, the inaction, I guess, I would say, where it feels like, one, we don't have a voice. Like, we're not really being, doesn't feel like my generation is really represented politically at all. And then also, yeah, so mainly that. But I think like the role, I think Bitcoin can play a really important role here in helping people, like you were saying, think a lot more critically about politics, about the political system that we have. And kind of like,

like you were saying, like dive into issues with more depth and research, right, not just believing the headlines and things like that, because you're totally right. Like, I, it was a really crazy journey for me, seeing like certain media outlets portray Bitcoin in a certain way and, and thinking to myself, okay, this is something that I've been studying for a few years now. I know how this works. And yet, these people in legacy media or whatever are either ignorant of how it works or purposefully misleading people because what they're saying is not true. That's not how it works. or just casting it in a really bad light. And that's a really like, it's kind of like a revelation in your mind. Because like you said, then you ask yourself like, okay, how many of how many other topics are they wrong about what is true anymore?

Right. And so yeah, I really do think that Bitcoin can can kind of encourage critical thinking and also like give a voice to to a generation that feels very unrepresented. Awesome. Yeah. I think I think that like add on to that point, something I was thinking about is it's not profitable to, you know, tell the news or even spread propaganda anymore. If you're a large institution, there's like the free market has decided that like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, all these things are unprofitable business models. They're propped up by basically two or three or four benevolent donors. Or if they're not a, you know, private, you know, so-called institution, they're state media. And we've, I mean, Ben, you shared that chart like a couple months ago, how CBC tries to conceal the fact that basically they don't have a profitable model. They just bleed money. And the only way that they're able to exist is, is on tax dollars. And when we boil this all down, if taxation is theft, the only way that CBC is able to

survive is through theft, right? And so it's like the, like the free market is a really good gauge of truth, but, you know, we have all this, like, vision of that, oh, laissez-faire, free market, it just leads to corruption monopoly. And, you know, some people in the left or the right, they can't see that. But in a truly free market, like, these massive conglomerate agencies that try and craft elaborate narratives, you know, by their, like, you know, their false pedigrees or whatever. It doesn't, it doesn't pay. It doesn't pay. The market doesn't want to pay for those things anymore. I don't think it's just because the internet has, you know, made knowledge dissemination so much cheaper and easier,

I think it's just people would rather go with someone they actually know and trust rather than go to an organization. So it's pretty wild to me sometimes that like people in our generation, they go to these big media institutions for learning about things when there are even people who align with exactly what they talk about politically and they won't view them, right? Because there are great, you know, leftist YouTubers and stuff that have good points, the socialist YouTubers and all that.

but they will still rather go to the state for their information than that. But that's all going to fade away. And it's not even going to take a Bitcoin standard to make that fade away. I think we're just going to run out of Fiat to fuel these organizations over time. Yeah, yeah. I think you're probably right. All right. Well, gentlemen, what I like to do as I round out of the show is I like to do a quick round of any final thoughts that you may have on any of the topics.

presented, as well as asking you guys for a recommendation. And what I mean by recommendation is for the people watching, what do you think would be valuable for them to check out? And this could be anything. It could be a book, a video, a podcast that you enjoyed. It could be an app. It could be a device. It could be just some general life advice that you think people would benefit from. really anything that you think would benefit the people watching. So I'll start off with my final thoughts and recommendation to give you guys, you know, a moment to consider.

And yeah, we'll go from there. So yeah, final thoughts here. I think, again, contrary to some sentiment, and this actually kind of runs contrary to some stuff that,

some stuff that that Safedine says sometimes as well, where there's there's this inclination of some people to believe there is no quote unquote Bitcoin community. And to a degree, I'd say eventually, technically speaking, yes, there is no Bitcoin community because it becomes just the world and everybody is using Bitcoin. But I do think that, especially right now, there is a distinct Bitcoin community. And that Bitcoin community, as Aladdin pointed out, is honed in on an idea of greater freedom, at least where it comes to the ability to transact and express the fruits of one labor, of one's labor and use money as almost like a form of speech.

You know, money is basically just a way of taking your values and and communicating them to the world. What are you going to spend your time and your blood, sweat, and tears on? What do you think is valuable to do with that? And so Bitcoin allows you to do that in a way that can't debase your values, right? When money printing happens, when 40% of all existing fiat is created in a couple calendar years, that means 40% of your communicated values disappear. And so when people don't see their values reflected back to them in the world,

there's a reason because people can siphon those off and allocate them where they see fit. So I think community-wise, yeah, there's a distinct Bitcoin community. I think there are shared values there. I think people are gravitating towards Bitcoin for a reason and that those people have a much easier time forming and forging relationships than you would with the average person on the street because you get to bypass the small talk and the feeling out of, well, where do you sit and what are your values here?

You know that you have a baseline to start from that transcends somebody that you'd be totally unfamiliar with. And I think it, as I said earlier, it leads towards a better foundation of shared values globally. And of course, there's going to be people that disagree on a lot of topics. But at least we'll have a base layer of communication in which people can, again, like funnel their values and hopefully try to see them played out in the world based on where they spend their sats. and that will create tighter-knit communities where people create value for each other. So, yeah, that's kind of my final thought there. In terms of recommendations, I'm going to bring this up because I made a tutorial on it this week,

and I'm just going to share it for one sec here. but if you have not dove into time chain calendar, it's such a cool tool. So I did a tutorial on it up this week. T.C. created this. Awesome dude. And he's made a hell of a tool.

And I always bring it up at the beginning of my live shows. And I, you know, rattle off a few metrics. But a lot of people don't realize how frigging cool this thing is and what's in front of them. Like you can literally scorn. scrub through the history of Bitcoin and find any block. And also that's a sound effect that a new block just dropped.

But you can see all of the stats of that block at that time, including what was the price then, what were the stats per dollar, what was the market cap, what was the supply and the percent mine? What mining epoch were we in? What was the subsidy? You know, like you get all of these stats out of the gate just by scrubbing through. You can literally click and type in any a block that you want. You can literally search by block or by date and find specific information then.

And you can also jump from epoch to epoch. What happened on the eve of the first having? Where were we at? What was the price? You can do all of this crazy stuff. And beyond that, get all your mining stats, all of that. And a lot of people don't even notice that this little rim here is actually the cadence of mined blocks over the last 24 hours.

So you can actually see like where, you know, how, you know, overall Bitcoin is very predictable. But when you zoom in, it looks erratic, right? Because blocks will come in in chunks. And then there'll be spaces where no blocks are mined at all. But you can you can basically go along this rim and click on any block. And it'll give you the information for that block who mined it all. that stuff. So again, if you haven't played with it, go check out timeshanecallender.com because it's so cool

and me rattling off a few stats at the beginning of an episode does it an absolute disservice because it's super awesome. So that is my recommendation. Go bookmark this and play around with it because it's amazing and TC deserves some credit and you should check it out. So anyways, Julian, I'm going to toss it to you for your final thoughts and recommendations. Take it away. Final thoughts. Stay bullish. I don't know.

You guys have, we've covered everything here. So I don't want to sound like a broken record. But I'll make a quick shout out here. To anyone who's watching this that is into filmmaking at all, I'm working to get a sort of list and collective of people that work in film. You can be an editor, a director, cinematographer, sound designer, anything. I'm trying to get a sort of like big picture list of people that work in the film world who want to do more Bitcoin projects. As I'm getting a lot down the pipeline, I can't handle all of them.

I think there's some other people feeling that way too. And we want to work with people in the industry that are aligned with that. So, yeah, if you're into film, please message me. I will get back to you within the week of kind of this little thing I'm trying to assemble. list basically of all the filmmaking talent in this space. As for recommendations, oh man, you know what I was bummed about is I had across the border from Pacific Bitcoin, so they wouldn't let me take liquids. But I want to give a shout out to Sovereign energy. These guys are making a Bitcoin-based energy drink. And you know what? I'm usually pretty brutally honest.

Like I love energy drinks. I probably drink too many of them. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't flatter these guys if it wasn't that good, but it is. The Sovereign Energy, I think the CEO, his name's Oliver, I think it's spelled SvRN Energy.com, or you just look up Sovereign Energy Bitcoin. You'll find it on Twitter. Beautiful, beautiful cans. And when you peel back the label, you can scan this QR code and actually get anywhere between 500 sats to a million sats on every single can of it.

But if you're an energy drink aficionado like me, yeah, there you go. Give this stuff a try. It's awesome. It tastes really good, in my opinion. Can't buy it in Canada, I guess, but maybe you can ship it to the border and then drive over and pick it up or whatever. But try this stuff. It's got a lot of good ingredients, too.

Full plug. But yeah, no, I usually, you know, it's like what you were saying earlier with Madex. Like a lot of people will just slap Bitcoin on something and try and sell it. And when I saw this at first, I was like, okay, you know, this is kind of gimmick you. But I tried it and I was like, shit. Like they actually really went to get the taste profile right on it. So yeah, give it a look. Yeah.

I was kind of hesitant when I took a look at it. I didn't get to try it while I was down there. There was a bunch of cans, but a bunch of people said it tastes pretty good. And the SATs thing, like the scanning for SATs is kind of cool. Like you can like you peel off the label and you can win SATs underneath. And then it gives you a bunch of information where you can, learn stuff and yeah so anyways uh cool idea the guy was super nice and um yeah i don't know i guess i guess we'll see we'll see if he uh again as as mentioned by madex we'll see if uh the product

uh is deemed worthy of the sats of the plebs let's let's see how it goes awesome um cool well i'm gonna toss it down to aladdin dude final thoughts recommendations all right um i've got to say on the sovereign energy thing real quick. I know Oliver personally, I've been working with him on his idea since Miami. Salt of the Earth, one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life, put his life savings into this. Like, this is not a big corporation. This is not a big group of people. He's doing the risk, and he's putting the whole risk out there, and he's a bit coiner through and through, and the man is just a beautiful person. So I hope everything works. works out for him in the best way is because he's got a great idea.

And that kind of leads into my final thoughts. Build, do what you can. Like the world needs the bitcoins right now. The world needs people to take that risk, jump out there and work towards fixing this holy, I don't know if I'm allowed to cuss on here, but it's a really crappy situation that we're in. And I've got kids and I'm scared for their future. And I've dug into a lot of things over many years. I've been anti-government my entire life.

So I've always been digging, always been researching into what's going on. And it's a screwed up world. And it's because of this fiat crap show that we're in. And they have the ability to run the narrative and control the world. And it's really scary. And we live most of us in a pretty kicked back situation. We have a lot of comfort, even when things are bad.

Most of the bad that we're seeing is on the television, and we're not living it. I've lived it. I've got a lot of friends and family. I know a lot of people all over the world that are living it. It's really screwed up, and the world needs people to jump out there and fight for them. They don't have the opportunities we do if you're in a comfortable situation at all to be able to fight for their freedom.

It's not just yours. It's theirs. It's our children. our children's children, just do what you can. It could be just talking to your waiter, talking to your Uber driver, whoever it is. There's many ways to Orange Bill people that ever happen to bring up Bitcoin and do what you can, when you can, because we're in a massive battle, and it's going to take everyone with a solid heart and good values to have any chance of defeating or even having like an impact against what we're up against it's not going to be a handful of people with

podcasts and a handful of people with some ideas that's going to make this change we all have to come together and do our part or it's just going to get worse than it is right now and look beyond your comfort zone and see what's really going on out there and take your stand now is the time take it from a William Wallace and freedom so that's my final thought and my recommendation support people and check out what especially, I mean, you're already here with Ben, so I would be shilling you, but everyone they hear knows you're here. Check out Julian, check out Zach, and see what they're doing because these are the people that, again, are making this impact.

And if you personally don't have the time and the energy to go out there and try to make that impact, at least share the people that are. It's free to retweet. It's free to share. I don't think there's enough of this going on. It's so free. And if you don't want to show, like feel like you're shilling it to Bitcoiners, then chill it to NFT people. Chill it to shitcoiners. Like you don't have to like hashtag Bitcoin. Who needs this information more than anybody? The people that are buying scams, the people that are getting scammed left and right, they need the information. So like reach out to the people that are doing the good and help spread the word about what those people are doing because every little bit counts.

Build your local circle and help those that are maybe misunderstanding the change that we're seeing in front of us. Because I think a lot of people, like you said, a lot of people that get into the shit coins and everything, they see it as kind of the solution to Fiat, not really. realizing that that quote unquote crypto is like fiat to the extreme right fiat the elites get to print money crypto everybody gets to print money and bitcoin no one gets to print money so i think that's a big takeaway that people should learn yeah and a lot of those people i they're not all bad people they're misinformed yeah it's like left or right or this religion or that really they're just misinformed there's so many beautiful people

people that have been scammed. I've talked to a guy just the other day that's one of the nicest people ever and he got scammed so we won't even talk about the amount of money he got scammed for and he's such an incredible, wonderful person. He's just misinformed. Most people are misinformed and a lot of it is because they, the shit coins have the ability with their funding to mass propagandize the world with it. And we are the marketing team for Bitcoin. So it's up to all of us to help the people out and they want the right thing. They just haven't been taught the right thing. Yeah, absolutely.

The way to win this war against the shit coins is you actually have to make it sexy to shit on shit coins. So I'm just like I'm a firm proponent of like if you want to stop the shit cornerry, you got to make it sexy to be only Bitcoin and you got to make it sexy to make fun of shit coin losers. I love it. Zach, I'm going to toss a deal. last final thoughts recommendations all yours thanks ben yeah well i'll just take this moment to kind of

reiterate my point i mean you know if if you're watching this and you're you're part of gen z i highly encourage you to do your own research and and study bitcoin and learn how it can it can not only just help you but also help society and and help us address these global challenges that we're facing and build a brighter future for ourselves you know there's there's there's There's a, there's light at the end of the tunnel. In terms of recommendations, I think if you're into reading, the Bitcoin standard is a go-to place to start. One of my favorite Bitcoin books. If you're more into podcasts, I mean, BTC sessions right here, great podcast, great tutorials,

but also what Bitcoin did is, is one of my all-time favorites. Yeah, but thank you so much for having us on the show, Ben. Awesome. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much all for being here. Nice. Yes, I like the, that's a Maidex original, I think, if I'm not mistaken. Back in the day, the Ethereum spelled with an eye with two turd emojis, making the logo. Amazing. So, guys, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time. I appreciate all of your contributions to the space and to the show itself. of course, you're all welcome back anytime. So have a great weekend, everybody. Thanks so much for having us. Yeah, thank you guys. Cheers, guys. I'll see you later. Thanks, Ben. All right. Awesome. And everybody, thank you so much for joining in and watching the show. Again, all of these guys, their handles are in these show notes down below. So make sure you give them a

follow and check out what they're doing through their Twitter handles and then you'll be able to find them on. I think all these guys are on Noster as well. I'm not sure if Sack is. I got to make sure I'm following them if he is. Anyways, yeah, check them all out. Links are on the show notes.

Of course, if you want to help the show in another way, you can always hit up the previously mentioned sponsors, hollow, hoddle, coin kite, Cedor,

Nunchucks, start nine. They're all down below. You can also, of course, smash that like button just below the screen that helps a ton.

Give the episode to share if you enjoyed it as well. on whatever social media platforms you're on. And then finally, if you really liked what you saw, there is a QR code on the screen that takes you right to my website. If you need some additional help navigating your Bitcoin journey, whether it be with wallets or hardware or lightning or privacy or nose or whatever it may be, you can scan that right there and you can book me for one-on-one sessions.

Of course, all of the information is free on YouTube. as well so you can watch free tutorials to your little hearts content. But if you need some additional handholding, that QR code will lead you to the spot to get it. Anyways, guys, with that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening wherever you may be. And I'll see you guys next time for your daily session.