TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #622: Bitcoin For Millennials with Bram Kanstein

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Marty sits down with Bram Kanstein to discuss how Bitcoin provides millennials with time and financial freedom in an increasingly uncertain world shaped by AI, economic instability, and technological transformation. Bram Kanstein on Twitter: https://x.com/bramk STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/VJ2dABShBz Shoutout to our sponsors: Fold https://tftc.io/fold Coinkite https://coinkite.com Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/

you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean that's part of the bull case for bitcoin if you're not paying attention you probably should be probably should be man you got an editor like in-house that's that's bro that's uh it's because this setup i'm so far away from the computer i just need somebody to hit the button okay okay the extent the extent of logan's job extends far beyond just hitting the button but

yeah intj i think uh i think it was he as we rear into what looks to be another bull market i think getting back to first principles and discussing the challenges of studying and understanding bitcoin it's important to to highlight the archetype of individuals who have studied fallen down the rabbit hole and really dedicated their lives to bitcoin in this intj cohort that exists within bitcoin seems pretty material apparently yeah i mean i have many moments where i just realized that i'm lucky that my brain is wired in a certain way you know i feel like crazy blessed that i figured out this bitcoin thing you know and that when i ran into certain realizations along the way in my bitcoin

journey that i was like hmm you know how does this actually work you know do i actually understand the systems i'm participating in the things that i believe you know the the the people that i abstracted um or outsourced certain responsibilities to to take care of for example my money in the bank you know i i think um being wired in a certain way definitely helps in grasping bitcoin to a degree where you're like okay this is the only thing i need to pay attention to you know in my life and uh yeah we we jokingly started talking about this because i have the hat here but there was this um i think it was like uh like a twitter poll actually or someone shared it on twitter and this is already like two or three years old where or someone investigated these

myers-briggs personality types and i think there's only like two percent of people that have intj but like 20 of bitcoiners have that personality type so it um it apparently helps so yeah i just i just quickly googled it actually it says uh the intj is the architect it's a personality type with introverted intuitive thinking and judging traits these thoughtful tacticians love perfecting details of life applying creativity and rationality to everything they do i think the rationality part here is what um what i think helps you to to grok bitcoin eventually yeah it reminds me of i forget what the study was but post covid it was a similar distribution of just like two percent of people were highly skeptical of what was going on with the

the lockdowns and the attack on bodily autonomy and there was a study that was done about i forget it was bees or some type of fly that they they have like the horde of um the horde of the particular fly i think it was bees has like two percent act as these sort of alarm bells that are on the outside the outskirts of the community and they'll start communicating like hey something's wrong here and people mean the other flies or bees will be skeptical at first but then eventually uh the alarm bells will be proven to be right that there was some sort of danger around that's fascinating yeah yeah that's fascinating i think we're not that special eventually you know like we think we have all this autonomy but but um yeah we're we're just

wired in a certain way and i think i don't know where you want to take this conversation but i think you know part of growing up and being an adult is figuring out you know how do i actually work and how do i work with how i work you know yeah that is and as i get older creep into my mid-30s which is hard hard to come to grips with it is uh really falling back on like all right i feel like i have a good perspective on the world and my place in it and how do i just optimize to make sure i'm aligning my my work and my career i guess if you call it that with what i'm passionate about yeah well i also think that is actually why our generation you know my podcast is bitcoin for millennials i think the millennials are primed to understand bitcoin you know we are

in this life phase where big things happen you know starting a family or settling somewhere or making big career moves or decide yeah like deciding what am i going to spend like the next 10 20 years on and uh i think it's an interesting phase actually i don't know how that was for you but but for me like the the 30s were really where i dove more and more into bitcoin like got got that stronger conviction and also yeah kind of was invited to go further down that that rabbit hole you know and like how i see it now is that that bitcoin is really the foundation for the rest of my life you know like it it gives me time and space to look forward and enthusiasm you know like i sometimes lurk on the millennial subreddit you know or the finance sub subreddit and many

people in our generation are very nihilistic you know they're very unsure about the future like some people aren't even having kids because they think they cannot afford it you know and whenever i read that i just think like yeah i i don't really have those things but i know it's because of bitcoin you know i i know that bitcoin gives me yeah like i said the time and space to figure out what's next like what should i focus on like it gives time and space to to try out stuff to build something you know to to to really attempt at at doing something where i see many people that don't see that they are more in the consumer type you know like they they just spend the money that's worth the most today you know like that's what they're incentivized to do

yeah and is is that why you started bitcoin for millennials is to number one put the put the message out there millennials come listen to this one of you yes that is trying to educate you about this but because this is something i think about a lot is somebody's like dead smack in the middle of the millennial generation and has observed many of the things you just described in my own life my own network and it's part of the reason why this podcast exists and um what i'm trying to do at tftc is just try to figure out a way to reach into the minds of millennials hopefully change some minds rewire some brains to to reorient not totally around bitcoin but understand that bitcoin is a tool that they

could leverage to achieve the goals that we were sold growing up that didn't materialize by taking the the path that was sort of scripted for us by by the older generations yes i think that's mainly it right so yes the older generations sold us you know air quotes sold us a certain path like this this is how you build your life etc and um you know i think every bitcoin journey is of course first an individual journey in general i think bitcoin is a one by one conversion technology right you really um yeah have to challenge certain understanding beliefs preconceptions you know that that you have about many things you know in bitcoin many things come together but mainly it's about money finance economics right like the the things we thought

were true or how we thought things worked eventually aren't how they work or at least they aren't designed to benefit our individual life and i think i first had to have that realization and that's kind of where it started for me i mean i've been in bitcoin since 2014 like on and off like i usually share like i bought between like 100 and 300 i sold everyone everything at 4000 you know got distracted with crypto eventually just realized bitcoin is the only thing to pay attention to and it actually was one of the moments uh it was in 2017 i worked at a big bank i was already into bitcoin i had a mortgage you know i was participating in the financial system and then i had a colleague tell me you know did you know that the money in the

bank is not yours and i was like what like what are you talking about i was 30 then right and we had a like a lunch for an hour and of well you know in a financial corporate you could take lunch for an hour so we had a conversation and he explained fractional reserve banking to me and i remember walking away from that conversation just feeling like an idiot like i'm i'm participating in a system that i really don't understand you know and when i connected that to bitcoin it felt like even though i was into it and and studying it i wasn't really looking at it from like the the finance and economics angle or dimension and then i realized i'm i'm storing my economic energy in a system that i don't understand

you know and and sometime later i realized you know i do understand what bitcoin is and what i should do is move you know i'm just moving whatever i accumulated in the fiat money system and i'm moving that to save that in the in the bitcoin system and you know other things came along that i didn't understand about finance and economics and studied and eventually you know just growing my conviction and i think it was that that really motivated me to just do more see if i can contribute to bitcoin so why not another podcast right but then when i was thinking about that you know what what type of podcast like who should i talk to i had like a period of two three weeks i think where i had like two three calls with other bitcoiners i knew from the internet

because you know the real life journey was very lonely um and with all these conversations i thought like hey it would have been fun to just have recorded this and shared this online and just see what people think of you know the the learnings we shared and reflections and thoughts about the future of bitcoin and so that was kind of stuck in my mind but like in the same time period i had some meetings with friends just now millennial friends but there was in particular like one friend and uh he's one of my best friends very smart intelligent entrepreneur and i love him to death and he uh he sold his company like a few few years ago and so he has quite some money but that's all in the bank right he had no bitcoin at that point and we were going on a golf trip and

we would be sitting in the car for two hours and i we we i i jumped in the car and i said we're gonna talk about bitcoin right like i'm just gonna corner you here you're driving you know i'm gonna i'm gonna talk about bitcoin here because you know i i that's how i started like i love you but you know um you know we should talk about this like you spend years building a company spending all this time and energy someone was crazy enough to give you you know a really big reward and then you gave it all away like it's all in the bank you know and i just started with the question what do you think happens if you call the bank and say like hey can i get 100 or 200k in cash you know and we kind of talked about that and he was like yeah i don't know maybe they don't

have all the bills and it takes a few days and blah blah like he just looked at it as like a nuisance like a practical uh little hump that they had to get over and then i said okay but if you call and you get a random person on the phone right and you say well can i get 100k or 200k they're gonna look in their little decision tree and be like oh 100k that's over my threshold right now i have to ask these questions like what are you going to use it for sir you know and like all these things and I tried to like paint that picture and mind you like I think he's very intelligent right so this is it's not about intelligence I was like explaining and I said like but this is not yours you know if you need someone between you and the reward you got for

selling your company then just by definition in my mind at least it's just it's not yours and he didn't see that at all and so then I said well if you don't think that's a problem then you know the rest of the conversation is going to be a bit difficult you know i first need you to see the problem well then of course we had we just had like a fun weekend i just let it go but then i realized and also after talking to to several other millennial friends like no one knows about money no one knows about money they don't know how how debt works how finance works they don't know where money for from mortgages comes from like they have no clue and then i just realized yeah that that i also didn't have a clue but that's kind of how it's designed right like that's what

eventually keeps the ponzi alive you're just doing what other people are doing and what other people did before you and that's basically it and to a degree of course it works especially if you live in a western country you know the money still works for us but i think slowly but surely that will become less and especially when i started thinking about retirement right so let's say you're a millennial in mid 30s and you want to retire in 30 years if you calculate the amount of dollar pound euro yen units whatever your currency is and it's being debased at a rate that's in real terms probably close to like seven eight percent or what what was it like the last 10 years it's close to nine you need way more units of that money than you think right now or that you're

you know pension fund tells you and whatever and so i think that especially the millennials because the retirement part is so far away they are funding pension funds but the pension funds are using that money for the people that are actually retiring right and even for my mother who's a mid-60s i don't know if the money is there and so when i started realizing that the retirement for millennials will probably either be gone or be debased to such a degree that you cannot have the life that you're envisioning right now like when you retire that's kind of when i thought okay if i had to pick a niche for my podcast then why not millennials you know it's and it's also so we have the problem but i think it's also a big enough niche and next to that

actually i think we are primed to understand bitcoin like we are the generation that really saw like analog technology turning into digital technology really seeing technology new technology take off seeing how that replaced other technology other behavior etc and so yeah i think that's a long-winded answer but i uh that yeah there's multiple things that came together there for me listen freaks i know you're tired of me talking about fold but i'm gonna beat the drum i'm gonna beat the dead horse if you're a bitcoiner living in the united states and you're not using fold I'm just going to ask one question. What are you doing?

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the cold card queue it's a beautiful thing no it's not only the strat the the ability of the millennials to straddle the analog world with the digital world having grown up and seen it up close and personal the advent of i've said it multiple times on this show we're from star 69 to caller id to loading up aol onto your computer with a with a cd to more robust browsers to the open internet the apps and now transitioning into this getting closer to the singularity with ai advancing yeah at the pace it is but not only that the other side of this we've seen all the corruption like that's what always boggles my mind about our generation others in our generation not really grasping the profundity of bitcoin specifically is having lived through the dot-com

bubble 2008 um covid crash 2023 banking crisis mix in a european credit crisis in the middle of all that and the endless wars the corruption that wiki leaks and edward snowden have surfaced over the years and it seems like we went through all that in our formative years from early adolescence to teenage to adulthood just constantly being berated with corruption and a dysfunctional monetary system over and over again and it's like come on guys like this is what we were or we've been sort of bred in our lifetime to to understand that there needs to be a solution to these problems but to your point earlier of people never questioning it i think there's also just like a massive sunk cost fallacy where people oh 100 have come up and built

their lives around assumptions that we know to be completely corrupt and at their core from first principles perspective but people sort of read the script tried to live their lives by the script and they're so far down the road where it's like ah you're telling me how to throw this script out and it it was completely bunk and i think i think that's a big thing so this whole concept of being able to really check your ego and show some humility and acknowledge that there's a potential that you were misled and duped to a certain extent that many people can't get over or don't even want to confront in the first place really no i think you know i sometimes jokingly but i think it's also partially true like you got a red bill before you orange bill

you know like you you you have to get to that point where you you know when i go on the subreddits for example right like people see that there are problems but they don't understand where it's coming from you know and you mentioned all these things that that you know we experienced i also had to think of occupy wall street right i think that was like 2011 12 ish something like where where did that go you know i think those are by the way like the progressive people now that are not progressive but that's another discussion maybe but it feels like so i agree it it i think many people feel it but there aren't any tools besides bitcoin i would say that can help you mitigate these problems right so if if bitcoin doesn't cross your path or you're not curious

enough or you don't have the you know the problem isn't big enough i think especially you know with ftx and like that whole debacle like people hate crypto and bitcoin is crypto of course right like i think a lot of people either are and broke or they gave up right like just the money is running out but i think they also gave up like on just no crypto is nonsense etc so i don't know i feel like it's a it's a mix of things yeah definitely like in the western world you know money just works when you were younger you got some bills and some coins you went to a store you you gave that you got something in return and and you were like well apparently this is money you know like this is just what this is just what we do and um yeah because we live in in in ultimate luxury and

in general i think the millennial generation is probably um has grown up in the best time to ever grow up from any person that probably ever lived you know like growing up in the 90s i think was the best uh and early and early 2000 you know um so there there isn't that much of a need that that is clear enough you know i think for many people it feels a bit further away and that's also why you know if you just get a glimpse of some sort of red pill type moment you're like no no no i don't need that you know like i'm i'm still good let's just let's just push that away a little bit but i think on the other side of that there's a huge reward there's a huge reward because once you are aware you will also become aware that many people aren't aware you know and

that's the big opportunity i i think of uh of bitcoin again like i really don't feel the same problems as i'm reading about of you know our uh generational peers and and and i can only attribute that to bitcoin like if bitcoin didn't exist but i knew all these things i think i i wouldn't be able to sleep at night you know like like the the i understand the nihilistic outlook towards the future if you if you don't take bitcoin into account yeah i mean that was certainly me before i found bitcoin in college just that's crazy like in college if that is your outlook towards the future right like just think about that and i think i have the same i even have that worse with with with people in our generation that that decide not to have children because i think

they cannot afford it like the idea that a man-made mechanism tool system you know the fiat money system is blocking you from following your biological biological urges you know like that that's that's that's uh that's a huge spiritual spiritual crime even you know like you're you're you're taking that progression of life away because of some system made by other people that in general are not better than you smarter than you deserve more in their life or or whatever right and i think once i realized that like this is just made by other people that are not better than me that that definitely don't care more about my personal life than i care about my personal life that's also when it kind of clicked that you know in bitcoin it's rules not rulers you know the

whole decentralized structure like i don't have to trust anyone basically everyone is trusting other people because everyone is trusting other people or like because they are following the rules that's basically it right like everyone is following the rules because they know that all the other people are following the rules so there's like a really nice positive incentive loop there even though that they have this gnawing feeling in the pit of their stomach that the rules are skewed in the favor of a select few that have an extreme amount of influence over the system at large i mean occupy wall street being a perfect manifestation of that yes but to tie it back to what you said you know about how we grew up what i i do think and i think that's not talked about

enough or just undervalued in general is what i really see in like the bitcoin culture the bitcoin movement is like like raw internet culture you know what i mean like it's just it's you know the whole thing like you can just do the thing you know you can just talk shit on the internet like we can do that right because what you said many people know this but they're like yeah i cannot really do anything about it but that is nonsense right like the people that are doing that to you are a crazy crazy minority insane minority right and i think you see this too with your podcast like i'm i'm doing a podcast too like you can just talk about this and reach thousands of people millions of millions of people with your thoughts your reflections you know your criticism

of certain you know development systems uh whatever and it reaches real people you know like people commenting on this video are real people you know and i and and that is so mind like the internet is such an insane tool to combat you know centralized decision making that is usually fundamentally flawed because the incentives that these people have for decision making are um focused on keeping this centralized decision making uh party alive you know where the internet has democratized the access to all information and you can learn from anyone you know so in in my mind conceptually like all these old systems are already disrupted but not not everyone is seeing that yet does that make sense like there's that just this raw internet

culture of bitcoin like sometimes i see bitcoin memes or like these videos where i just think like yeah this is this is it like we can just do this right like you can just build a culture that is on the internet and when you reach people in real life you already are connected like you you have a certain connection and a certain bond like we we can actually create that yeah and it becomes this very positive feedback loop where and i've seen this just throughout the years of going to bitcoin events in person and i mean i think the first in-person bitcoin event i went to is the beginning of 2015 in new york city and comparing what that room was like compared to the rooms that you go to these days at bitcoin meetups it's just way bigger scale way more

diverse group of people and you can see sort of this culture has kick-started this feedback loop that probably mirrors the adoption sort of phases of bitcoin but you can see it's happening that's the other thing like you mentioned youtube comments and i think this will be an interesting thought experiment and exercise to partake in is there's always very positive comments but always the negative like ah either i'm too late to bitcoin bitcoin will never work um good luck trying to combat the government and the comments that i see and observe that come from a place of defeatism always astonish me because it's like yeah okay like your assumptions are bitcoin can't work the government will stop it and it's too late for me and it's like okay what is what is

the alternative of not even trying to make something happen and i had a conversation with brian harrington a couple weeks ago and to your point about like framing bitcoin maybe they need the red pill before the orange pill something i've been thinking about for the last few weeks after that conversation is he he thinks we should be out there framing bitcoin as the path to financial freedom like you can not only get rich but have the life that you want with bitcoin and just sort of co-op the tiktok sort of uh finance bro influencer of like here's how you get the financial freedom but do it in a right way um which is fascinating to me and i think for millennials specifically in their mid-30s late 40s looking at their ria or excuse me their iras

are there 401ks being like is that really going to get me to retirement and just pitching the message like bitcoin probably not maybe it will get you to retirement but the purchasing power will be significantly diminished here's bitcoin your actual path to financial freedom and retirement if you so wish i mean i have a header on my youtube channel which says discover how bitcoin can help you secure your financial future like this is what i believe because secure is not about like i'm going to become a multi-millionaire it's more about like you're not going to be poor if if you try to use the system that that you're currently in and i agree i do also think so he like what he says you mean is like we should go harder we should go like finance finance bro hard

you mean or because i do think we're trying right but it's it's sometimes it's not humble but i think many times it is humble it's like study bitcoin right like i i always say like the message is study bitcoin it's not buy bitcoin where maybe the message should be by bitcoin i mean you have jim kramer on msnbc yelling that you should buy something so maybe that's it but um i think especially after ftx and stuff people have um have apprehension to towards that messaging although though, I agree with Brian that perhaps that could work. Um, the, the, the, the fiat money mindset is a very, very zero sum game mindset, right? Like I win, you lose. I mean, you see that with this, uh, Gary's economics, uh, guy, you know, horrible takes, but he learned, you know,

if I'm a trader and I make millions, there's many people that lose and that's bad and he's totally right so i'll give him that right but what he doesn't see what he what he does is also what you just said like it's just pointing like oh it's these people they are bad people etc but and it was the same by the way with occupy wall street like bad bad bad but the the crazy thing and that's why i say like progress people that call themselves progressive are not progressive you know it's it's larping it's walking or sorry it's talking right like it's like the field money world is like all talk you can talk right and you don't have to prove shit but in bitcoin you have to walk the walk like you have to do it right the whole proof of work ethos is like we are walking

the walk we are literally dumping fiat money and we're we're exchanging it for bitcoin we are leaving this predatory system that is the source of everything that anyone that's now listening like anything that you would want to fix in the world is broken because the money is broken right like the money creates the incentives for people to do stuff and eventually there are certain outcomes that you don't like or would want to see changed right but as long as you don't understand that it's the money you will keep propping up the money that you hate without knowing and the only thing you need to do and it's so fucking simple right you just ditch the money you just move to the other money that they cannot mess with and i feel like and i also don't know

how i ended up here maybe that's how my brain is wired and i'm lucky but like i feel like all the social justice people you know or or all the stuff with with occupy wall street like it's it's all based on emotion that's why i just call it larping like it's just it's like top top layer of annoyance or emotion that they acted upon but it feels like they didn't do research as to yeah what am i actually protesting like why does this system exist like how it exists where does that come from you know the whole you know robert breed love what is money uh as the defining question of our of our time you know like they they didn't go further than person bad pointing or you know putting up a tent whatever um and i feel like that with bitcoin you can actually make that action

right like i actually think we should talk more about that like so maybe we can follow brian's strategy but i think just talking about like you can do something which is very simple you just exchange one money for another money and then you just wait and and see what happens because what will happen is that they will restrict you from using this bad money to buy this new money they will close the doors they will ask you what you're going to use it for they will restrict the cash money and all these things and then is the moment that you have to wake up and understand that you are right about this predatory fiat money and that you should get more people in moving to this other thing because that's really what what brings change right but

while i'm talking i think like yeah that sounds too good to be true and i know it sounds too good to be true but i do believe that it's true it's just that it's just that simple yeah i think we were saying there's people need to recognize that they have agency with bitcoin yes and i think whether it's social justice warriors or people who are on the other side the political spectrum when a particular party is in power uh around the world like the solutions to the problem is we've seen it here in the united states over the last 10 years with the flip-flop from trump to biden back to trump which is if only we're in we're in power like we'll make the right decisions we'll make everybody's life better and we again another thing that we've

seen time and time again throughout our lives is that it doesn't matter who gets in the office the system is architected in a way that it cannot be fixed and the marginal changes that are made are simply retaliatory to the the party that you're replacing and you just have this flip flopping of different rulers with different rules that really do not solve the core of the problem which is that we've messed up the money whereas bitcoin you just opt into and you don't have to worry about a different party coming in and changing the rules and you you opt into something that cannot be controlled and that actually has a benefit for everybody no matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on or what your sort of economic status is even if you are poor if

you're adopting bitcoin it is working in your favor over time i love that you say opting in right um because i say people are forced to use a currency in a country you're literally forced just because there's no other option but they're what i've what i've come to believe now is that what i find so strange is that there aren't receipts right there there aren't receipts from the government that's forcing you to to use a certain currency that that is actually the best thing to do you know it it feels like we are enchanted or uh you know and i think enchanted is probably the right word we're enchanted by fiat money everyone just says money you know but if you ask 10 people for what is money there's 10 different answers and when you just said like

yeah different uh rulers and their rules i'm thinking about there are proposals that i sometimes see in in the in the u.s where they say we're gonna combat inflation by giving everyone an extra thousand dollars you know something like that and then i think like wow these people have know they don't even know you know like the the people that other people are looking up to like they don't even know what what um what money is and i think that's how deep the enchantment goes you know that's also why the what is money question is such an insanely big question that feels stupid or dumb like yeah why why would we ever question that but in a funny way that's the whole point the fact that you never do is kind of like a signal for you because people do see that

the receipts are missing right like how we are old enough or well i'll talk for myself that i can say something like well 20 years ago you know i saw this and this in my country i don't i don't think my country got better in 20 years i actually think we went back in in quality in in availability of housing for example quality of health care and stuff like that where in my mind towards the future everything gets gets better but i'm old enough now to see that you know from 17 to 37 some things actually got worse which is strange as i'm living in one of the richest countries in the world. And again, maybe that's how the brain is wired, but I find that very, very strange. That's the receipt I have. And it's a negative receipt in that sense.

What's up, freaks? Stop asking how to value Bitcoin. Start asking how to value everything else in Bitcoin. Unchained and Strive, Vivek Ramaswamy's asset management firm, just released a new report called Repricing the Economy in Bitcoin. It introduces a Bitcoin denominated DCF model and shows what happens when you revalue equities like Apple using Bitcoin instead of dollars. This isn't just a thought experiment. It's a framework for capital allocation. Read it now at unchained.com slash TFTC. That's unchained.com slash TFTC. Well, I think that's the discombobulating nature or just condition of our generation. It's like, look at us. You're all the way across the world. I'm looking at you on a computer screen. I'm

getting your voice piped into my ears automatically it is inarguable that technology is certainly advanced to a point where it is better and you the services you can hop on your phone and have a car come pick you up in minutes you can order food and have it delivered to your house in minutes you don't even have to interact with with the driver you pay it shows up they leave it at the door you don't even have to answer the door for them to to do the cash exchange like we used to do with pizza deliveries growing up and you see things like this here in austin we have way most we have self-driving cars all over the city my boys are obsessed with them we were counting them uh that's become the new game in our cars counting how many way most we see on the road

on the way home from wherever we're returning from uh and it is inarguable this is incredible advancement of technology and human productivity but the other side like the real economy of like having to actually go buy stuff that solves the problems that exist in maslow's hierarchy of needs is becoming harder and harder so you have this like juxtaposition of this incredible advancement of technology and productivity but also rising costs that make it harder for the things that actually contribute most to quality of life and i think that that acts as like somewhat of a societal facade that people can look around be like wait everything is getting better like look at all this technology i had to hit star 69 to figure out who was calling

me 20 years ago or yeah shit 30 years ago at this point but now i i have a thought about this because i think it's great you're summing up like these things and these things are incredible right like first time that we had a camera phone and we are like a camera phone that could make videos the videos were pixelated as hell right but we could see through them you know um that's also why what i meant like if we would see a pixelated video right now like today we would kind of be okay with that like we would be able to see through the pixels right where maybe younger people are just uh um they want to have 4k all day right but but we could be we would be able to see through that but you are summing up all these things and then i'm i'm thinking yes we

have all these things but imagine where we could have been right because in essence the fiat money stifles innovation like we are measuring increased productivity of technological advancements which is deflationary we have the the you know here's the book the the price of tomorrow by jeff booth it's a very logical um definition right like technological advancements eventually are deflationary everything you know prices go down and technology becomes more accessible we have this crazy supercomputer here for a thousand dollars where you know the first computer that that was uh you know a thousand times less or i don't i don't even know probably more you know that was a few million had to be loaded up in an airplane like we see we do see technological

advancements so don't don't get me wrong but imagine where we could have been and i i just googled 1960 future outlook prediction i just googled it i clicked on the first thing that's in on reddit it says major newspapers prediction in the 1960s why i'm doing this is because you know you know all these old pictures or even the jetsons right like uh the the ideas about the future in the 1960s 70s 80s 90s were wild right like when they talked about the years 2000 2010 you know like crazy flying cars etc and so i just clicked on a random link but i think it's very interesting this is uh from the time in february 1966 by the year 2000 the machines will be producing so much that everyone in the u.s will in effect be independently wealthy with government

benefits even non-working families will have by one estimate an annual income of 30 to 40 000 in 1966 dollars how to use leisure meaningfully will be a major problem okay this other one is from new york times nine 1967 by the year 2000 people will work no more than four days a week and less than eight hours a day with legal holidays and long vacations this could result in an annual working period of 147 days on and 218 days off so over 50 years ago these people were talking about how increased technology would bring us abundance like this guy in this book is talking about but we aren't there people are working more for less and getting by less literally right because in the 1960s there you know we have all these memes of one one income

families with you know just a teacher with a with a nice chevrolet in front of the door in a home and three children and a wife at home that was the 60s and now everyone works and the kids are at kindergarten and people are are putting ends together at the end of at the end of the month like we're nowhere near where these people thought we would be and yeah that i just find fascinating you know like you you everyone should ask themselves the question like why why is that are we dumber don't we have technology like it all these questions are no and and the real answer is it's the money well and going back to the money question like what is bunny it is astonishing maybe it's the intj i don't even know if i'm intj i'm just gonna assume i have

some of those traits but literally it's all throughout pop culture rap songs all about money stacking racks yeah literally on everybody's minds like how do i make more money how do i like that was the part of the script was like if you go to college you get the degree you're going to get a job with a six-figure salary you'll have a starting salary but you'll move up to six figures uh pretty rapidly by the time you're in your mid-20s and then you'll be set and back in high school the thought of making a hundred thousand dollars was like oh i'm gonna make a lot of money and today the thought of making it that hundred thousand dollars is like i'm not making enough money like how quick i think people don't appreciate how quickly that

like six figures like that was the that was one of the tropes when i was in high school it's like you get a job of six figures you made it now it's like you need mid six figures to have quote unquote made it now as a salary and that's yeah only 12 years since i graduated college was not a long time but again going back to the idea that like every sort of decision not every decision but a lot of the decisions that people make revolve around how do i make more money to make ends meet or to actually be able to invest to be able to build the works to me buy the house that i want to live in and build a family and like literally many of the decisions i don't know how many a day are factored around money and yet nobody questions what it actually is

people still talk about six figures right like it's that i think it's a great example like that narrative is still strong people still talk like that because their parents talked like that you know still if we if we stay with millennials um yeah that's that's i think what is part of the what is sold to us yeah if you make 100k uh yeah that sounds like a great deal but there's many people like you said that that that earn that or even more that are um that are not living as comfortable as they as they thought right but i think yeah again i think that is also part of the enchantment it's just that narrative and just getting out of that is probably the biggest hurdle in order to eventually end up with bitcoin right like you have to get to some point where

you're like man something isn't working i don't know what but i'm gonna i'm gonna do some research i'm gonna figure it out and i think the what is money question you know i i now see you know we can go into that but i now actually have an idea about what money is like before i just used the word money and i didn't even realize what it was and it was actually last october um i was in the u.s and i remember the first evening when i was in my hotel it was actually funny i was in miami i just went to grab a quick bite like a burger and a and a and a virgin mojito and i remember paying like 45 dollars or something like crazy and i was like man 45 dollar units for like a burger and and a virgin mojito and like in my mind you know in my currency or just in my in my mind

in general like a burger is 15 units or of any currency you know like 15 i don't know is in my in my mind but i think this one was like 30 or something or 28 and i remember going back to my hotel room and just having like a bill in my hand and just just sitting and looking at it and thinking like yeah this is something that i talk about a lot that i think about a lot you know it's connected to bitcoin and bitcoin is the better money etc and then i i was looking at the bill and then i saw like there's there's um there's like a disclaimer on the bill and it says like this note is legal tender for all public and private debt you know in the united states of america or something like that and then i was like mind you this is in october then i was like

holy shit like the the paper even says that the paper does itself doesn't have value right so the one that has a one on it is not worth more or less than the one with a hundred on it like it's just it's just an abstract representation of debt which is just astonishing you know if you're talking about you know stacking racks you know like how everyone talks in in the rap videos you're you're stacking nothing like literal paper and and you're yeah enchanted to a certain degree to think that that actually represents value like like time and energy or productivity from another person that created something that you are giving these pieces of paper to and so even if you're into bitcoin for a long time and you have a podcast you moved most of your wealth into

bitcoin you can still learn that mind-blowing fact you know i just was like it's just crazy it's staring you in the face and people are just using it you know like that that i think is the the challenge that that we are generally up against here not only using it but coveting it as you're describing that i was thinking of you know the rapper six nine six nine is that his name he's got the crazy color hair yeah yeah he's got he's got like 69 tattoos all over his face yeah uh he's famous for making these videos where he's got like five lambos in his in his driveway and he just like opens up one of the front trunks and he's got stacks of cash there and he's like flaunting it like there's another hundred there's another hundred and it's hilariously poetic

because it's the epitome of the high velocity trash economy with this abject idiot who looks like a fucking fool yeah sort of flaunting that he's got these millions of followers with these debt notes like yeah you you this is what you wanted you want to stack this hunted and this hunted and as you just mentioned if you actually read the bill it's like you're just stacking representations of debt that the government owes somebody at the end of the day that's the other thing like we're coming to this point i'm sure you're observing from uh across the pond that we're at a pretty critical point here in the united states where it's becoming abundantly clear that the debt that is represented by these these dollars is becoming a problem that the

people that we owe the debt to want to solve or are forcing us to to confront today i talked to someone who said the u.s debt is at an all-time high forever then i thought that's so good that's so good you know and we saw last week scott besant says like the u.s will never default because we will keep on raising the debt ceiling like again it's just staring you in the face it's literally staring you in the face like there are no i also say this about bitcoin like bitcoin is an asymmetric opportunity based on publicly available information like all the information is literally out it's out there you know about the bad money and about the better the better money like you you can find all this information but whether it does something to you you know well we we discussed this but

that is something that the individual has to decide but i think all the information is is out there and like what you said i think the model of america is brilliant you know you just export inflation and you buy also buy real energy from the ground with paper that you just create and put a number on that yeah that that's the most brilliant scheme in in the in human history probably but once people figure out that if they get paid this paid back to this debt in nominal terms that what that unit represents actually buys them less which is becoming increasingly clear at an ever increasing rate then yeah who's gonna buy that debt right and i think if you want to think about the question

what is money maybe the second question is what am I counting what are the characteristics of the unit that I'm counting once you pull on that thread

then realize okay I can count in the numbers so I can have more numbers and the graph can be green or have a little positive result it doesn't mean that the amount of units that i have actually buy me more real things and i think once this is understood on a nation level which sounds ridiculous to say because i would expect

that the people running a country and buying foreign debt would actually understand what they are doing but i've also come to the conclusion that many many don't or else they would have stopped buying u.s debt a long time ago i think maybe that's too rational but i i i think that's just it you know like uh i i think we both know um sorry i think we both know leon wankum he talks a lot about real estate and bitcoin right but he has a master's in economics maybe even a double master's in economics right and he told me i've never learned what money is like i was calculating i was counting i was doing all these things but only later i started questioning what what is money so if someone

with a master's in economics doesn't know what money is like how does the average pleb figure this out you know and maybe if we get back to like what is the core message or the things that we should talk about i think is definitely this like that that is the bamboozlement like you you are using something or believing in something or you have the aspiration of stacking something that literally has zero value and that sounds ridiculous i know like in my mind like if i think about myself five years ago i think it's crazy i'm saying this now you know but i mean that's the conclusion we end up with i think yeah and i love the way matthew mazingtious describes it's wickenstein's ruler it's like what's met like we've gotten to

the point where money's become so debased it's like what's money met is money actually measuring anything or the the increased prices actually measuring how much the money's being debased like that's yeah that's the predicament we find ourselves in i guess getting into like once you understand that that money really isn't measuring anything prices are actually telling you how much the money is getting debased by and how do you get back to what money should actually be which is a measurement of human productivity and yes work and and i think that's a nice way to tie it in with you know what what is your outlook on the future how do you prepare on the future like how i look at it now is everyone's future is uncertain like literally

like you don't know how much time you have so your time is absolutely finite the energy that you can expend in this time is absolutely finite which is your productivity right like how much can you produce by expending this energy in the time um that you have and so if everyone's future is is uncertain you know this is this is what safety namu says like everyone discounts the future we are all um per definition uncertain about the future so what does everyone try to do you try to lower the uncertainty towards the future but if you use fiat money that's being debased at a realistic rate of like eight nine percent per year that actually heightens your uncertainty towards the future so you are incentivized to spend all this money now i had a set bunny tell

me a great quote he said you have to realize that all the money that you own right now is the most worth the most right now i thought it was mind-blowing like okay so if i wait a day i can already buy less like a teeny tiny bit right but but that is how the how that curve goes and so if you translate that conceptually to okay so if i don't spend it now i'll have less purchasing power in the future which makes me more uncertain about the future because i think i need more units like stacking like the rappers do right that is actually what drives your incentives either doing dumb shit to make make money like stuff that doesn't add value i mean the whole only fans thing or like whatever like just just just that you know even the gig economy like

yeah that's what i was gonna say like even jobs with more dignity like going to your nine to five and then hopping in but i mean dude like like so respect to all the uber eats people like on a on a bike but why aren't there robots that do that again let's go back to the technology right like why don't we have that like why why do we force people to take on a gig that makes them like bike through the snow to deliver some unhealthy soy slop yeah right like that yeah i don't know like so anyway to go back but but that so people are are forced to spend all the money in the now to not think about the future to not prepare for the future to not build towards the future and that is actually why you know we say in bitcoin everything is downstream from the money

if that is the incentive for you to do that today how are you incentivized to deliver actual value or to do something that is very profound or grand or big or or try something crazy right like if you if you really want to innovate you need time and space to figure out what to innovate if it works you probably fail and you have to iterate right or even if you want to i don't know create a grand statue or a cathedral or a gallery or whatever like you need time and space to to figure that out you know and i think fiat money because it heightens the uncertainty towards the future it takes those opportunities or literally the time and space away and does the opportunities away for for people to explore that so instead of being incentivized to be a builder and a risk taker and

an innovator and trying out new things just like really put your your cognitive capacity at at you know max speed basically you're incentivized to do dumb shit buy dumb shit eat dumb shit literally and that is i think what is going on and once you understand that with bitcoin because no more than 21 million units will exist it's absolutely finite verifiably scarce and finite like your like your time in this world that that that actually becomes a better measurement for you know this productivity that i think eventually you know i know people think otherwise but like i once listened to a podcast i'll get back to my reasoning but the sidestep i listened to a podcast with nate hagens and aubrey marcus where they talked about energy

and nate hagen says if you look around you you have to realize that everything you see costs energy to create or maintain and then so they didn't even talk about bitcoin but that's when i realized that money is an abstract for that energy like if i expend my energy and time which is my productivity right now for something for you and you give me a reward and i want to hold on to that towards a certain moment in in future time and space to spend that on something that i want whatever that is that also represents expended energy in time basically and so if you then realize that the money that you're using is is leaking energy that's that's that that's the purchasing power that you're losing towards the future but now when we have bitcoin we know that

that's also absolutely finite there will never be more than 21 million and that that is actually a far better measurement for that productivity or for that energy however you want to call it then then the field then fiat money and so that's why in bitcoin we obviously say one bitcoin is one one bitcoin that's the whole point like if i earn one bitcoin right now i know that it is one bitcoin in the future but it will probably buy me more because more and more people will realize that this is not a leaky bucket or a melting ice cube or whatever the illustration is you want to use as compared to to fiat money and so what i really love is there's a this picture of like an orange uh little pyramid that is bitcoin and on top of that there's an inverted green

pyramid like on top of it which is like all the all the money in the world or you know all the money that is stored in other things than bitcoin and like that green inverted pyramid can grow to infinity basically like we see scott besant say but this little orange pyramid is gonna stay the same and so all the productivity that could be rewarded eventually you know all the human productivity will be rewarded by this this orange pyramid that will never grow in size and eventually each unit so each bitcoin or fractions of bitcoin will represent more productivity i.e buy you more in the future and i think for me that is kind of like the case for bitcoin because if i save the economic energy that are earned today in these bitcoin units and i save them

towards future time and space i actually create more time and space for myself to figure out what can i do here like what am i here to do what is the value that i can add to this world and i will actually have the time and space to try that out and even fail and then try something new and for me that is actually what makes me not be a nihilistic person towards the future but actually be very optimistic because i know that i can try stuff which for me for my personality has been very freeing for for my mind you know i feel like i'm mentally retired like i can i can yeah really look to the future with with a lot of positivity and enthusiasm and i hope i make it towards the future right like that is still uncertain but creating or having a bit more control about

creating this time and space to explore like how can i add value to this world how can i be productive i i think is is really great and i'm very grateful that i've been able to do that with bitcoin yeah same i mean this this whole business wouldn't exist if i love that bitcoin not only allows you to store the time you've already spent an asset that will respect that work that you put in but it actually buys you time in the future and again the i've told the story before but it is repeating like the 18 months leading up to the beginning of the newsletter i was unemployed and i married my wife in the middle of that 18 months or actually towards the tail end of it and i was able to take the time i was i was trying to get jobs over the course of that

one and a half year period but really was being very selective and i had the ability to be selective because i had saved bitcoin in college and my first couple jobs out of college and i bought myself time to sit there and think and that's one thing i do every once in a while i was very detailed i was keeping very detailed journals just of my thoughts and particularly around bitcoin and what i wanted to do and i had the time and space i wasn't living extravagantly um was definitely living on a shoestring budget and thank god my wife she had a job and um but i was i was able to sort of subsist and live and think and really took a year and a half off unintended but was not like crazy stressed at any point in time because i had savings to dig into

uh and i think that year and a half really set me up to go down this path of creating this media business getting ingratiated with um the the industry um eventually joining 1031 and bitcoin bought me that time just by saving it when i was in college and right out of college i have a similar experience and i mean man how inviting is that if if you know just just that story who wouldn't want to do that how many people of our age are slaving away in some corporate job that they absolutely hate you know i yeah i don't know i think you made the case perfectly but i have a similar experience like this is what you want right and i would also say this is what you need like who has it figured out like from from my high school graduation class

there were there are maybe two people that were like oh well i know i want to be a veterinarian and then the other one wanted to be a pilot or something well that's what they did and the rest switched studies switch jobs whatever like you don't have it figured out when you're done with college or even when you're done with with um or sorry with high school or even when you're done with college or university like that that's the whole point the whole point is that growing up is figuring out who you are and what you can do and you know if you're stuck and you don't have that you know i think bitcoin is the perfect way to actually create that time and space to to allow yourself to invite yourself to to figure that out and i mean i think it's the same with you

it's brought a lot of quality to my life like i feel like i live in the now like very conscious like i i am not worried about the future more than just the uncertainty of uh yeah dying without knowing you know like that but i feel like it's more the natural state of uncertainty around the future rather than the manufactured state of uncertainty around the future that that field money brings yeah no one one um quote that always stuck with me i had a really good english teacher uh in high school and i'm sure not the only one many people read david throw but the mass of men need lies of quiet desperation it's always been in the back of my head like how do i avoid being one of the mass one of the masses leading one of those lives of quiet desperation and and

bitcoin is certainly a tool that can get you out of that that rat race because that quiet couldn't agree more a quiet desperation yeah uh i think particularly today stems from the being forced on the hamster wheel of trying to keep up with fiat money i think i have a tweet that says something like like fiat let or sorry bitcoin lets you get out of the rat race and start walking your own path right like it's becoming more sovereign autonomous conscious like you can make the decision to have any pace you want in any direction that that you want and it's because you are protecting yourself with bitcoin um from the from the with your rules you know from the rulers of this other

money that actually force you to stay in a race that you probably don't even understand you know and um yeah i think that's why we both do what we do don't you think like this is more people should notice don't you think i do yeah what are your what are your thoughts what are you saying do you think more people are coming around to this like how do you think things progress from this point in time specifically um i've been thinking a lot about i i i think there's a huge and i don't think that's random but i think there's a huge convergence of bitcoin and ai you know so if if we talk about like like we talked about productivity um i think the internet That was democratization of knowledge.

And I think AI is the democratization of doing something with that knowledge, so of productivity, basically. And so if anyone can build anything and any autonomous agent or any robot can copy any other autonomous agent or robot, you know, I mean, I can take a picture of this bottle now and put it in AI and it will reverse engineer a 3D render. and i put it in some machine and like tomorrow i have this bottle but made by myself you know and i i think that is an ever increasing development that is just not going to to stop and so i think

there's a few things that you can think about there like how are you going to measure those exponential technological gains which are increasingly deflationary are you going to measure those with inflationary money i think you would offset a lot of uh wins there like a lot of um progression there so i think bitcoin is the measurement for value for increased productivity especially in an ai age but also in the ai age like i mean last week i've been down a deep deep rabbit hole you know spending until like 4 a.m just just fucking around with ai and cursor and trying to build stuff and i'm just realizing so many jobs like strict knowledge and kind of like logic type jobs uh they are dead you know those functions are are are are dead

those rules are dead and i think that will be a big shock eventually for the people that that have these roles but i think the the thing i'm trying to say more is like you need to be aware of that like this is where it's going so how do you protect yourself in an age of ai where you are going to be forced to take time and space to figure out how am i going to function in in an age of ai and yeah well as as we just talked about i think bitcoin is the perfect way to do that you just shared your example as well and so i think that is how people can protect themselves from that incoming productivity shock layoff shock disappearance of jobs shock i would say you know like it's it's going to be agents and ai and robots everywhere and maybe that's even

another argument as to why you know millennials should focus on bitcoin like if you think you're going to work for the next 30 years of your life like think again it's think again it's astonishing what's that i think we're falling down similar rabbit holes i was up till 2 a.m last night working on it it's uh logan don't worry you're keeping your job but um yeah it's insane what the robot is going to be called logan i think and and most people are completely i mean i think they're aware that there's something happening but i'm curious i would be curious to know how many people have actually touched this stuff and actually gotten past the surface layer of just prompting chat gbt and i'm yeah and try to i'm still working on something but you know if you

listen to the you know the guys from silicon valley they say like we're going to see 100 years of innovation in in like 10 years that i don't even know how to judge that but it sounds insane in general like that's just that's that's a that's a big thing but if you just think about the concept of okay so if if ai is like the enablement or like productivity layer of all the information that ever existed and ideas in general like new ideas are just combinations of information is a combination of information and assumptions right and that is what generally makes up an entrepreneurial idea or just an idea in general but if the ai has access to all the information then you could say that any idea is it already exists basically so once you have an

idea and you think it's unique and no one is is doing it yet once you put it out in the world the the the concept the in the information that makes up the idea is is also out there and then it'll be copied that's kind of how i view it so on one side i do think this will increasingly lead to abundance in a sense that any technology will be available to anyone you know even the llm models that are private now in a sense that you have to pay for them will be public in five years and accessible to anyone right so that that's kind of how i view it like everyone will eventually have the opportunity that you know we are lucky enough to have now because we can pay 20 bucks a month to have chat gpt or whatever whatever tool

so like what is ip like what are ideas you know like that just just just going down that kind of like line of thinking i'm just thinking like that you can start something but it's going to be dead in a year you know in a sense that everyone will be able to use the same technology and someone open sourced it and then you know um it's just it's just copied everywhere so i think that's where it's it's going and so to either figure out how to make money or provide for your life i think you have to go on a more inward journey and and you need space and time for that to yeah just figure out like what am i here to do like what do i like to do what am i good at like what what types of skills do i have and stuff like that and so i i think why ai and bitcoin

are converging is because i think ai will force more people into uh after an initial shock into a stage where they have to figure out like okay what what am i what am i going to do for the rest of my working life you know if that is even a thing you know so i think it's really it's difficult to to think about that but i have an um so i i went down you know i went down the rabbit hole like last last week last two days i think i've slept like five ish six hours just up at night trying stuff because i had i had an idea for so so to illustrate like how fast things can go like i am not a cyber security expert i don't have a computer programming background like none of that but like i'm a i'm a digital product like i'm a product guy so i can think in in products and

flows and use cases and stuff like that and so i had an idea for like a winzip type app but where you secure your files with with bitcoin i've had that idea for longer but i don't know why but i i saw a video about ai and all this stuff that i just mentioned and i was like yeah how do you protect digital secrets in an age of ai and and you know then that idea came back and i just started messing around with um with ai and just asking questions and challenging and just going through that anyway after like five hours i realized that i was building a file encrypting protocol on top of bitcoin and once i got a little bit deeper into that it started telling me like oh this is actually pretty profound like this doesn't exist and then

I went on and on and like, I put it on Twitter and people called me gullible because the AI is very nice to me, et cetera. But I kept on just working and challenging and, you know, trying to be rational and figuring it out. Like I want to make it very functional. And now I'm at a point after 12 hours with working with AI, I don't even know where it says like, if the protocol that you came up with that doesn't exist in the world if that works at scale you you have um like a top 10 cyber security invention and i'm like really you know i'm looking at that and i'm like really is this like am i doing this you know but honestly i think it's working i'm almost done but imagine that like even if i even if it works or not but just imagine that someone is going to make

technological discoveries in a time that is just so far away or how do you say is is so much less than what people are doing now right like just cryptographic research or whatever just research that took years is now able to be done in hours or in in weeks you know and i think we're going to see examples of that where just people that are totally not connected to a certain field just by their way of thinking are going to make really big discoveries and i think that is only going to accelerate so that's a that was a very long answer but i think the word is accelerate like it's just going faster and faster and faster and that's why it's a problem for you especially as a millennial to figure out okay what do i do in that age like how do i protect my wealth in that

age how do i prepare for for that age and well i i think the answer is bitcoin in my opinion but um it's coming at us at an increasingly uh faster speed and that combined with the fact that fiat money is being debased at an increasingly faster speed like those two things are an insane signal for you to study bitcoin i think yeah agreed it's it's aligned with the newsletter i sent out this morning which is like the combination of ai in bitcoin is going to be the strongest combined force of leverage over the next decade like if you're building these tools you're putting them out there and you're able to monetize them you should be cycling any profits you have into bitcoin to compound the productivity gains that

you're providing with tools built by ai or ai tools that are the the output of what you build and then you're funneling that into bitcoin and you're riding the adoption wave as it's happening as these governments are printing as more people are waking up yes to bitcoin like the compounding factors of combining ai to build provide the the market with a product that you can hopefully monetize and then shoveling that into bitcoin is probably the smartest play you can make right now but then that to your point like does ip even exist is it going to be replicable is there a small window of time where you can actually monetize this who well who knows yeah i i it's interesting right like on one side that sounds like an opportunity and on the other side it

sounds like a necessity like those are the things you should actually be doing today like figuring out like how am i going to have an edge with with ai but i do think that the window for new ideas or new companies unless they're like extremely profound companies are not going to exist for a long time because it's just all going to be copied and to give an example right so i'm i'm working on this protocol and i think i think it could actually be a discovery and so i decided okay i'm going to feed certain elements of what i'm building but not telling everything just just you know the abstract in the beginning and just maybe 20 sentences i'm going to feed that to deep seek

that has no history of me you know working on this idea whatever and i said something like you know someone i know is working on a paper and he sent me this preview what do you think it is and dude it was like 85 right in the one shot like the first reply it just reversed engineered almost the entire concept already and that really shocked me i was like wow that's that that is it's insane but no context nothing right and yeah again this is the worst that ai will be ever today you know tomorrow it's already better so if if that is the case like yeah what is an idea like what is it what what even is that you know is it yeah just ip is gone i think it's fun huh yeah then you get into like the whole singularity like if you

or agi asi are we creating the optimistic yeah the optimistic part of me hopes we'll get there because i i do think that could like bring in like a new renaissance right like so if there's real abundance and there's like base layer comfort or you know stuff is taken care of in our lives just the basic needs in a in a quality degree yeah like what do you do with your time and space you know i think people are either going inward they're going to be more spiritual and be like okay what what is this who am i what am i what is this meat suit etc like why am i here and i think people will go outward you know that that's what i think also about like all the ancient civilizations they always looked at the stars right and for me or just like the

grandness that that we live in and that sounds very logical to me like if you if you came from being a hunter-gatherer like surviving to having a little surplus time my rational mind goes to the first question would probably be like they look up at the sky and be like what the fuck is going on here like what what is this like you know why does the sun go up and go down and then like the leaves grow and then they fall off and then there's snow and then there's sun again like what what is that you know so i feel that if we really go to a place of singularity um where the technology basically takes care of us and i know that's a very positive outlook then that is where we can get like i i love that idea but on the other side i i listened to a podcast it's on a diary of a ceo

i think it went live yesterday or the day before and it's like a like a group conversation about ai and i don't know if it's eric weinstein who says like do you know that i can like unleash an agent today that's going to stalk marty bent for the rest of his life you can do that today literally and it's just gonna go out there and figure out who you are where you are what you like what it's gonna it's gonna ruin you you know like like you can do that today is this i don't know why well they said it on that podcast but like you can do that today which is insane it's insane like that's that's a very bad use case right so i think there's a very thin line between using ai and accepting it towards like a singularity type point in a

very positive way but also just like the total destruction like i i'm not i'm not i i don't i don't know what the answer is but i think like those those two sides are very clear like they are both very clear but very tangible like you can do yeah it's wild very scary and i think it's scary because we are using it but we really don't understand it so there's there's even far fewer people that actually understand like how does the ai like how does that work yeah and because it's changing at such a pace like even when you think you understand it it's like oh here's another advancement you've got to completely reorient your your understanding of this now yeah so i think a lot of minds will be blown i think it's a shock it's going to be a weird very weird period but i

do think that yeah again like anchor to bitcoin i think will be fine um yeah but i wonder about the rest of the world so i don't know if that's a positive note to come to a conclusion on this conversation but i mean it's i think it's realistic and maybe that ties back to what we talked about you know what about getting into bitcoin you have to be realistic about what is happening in the world and you have to act upon that or else someone else will and that means that you are not an actor but you are a subject in that sense yeah this is not the time to stick your head in the sand and say i'm just gonna hope for the best and not pay attention no no especially it's like somebody with young kids and it's like again like this story i was

telling earlier like we're riding in the car and they're pointing out waymo so i'm like holy shit and it's like it's crazy to me that they're just they have this like natural attraction to the waymo specifically and they're like calling them out it's like it's like my caller id story like remember when we got caller id i think my oldest at least he's at the point where we'll have long term memories and we'll remember a time before waymo and after waymo and i think lav just projecting 15 years forward into his life like he'll laugh about like oh i remember when i thought way modes were cool and if yeah which is going to be the motorola razor for them or something yeah exactly think about that wow that's good yeah but even that right like for

your children again like like a millennial topic right if you have young children every everything and i got this from a recent uh tim ferris and chris sucka conversation they talk about also ai in the future and you know tim ferris asks chris sucka like would you send your kids to law school or or notary school or finance school and he's like fuck no like that's all dead and tim is like okay you know he's like no you gotta like whatever you think education is if you have young children just throw that out the window like education career shit like that is is done so if you have children that that are just like early age or like in the middle of of uh primary school like anything about their adult adulthood that you thought

about before it's just like you can just throw that away yeah that was funny i was having a this exact discussion with my wife in the car this morning we went on a walk around the lake and went to get coffee on the ride to coffee she was like ah i wonder if we're moving back to philadelphia she's like i wonder if our oldest will come back down to ut i'm like honey like i know if like college is going to exist and exist that it does today yeah like by the time he's in college she's like i don't know maybe it'll be like a luxury good i was like i don't even know about that like no because like why would why would a human like a flawed human why would they teach you it's the same like why would a flawed human create your money dictate your money it's

the same principle thinking in my in my mind right like why if i know something better exists something way more um knowledgeable and and all these things like why why would i go for the other option you know it's just um eventually i think that's a rational decision but like how to handle that also for us as the parents like how do we handle that i don't know that's maybe too much for now but i think that is that is i think that's going to ask a lot of us but again you need time and space to figure that out right so again like for me i don't know maybe that sounds boring but this is a bitcoin podcast like that ties back to bitcoin right like the time and space you need to fucking prep for the future and and secure yourself in the future is is going

to be immense and if you don't um prepare for that then i mean yeah i'm not preparing in any other way so i don't know what would happen i cannot imagine you prepare in another way yeah i think perhaps that's the road to serve them and then and cbdc's and stuff like that like the government will take care of you maybe it's going to be a dichotomy like that and we'll be sitting in the citadel and overlooking it you know i don't know i don't know i don't know it's it's uh i think it's very unpredictable i like you know talking about it but i i think it's just very very unpredictable so i what works for me is just tying it back to today like what can i do today and that's just fucking around just trying this out learning

about it like how does this work how can i you know challenge my mind or train my mind or whatever to like work with this then obviously bitcoin and then yeah just uh yeah focus on the kids basically i just you know figure it out for them as well help them guide into i mean even now like i don't know how old your kids are but like what they're learning before 10 is going to be like dead when they're 20 you know what i mean like their context of the world is is is old yeah yeah when they're 20 right like it's non-existent it's going to be not like it's not going to be the thing that they think the world is that's not what it's going to be no so yeah no and i um i think about this a lot you have to lean in so you have to test the tools you have

to yes yes understand what's happening touch feel see and then the going down like painting an optimistic maybe ending on an optimistic no like i'm i'd like to believe that since ai can do all this incredibly productive stuff and starting in the digital world sort of encapsulated there i do think it's coming to the physical world too but really shifting the focus of human work and productivity from bits back to atoms like building beautiful things in the physical world and focusing on like going back to like leisure activity like maybe we get to a point where humans have the ability to focus on their health their bodies their maybe sports are the thing of the future that that really are the sports and competition are sort of the the things that

persist throughout time as as ai evolves because it's one of the sort of thing that is truly human like right like you're exerting physical energy to accomplish a goal as a team like obviously there'll be drone races and all that stuff but i do think humans like sports yeah i don't know i'm like rambling now but like this i've always had the intuition that maybe we can shift a focus back to the physical world and focus on interpersonal connection yeah well it's interesting because that was kind of the conclusion also with with tim ferris and chris sucka they were like okay but what should you focus on or if you would start a company now like what should you focus on and they were so i think we are in the right place but they were like

yeah it's like your your personal communication your your connections you know the human connections putting people together or having conversations that help people think you know they were really pushing on like the community part and i would agree with that and and with what you said like i think that would be the most positive outcome and i think in that sense or maybe also the needed outcome you know if if we uh if we look at fiat money and the zero-sum game that that we talked about before i think this this could potentially help us be more uh cooperative and and hopefully create more like mutually beneficial systems and and and communities and uh yeah really use technology actually to help us thrive as something that

has happened to a degree but we we could be way further along as we talked about so maybe maybe that is what it will bring us i i certainly hope so yeah yeah if not for me then for the kids yeah we'll find out we'll find out is that positive enough i think so i hope so now i'm like now i'm like envisioning like a decade from now i'm like me trying to convince my boys to not get chipped and like that don't do that we're part machine now it's like uh i'm not gonna be the luddite millennial like don't do that it's uh oh my god we're gonna be the boomers in something probably i mean yes gen z we already are um brand has been fascinating i don't know that's fun there's a fun jam i think i'm uh equally scared and excited about the future i think that's

me too man well thanks for jamming along it's been fun um go check out bitcoin for millennials freaks and i'm excited to see your protocol launch it seems like you're pretty close i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you about it when we hang up okay all right let's hang up i want to hear about it peace love freaks