The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - Scott Wolfe - Engaging the Plebs and the Government | The CBP (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

FRIENDS AND ENEMIESThis week we welcome Scott Wolfe to the show to discuss all things circular bitcoin economies, Bitcoin and it's relationship to governments, his work with the Bitcoin Coalition Canada and much more. From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com⁠Discord:   / discord   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetworkThis show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠www.easydns.com⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

friends and enemies. Welcome back to Canadian Bitcoiners podcast where StreamYard is still giving me trouble when I go live. My name is Joey. You know that already. I'm taking a day off work today to talk to my friend, Scott Wolf. Scott is involved in a couple of things here.

I was going to pop the website, but we'll talk about it. The Bitcoin Coalition of Canada. And he's also involved in some Bitcoin circular economy stuff. Both things that are pretty important and both things that I think I've been critical of in the past, but having talked to Scott and met him last year at the conference, I've come around to, I think, what's closer to the standard sort of mainstream way of

thinking on these things, that there is value in encouraging Bitcoin circular economies in your community, which is an easy place to start. I think for a lot of people, we've seen obviously stuff like the Sats market take off in Alberta, among other places. And then on top of that, engaging with governments. I mean, there's clearly, if you look at the American model here in the last year or so, there's clearly value in engaging with politicians who are willing to talk with you on even ground, on equal footing, and do so in good faith. So we're going to talk about all those things today, the Canadian angle, obviously, where Scott's doing his work, among other things. But first and foremost, as you guys know, we are sponsored by two great companies. EasyDNS is the first. Mark and Team, the best place for you to start a website. You can do a number of things over there, okay? Mark is a friendly

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this in the intro but you also are um less than enthusiastic about the career arc of russell westbrook which i find offensive and uh maybe we could talk about that too but you know first and foremost uh what's going on how the heck are you i'm all right brother how you doing i'm i'm uh i'm honored that you took a day off of work to hang with me. I'm happy to do it, man. I'm happy to do it. I've done it before. And no hard feelings. We were telling people on the show on Monday you were going to come to the studio. But because of the snow, we had Ali and Brad last Thursday booked for here.

They couldn't make it. Way too long a drive from London. And now you guys in Toronto, we just talked about this on the show on Monday night. It's a nightmare with the snow. And so you guys are paying the highest property taxes on the planet and can't get dug out for weeks. You're stuck in your house looking at each other in the mirror, right? You and your wife and your kids, whatever.

So, you know, it's all good. I do appreciate coming on. Maybe the best place to start, since you will be unfamiliar to some of the viewers and listeners. Who are you? I mean, you're on Twitter, obviously. You've been in the bitcoin space a while but i think a lot of people you're operating in a way that not many people do which is to say i can go on your feed and not get bombarded with like dumb pepe memes but rather quality content that requires more than seven seconds of attention some of the bitcoin people don't love that but uh this would be a good time

for you to explain to them maybe why they should and who you are. Yeah, sure. So Scott, based in Toronto, playing a couple of roles in the global Bitcoin ecosystem. The one most immediately pertinent here to listeners and our conversation today is sort of as the inaugural executive director of the Bitcoin Coalition of Canada, which is an incorporated not-for-profit organization that has the goal of advancing education and adoption of Bitcoin, focus on grassroots adoption, but also to provide content for journalists and policymakers at all levels. I spend a bit of my time doing that. Another bit of my time is on the global level as a coordinator of a sort of upstart global organization called the Federation of Bitcoin Circular Economies. And the goal of that organization is really to connect and support local community projects around the world that are embedding Bitcoin within the community as a tool for community development,

peer-to-peer exchange, and really doing all those things for the community that traditional financial systems and governments and global donor agencies have not been able to do. So, you know, those are, those are the two roles. And I know we will talk about both of them. In terms of my background. So I spent about 20 years in global health and development my educations in political science international relations um spent about 20 years a couple of those with a large global ngo um which was a really informative experience in terms of the good bad and ugly of you know, UN agencies and, you know, big multilateral billion, million and billion dollar, you know, projects to save the world. And then, you know, the lion's share of my time

in health and community development was more on the ground with community health centers. So working with local community-based organizations across Canada and around the world that I still believe in really strongly are local agencies that are trying to cut through all of the silos in government and public programs that are trying to provide remedial services to people, to kind of bring those into single local hubs where you can actually get to the root of people's health and social distress and provide services in an efficient, cost-effective way. So I ran two associations, the Canadian Association of Community Health Centers, and then our International Federation,

connecting those community health centers, you know, to try to provide, you know, effective community-based health and social services. And I'm happy to talk more about those. About a year and a half ago, as part of my, and I actually wouldn't mind talking about my Bitcoin journey, my orange pill journey, because I think it touches on or gets at some of the messaging

I'd like to get across to Bitcoiners about reaching out to people that are pre-coiners or no-coiners. But about 18 months ago, when it really... Sorry, back up. About two and a half years ago, I would say is when it really... The light bulb went off that Bitcoin bitcoin is more than you know just a savings technology that that it's actually a a tool to what i you know believe is accomplish a lot of the things that i've been trying to do through community health and and and development services um and and we talk about

you know working upstream um to try to tackle sort tackle what we call social determinants of health. Love that term. What I realized as I started to learn about money and our broken money and the problems that Bitcoin helped solve was that for 20 years, while I thought I'd been working upstream, it was still downstream. Right. And so made the decision about 18 months ago that I needed to, you know, move laterally from that work that I was doing in community health and development to get at, you know, that upstream problem of the broken money and try to figure out how I, you know, can contribute to, you know, advancing Bitcoin adoption. Because ultimately I think it's where we're going to be able to

solve a lot of the problems that we dedicate our public and charity dollars to, right? Like if we move further upstream to try to fix the money, we're going to be able to disintermediate a lot of the structures that contribute to those downstream problems of inadequate housing, homelessness, social isolation, food insecurity, et cetera, et cetera. So there we are. I made that move laterally and I've been trying to make contributions to the Bitcoin world in large measure because I see them as a continuation of the work that I used to do in community health and services. It's just that, as I tell my colleagues, I packed up my tent and I've moved further upstream. I like that explanation. I didn't know you worked in community health. I probably should have known that, but I'll note that I've been on the board of directors for an agency here in Hamilton wayside house for,

I don't know, 11 or 12 years. And I I've seen some of the struggles with not only the, you know, the sort of side effects I would argue of some of the broken money issues we have stuff like addiction, isolation, things of this nature,

but man, the, the, the idea that, the idea that people are waiting for the province or the Fed to come down from the heavens and save them with some catch-all program that's going to help with addiction, going to help with these, like you said, improving the social determinants of health. It's just not the case. Not because there's not good people working at those levels. There are, but they're really bogged down in a way that community providers are

not in bureaucracy and funding and all these different, you know, red tape and cutting ribbons and all sorts of things like that. So I, you know, I do want to talk a bit about that. It's a good idea. Maybe we should, we should start there. You know, where are you finding the most success in your current endeavors at these sorts of, let's say three levels, right? I mean, when it comes to the Bitcoin coalition, especially, you're talking to federal government. You guys just released a paper, I think about a month and a half ago, sort of your recommendations as far as Bitcoin for the Fed. And then when it comes to the province and the community levels, maybe as well with the coalition,

but then with the circular economies, I mean, where are you seeing the most success and sort of the most difficulty? Because as I said in the intro, and I told you this when we met, one of the reasons I was critical in the past is because it seems to me like there's not a willingness for governments to engage on equal footing with Bitcoiners and specifically people who, you know, I think by their own admission, like I want Bitcoin to succeed because I think it's a good tool, but also because I have a bag. And I think governments view this as sort of a jive or a dog that doesn't hunt. And I'd be curious, when you talk to governments, do you see that resistance? Where do you see the resistance?

Where do you see the opportunities for both of these things that you're interested in now? Yeah. So to be frank, we haven't had conversations with government yet, to be honest. So the Bitcoin coalition is still embryonic. We had about a year worth of back and forth among a lot of Canadian Bitcoiners dating back about two years ago. But the need for something like a Bitcoin coalition of Canada. We saw the work that was being done in the US by Bitcoin Policy Institute and some other upstart organizations in other places, the Bitcoin Policy UK, which has now been established

in some other places. Even Bitcoin Magazine in the States is doing a lot of this sort of work. Yeah. And T's work. Yeah. And Dennis Porter's work with yeah you know satoshi action fund and whatnot and so um you know lots of conversations about getting this going and and it took about a year to finally um and you know to his to his credit really brad brad mills you

know just sort of say like let's just you know um um get off the proverbial pot um you know, just sort of say, like, let's just, you know, get off the proverbial pot. You know, Brad Mills is the meme of the man lying next to bed and his wife, right? And his wife, you know, what's he thinking about? It's not, I tell you, it's, I'll, I guarantee it's never other women. It's always something. Yeah. Brad, Brad, Brad, Brad's a good dude. Brad's a, Brad's a really good dude. And, and, and so, you know,. And so, you know, he brought me in saying, like, look, you've worked with not-for-profit organizations before. You know, you know, sort of the mechanics of this. Would you be involved? I'll help support it to get going.

And so we spent a little bit of time to so sorry to bore everyone with sort of the mechanics of it, but it's just important to know in terms of people setting expectations and hopefully for us to begin to build buy-in, that there is a grand vision, but it takes time to bootstrap something. So we spent a little bit of time about a year and a half ago getting the bylaws written for this organization, incorporating just all that kind of stuff you need to do to have a real organization and had that all effective as of January 3rd, 2024 you know we had an actual organization as a as a jan 3rd 2024 and from that point um you know with with no funding um it's a question of like okay how do we walk this forward uh and so um began with you know trying to assemble people to get involved um to dedicate some time to, you know, help provide some ideas for

the work of the organization and, and, and so forth. And I believed firmly that, that in order to actually, all good? Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I thought you, maybe I had an audio issue or something. In order for us to be ultimately effective you know at doing advocacy you need a you need you need an army on the ground right you need to get coordinated you need to get organized because um you know even the best policy papers positions and sitting um you know across from party leaders in Ottawa won't amount to anything if it's not backed up on the ground. They're not hearing messages

from their fellow MPs at the constituency level. And if it's not made abundantly clear to them that there's a consequence to ignoring messages that you're bringing forth. And so we started with trying to just kind of bring some coherence to the tapestry of Bitcoin education efforts that are happening, local meetups, et cetera, to start with building that grassroots movement, bring a little bit of coordination to it.

And at the same time, trying to continue to put up the scaffolding for this organization, which has been incredibly challenging. So a good part of last year was spent, you know, working with a committee that we've pulled together of local Bitcoin meetup leaders, people doing educational initiatives, etc. To talk strategy, to connect them, to build a bit of an actual coalition on the ground. I think we've had some success with that, connecting people across the country. It might not be evident to the average Bitcoiner, but there is some of that work that

went on or that has been going on to connect people and help local meetups support each other, strategize about how to increase their numbers and so forth. The other part, very frustrating part has been, A, trying to get banked, which has been next to impossible. We needed to get banked so that we could transact as an organization. We're 0 for 5 with banks. It's unbelievable. That is just still unbelievable to me. Yeah, absolutely.

We have thankfully identified a bank based in Alberta, Credit Union, that has been fantastic so far in terms of our engagement and is willing to bank us. The rub is that we need to reincorporate in Alberta. So when we hit that point, I put it on pause late last year. Because simultaneous to that, it was becoming clear that there was movement in the US around Bitcoin adoption, the strategic reserves gaining traction around the world and increasing indication that government was going to collapse in Canada. We'd be heading into a federal election,

and we had to seize the moment. Totally. And so it's at that point that engaged with the committee that we have of local educators meet up uh um meet up meet up needs and and some folks with a policy background to develop a policy paper that you saw um which i put that link in the chat by the way for people who are listening watching uh i can see there's a bunch of you on twitter you won't see that go to youtube and look at the link it's on the BCC website as well. Great.

Thank you for, thanks for sharing that. Which was, you know, I was basically saying, you know, it's time to actually just get some messaging out there and have a platform on which to, to engage policymakers at different levels,

starting with the federal level. We are the Bitcoin coalition of Canada. So the primary, you know, you know, audience for, for messaging and policy engagement is at the federal level. But hopefully that'll diffuse down to provincial and municipal levels. And we're trying to share that messaging with them about the value of Bitcoin to the provinces and municipalities. And it may appear that, you know, not a lot has happened.

But, you know, with a small organization that, like, look, basically running on a zero budget at this point, you know, we've done, you know, what we can to, you know, start to put some pieces in place so that when it got time to have a policy paper out there and some actual asks for policymakers that, you know, we'd have something of a network on the ground that we could tap into to then sort of activate. And so now that we've put out those federal recommendations and have followed up with messaging to the executives of all of the federal political parties, well, I shouldn't say all of them. We haven't reached out to the yogic flyers and those that are really on the peripheries.

But to say that we're here, these are our messages and we're going to be engaging you not only at a central party level in the upcoming federal election, but that we have a network on the ground that is going to be bringing questions to candidates on the ground.

We want to hear your positions on these. It's now time over the next couple of months to, you know, get some tools out to Bitcoiners across Canada so that folks on the ground in, you know, in the Paz and Kelowna and Ottawa and Halifax and everywhere across the country can actually, you know, bring some questions to their candidates during the upcoming federal election and hopefully cause a little bit of a buzz

when it comes to Bitcoin. And yeah, let me pause there. Let me pause. Let me see if you have any questions about that. Sure. So that was great. Scott, when I do the show, I encourage our guests to roll downhill because i would rather sit here and just drink milk and let people actually hear from someone who's not me or len during the show

that was great so there's a lot of stuff to pull on there maybe let's go back a bit to the policy paper and the boots on the ground stuff so that policy paper was released i know like i said i think about a month and a half ago yeah and yeah so you know that i i really i think the policy paper is very good i should say that so kudos to you guys and it's well put together i think those those recommendations by the way they're they're pretty easy it's like to me and i think most bitcoiners seems like low-hanging fruit right like you would obviously want to start a stash of bitcoin 100 000 is not that many we have a commodity here that we could sell. We have actually a few commodities we could sell,

but one key one, I would argue, obviously the oil and gas from Alberta. And when I look at that policy paper, what I see are things that already seem to be not out of date, but we could shoot higher than that because of what's going on in the United States. And so we have, I think, a lucky sort of cocktail here where it's clear the Trump administration, as pro-crypto as they may be, is pro-Bitcoin as well. Super.

So we'll take that win. to talk about not only using seized Bitcoin as a reserve asset for the US treasury, but also potentially buying Bitcoin down the road or using Bitcoin the same way they use gold. These things have all been discussed. Guys like David Sachs, he's a very public guy. He's been doing a podcast for the better part of five years and has said a lot of things about Bitcoin on Twitter and on that podcast. And as I mentioned earlier, probably has a bag. And we also now have this, I think, spirit of competition, save for the other night and embarrassing showing on the ice by the red and white against red, white and blue. The spirit of competition with the United States now, where maybe there's a possibility we could unite a group of people that would otherwise not be super friendly to Bitcoin. I'm talking

specifically about federal politicians and say, look, the US is doing this. We need to not only do it better, but we have to do it first. And by the way, there's a ton of Canadians here that have not only influence, but capital to help you do it and help you win if you run on this platform. That's not a question per se,

but it's a little bit of a framing to what I want you to talk about next. The policy proposals. So for people who are looking at the document, on the second page, there's basically a summary of the four policy positions. One is implemented to minimize tax. There's the elimination of cap gains for Bitcoin held more than a year. Provide incentive support and remove regulatory red tape to scale up mining. I love that.

It's not talked about enough. And obviously establish an SBR for Canada. So let's go through them. Maybe in a way that you think is best. We don't have to do it point by point. But give me the sort of framing on why you guys chose these when you chose them and whether or not you think these are too easy now, not easy enough now. Where do you find yourself now as someone looking at these policy positions, given what's happened in the States over the last two or three months? Yeah, I mean, we crafted the recommendations sort of cognizant of what was brewing in the U.S. This was immediately after the recent election in the U.S. that we got going with the policy paper.

It was clear that there was momentum. But coincidental to that, there's also momentum in other jurisdictions. There was already indication in the Czech Republic, for instance, that they were going to eliminate cap gains on Bitcoin held for three years or longer. You know, there was, you know, continued policy in Germany and other jurisdictions related to that. And I think it's sort of this, they were intended to capture the spirit of moving from from Bitcoin as this thing or tool in the shadows that individuals are sort of coyly holding on to and trying to do jurisdictional arbitrage

to figure out how to fly under the radar and take advantage of their stacks, et cetera, to fly under the radar and, and, you know, take advantage of their stacks, et cetera, to like walking out into the light to say like, no, this is a legitimate technology, a legitimate tool for savings. And, you know, as indicated right there in the white paper, money, right? And this has now received, you know, wide scale institutional endorsement and adoption. It's being, you know, recognized and used that, you know, at a state level as money in multiple jurisdictions, etc. Like we, you know, should no longer be hiding away from that as Bitcoiners. We need to like to own that and walk into, um, or lean into the challenge of getting policymakers in Canada to, to, to recognize that. Um, and in terms of the, the,

the recommendations, I, I, I want to make, you know, really clear that the order of those recommendations, I think, speaks to a priority as well. Okay. While we felt that having a recommendation related to strategic Bitcoin reserves is important and timely, you'll note that it's the last of the recommendations. And I think to speak to the probably zeitgeist among Bitcoiners, is really that there's a tension among Bitcoiners as to what we want in terms of the involvement of the state. Do we actually want the state to hold Bitcoin or do we want to accelerate, right? Disintermediate the state and either move to some future state of anarcho-capitalism

or basic state. And that's going to continue among Bitcoiners. There's going to be a spectrum of people there. But fundamentally, I think what we can all agree on is that, you know, as Bitcoiners, what we want to do is make sure that to the extent possible, this is and remains as much as possible a grassroots movement. Right. And so the focus is really on policy that will support and accelerate adoption and use of Bitcoin by individuals, families, small businesses, community groups, etc. So trying to reduce those barriers and make Canada more hospitable jurisdiction,

you know, to be a Bitcoiner. And so, you know, eliminating, well, not, sorry, not eliminating cap gains altogether, but having an initial de minimis exemption so that you're not, you know, hit on spending Bitcoin to buy a cup of coffee or a pair of hockey skates or something, I think will help to advance that spirit of Bitcoin being a legitimate medium of exchange. Something that I think a large proportion of Bitcoiners be willing to, you know, tap into. Totally. Even if, you know, there are, you know, those holdouts who say, like, never spend your Bitcoin.

Right. I think that there are a lot who would if, you know, and do the spend and replace bit if, you know, the cap gains tax was not made an issue. And that applies on the day-to-day spend aspect, which is why we led off with the de minimis exemption of $10,000. And then the second being to have cap gains eliminated period on Bitcoin held for three years or longer. We could have outright asked just for the elimination of cap gains. I'm sure those that are a bit more pragmatic among us would agree that that would be a hard sell. But when you have other jurisdictions that have had have implemented something like a minimum hold period, you know, to to not incur cap gains, that we can demonstrate that there is that there's

precedent out there globally, you know, like the Canadian government is not going to turn up its nose at Germany, for instance. And it also enables us to advance the case that Bitcoin as a savings technology can help empower families and encourage savings. So a compliment to something like the TFSA, for instance. And so those two asks, I would say, really are the primary focus because that's what will enable us to continue to make this more of a grassroots movement. And I think ultimately, there's a case to be made that it's probably better to have a distributed network of individuals, families, businesses across Canada that hold and use Bitcoin in terms of the stability and, you know, development of our country, be it as it may, than it is to have, you know, the government itself holding a stack. And so, you know, I think while it's important to argue that, you know, the government should hold reserves, if you're not going to hold gold, you know, hold Bitcoin and, you know, put those towards elimination of debt, debt future investment and infrastructure other you

know projects but like first and foremost we want to stress that you know bitcoin is a tool for the people right and and that with those two primary recommendations you know we can really you know contribute to to rebuilding our country from the grassroots up. Okay. So there's a lot there. The one thing I like, this idea of the de minimis tax, is that it does force some increased velocity of money among Bitcoiners. It's a real issue, right? And you guys, I'm sure, thought about this. You have a great group of people there, people who are not watching live, or even if you guys, I'm sure, thought about this. You have a great group of people there, people who are not watching live. Or even if you are, go to the website and look at who's involved in the BCC.

The thing about the velocity of money in Bitcoin is that there's a huge swath of people. I would argue the people with the most Bitcoin, the people you really have to do the most convincing for a multitude of reasons, chief among them, they actually have the Bitcoin that needs to be spent. These people don't want to spend it. And they don't want to spend it for a couple of reasons. One, because I think there's a case we made that if you're a really OG Bitcoiner, like pre-2015, let's say, there's a level of anonymity with those older stacks

that is just not replicable today. And if you spend, you're cooked. That's number one, which is difficult. And so that's why, by the way, people listening, watching, it's so important that you have this de minimis tax exemption because you don't want to have your stack exposed to a government that is, I think you guys even mentioned this in the paper, growing their debt by $100 million a day or something insane, right? Or 10 million a day, whatever it is. And to have this government looking at your stack and thinking this is a tax receipt in waiting is not palatable for people who are invested in this stuff and have their whole net worth tied

up in it. That's number one. Number two, the reason you need to convince these people is because these are people with the most influence. I look at the Bitcoiners that are prevalent on Twitter, on X, and it is guys like Mills, Pierre Rochard, Levera, these guys who are sort of at different places in terms of their views on spend and replace, on velocity of money, on whether this is savings technology or a means of exchange, things of this nature. And you have to get those guys, I think, aligned a little bit on whether or not this is something that people should be doing in terms of the spend. And without that's minimus tax exemption, it's very difficult. So I applaud you for that.

The other thing I want to talk about a bit is this mining thing. So mining, we talk about mining on the show a lot. Yeah. Not for the reasons that you may think that, you know, when we talk about it, one of the things we say is we can't have corporate mining entities that are the size of Riot, Hut, Marathon for a bunch of reasons. The two big ones obviously are one, they're an attack vector for the network. The things that really make the network valuable in terms of like, you know, the uncensorable or difficult to censor transaction nature. And then also the thing that bothers me is that these guys are constantly for sellers

because they're operating in a world that rewards that behavior and it's bad for the floor price. And that's me talking to my book a little bit. I think you probably agree, but you know, I, I'm curious when you guys talk about the mining aspect, you know, talk to me a bit about why that made it off the list and what it means to actually have true proliferation of mining. You know, that's not on the corporate side. Yeah, no, and I appreciate your comments there. earlier you know coming to bitcoin um and and making that lateral move from community health and development to bitcoin was precisely because i saw the promise of bitcoin as a tool for you

know building a a better fairer society you know and that i mean you can drive a truck through through that statement right because? Because by whose definition, what is a better society, et cetera. But I think to use that adage of the average person, I think the average person feels that we would be better to have a society that is characterized by less disparity in wealth, reduced, you know, reduced income and wealth gap.

And that whether it's through charities, through state activities, et cetera, we should have some mechanisms to, you know, help people who are just catching hell and who you know who who need some support to um you know live a life of with dignity totally right um and and and so that's the that's where i come from i don't come to bitcoin um from the perspective of TradFi, NumberGoUp, et cetera, I really believe in this as a powerful tool for social good. And not just in Canada, globally. And so to pick up on that, the extent to which, you know,

that idea of NumberGoUp dominates to the exclusion almost of other considerations. Bitcoin as money, as a tool to unify us, to build healthier societies. Yeah, of course, within a market-based system. I'm not talking about some communist redistributive you know i just want to make clear vision but like to actually you know achieve some modicum of a liberal you know democracy where you know we can lift all boats and um based on based on sound money. I absolutely agree that like, when it comes to mining, we need to distribute, um, that, and I would love to see mining, you know, take root in, you know, first nations communities in, in Northern Quebec, Northern Manitoba, uh, and,

and, and elsewhere, for instance, to actually, you know, provide the opportunity for true sovereignty and development in ways that, you know, our current, you know, top-down federal... It's so embarrassing. ...neocolonial structure... It's so embarrassing. ...are never going to do. So, yeah, absolutely.

The same way that, you know, you have gridless and, and, and other groups, uh, marathon among them, right. A big, a big one that's mining in, uh, in Ethiopia and, and I think Finland and elsewhere, you know, doing good work. Like I totally agree. We need to descent, decentralized distribute that. And, and I mean, talk about low hanging fruit, you know, to borrow your term from earlier. I mean, our resource abundance, right? The amount of untapped natural resources, hydro in particular, that is just being squandered on a daily basis. If we could get some policymakers to Bhutan,

you know, to actually learn something, you know, just imagine what we could be achieving. You know, to tie in the other piece, you know, and I know you've been banging on the last couple of episodes as I've heard them, you know the the imminent impact of u.s tariffs and the trade war with our partner like come on yeah we just a bit of agency we refuse to do it you're talking about it for the the first nations communities for a country like butan you know like like these guys they are they are in this boat where they realize the agency has been taken from them over the years.

It's been completely eroded, right? Whether it's waiting for handouts from the federal government here. And, you know, I cannot imagine the anger in a First Nations community where you don't have running water, but you get to see the prime minister talk about, we're going to lower the flag for six months. Like that's not a win. That's not a win for anyone who cares about real life. And when you talk about that community, you talk about Putan, talk about even El Salvador, Scott,

like these countries looked at their chessboard and thought, I am against the wall here. I have to make a move to get agency back for my country, my people and generations to come. How am I going to do it move to get agency back for my country, my people, and generations to come. How am I going to do it? They see Bitcoin. And when I ask myself, why doesn't Quebec think about the hydro? Why doesn't Alberta? Although to Alberta's credit, I think they are starting to think about this in a way that maybe they weren't before. They're not seeing the big picture because they don't realize that their agency is being eroded.

It's this boiling frog thing, right? You don't realize that you don't have any freedom of choice or freedom of outcome, freedom to influence your outcome past 10% or 15% until it's too late, until that freedom erodes to zero. And these countries have reached zero and they've decided to go a different route. In Canada, Quebec and all these other places like that are wasting power wasting i think like time honestly these are my words not yours you know like like trying to do this dance this bureaucratic dance about what can we do against trump what can we do against fuck all that like you you have options that are in front of you that you refuse to embrace because i I mean, you just don't know, or you don't like the people who are posting about it online, or you don't like that the government

next door who has opposing views to you is thinking about doing it. Like, these are not good reasons. And, you know, one of the reasons I was critical of engaging with governments in the past is because I think about these types of people. And the first thing that comes to mind is this is an immovable object. This person is never going to come around because their way of life is too comfortable. They don't have the same problems that the rest of us are seeing, experiencing, you know, in your case and a little bit in my case, spending time working on fixing.

And unless you see that firsthand, the incentive to change just does not exist. And that's been frustrating for me. I'm curious, you know, when you think about what you've done so far with BCC and in the circular economy, you know, when you come up against one of these, what I'm calling an immovable object, like how do you find the resolve to like hang in and say like, this is a worthwhile cause engaging with this person, engaging with this community, trying to find a solution that's not only going to work, but it's also like agreeable, palatable for this person? How do you do it?

It's admirable that you guys are doing this, but I just don't have the... Yeah. Well, I mean, I look at myself personally, right? Like as sort of a case study here. I'm an accidental Bitcoiner, right? I'm a recovering lefty um and you know i say that i say that um facetiously right because you know i've now moved beyond like the left right um you know polar narrative and and

for for quite some time i started describing myself as, you know, politically homeless. I've shifted that to talking about, you know, being postpartisan, right? Like, I'm postpartisan because we now occupy in, you know, liberal democracies, these theaters where politics is sport, right? And all of the incentives conduce towards politics as sport, where an issue adopted by one team must, you know, by virtue of being adopted by that team, be opposed by the other team, right? And we, it's theater.

It's theater. And it doesn't actually reflect what I believe are actually the genuine dispositions and values of the vast majority of people. You know, like I've become fond of saying that I really believe that, you know, if you can strip away all of that and you can strip away the coded language that we use

that gets, you know, picked up and weaponized, you know, by political parties and those who attach to their team, their political team, you know, that just as much on the left as on the right. For sure. If you can strip away the coded language or whatnot, I honestly think that about 80% of people can agree on about 80% of things. But we don't start there.

We start at the 20%, right? And automatically, it becomes lightning rods, right? And we end up not being able to have constructive dialogue about materiala at like at the 20 percent of things that we might really disagree with to say like okay let's start with where we can agree um and you know as someone's really long-winded but as someone who's like come into bitcoin and has really been engaging um in good faith i, with people across the political spectrum. And as that recovering lefty, with people who would be more to the political right, people six, seven years ago, I would never be talking to. And to actually engage with Bitcoin sort of as a common touchpoint.

And to be able to like strip down conversations and to say like, okay, who are you? What do you value? You know, do you really believe that, you know, that everything boils down to like pick yourself up by your bootstraps and, you know know if you're poor you deserve it etc like those caricatures that we would have of people on the political right coming from the left um they're just so false right and i would say it goes the goes the other

way etc so i use myself my own experiences the way i'd entered into Bitcoin and just, you know, the, the, the renewed optimism that it's given me about, you know, being able to actually connect across a political spectrum and to, and to, you know, be post-partisan to not get caught up in the theater of politics as, as sort of my, my, my well, you know, and that's what kind of renews me. And I always try to engage people now on like, okay, where can we agree? Or, you know, just that fundamental question, like what matters to you, you know? And appreciating that across society, because of this polarization, because of this toxic, like team sport type partisan politics

um you know we we're often just you know using different words different language to either like positively talk about things or pejoratively talk about about things and it's like just making a commitment to kind of strip that strip that away and more I do that, the more I, you know, come back to that conclusion that like 80% of us can agree on 80% of things. What that means in terms of like a practical program of action and like how, what do we do with that? I'm still chewing on, I'm still trying to figure it out, but it at least gives me the sense that, okay, you know what, there is the basis for, you know, building a better society

and working on that as a collective project. It means though, that we've got to be able to get more people to actually be able to step back a little bit from the partisan politics to get back to first principles conversations. To actually making commitments to have constructive dialogue as opposed to just throwing spears at each other. And to say, okay, what can we agree on? And I think Bitcoin is a unique, or maybe not unique, incredibly powerful tool to do that because there are reasons why it should appeal to individuals who want to focus more of their attention on market-based economics and finance and that sort of thing and how it can create more fairness within that structure. And to the same extent, you know, individuals like myself who might have cared first about,

like, how do we deal with homelessness and getting housing to people who need it? Or how do we deal with the crisis of food insecurity? It should appeal, or human rights should appeal to them as well, right? Because it's the upstream cause of so many of those factors. So I just try to carry that knowledge and that consciousness with me into all of my engagements and to try to know my audience and to say, okay, how do I help you get to that point where you can appreciate that Bitcoin is this tool that addresses some of the concerns that you have. And I think the more of us that do that and just try to engage from that perspective, and I know it's not easy, like you just want to, you know, you just want to resort to like, have fun staying poor or, you know, the name calling, like, I get it. But like, that's just how I see my place in this. And it's from that place that I've been trying to help build

the Bitcoin Coalition of Canada as well, right? To try to get as many people into the tent as possible who can communicate with different audiences and to try to unify more Bitcoiners. So we'd be like, okay, you know, we have some common challenges. And because we enter into, you know, this space with all of our preceding baggage, political affiliations, or preferences, etc. You know, we're going to be able to better communicate with particular, you know, parts of the normie world that, you know, that we need to, to, to reach. And, and it's just an optimism, a hope that we can, we can do it,

like one person at a time, one meetup at a time, et cetera, but hopefully, you know, moving that forward gradually over time, to the extent that like, we're kind of from the grassroots up, you know, doing this societal renewal. And it's probably a project that like will last beyond your lifetime, my lifetime and others. But like, I think that's the mission that's in front of us. So I was, I will say that this passion you just heard is the reason why I,

one of the big reasons why I wanted to have Scott on the show. I met Scott last year at the conference. The first time we met was after I had just taken a leak. I barely was out of the urinal and we ran into each other in the hallway. And then the second time was at the sort of pint meetup the night after the conference was done. And both times, you can hear that passion in Scott's voice. And that's an important thing in Bitcoin because as you mentioned, this 80% thing is like the easiest thing in the world to say and understand no matter where you are on the political spectrum. But talking to somebody about it is almost

impossible. You see this all the time, by the way, whether it's like at the pub with your friends, whether it's playing pickup basketball, whether it's like, I just finished watching love is blind with my wife. And like these people agree on 80% of things and they want to talk about George Floyd instead. Why? Like you guys, you, you agree on so many things. You can work on that other 20%. That 80% is hard. It's hard to get to, which makes it so much more valuable. The unique thing is that it's there with everybody, pretty much. You're the same species at the end of the day. You rely on the same things. You want the same things. You have the same internals. And by nature, you're going to be aligned on quite a

bit. So kudos to you again for sort of pinning that down. That's important. And Bitcoiners need to remember that. I've said many times that one of the things we need to do better as a community is stop telling people to have fun staying poor and stop refusing people who are coming here from different backgrounds. Because as the space grows, whether it's because numbers going up, whether it's because governments are cracking down,

whether it's for whatever reason, you're going to get a lot of people with a lot of ideas and a lot of them are going to be good. And if you refuse to accept these people as part of your tribe based on that 20%, you're going to be cooking yourself a little bit. You don't want to do that. These are good people with good ideas in a lot of cases, and we need those ideas as a community grows. Now I want to finish with this. Let me just add on to that. If, because I suspect that a large proportion of the audience is probably not coming from a traditional kind of lefty NDP background.

Certainly not. Certainly not. In Canada. I am. Right? to some extent it makes sense and that like, Hmm, this isn't like some commie, you know, redistributist, you know, agenda that this dude is bringing here as someone who declares his, you know, sort of traditional lefty, lefty background that I hope that, I hope that sits with you because I think, you know, we need to like be able, and I'm

not, I'm not, I'm not just directing this to, to, you know, folks who may be like center, center, center, right. I have this conversation all the time now with friends and colleagues who come from that, you know, left, left background in terms of engaging people on quote, unquote, the opposite side of the political spectrum with a spirit of generosity right um but i would just say that that you know it's important for us to unpack why it is that people arrive at certain perspectives about how to build that better society and why it is people who you know are leaning left and who think that you know the the answer to every societal issue is another regulation

or another government intervention to solve that, right? Like there's, for the exact same reasons as those of us who are Bitcoiners now, you know, previously did not understand what money actually is, did not understand, you know, the problems that we're now looking to address that they actually existed. It's the same thing with those folks, right? And so the left is occupied by, you know, there's more extreme cases of people who really have, you know, more authoritarian, leftist authoritarian tendencies and are going to only see the 20% of issues that, you know, are divisive. But like the left is, and people I, you know, work with and friend group or whatnot,

occupied by people who very genuinely are compassionate, who want to build better societies, and who very sincerely, genuinely believe that the way to achieve that is, you know, through government intervention, because they don't understand the, like, I say the left has lost political economy, right? Like, just this ability to understand the mechanics of how things function.

The time is spent always on the spending side of the ledger, right? And never on the income side of the ledger. And so my challenge to friends on the left is you really want to make a difference in the world? Learn about the bond market, right? Learn about the mechanics of finance and global trade, et cetera. Begin to appreciate, you know, how decisions are arrived at, you know, at these macro levels that affect the fundamental operation of the country, province, city in which you live. Because to just talk about clawing back from the rich and making corporations pay their fair share, et cetera, to which there's some small eye would open it up

and say there's some truth to that, right, to some extent, and say that people should pair their fair share. I know. I just lost them, right? You know, that fundamentally, folks don't have the fundamental education to appreciate the bankruptcy of a lot of the solutions. That doesn't mean that they're not genuinely concerned

with building a better society. And they're homeowners, and they're like, like everyone else trying to hear that. They're on the street with you and me. They're at the grocery store. They're at the gym. They're at the church. Like they're everywhere you and me are.

They're living this pain life. And they're living this confused world where they, they realize that like their purchasing power is being deleted. And there's this thing, inflation and you know, they're trying to figure out what do I invest in so that I can you know leave a legacy for my family etc and it's just you know and i i say that the same thing to to you know to um you know my my friends and colleagues on on on the left is like stop you know stop you know painting this caricature of people you know, stop, you know, painting this caricature of people, you know, who vote conservative, who,

you know, occupy the center, center, center right, are, you know, exclusively hyper individualistic, don't care about the community in which they live, you know, wish only to live in gated communities, etc, etc. It's just not true, right? Yeah. And so I think we've just like got to figure out, you know, at a, at a, at a, at a societal level, like how do we extend a bit more of a spirit of generosity to people and like walk, appreciate that, whether it, you know, put your tinfoil hat on and say it's it's Chinese and Russian agents that, you know, have implemented this

grand plan to weaken us from within, you know, or if it's just, you know, the, you know, consequence of fourth turning or whatever. We're at this point now where we're just at war with each other and weaponizing language and not being able to be constructive with each other. We've got to figure out how to walk back from that. I totally agree. I do.

And I said this to Scott beforehand that most of the time in interviews, people start to drop off at like 50 minutes, but the numbers are still going up here. I can see there's a few hundred of you guys here so maybe we'll we'll do one more question um and we could tie a bow on that whole spirit of generosity thing at the end here you have your work cut out for you scott um when it comes to bringing people together from across these different you know spectrums of living and and spectrums of ideologies and things of this

nature you have your work cut out for you, engaging with some of the, you know, for good reason in some cases, the most calcified, ossified institutions and agencies and things of this nature in Canada at the federal level. And, you know, in terms of your work within the circular economy community as well, you know, trying to convince people that are living in some cases, check to check meal, the meal that decide that you should take Bitcoin for some of your services

instead of Canadian dollars or, or, you know, barter or whatever they're doing now. So I want to know what's next for you. And maybe at the end of that, how can people help you? I mean,

if people are listening and want to help, how can they do that? Yeah, no, thanks for that. So the next thing is to continue to move forward the sort of three legs to the bar stool that I described earlier that we begun to put in motion last year, 2024 which were like to build the structure of the organization so you know we have the capacity to um you know take donations uh function as a as an organization and um and and grow so that we can actually you know get to ottawa and spend time sitting in front of mps and you know um have a little bit of resources to work with. The second is to continue to move forward the kind of movement building at a grassroots level. So

leaning into the group that we've already brought together in terms of education, local meetups, et cetera, and hopefully trying to help them help new groups to get established. You know, it'd be great to see a Bitcoin meetup in twice as many communities in 2025 as there were in 2024. And that's happening. And I think we can claim a little bit of credit for that, for increasing visibility of local meetups, helping connect people to someone like Corey in Ottawa is connected with folks on the West Coast. And that's where to provide insight.

People in this chat know Corey, but they don't know his name is Corey. So just be informed. I mean, they're not gonna be able to put it together but just know okay cory is a frequent viewer listener of this show yeah all right so i'm doxing people right sorry comrade um um yeah you know to provide some support and i think sometimes that's all that's needed is like someone's like i wish i had a local a local need up i wish there's somewhere you know i could get people to to help you know share my knowledge about bitcoin and help help move for the ecosystem

and it takes as little as like you know giving them a little bit of a a connection or a resource so just trying to do do that sort of thing with with a light touch and to the extent possible just trying to add some connective tissue to all the things that are already happening to hopefully help that have that generate more grassroots education, activity, et cetera. And then the third is like really moving forward into, into engaging policymakers. So the policy paper, our asks now provide us the platform to do, do that. I think that's a, you know, solid four asks, which we'll want to tailor with all of the political parties. Obviously, the Conservative Party of Canada is going to have different primary interests

than the NDP and the Green Party, for instance. But I think there's a case to be made with all of them that Bitcoin is something they should be paying attention to and should be supporting as a tool for society building, as well as then getting it down to the provincial and municipal levels. And, you know, we have the example of Vancouver now, which had already been, you know,

already amazing stuff happening in Vancouver, thanks to, you know, the work that, you know, folks on the ground are doing and Koinos and, you know, others to build a circular economy there. But now with the mayor. Ken was on the show about a month ago. Yeah, and I just had a little bit of time with him in El Salvador a couple of weeks ago.

And we had brief conversations, but he's the real deal. He's a Bitcoiner. And his message, I'm sure he would be fine with me saying this, is use me. I believe in this. I believe I'm sure he would be fine with me saying this is like, use me, right? Like I believe in this. I believe I'm being authentic. I really believe that this is a tool to improve the, the, the wellbeing of our city and the residents of our city. And I'm happy to communicate that message to other mayors, et cetera.

And so, you know, plan to take him up on that. So, you know, obviously that's a lot of work we've got to coordinate it and um and and i hate being you know the one to go hat in hand to people but um you know it does take resources to um you know to get uh get this done i think we're we're doing a fair amount already with very minimal resources, almost a zero budget. We have a few recurring donations and support from a few very kind people. But if people want to donate to us, if you go to our website, there's a link to our Geyser page. You can donate sats via Geyser to us if you want to make a contribution via

another method you know if you wanted to do it in a more discreet way whether bitcoin or or or fiat we could find a way to make that that happen hopefully over the coming few months we'll get you know our banking established and um have some alternate ways to to to accept bitcoin other than than geyser but that would be incredibly helpful um volunteering you know we do have a vision of of engaging people to be able to you know have people volunteer time and we have had some expressions of of in volunteering time. How can I help? How can I get involved? It's incredibly, you know, appreciated. It's just like, what do we do with it?

But I have a bit more capacity to be able to make good on that. people to kind of do is to take our recommendations and go hand them off to your current MP, to your MPP or MLA or city councillor. Even if it's, you know, with little other than that, just saying like, please, I'd like you to take a look at this. This is important to me. I think this is important to, you know, to our constituency. And then during that coming federal election, we'll be putting together a package that people can use some, you know, some prescripted questions that can be asked at all candidates meetings, you know, a letter that can be written to, you know, sort of template letter that can be sent to candidates, etc. So to get involved and engage. And I would, you know, appeal to folks, even if it's just out of enlightened self-interest, right? Like, I want to, you know, as a Bitcoiner, I want to feel like I should engage

candidates and elected officials because I just want them to leave me alone. You know, and this is the route to getting them to leave me alone. You got to engage because, you know, as the saying goes, you know, you may not care about politics politics cares about yeah right so like those are those are a few ways if you're willing to you know donate um we'd be you know incredibly appreciative of it if it's not evident how you can do that please get in touch with me directly and we can try to figure something out. And then otherwise, as we move into the federal election, and aside from the federal election, get our policy paper into the hands of your local officials. Send them an email, print it and drop it off at their office, et cetera. Even if it's just, I'd really like you to lay some eyes on this

because that'll have a lot more impact than our email blasts and sending things to Ottawa offices and whatnot. I think you're right. Maybe before we go, I'll note to you as a sort of beacon of your work, not long after you released your paper, I got an email from somebody who is doing a similar proposal for a city in ontario oh and uh yeah asked me to have a look at it maybe i'll see if he's willing to let you guys have a look at it too i think it'd be good that's a good connection that i didn't make in my head until just now no that's it uh yeah that that's amazing and and i um

we didn't touch on this maybe we can do another time if you're interested in having me back. Talk about the Bitcoin circular economies piece. has been to start sort of a small working group for municipalities in North America that are looking to establish circular economies. Outstanding. The realities of doing that in Vancouver or Tampa Bay are much different than Nairobi or Bali or wherever it may be. So it would be great for that individual to connect into this because even though our primary interface

is going to continue to be at the federal level, I'm increasingly one over to the idea that if we want to foster real change, our greatest chance for it's probably going to be at the local level, the municipal level. I totally agree, Scott. Yep. Yeah.

It's almost a no-brainer. And again, the thing that I would tell people is you have been, in almost every case, the outspoken person in your friend group, when we look at the camera, you've been the outspoken person in your friend group for a decade probably at this point. I know for Len and I we're like in our eighth year ninth year whatever it is and i spent a lot of time trying to convince people this thing was a good idea and now it's it's hard for me to understand how bitcoiners are gun shy talking to their mps to local businesses to their government representatives and trying to make the same case the stakes are

higher now than they were eight years ago the the veil and cloud of legislative uncertainty has largely been lifted there's a global competitive landscape easy to see taking shape now not just on the you know horizon in the distance it's almost right in front of you these are important times important conversations and guys like scott and the bcc are putting together documents for you they're they're really doing the hard work for you in terms of starting the conversation like you said building the platform you take it the rest of the way you know they're putting you on first base now it's your job to take it to second and third and eventually you don't get home with it so yeah i will you know and and i think you know probably less is less is more i don't need to like get chipped up with

you know the the idea that i've got an orange pill my mp or my mla like this and i've got to have the perfect elevator just start just. Just start. And that's probably better. I think we know with friends and ourselves, it takes multiple touch points, right? So I think even just getting this information into their hands and saying, look, I think this is really important. I think that this is something you and your staff should be taking a look at. I think this has a big opportunity to help us build a better community, a better country, and endpoint. Yeah.

There's nothing to it but to do it, as the saying goes. You've been a great guest, Scott. You're more than welcome to come back, of course. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks, everyone, for listening watching and uh look for this on audio if you're on video on uh i don't know thursday sometime tomorrow until then take care of yourselves thanks bye everyone