The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP - Fundamentals ∞/21M, Co-Host of Rock-Paper-Bitcoin Podcast

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES This week we welcome from Philly, Fundamentals ∞/21M. He is the co-host of Rock-Paper-Bitcoin podcast, Bitcoin maxi, hater of spam and scams, and lover of vintage video games. With Bitcoin being attacked at different angles, and the noise level creeping up, people need keep their eyes on the prize and maintain focus. You can find Fundamentals on Twitter at:   / bbrianpaul   and Rock Paper Bitcoin Podcast at   / rockpbpodcast   / https://rss.com/podcasts/rock-paper-b... 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.com⁠ Discord: ⁠ ⁠⁠   / discord   #Bitcoin #Podcast #HardMoney A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠⁠https://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. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

The Canadian Bitcoiners podcast is just two guys and maybe a guest or two discussing Bitcoin, Bitcoin equities, and the related macroeconomic space. It's not meant to be financial advice, so please, if you're doing any investing, after listening to our program, do your own research, do your own due diligence, and understand that any money you invest can be lost. The show is meant for entertainment purposes only, and we hope you enjoy the program. Friends and enemies, geez, that's the second time I tried going live. The first time they didn't work anyways. Welcome aboard for another edition of the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. So we'll be chatting with fundamentals in just a moment. Jeez, the intro music didn't play for whatever reason I clicked on the go live button. It didn't go live.

We had a snafu, but whatever. Here I am. I'll be able to pick up the pieces and we'll continue on just a moment. Either way, before I bring fundamentals on and chat about, you know, there's so much chat about what's going on in terms of the attack vectors that are going after Bitcoin, all the noise that's out there. There is the attack vectors that are going after Bitcoin, all the noise that's out there. There is some signal and fundamentals is going to help find where it is. And of course, he's also part of the signal as well. So with that being said, there's a couple of sponsors I want to talk about. Our first sponsor is EasyDMS. And if you haven't used them yet, I suggest do so. If you are looking to open up or start your own webpage,

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your account and provide the necessary information 21 bucks will be added to your account and then you can start buying some bitcoin check that out pretty handy stuff but with this being done i want to bring on the man of the hour fundamentals how are you buddy i'm great man great to be here what's up well living the dream, as you can tell. And I want to hear, you know what? Thank you. I took a week off last week because I don't want to say exactly why, but if people want to see, you could just dig in. Those motherfuckers from the magazine.

Yeah, anyways. You know what, Mr. Fundamentals, I want to hear a little bit more about you for people who are not aware of who you are. I want to hear your story, who the heck you are, how you got a Bitcoin, started your own podcast. And I want to know how you ended up here on the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. So the floor is yours, buddy. Oh, right. Well, OK, so I am training, an actuary. Started that path 30 years ago in the year 1994.

And, you know, was always sort of like good at math. And I mean, I've always had like undiagnosed autism and never really fit in. And, you know, I was able to. so that was like a career path for people that like wouldn't couldn't do anything traditional and um i immediately hated it and hated everybody in it and realized they were all frauds and felt very stuck and um you know just kind of like you know toughed it out and then eventually became a, like a quant for trading desk risk, risk desks. Did you speak English though? Because if you watch the movie, you know what I'm talking about? The, the big short,

they had a quant on there and he didn't, they claimed he didn't speak English, but he did in fact. So you spoke English, right? I spoke English. I mean, I'm, I was like, I was like an actuary quant meaning like he didn't really have the math i had to teach it to myself the real quants are like they don't speak english they find them in like jfk jfk airport you know like ukrainian refugees or whatever but uh they're coming in by the plane low these days right yeah i mean there are a lot of quants.

I mean, there's a lot of people who are like, there's a lot of people who really good at math in this world that don't work. Because, you know, because Fiat actually, right? But anyway, this was the path that I ended up taking. And so for the last 20 years, I would say I've been working, managing hedging programs on a risk desk for large insurance companies that sold investment guarantees, which sounds stupid,

but we did sell them. Meaning like, you know, whatever happens to your investments, your principal is guaranteed. And so we're able to run hedging for that it's actually not that complicated um i don't know maybe it is it gets more complicated over time naturally because like the initial idea is well you know you just you know uh you just hedge out the thing but over time the risk gets more complicated and frankly untenable um and i think they're all, I think all these companies are in a lot of trouble right now, but whatever, not really, not really our problem.

So it's been like a 30 year journey of 30 year journey of that kind of always being odd man out, never satisfied. And you know, I came to Bitcoin. I bought my first Bitcoin in 2022. After really the year 2021, that was a very confusing year. But like, for me, it had nothing to do with my profession. It had everything like it actually had a lot to do with me socially, where I was, I was what I call a woke supremacist. I was one of those guys, like the white knight. And, you know, with the whole vaccine issue, it just kind of like pulled the wool off and exposed all of them as LARPs and inauthentic. And like the 20 years of me building friendships, like all kind of dissolved into nothing. Cause I felt very strongly about vaccine mandates, not being good,

not being okay. And all of these people who believe that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Couldn't seem to see the injustice going on. And so I'm like, they're either total larps or they're fucking stupid. And I'm really stupid, obviously, for giving my life to this for so long. And started over. And then it's almost like all of a sudden, Bitcoin just shows up in my face.

Like, as soon as that happens, as soon as I realize what a fucking moron I am, this Bitcoin thing shows up in my face like as soon as that happens as soon as i realize what a fucking moron i am uh this this bitcoin thing shows up and for somebody who is you know very risk-minded quantitative analytical who also like very conservative financially like live below my means since 2008 you know kept all my money in cash like didn't believe in the more i really didn't believe in the opportunities in the more i didn't believe that any of that growth was real just you know i just wanted to save my money like and i didn't like i knew i was getting bled out but it i was like everybody else in like the 2010s was like, where's the inflation? I guess we don't really see it, you know?

And so I definitely got fooled there as well. But when Bitcoin showed up, it was just like a lightning bolt just immediately. Holy shit. This is not only is this the thing, but this is like this is showing up now. This is like once in a lifetime, not just lifetime. This is like once in a lifetime not just lifetime this is like once in a hundred lifetimes and i fell just i fell so hard down the rabbit hole i don't even know where i am right now open your eyes you're in the right place which is good and you're surrounded by

friends have some enemies too but uh you know that's the way bitcoin works is for everybody that wants it now i gotta ask, because you were knee deep. Well, you were fucking neck deep in fiat for quite a while. Now, as you slowly became aware about how money it helped out the people that were closest to it, backed by nothing, all that stuff. Did you look at gold initially because you know looking at hard money something that has value that's hard to reproduce and difficult in this case difficult to mine did you look at gold as an opportunity something to buy before you even got into bitcoin no i did not i was psyoped i would say by um the investment class that laughed at gold.

And I never even heard the phrase Austrian economics until January of 22, watching nobody caribou's video where he casually mentions Austrian economics. And I was like, what the hell is that? Yeah. So a lot of people, I mean, good for you that you avoided gold um i i did buy a little bit

into the etfs um i i was for a period of time a gold bug and thankfully i am no longer in that group just i i understand the value of it but but just the manipulation and the problems of costing it. And, you know, it's very difficult to custody. It's very difficult to move it over distances. And Bitcoin, obviously, it solves a lot of those problems. So luckily for me, I got out of it. And good for you for never getting into it. I mean, I'd love to be able to say I saw through it, but honestly, it was just never entered just never entered my radar like shit coins i mean it's like i didn't see through those either i just it just

never occurred as interesting or anything i should pay attention to so you never bought into never dealt with shit coins traded it any of that no wow good for you see i i can't say the same but i came in in 2022 i gotta understand so it's like i think that by the time like by the time i might have like by the time i might have come up for air and seen it as interesting they were already blowing up it was already like already luna was gone you know it was already like yeah disgusting that's fair are you surprisingly though there are people that are coming into this space even in the last 12 months after you, they don't see that. They see shit coins as an opportunity to make some tremendous gains over a short period of time.

They're not looking at the fundamentals. They're not looking at the people behind the project. They're not looking at the fact that it's a scam. They're not looking at the fact that, I mean, in the best case scenario, it still pays out in USD slave money. And it's like like what's the fucking point right yeah like they're just looking for gains so there's a class of people even in bitcoin they're just looking for gains right well eventually you guys started a podcast i don't want to hear about that because that's that's an interesting journey. So go ahead. Well, very quickly into my journey, it became apparent that I was going to have to find at least a meetup or else my wife was going to murder me.

Like, I think two or three months. And I think I had a call with, like, Swan Private just to ask some questions. And then I think I was a call. I, I, um, I had a call with like a Swan private just to ask some questions. And then I think I was talking to Terrence and I was like, Hey, mind if I run, like run some ideas by you? And he was like, I think you better,

I think you should find a meetup. I think, you know, and then, and so I did, right. So I found, I could,

I realized I couldn't even get enough of meetups. And then I found out that there was a meetup 90 miles away. And I went to that. Was it in your state? In my state, yes. And that's where I met Business Cat. I was actually on my way to do a college visit with my daughter. And I knew I had known that he had scheduled a meetup on that day.

So I stopped by and met Business Cat. And it was just like, you know, sort of immediately just kind of like the Terminator, you know, just immediately recognized him as like fucking partner. You know, we didn't really, it took, I started going regularly to that meetup. So I started traveling regularly to that. And, you know, I go to like five or six meetups a month. I still can't get enough of them. You know, and I'll do podcasts.

It's just like don't get enough of it. But I started going regularly and getting a no business get. And probably in about five or six months, we started talking about starting a podcast. But he had it in him for a long time and didn't really i guess didn't i'm not sure what was stopping him right but maybe just somehow with me saw just the ability to get over the over whatever hump right and are both you guys in philly no he's out in central Pennsylvania. Got it. I don't think that's a secret. Okay. Well, if it wasn't now, it's out in the open.

I don't think it's a secret. Yeah. So, I mean, we just kind of hooked up right away. And then we said, hey, let's try this. Let's do five episodes and see what happens. And so I think we did about, we did five episodes and three of them we didn't air because they were like three hours of garbage.

But so I think we just ripped, we're about to drop it tomorrow. I think we ripped 38, number 38. So we've done over 40. We've probably had five that haven't made the airwaves. And, you know, he and I really do have the same sensibility like we we don't we started out really not caring if anybody even listened like we are like god is listening and we are going to do this because we're creating the world we want to live in

and it does turn out like we are now starting to see people kind of hop on you know hop on board and it's great it's just cool so you guys release thursday mornings but it's not every thursday morning it seems like every every other we started out every week but then um you know business guy had to go have another baby terrible stuff rock paper bitcoin is the name explain the name okay great um i it's something i it's a blog post i wrote called rock paper bitcoin that we never talk about it on the show we just kind of used it for the show because we needed a name and it was cool but like it is a meaningful construct for me i i wrote a blog post thinking of rock as gold or rock as physical things, paper as abstract things, and Bitcoin as like metaphysical, very real things. And so like this trichotomy to reconcile the fact that Bitcoin exists in the world.

And I had to now go back 49 years of my life and recreate everything I i thought i knew that's in a nutshell what it represents it's it was the construct for me to like look at all these things that are now i i now doubt my understanding of and rebuilding how to rebuild my understanding and i'd say the essence of that is what we do every other week like we really are like rebuilding our understanding of the world in the presence of bitcoin it's like okay bitcoin's here now what the fuck do we do yeah you guys go deep like it's almost philosophical discussions with so it's it's an interesting like as opposed to joey and i like we're sometimes we're pissed sometimes we're laughing and we talk a lot about the news but yeah you guys really dive deep into certain topics and it's it's a it's a different it's a different podcast um so like i appreciate

hearing i appreciate hearing that yeah yeah the concept of this though who came up with it that was well that was something that i wrote it's you, that was an idea that came from me, but the content of the podcast itself is really just business guy and I talking about what we're dealing with that particular week. And I'd say that was primarily season one and season two is now really, um, I see it's like, you know, Frampton comes alive. This is like business cat comes alive. Like he's been holding back really his real depth. And in season two, he is going very deep on something he's been researching regarding the magnetic pole shifts.

And yes. Yeah. And it's slowly moving. And from what I understand, it may, they may switch. The North and the South Pole may switch over a very long period of time. They likely will. We're nearing the end of a 12,000-year cycle that could be very bad. You know what I mean?

Even the things in the knowledge system suggest it's going to be really bad. So then we're obviously not going to see it. So it's not going to impact us, but it's going to be our descendants. We might see it. No, we might. You think so? I'll say this. I refuse to believe that Bitcoin comes when it does only for it to say, ha ha, fuckers, now go fucking die in a magnetic pole shift.

Okay. So I believe that Bitcoin somehow is going to interrupt this somehow. Whether it is we get the attention of the aliens who now maybe believe we're not going to kill each other and they're going to give us the answer, you know, or maybe we select the smartest people to go live in citadels with and find find the parts of the earth that are going to be okay. I mean, maybe some natural selection will just do this and people will tend to over time, you know know between diseases and killing each other they could just you will have the the best and brightest and strongest end up living it's just just just natural selection right and they will find areas to to like to live in that are best suited for them for to thrive but natural selection now like natural selection has something now that

i never had before which is a lot like selecting for a low time preference, selecting for people who actually are incentivized to win with each other. I'm not saying there haven't been people that have done that. I'm saying that I think that now we're going to see natural. So that's going to get incorporated into natural selection. Yeah, it's inevitable because this is just ingrained in our history and this is the way yeah anyway i i have to pick your brain on something because you like as a reference you live in pennsylvania and i i'd love to know for an american out there where do you typically buy bitcoin like what is something you where's a place you recommend for people who go i'm certainly not coinbase but it's like swan or like what would you recommend uh well i mean if you're

it's like if you're regular if you're relegated to if you accept being relegated to kyc exchanges which you shouldn't but in in the united states um you know you can you can buy Bitcoin without KYC. It's just difficult. You do it in small amounts. You may not be able to put your life savings into it right away, but I think that should be the first thing people try to do. Are there options? What are these options that you can say?

I mean, are you able to disclose some of these? Well, I mean, like ATMs are an option, you know, buying from friends is an option. Peer to peer. Peer to peer, yeah. I'm not that familiar with BISC, RoboSats, and the platforms people use. That's something that I'm working on you know like i've i've recognized that

i probably am deficient in the no kyc sat arena so i needed to just put that out there and then say what i do know where i buy kyc you know exchange bitcoin i think river is a great place to do yeah um yeah that's probably my preferred place you know what are your thoughts on swan um i'd say not a i'm not a fan of their business to be honest i like i like their content um but i have i'll just say this. I have, I was very dismayed by the prime trust debacle. Yeah. I talked about it on my podcast, but I'll talk about it here that they entered a very, you know, kind of very cozy relationship with prime trust.

They had prime trust be the lead sponsor of their big conference and it turned out that swan was the last company to see that prime trust was going to go go down and the last company meaning like strikes the folds the coin bits of the world right they all that you know they all jumped off the ship before Swan did, and Swan ended up nearly having their customers' keys in the hands of Ripple. Yeah. This is such an objectively bad outcome that there should have been widespread apologies and contrition, and there wasn't anything even close to it so that that type of

stuff really bothered me yeah cory seems to have a let's be honest he took a beating for a period of time he both he and swan but it seems like a year later not quite a year that it they just kind of parry this attack and and they've gone they moved on especially another piece of news that came out of them when when it was announced they're doing bitcoin mining and that came out of left field i had no idea they were even considering and a lot of people had no idea so it just seems like that you know news like that and continuing on with the pacific bitcoin conference and stuff to be fair it seems like yeah i'm just saying to be fair right when i first heard the mining news i was like oh my god yet another thing there another covert operation that is not part of their core business or not part of anything they're asking

people to trust them for but to be fair it is something they do well and they see it right it's something they're competent in so i have to give them credit for that right yeah yeah gathering that type of hash rate the those the amount of basics required to do it quietly and then to find a place to energize it it's it wasn't an easy operation that's let's be honest and they did but another thing they have going for them at least right now is they're not publicly traded if they were publicly traded maybe this information would have been more readily available right but their whole desire is to become at least publicly funded they are still going oh sorry go ahead i'm just saying that's what led them to

have the pacific bitcoin conference and the prime Trust sponsorship to begin with, which is really, to me, that's the thing, you know, that's the straw that broke their back. Right? This quest for public money. And so this is another inauthenticity I just point out is that they say they're Bitcoin only, but, you know, they're really seeking fiat money. They're a fiat company. But they provide, they have, you provide – they have very competent Bitcoiners there. A lot of friends that work there, right? I mean, it's uncomfortable to criticize them and all that stuff, but I don't –

I just find certain things so upsetting that I can't not talk about that. It's my school that my kids go to. They went on a journey and decided to go buy Bitcoin, right? They did it through Swan. Like, fine, right? I mean, I had a little bit of influence, but I didn't have enough influence to say, look, maybe you should at least look at a couple of

other options but the person in charge just he saw his access he was very you know very impressed by what you know what he saw in them and understandably because that's what they do right they project a great image um so he successfully does start buying Bitcoin. This is like my children's school. This is amazing. This is really rare and incredible. But then his board starts – they started freaking out about Bitcoin in general. And the easiest attack vector they found for him was Swan because all they did was just – they were like, who's the Swan? They Googled it, and then they just found like – they found all kinds of shit.

And so, frankly, that put my school's dean and me in a really bad spot. I am upset about that. I take it they don't go to Ohio State. No, they don't go to Ohio State. No, they don't go to Ohio State. It is a Waldorf school. Yeah, I saw the Ohio State thing. That was pretty funny, the fact that that guy was talking about Bitcoin. I didn't think he did a great job at selling it,

talking about ETFs and the attack vectors and all the problems, the hacks, they've been solved by the these new etfs but it's just funny to see that there's so many people out there young people at that they were not impressed they don't get it and they boot the fuck out of bitcoin i mean that was the story the story wasn't the kid the story was the 20 000 other kids right it tells you how you know i'd just say these are students that spent four years in one of the finest institutions in the land you know and they're you know their finished product at their you know at their graduation ceremony as a finished product basically sees a choice to either ignore, cheer, or boo Bitcoin, and they boo. Pretty pathetic.

It is. If you figure that anybody, if a group of people, if I had to categorize by age the group of people that probably get bitcoin the best i i would right away i would say the younger folks the people graduating college just because they truly understand that the price of has gone up so much that they have no hope in hell to succeed the same way their parents or grandparents did and why did this happen well because money is not hard anymore you could make it very easily and when you have more money chasing the same amount of goods well obviously the price goes up so i can't understand how they could they could look at bitcoin and understand the fundamentals behind it and still boo it like i'm gonna challenge you

for a second though because i'd say that i would say the better group to get it would be kids that are about four years after college okay that they've been working and now they really see that it's never gonna happen for them like they see that their entire life is a bag of water with a bunch of holes in it and you know like they just know now they are totally they know how fuck they are these kids still think like these college kids, I mean, they're more concerned with saying the right word for like neurodivergent or whatever cis, bi, gender,

polarized, whatever. They're still more concerned with that shit than they are about inflation or economics. They've been living for free for the last four years in a sort of elite conditions

so I'm just saying like maybe I'd be really shocked if like you had a bunch of kids who've been working for four years already because those guys know like those guys definitely know and I'm wondering how many of those are chomping at the bits

of having their school. And I'm wondering how many of those are chomping at the bits of having their school debt. Because I'm certain that a decent proportion of the people that are graduating are carrying debt from school. School is not cheap. So they're probably looking at the fact that there may be a possibility of having it forgiven. And so they're probably looking at this. This coming election is going to be a huge thing for a lot of different people. I mean, you see Biden every so often. There's another announcement of another swath of debt holders that are going to be forgiven.

It just seems funny they're doing this over and over again. And I'm wondering if this is going to be, they're just going to go right to the end and say everybody that has any sort of debt, any sort of school debt, education debt, that they're going to just cancel it altogether. Yeah, I find that hard to believe because, sort of debt, any sort of school debt, education debt, that they're going to just cancel it altogether. Yeah, I find that hard to believe because, first of all, student loan debt, you can't even default out of it.

It carries with you for life? Yeah, you can't. You may not default. Bankruptcy will not protect you from student loan debt. Here's a dumb question. What about death? Does it carry to somebody else or is it what happens at that point at that point in time i'm guessing you're i'm guessing you're

out once you die okay so it's not like you're you're in the people but i know you're like yeah but it is like exempted from all of it's like the only version of debt that you can't actually wipe off through bankruptcy that's why there's father Father Biden over there able to say with a stroke of the pen, yeah, fuck you. We will make sure that somebody else is going to pay for you. But what I'm saying is it's more likely that what the government will do would be to say, pause, like say, oh, you know, we'll just put a pause on you having to make your payments for, for,

I don't know, four years, you know. What does that do? You're kicking the can. Yeah, but that's really the only tool they have. I think that it would be absolute chaos if they just canceled all the student loan debt. I mean, there would be guns and riots. You take people who did the right thing, right?

They are going to get radicalized and fuck shit up. It does seem like we're getting awfully close to a watershed moment like that, right? If you look at, for example, just the general population, everybody's feeling a pinch. Not the poor but the rich the rich could easily absorb it but the people that are lower income middle class they are really feeling it because their lives have been drastically altered in the past four years the stuff that they could buy a few years ago they can't now they have to ration their money, be careful with their money, or just tack it onto credit cards and deal with

it at a later time. But I'll give you an interesting stat that they say that 29% of the population in the United States have jobs but struggle to cover basic needs. This is as per CNBC. And if you look at that,'s like a sizable amount of people united states it's not going to take much for them to basically get their pitchforks and torches and storm whatever's nearby and just say we want we demand a change right you must see this you live which city do you live in i don't it's i live you want to say i live um in a philadelphia suburb okay i thought you lived in the actual because philadelphia itself has been i i see videos of zombie people just walking it's not good over there it's not great so it's just a matter of

time before other people are just like what the fuck is going on here we got to do something so i'm looking at all this i'm surprised people haven't yet just fucking demanded massive changes but we're if we're not there yet we're awfully close what do you think yeah i mean i i think that look there's only so many ways you can buy an election and they're all going to make a lot of people really angry. Right? You know, 2022, well, forget 2020. I mean, right? That was probably the most egregious, you know, that was the most egregious year of, A, buying the election,

rigging the election. Who knows what, I mean, nobody really knows what went on. We only know is that a massive amount of money was printed. In 2022, yeah, we had, they're flirting with the student loan forgiveness and we drained the strategic petroleum reserve, right? These are the kinds of things that if they go too far, like by a centimeter, if they go too far by a millimeter,

there'll be widespread just you know there'll be people in the streets um but yet that you know somehow they seem to be very good at knowing exactly how far to go i mean the next thing is social security right all these people have been paying in social security their whole life when they shit can that that's going to cause some anger right well the treasury u.s treasury is saying they're going to run short of funds in 2035 for social security so this is just 11 years out and that is their previous projection was 2036 so now it's coming even closer and closer soon as we 2034 2033 and it's once that runs out this used to be the biggest the biggest portion of the balance sheet right uh yeah it's well actually you mean from it's a big unfunded liability. Social security technically is not funded as much as we've been paying into it

forever, but it is what you call a pay as you go pension. So it comes out of the operating budget. Okay. So when I hear things like 2036, right, I am thinking that the majority of the people that would be really upset if you took Social Security away

will be dead. I think that's a hope on their end. I think it is a hope on their end. It's also like these are the people who you just can't... Look, there's a class of people. They're over the age of probably 70, 75. You can't touch

a thing. These things are untouchable but everybody knows that we're gonna everybody knows we can't support it and that's sad you know just the way things are and you know you look at we just mentioned social security is going to be coming to an end so it just makes or it's going to be running out of funding they're spending so much money in terms of continuing the debt they have like servicing the debt that like it's over a trillion dollars now is spent annually on that something has to give and i don't understand how that's money well spent for the united states right that's money that every once in a while you gotta that's you gotta pony up every once in a while if you're going to just

inflate your debt away. Every once in a while, you got to just pay the interest, right? Yeah. But we're a debt-based society and we have the ability to inflate and debase all over the world. That's getting less and less. Like probably two years ago, I think 95% of the country has held US reserves. Now it's like 65 something like that but you know we still have the u.s balances all over the world to debase by printing money and so payments on interest is the cost of goods sold on that what's going to happen then the countries that are on the margin that are just struggling to get by, they're the ones that are going to capitulate, either start adopting Bitcoin,

or alternatively, maybe they could get chummy with BRICS. Yeah, I don't believe much in BRICS, to be honest. Long term, it's like the reality show Alliance that's full of women that hate each other, and you know it's going to fall apart. They have a common enemy they do yes i do think that i i i think it's going to be bitcoin that or you know and maybe some maybe gold to some extent but look like i think the last 30 years it's been terrorism what you call what people call terrorism in the west which is i would probably say them holding us accountable

for putting our boots on their neck and doing basically the only thing they could do, which is shoot bows and arrows at us. I think it's Bitcoin now, the next 20 years, right? This is how El Salvador has shown, at least, that it's possible to get off the teat uh has it been a success has it been enough as a success or at least enough of um a positive gain that somebody else will copy the template i think not having to re-up with the imf was the like watershed moment for them.

I think that's what people will see. That's what other countries will see. They'll say, oh my God, El Salvador stopped borrowing from the IMF. Nobody does that. You get bombed for doing that. Yeah, you always have to double down when you're dealing with the imf because then you know eventually you're close to default okay let's restructure borrow some more money and just keep going down this fucking rabbit hole but you're right like you make enemies and bukele i have to

give credit to his security because i would imagine he's a marked man by not just people in the imf but he's like made enemies with United States and very powerful figures in the United States. He's been thumbing his nose on a lot of people, but still to this day, he's still doing the job and he's with us. Right. So,

I mean, I just got to give credit to his security team. Indeed. I mean, yeah, it's such an unlikely thing. I mean, just the history of the last 50 years just suggests that it's such a very unlikely thing that you will have an exception anywhere in the world, right?

To the U.S. going in and taking both sides of civil war and just installing whoever they want, that's the norm. It's 100%. So what El Salvador did is like the problems Custodio Bank has getting its license and they say even like a small bank, if it's 100% reserved, it'll fuck the whole system up. It's like the turd in the punch bowl right that ruins the whole punch bowl i mean i think that's what i think that's what little el salvador might actually be it's like the whole turd in the punch bowl that's an interesting analogy you know like yeah go ahead and you know yeah i mean like we're now we're all realizing

how much this shit stinks and i i do have to ask you because you're living in the States. I'm not. So I have no skin in the game, but indirectly I do this coming election. And just a few months away, we're like five months ish away from it. I love to hear your thoughts on it. What do you think is going to happen?

Trump is going to be, it looks like the gop nominee biden looks like he's going to be the democratic nominee but then you have rfk jr what he's tweeting out there he's saying that he's he's pulling decent enough that he could cause a problem for these two candidates so i want to hear your take on this election. What do you think is going to happen? Okay. I'm no expert. I'd like to say, I would love to say I absolutely don't care what happens. It impacts us. But I mean, I would say the most dystopian outcome is the one where Trump doesn't win. And you're talking to i was like the president of trump derangement syndrome club okay um i couldn't think straight for the whole the time he was there i'm i admit it my head was up my ass and i couldn't deal with it were you yelling when he was uh when

when he got uh sworn in were you out there yelling at like that that great meme that's on youtube no i just it's just hurt like you know like for me i felt just hurt by the whole thing you know i really felt like me the idealist that i was about what american values are what i thought they were you know i was look i was watching like cnn all fucking day i mean you know it was bad it was bad you're in pennsylvania you're you're in you know it's you know and country but so i say that to say that i like if trump doesn't win it is an absolute dystopian nightmare there there's no explanation there will be no explanation for how that can possibly happen right so at So at least that's how I feel.

I do think RFK, yeah, can make some problems for both. But ultimately, I don't know. I feel like RFK, at the very best, did nothing for himself. There was a time where I thought he was helping himself by jumping in this race, but he seems to be getting more and more fucking stupid as he becomes a presidential candidate. You know, like the thing last week when he's like, I'm going to put the whole budget on a blockchain. What the fuck does that mean?

I still don't understand it. I know. Well, my guess is like you know he was out at the eth conference right he was and my guess is he got more eth donations in a day than he got bitcoin donations since last may right do you think he's going to speak again at the next bitcoin conference i'm wondering if he's probably he probably will but i think that he has bought into the shit coinery i think they got him well he's talked up monero i think it was he's been very i mean that you could look you could view that as based in a certain context right well come on i'm just saying right no, there's no fucking way. I'll explain why. There's no way you could verify how much is in circulation.

You can't verify if it's been compromised in any way. This is not my wording. This is right from the Monero website. That seems to be a very trustworthy source. And if they say you can't accurately verify shit, well, fuck, then there's no way to figure out anything. You might as well still run the US dollar and have some other centralized entity run it. Fuck that.

I'd rather have the ability to run my own node. No, totally. Like a Bitcoin, and do it cheaply and efficiently, and verify everything. You can't do that in Monero. RFK is a public figure. Before becoming a presidential candidate was the guy that took down Fauci.

He was the guy that was fighting, really the singular guy fighting for people's rights to avoid getting an unsafe vaccine that they don't want or whatever that they don't want. He was that guy um i'd say he was you know pretty um pretty noble and pretty high signal prior to becoming a presidential candidate and i feel like he's a dipshit now like he has become dumber and dumber by the day right and i think that it's like it's like you know you go back to like swan the aspiration for public money just makes you it just it just worsens you right and it's like running for president the same thing you know it's gonna make you worse and worse and worse it's just to the point where it's like that simpsons episode you know where they found a crayon in homer's head and oh yeah yeah they took it out he became a genius and they start putting it back they start

putting it back in and he's like lottery tickets for everybody and they're like nope not dumb enough yet not dumb enough yet and it's like blockchain for the put the budget on the blockchain you know it's like he's just trying to prove i don't know you know it's insane those are great episodes back in the day i don't watch newer simpsons but those earlier ones were fucking gold so yeah you know it's i think it's a good segue because those are the days which you know you and i are i think are fond of because of our age and so you wanted it to say something about a particular time and why it is in your opinion the best time so i mean go ahead i want to hear your thoughts on this. Okay. So.

Well, first break it down. What is it we're talking about? So that people understand what the fuck it is. We're talking about the year 1994. One of my first observations when I got into Bitcoin was it reminded me of 1994. Like I looked at the primitive tools we were using. You know, I was into the command line and, you know, these hardware wallets that are like kind of primitive, you know, it reminded me of how I felt in 1994, seeing all of these tools pop out, they were all in text and you all, you know, you had to,

you had to do a little work to learn them. Right. But it kind of felt like 1994 again with like the internet um that's the year that the internet came into my world um were you using unix at the time yeah i was i went to temple university and i had like an astro.temple.edu account it was all unix like we browsed the web through links links and gopher and then use pine i guess for email yep yeah but i was big on irc too i was like huge on irc i can't remember what would be the irc i know merc was the one for windows i can't even remember what it would be for on unix but i remember it's italics uh sorry telnet telnet yeah to your irc yeah okay so so um I'm sorry, tell that? Tell that. Tell that as happy about TRI or say, yeah. Okay. So to me, it was a pivotal year.

I didn't, you know, sometimes you don't realize that it's never going to get better. Like it's only going to go downhill. Now you're sitting here in 2024. I go back to 1994 and I'm like, damn, that was maybe the greatest year, right? I have a small list of things just to take us back to 1990. I want to hear it. All right. It may be

2024 out there, but in here, the CVP at this particular moment is 1994. So I mentioned like the internet Usenet Group's IRC, like the internet. Yeah. Okay. Now, yours and my favorite game, NHL 94, which happened i mean let's be honest

that was 1993 but it released a latter half of 93 but it is you know yeah it's nhl 94 okay and it's the goat of games okay uh i agree okay um know, most of us were just, I'll just say myself smoking weed in college playing NHL 94. And then the internet came along. I mean, great. You were the idiot savant, weren't you?

I, yes, I was, we get into that. Let me, let me get through this list though. This is, I'm going to just name the,

some of the movies that came out in 1994, Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption. I was going to say that right away. Pulp Fiction in 1994. Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption. I was going to say that right away, Pulp Fiction. What a great movie. Incredible. Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, Dumb and Dumber, Clerks, Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. Goddamn. Right?

Good year. I don't think that that many great movies have come out since 1994, I might say. Okay. You had OJ? Yes. Okay. OJ murdered his wife in a waiter, and it became the media circus we all found it to be. Incredible.

There was another great, all-time great video game called NBA Jam. Yes. It existed in a time of arcades where you could play the stand-up with a friend, two-on-two. Yes. It existed in a time of arcades where you could play the stand-up with a friend, two-on-two. Incredible. Now, here's one that, here's the last thing on my list,

and it's a little relevant to NHL 94, I say. Okay, so I talk a lot about this band, Phish. I don't know if they're, they didn't really get big in Canada, but I had some friends in canada who were definitely into them i'm not familiar with them so fish is probably so in 1994 they were basically the band that was going to take the torch from the grateful dead and it turned out in 1995 jerry garcia died and that's exactly what happened and fish became like to the point where you know there is no second best like they they're in a category by themselves and popular i'd say popularity staying power for

a band of that a rock band and a jam band of that genre but in 1994 they began something that they were very known for which was a halloween tradition where they would cover an album okay so they would be they would like putting on a costume they would cover an album and i talk about this in relation to the halloween 2008 release of the white paper in 1994 fish did the Beatles' White Album. I heard you talk about this, yes. So they began, and Mark Lesser, Mark Lesser, not the creator, but he was really the, what was he? The coder? He was the programmer behind 94, 95.

And a whole bunch of other games too, by the way. So I saw Mark Lesser in an NHL 94 documentary say that he was living up in maine okay while he was making the game and he believes that there were there was a special spiritual thing happening between him and the people that he was with right number one number two the university of maine hockey team was going on this championship run that had never been seen before paul correa was part of that team right i do not know i just know that mark lesser connected this spiritual vector of this team the energy of this team winning to the spiritual connection of him and his

fellow programmers to create this like chimeric event of how special 90 NHL 94 was. But what I'm going to tell you is that in 1994 fish was up in Vermont, just coming out of their shell and being ready to take the torch from the grateful dead and just crushing and adding to that vector. And I say, maybe it's part of that specialness. It wasn't a mere coincidence. There was a plan behind everything.

That's right. And there were a couple of things that were not so good for Canada in 1994. I have to disclaim. Well, at least it got blown out in the semis against Vancouver. Yes. The World Series was canceled when the expos were fucking crushing yeah they had a good team with larry walker pedro martinez yeah they they were they were poised to win at all that year so that was kind of rough and you know yeah the canadians winning that was like the i think that was the last time canadian team won it was the year before. It was 93 they won. Yeah, that's right.

But that was the last time any team from Canada. I don't know if that's happened. I don't know if that's been broken in the last few years or if that's still the case. No, no, it's the same thing. No Canadian team has won a Stanley Cup since 1993, the Habs. So Canada paid a price. However, Fred Van Vliet was born in 1994.

Who's he? Canada paid a price. However, Fred Van Vliet was born in 1994. So, you know. Who's he? He is probably the reason the Raptors won the championship in 2019. Okay. I don't watch much sports in the past 15 years, including basketball. So, yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah. Now, NHL 94 really was special to me growing up.

And I have to say, like, I felt an immediate connection to you finding out that, A, you know, the game still exists, and, B, that you're so, you know, so into it, right? Because that's – I was that into it. So there's a bunch of guys from Philadelphia that apparently are really fucking good in the game. There's a tournament that's run every year called the King of 94. And in the early editions of that, it's now 10 years-ish or so it's been running.

The early editions, apparently these guys came out of nowhere from Philadelphia, came in and just fucking cleaned the clocks of a whole bunch of people. And they don't play online. They just play amongst themselves. And I think they call themselves the four horsemen or something like that just four guys just so yeah fuck me maybe you came across them one time it may like when i like in my prime all right was the summer of 94 i was living in my first apartment in philly and people were coming over like strangers from the internet were coming over to play, you know,

which is pretty cool. So, you know, when the game came out, um, I didn't actually have a Sega. We all went to a friend's house. He had it and I was just destroying, like this is what made everyone so mad because it wasn't even my game. And somehow I was just able to pick it up. I mean, you know, we weren't good. Like I see now, like, like I even like, you know, we didn't know about a lot of the techniques that you see now. You know what I mean?

You had breakaways. Everyone knew how to do the breakaway. And, you know, we had one timers, but we didn't really, we really weren't very sophisticated. I just happened to be like autistic enough to never let up and then just be able to you know like you know what i mean just never you know never never let the energy down at all and just i i loved when my friends would throw their fucking controllers uh it's the best pissing somebody off rage quitting is but unfortunately you don't get to see that a lot on the internet for what i mean yeah on internet and nobody i have come across that just puts their controller down or quit the game everyone's gone to the bitter end

and even i got thrashed recently 14 nil in one match it was disgusting but i stuck to it i love the streams you do when you're when you guys are talking like i watch i watch them all but like it's really cool when you're talking to your opponent it's very infrequent that happens i'll be honest nobody wants to because it takes they they think that they're less doing less concentration in the game and you're just talking more and it's taking away from the game itself but for me i see that i'd prefer to chat when i play and it's not like i'm trash talking but i just you know there's some banter to go back and forth, but I'm with you, man. But unfortunately I'm in a, I'm in a minority here, but yeah.

Anyways, it's getting close to an hour. So I think it's, it's probably a good time to cut it quick. But before I do, I just want to, to pass over the baton to you. If in case people want to find you where they could find you, maybe you could do one last plug for your podcast so man yeah the floor is yours i would say yeah check out rock paper bitcoin um i started these short rips um you know i like realizing that i i really wanted to get give the room for business cut to get this you, to get this big idea out there, you know? So I started doing just shorter rips.

So that's something called the fundamentals of fundamentals. And those are episodes. The episodes are fundamentals of something. So like the last one I did was the fundamentals of standup where I told a couple of stories about getting heckled and how I, how I managed to deal with it. And so it's like every episode is the fundamentals of something. You have to have balls to do that, by the way,

to stand up and do, because you're basically throwing yourself out there for everybody to challenge you. So good for you. Oh, absolutely. You really are out there. I mean, I definitely, like, I think, like, it takes a lot of thick skin, I think, to be in Bitcoin, right? It takes a lot of thick skin, I think, to be in Bitcoin.

Right? It takes a lot of thick skin in the world just to have conviction about something that nobody thinks is good. Right? So it's good. It's a good thing. So many people in Bitcoin tell me they're thinking about doing stand-up, which is kind of cool. So fundamentals of fundamentals, paper bitcoin um and i would say yeah that's it uh hang out we have a telegram rock paper bitcoin check out the podcast come to telegram tell us how fucked we are um it's all good

ladies and gentlemen that's fundamentals thanks so much for coming on the show. This has been a blast. And we'll be back again on Monday. But for people who want to get links for Fundamentals, it's in the show notes below. So just click it. You're on your way there. So, yeah, thanks so much for showing up for this riff, Fundamentals.

Thank you, bud. Are you a fan of the old school NHL 94 game on the Genesis or SNES? Why not check out my show, the NHL 94 podcast from tournaments and tactics to the people who make up this community, check it out wherever you listen to podcasts or find it on YouTube.