The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The Philosophy of Bitcoin (Joey on The Phil Bak Podcast)

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

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Welcome back to the podcast. Guest this week is Joey Temporally. He is the co-host of the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. He's known for his analysis of Bitcoin, but also markets and culture. He blends macro commentary with reflections on faith and modern life. We did an episode, Joey, on your podcast, about a year ago, maybe a little more, which I really enjoyed and have been listening since. And I'm very excited to have this conversation.

I'm happy to be here, Phil. It's good to hear that you're still doing this. I remember when we did my show, you were on a hiatus. I don't think anyone told you to take that hiatus. I think people are telling you to get off the hiatus, and so you've been off and out for a while, and we're all grateful. It's good to see you. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah. And I could say that, you know, this podcasting thing, like any muscle, it atrophies, right? And when you stop doing it, you kind of lose the skill. So, you know, definitely happy to be back. And, you know, just the opportunity to, you know, bring to my audience different perspectives and different conversations of people that I think are interesting and have something to say is really special. And I hope, you know, for the listener, have a lot of different type of guests. You know, you talk about Bitcoin, right? I mean, you talk about other things.

But you have the focus. I don't. And that kind of allows me to bring in some very different perspectives. And I think your perspective today is going to be a new one to my audience, especially to a lot of people that maybe don't have their finger on the pulse as much with what's going on in markets these days. The idea, we'll talk about the ideas of financial nihilism and all that. But I want to start with Bitcoin. and with this idea that Bitcoin is a trade, like any other financial asset or any other derivative instrument, but it's not just that. It's also a philosophy. And I think that's something

that a lot of people don't, like people deep into this stuff, people who are constantly, you know, reading and talking about it, you know, really understand. But I think a lot of people that that aren't so deep into it really don't understand and they don't really see it. And it really makes Bitcoin a lot different than, you know, other asset classes and other trades. Because it's real. I often say Bitcoin, the smartest people I know are in Bitcoin and also the dumbest people I know. The purest, the most pure, you know, decentralized, we're going to get away from money printing. The most pure, you know, economic idealists I know are in Bitcoin and the scammiest people I know are in crypto, maybe crypto more than Bitcoin more broadly. But it really is a dichotomy.

me. And I think, you know, the best people that I know that are in it, that are in it for really pure reasons, the philosophy of that I find really interesting. I think you can articulate it really well. So let's start there. I think that, first of all, that was a great description of Bitcoin and Bitcoin culture. If I didn't know any better, I would say you were a huddler yourself, Phil. I won't ask you, but, you know, it wouldn't surprise me. I think it is a culture. And the reason I say that, and I largely agree with what you said as well. But I think the big thing for me is that we have been, I'll say the millennials more than anybody, have really been disadvantaged by the mid-curve elite. And, you know, I have a problem

with the mid-curve elite in a lot of ways, but specifically on the finance side, the market side, and let's call it the quote-unquote cottage industry investment side. There's so many different ways that boomers especially absolutely nuked their their descendants over the last 30 or 40 years, sometimes unknowingly, whether it was buying real estate and looking into assets that were being monetized by government policy, all of which, by the way, turned out to be errors on the policy side. Unfortunately, we can get into that. The reason that culture has become so tight-knit and I think so sometimes difficult to permeate for people who are coming in from the traditional finance space for sure is because we have this antibody response all the time. And I don't,

I don't love it, to be honest with you, Phil. Sometimes I don't mind seeing somebody who I think is acting in bad faith or just like pretending not to understand why Bitcoin is important, getting nuked on Twitter. Mike Green's a good example. I like Mike. He's been on my show. But I think he's like just pretending not to understand the value prop of Bitcoin. I don't know how a guy like Mike Green doesn't get it. Duneberg's the same way. Another guy I consider a friend. He's been on my show. I don't understand. And I think, a lot of Bitcoiners look at them as bad actors because everyone else who comes into Bitcoin and thinks it's a scam or thinks that they have it right and we don't has turned out to be

a bad actor in some way. And that culture, you know, it's kind of calcified in a way that I don't like. When you get to be a trillion dollar asset class, which we may not be today, I don't know what the market cap is after this nuke, but you're going to draw people in from all facets of markets and life. You're going to get people across age demographics. We have some great older Bitcoiners. We have some great younger Bitcoiners. We have some people who are from the third world, the developed world, everywhere in between people from Canada, from the States, from Europe, from El Salvador, you name it.

And you want that draw because there's a talent draw that comes with that. But also, like you mentioned, there's going to be people who come and try and pray on the sort of less intelligent membership there. You know, where am I going with this? I'm not exactly sure. but the culture in Bitcoin is something that's valuable to us. But, you know, you can tell me I'm positive. Is it something that's inviting?

I don't necessarily think so. I remember when you came on our show, you know, you expressed some doubts about Bitcoin. You may still have those doubts. There's always somebody in my comments saying, this guy just doesn't get it. He doesn't want to get it. It's important to his pocketbook that nobody else gets it either, blah, blah, blah. That culture is not one that's going to last in Bitcoin if we want to be successful. I'll probably catch some flack from my colleagues for saying that.

But the important thing for me is when I talk about Bitcoin, I talk about it in a way that's respectful, that makes sense. I consider myself a Bitcoin maximalist and that I don't hold any other cryptocurrencies, but I also own a home. I have a child. I own a car. I go to work every day. I'm not so extreme in my views that I've mortgage and sold and otherwise put liens against my entire life to acquire more Bitcoin at the cost of my quality of living. but there are people like that in the culture too. And I think that as we evolve and grow and as we bring in more ideas and more money, more

capital, we're going to have to deal with people who have different opinions about Bitcoin. And it's our responsibility to make sure those people are heard and that we take the best ideas and run with them, take the best people and run with them. Don't turn them away just because they don't agree with everything you say the first time that you say it. Yeah, those two people that you called out, you know, Duneberg and Mike Green. I mean, those are two of the smartest people. and, you know, pure, like, there's no, oh, you know, it's in my book. It's in my interest not to, like, there's none of that. Those are two people that will say something if it's popular, say something if it's unpopular, but they're going to call it as they see it. And those are great people. I think where, you know, the narratives around Bitcoin, the narratives around, you know, peer to peer transactions, the narratives around, you know, debasement and currency and, you know, the bringing the money back to the people and limited. So they're in, in their, in their minds, there's a disconnect. Those narratives don't directly connect to the asset and to the trade.

The number go up and the trade of, hey, everyone's going to double their money. And Michael Saylor says, oh, we're going to put a $30 million per coin target, which would be more money than exists in the world or whatever crazy things that happened. And I probably personally lean more towards them than I do, honestly, towards you. But what like sticks, what I just can't shake is, again, you know, just getting back to the philosophy of it, that there is a generation of people where the story of decentralization and getting away from the incumbent systems, the economic systems that rule us, and getting away from the debasement and the ability for governments to just print indefinitely, the evaporating middle class, and how it all,

it does tie to this trade. It does. There's a philosophical and there's an ethos that's embedded in this trade that takes it from any other trade, right? Nobody's fighting about, I'm short, you know, I'm long muni bonds and I'm short, right? There's no other asset class that has successfully connected with people on the philosophical level as this trade has. And I just find that really interesting and very, it really sticks out versus any. Let me ask you, you have kids that are younger than me, but they're kids all the same. Do they think about their future in this way?

Yeah, I think you have one that's like in the teens, right? So, you know, do they think about, are they thinking about their future? do they look at this stuff going on on television? You know, their father's brighter than most, I would say. I don't want to gas you up too much. But the idea that kids are seeing this now as well, I think, is contributing to that sort of thinking, right? And I'm in my late 30s.

I've seen this for years at this point. You know, the first time I was really sentient as a market observer, although not a participant, was during the OHGFC. I still remember getting picked up by my dad. I was at university. It was a Friday afternoon or a Thursday afternoon. I remember Obama was on every TV talking about the things they were going to do. I didn't understand any of it.

But to see the president on TV on Thursday afternoon is rare. And, you know, I think a lot of people came of age during that era. Now, you mentioned some things that we should talk about. We'll pull on some threads a little bit. Why is it that the Bitcoin crowd, right? Not even the Bitcoiners. I think there's a lot of Bitcoiners who don't necessarily hold Bitcoin. You mentioned it's an ethos.

I think a lot of people think this way now, especially the younger, crowd. Why is it that they have this view? They have this view, like I mentioned, because things are out of reach for them, Phil. I just did a video the other day about the first time home buyer age in Ontario, here where I live. It's 38 years old. At 38 years old, you're out of the range probably for having a big family and getting married and things like that. That's difficult to stomach and something you don't necessarily come to terms with until it's too late, which is also difficult to think about. In the States, I think that number is 40, by the way. So you're kind of going the wrong direction here and there and probably other places as well.

So you have things that were sold to you on the way up as normal, expected, and valuable, by the way, by your parents and by their peers that are basically unachievable for you. And now when you look at why they're unachievable, Phil, I think a lot of people my age look at their parents as the culprit. You know, an unwitting, sort of useful idiot along the way for governments to say, yeah, things are going well. Look at the value of your house. Things are going well. Look at the value of your retirement investments. Things are going well.

Look how many vacations you can take to Florida, to Fort Lauder, like whatever, right? These indicators of success were sold as the sort of be all, end all, what you should be looking for in life. And now those same boomers have to tell their kids that, yeah, maybe it's not going to be like that for you. But I'm going to keep voting for something that continues to make it like that for me. And this is a whole other problem. we should discuss. Now, the one problem I have with the Bitcoin crowd is that they do have

this idea correct, I think, peer-to-peer, debasement. There's a number of elements to this whole story that we're trying to upend, or at least disrupt in some way. I don't want to see people starving in the streets, holding out Apple stock certificates that have become value. I'm not interested in that. That's a nasty outcome. But I think there are a lot of Bitcoiners who do want that. And why do they want it? And why do they articulate it this way? They articulate this way because they are angry. It's one thing to be disadvantaged and, you know, sort of illiterate or disadvantaged and not part of the conversation.

Those things don't exist anymore, Phil. It takes $10 a month to get involved in the conversation on Twitter through a cell phone or an internet connection at a library or at your school or whatever. That $10 a month is going to get you in touch with a lot of other people who also only have $10 a month and feel the same disadvantages. The Bitcoin crowd needs to start thinking in terms that, you know, help articulate. the actual difficulty they're having. It is not pitchforks and torches at the doors of the banks. It is, I'm tired of intermediaries getting rich on my activity. This is the way it should

be articulated. I feel this way too. You probably feel this way for all I know. I'm tired of everyone's getting 1%, 3% no matter what I do, what I don't do. And it's money out of my pocket. And then to make it worse, the millennials especially are active politically and see where this money is going. The the sort of frequent knock on Bitcoiners is, well, you don't want to pay taxes. How are we going to build roads? I've never heard a Bitcoiner say they don't want to pay any tax. What I hear is people don't want to pay taxes and see very unpopular uses for those. Canada famously spending money on all kinds of stuff that you've just never considered to be valuable.

We're making a billion, $100 billion or some number of billion dollar contribution to the European space program. This was an item in our recent budget. Phil, I'm not European, nor am I going to space. What about our space program? Do we have a space program? Does America have a space program? We can't contribute to that. If you want to get really politically incorrect early on,

the number of kids who are working, you know, part-time jobs driving Uber or even more difficult, more precarious employment situations here in Canada and specifically in the UK now where it's become very clear, very apparent. There's tons of videos about this. They're paying some of the highest tax in the world. They can't see a doctor, they can't buy a house, they can't get a girlfriend, and they see people who came to the country in the last six months living in five-star hotels playing PlayStation 5.

How would you feel? If you want to know why Bitcoiners, you know, the most extreme among us feel this way, look no further than the things, I don't want to say you, but the things that the sort of royal you has done to us over the last decade. Can you think of a policy that has been positive for millennials since, I don't know, 2010? Can you think it won't? They just won. Just one. Look, there is nobody who understands these things, who can think about these things under the age of, I don't know, probably 45 that thinks in the U.S. that thinks that Social Security is going to be there for them.

They're paying it, but that any Social Security will be there for them. The amount of debt that this generation across all Western countries is leaving to their grandkids is appalling. It's disgusting. Like, how do they have the nerve? wonder, is there a grand plan for a dead jubilee or something? You know, because hyperinflation is the only way out. And that's what we might be coming towards. And there's, you know, I mean, you mentioned my kids. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You think you are a hyperinflationista. Did I hear that correctly? A hyperinflationista. I don't know how you find that, but I've been

warning forever. I mean, there's, there's no way out. There's no way out of the, look, just forgetting about the policies and the printing and the spending. And, you know, there is no way out of, there's no way for governments to repay the debt that they have now, but for either hyperinflation or debt jubilee. It's not going to come from, you know, from cutting spending. We know that. They don't have the discipline, right? They don't have the will. So there, there is only two other ways to do it, and neither of them are very pretty. And look, I've been warning about inflation for, I don't know, at least a decade and the dismissiveness with which the policymakers acted when people were screaming, you know, people, Austrian school economists and, you

know, people who are just, you know, prudent observers. And for years, you know, leading up to COVID, there was no inflation. And the arrogance, the hubris that they had and being so dismissive of those concerns. And when COVID came, the amount of spending, they tripled the NASDA, they tripled the NASDAQ and kicked off 30% cumulative inflation over five years, 30%. So if you're an old person on a fixed income, you're one third poorer directly as a result of their policies. And they don't care because the people, the policymakers here are rich, they're asset owners. And what they care about is keeping the asset levels high. Stocks, houses, bonds, that's what

they care about. They don't care about the poor people that are getting killed by them. They give it lip service. They claim they care. But when they quote year over year inflation, I say, oh, inflation's down because we went from 3% year over year to 2%. When it's a cumulative number, everything else is, right, why are stocks given as a cumulative number when they want to talk about how great stocks are up over the last decade? But then when it comes to inflation and want to minimize it, all of a sudden now it's a year over year number. And it's versus expectation instead of absolute, right? I love it. It's really changed. Do you know what's going on in Canada with so we had our budget like a week ago, two weeks ago now? And our prime minister, Mark Carney was the

bank of Canada governor during 2008, I think. And he was the bank of England governor in 16. I might have that backwards. But he basically was involved at the highest levels in those countries during the periods in which the policies set in motion the inertia that are causing these issues now. We have a couple of measurements. You're going to love this. You are going to love this. The health of an economy oftentimes is GDP per capita. People talk about raw GDP numbers or direct foreign investment, whatever. There's a number of different sort of measuring sticks you can use to talk about economic health. Our government now, I'm going to try and keep a straight face when I say this, is talking about net debt to GDP being the best in the G20 when it comes to

economic health. If you had to define net debt to GDP, how would you do it? What would you, what would kind of go on on your head? I'm putting you in the spot here, but I would love to hear your thoughts on this before I tell you how they define it. I would say federal debt, and I'd probably add in, you know, consumer debt, credit card debt. Yeah, you know. This is the rational way to think about it, that you're, you are erring on the side of caution there, Phil, right? You're adding more to the debt pile than probably you should. You're sitting down. I hope the listeners and viewers are sitting down. The way that we measure it is we talk about net debt, which doesn't include anything that's not municipal or provincial, strictly federal

debt, no health care, no pension entitlements, nothing. That's a debt. And then on the other side of that balance sheet, guess what they include on the income side? They include the pension assets. So you have the pension assets for the public pension included in this net debt to GDP ratio. We are the best in the G7. This is the sailboat that we're going out into the Pacific Ocean on. And I'll tell you something, the tide is high. It's not been higher for a long time. And this is how, this is the direction we're headed. Our government now talks about the IMF says we're in the best spot. They talk, the IMF put out a report that our government loves to cite every chance they get about how the two healthiest economies that have the most capacity for more debt

and deficit spending are Canada and Germany. Do you think that report is anything to hang your hat on, Phil? That you have the ability to do more definitely. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Canada and Germany. We're in the best position. Health.

I can do lots of drugs because I'm in good. It's insane that these are the metrics we're using. And you're making a point that I'm trying to amplify in that the goalposts are moving for what is healthy, expected, normal in the sort of post-COVID era, post-GFC era. And a lot of people don't realize this at all. When I talked to my dad, my dad was a high-ranking municipal official for a long time. And when he comes over to see my one-year-old daughter, I try and get in his ear a little bit.

Hey, dad, I don't know if you saw the budget the other night, but we're talking about using your pension benefits to pay down the debt. Does that bother you? His eyes glaze over. And it's like, I don't know what he's thinking about. Is he thinking about his house going up in value? is thinking about his investment portfolio? I'm not sure. But the problem is that at some point, these numbers, to what you said earlier, are going to matter to somebody. Canadian tenure rates

going up. Japan rates. I mean, Japan is building a skyscraper on that chart every day with the green candle. And this is going to continue until something happens. And I don't know what that thing is going to be. But to me, I happen to agree with you. It is going to be some incredible inflationary event or some kind of debt you believe what other option is there every people talk about stuff like gold revaluation or you know the bitcoin wet dream is that they start using bitcoin to pay down the dead and it revalues at a million dollar coin these things are all possible but none of them are good ideas not a single one the damage is going to be unbelievable on the other side of any of those things yeah when you look at waymar germany you look what happened with hyperinflation it started just like

this and there was just an announcement just yesterday from the boj that they're going to do do a $120 billion stimulus to address, to hand people to address inflation. It's like, are you insane? And again, you go back to Wyoming or Germany. People say, oh, the cure for high prices is high prices. When things get too expensive. And it's like, no, it's not, right? Because it gets into this unwind where things fall apart. And, you know, on the other side of that is social unrest, social upheaval. And we can start to see pockets of it, right? You can start to see it bubble up. in a number of different ways. And it's, frankly, it's depressing.

And I think there's, I think there's a dark cloud hanging over America and Canada now. I think there's a feeling of a little bit of depression. There's a feeling among young people that these governments, these, not just the economic policies are not for me, but the systems, the establishment are not for me. You mentioned my kids, I have a son who's in high school applying to colleges. and he told me that half the kids in his grade in public school, half the kids in his grade are pretending to be gay or by on their applications to college so they can actually get in.

And can you imagine these are teenage boys, underage teenage boys telling adults that they have gay sex lives because that somehow is going to be rewarded without that they can't get into a college. Yeah. Is that what is the sign of late stage fiat, if not that? I feel like this is a, you know, it's an ongoing kind of thread that no matter what side of the Bitcoin financial world you're on, you see this everywhere. When I think about why those kids are doing that, isn't the other question, why do you

want to go to a college at this point? That's a very good question. And that's a question. So with high school kids, that's a question that I'm really grappling with because, you know, I don't want to be the one guy who's telling his kid, it could be a passing, you know, these things could be a passive way. they could normalize. Do I think that they're going to learn any information, proprietary information that they're going to get from college that they're going to use in business and life that's

going to help them, propel them forward? No, I don't think there's a single thing. I think they can spend three weeks listening to podcasts and go on chat GPT and learn anything on any topic that they would otherwise learn in college. I think they're probably going to learn how to play beer pong. And they're going to learn how to bump around and sleep late and maybe some radicalism and, you know, some anti-Semitism and... Do you fear the radical, sort of most radical, not to turn the interview on you, but the most radical tendencies of some of these communities

rubbing off on your kids? Like, I'm many years away from that, and it may be totally different when I send my own. But, you know, you're a father who understands the game, and still, you know, you're expressing that once you send them into this community where peer pressure rules a day, who knows what they're going to start thinking. You know, it is nuts that even Phil is saying,

saying this at a time when much less competent people are sending their kids to universities. Here's the other thing. In terms of university attendance, you almost have to send your kids away for school. Even if you don't love the idea of the major, even if you don't love the idea of the ROI, even if you're afraid that they're going to come back with a Mamdani 2028 shirt, you have to send them because if you don't, you're putting them in a position where they become dehumanized. And what do I mean by that? If you look at the top sort of earning companies, most influential companies in the world. What do they all have in common, Phil? They're all trying to take away your human impulses. They're trying to take away your sex

drive, right? Porn is free. They're trying to take away the need to be around strangers. You can just go on Tinder if you want to find a mate. They're trying to take away your need to cook and provide for yourself. You can get a, you know, what we call here an LMIA, a foreign worker to drop a taco bell off at your door that you're financing over six months or whatever. Like all these things are happening in your day-to-day life all until you turn basically 18 or 19 and you can go to school. I don't know what the value prop is on that side, but I think it's getting greater and greater. And I think the universities know this, by the way. And so they realize that they don't have to produce an academic product anymore. Their product is a social one,

even if they don't officially add that to your line items on your invoice. They understand that if your kids, if you want your kids to develop, you have two choices. You send them to the military or you send them to ex post-secondary institution. But those are the, those are sort of the choices now. And until that changes, I don't, I can't imagine that universities are going to care about the outcomes. I mean, we could talk about the way that they're not forced to underwrite loans for worthless degrees. You know, how many kids can you graduate in underwater basket weaving? Well, I got an honors degree. I don't want to make coffee and write your name on it. Too bad. That's where the value is in that degree. But, you know, all these things are are piling up.

And this is the other problem, right? You know, we've talked. about kind of the younger generation feeling like they're disadvantaged. It's not just policy that's done this. It's basically every single institution along the way has become predatory, whether it's elementary schools, daycares, high schools, universities, places of employment. Where are those kids dealing with an honest dealer at this stage? I would argue that they're not dealing with an honest dealer anywhere except in their home. And by the way, mom and dad have to work four jobs now to make sure the mortgage doesn't go into default. Sorry about that. You're going to be raised by, you know, I don't know, who's a famous YouTuber? I'm out of the loop

there on that. I'm a boomer in that respect. But, you know, you're being raised on YouTube or Twitch or whatever. It is a bad situation for kids. What I try and do is to stay positive to say, look, you know, there's a lot of good communities out there. I live in a good community. I'm sure you live in a good community where I have faith that if I, you know, see my neighbors or I send my kids over to a neighbor's house who has a kid, or my daughter's age, they're going to get a similar message. You know, I want the message to be reinforced all the time. What I don't want and what I think a lot of people are dealing with as parents

is sending their kid to school and then having to unwind seven, eight hours of just bad information, okay, whether it's stuff about sexual identity, whether it's stuff about colonialism, whether it's stuff about, you know, who knows, right? There's a million different things. it's just everything is swimming upstream and you know to tie a bow on it one of the reasons bitcoin is important to a lot of us is because it gives you the financial freedom to say I'm not sending my kid to that school my wife's not going to work she's going to stay home with my daughter she's going to do this you do that you know I'll have more input into their

into their life than a parent who doesn't have that financial freedom yeah go ahead only if you know a number goes up right only if it goes up and and there's you know you play it out to infinity. It can't go up forever, right? It's just money, right? So, you know, you don't have money. You don't make money on Bitcoin unless you eventually sell and eventually you take a profit. So, you know, the financial freedom is is a little, a little iffy, but like on the, on the, on the philosophical side. I mean, we talk about, you know, the economic institutions, the academic institutions, the political institutions. We didn't get into the media, which is untrustworthy. And so you have all these institutions that are like completely breaking down. So the concept of decentralization,

Right. And decentralizing the money from, you know, central banks and from the treasury and from these government. That is a concept that is really, you know, that you can spread, right? Hey, we can bring that to Dow's. We can bring that to different assets. We can bring that to just trusting, you know, things, documents. But it's an idea where the people who are in charge, the people who are in charge of information, of the money, of the, the certifications and the gatekeeping, and all these things, if those people are not to be trusted, then you have to take those responsibilities away from those people, right? And all people are corrupt or can be corrupted. So you find these processes, these algorithms, these ways where you decentralize it, maybe automate it, right? And

you kind of, you remove that. So it's like Bitcoin as a trade or as a monetary system is, you know, like that's, that's the connection between the philosophy of it. And that's what I'm really trying to build to and get to here? I think that is true. You know, in terms of the community building and removing the trust from people and decentralizing, you're 100% right. One of the things that I think, you know, a lot of people agree with Bitcoin or not is the problem that governments are having now is to really raise a healthy society. You have to have people who are willing participants in that society. And to get willing participants, you need the rational action to be participation. And you make that the rational action by rewarding participants with some

improvement in their day-to-day life, economic situation, their community. They do something and then they look outside their window and something has improved over time. And the more people are doing things, the more things are improving. The problem now for governments is that participation is no longer the rational action. And there's something to be said for what happens when that becomes the case at a certain threshold of the population. Right now, maybe it's Bitcoiners who are thinking this way. There's homeschoolers and survivalists and these types who have been thinking this way for a long time, but they've never really hit a threshold, both in terms of just pure numbers and in terms of available capital, which I think is giving

governments a bit of a headache. So what happens when that becomes the case? Well, a couple of things happen. One, the government tries to force you to be an active participant, and they criminalize anything that looks to be anti-participation. How do they do this? In the UK, they're monitoring private messages talking about, you know, if you're talking about immigration, for example, easy thing to pick on. They send police officers to your house if you've tweeted something illegal. UK arrested more than 10,000 people last year for social media posts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, these sorts of things. So you make that illegal. You also tell people that they must be X, you know, X level cooperative in certain community efforts. So whether it's

vaccination or whether it's sending your kids to school, whether it's making sure that you're working. You have to do X level of stuff to be sort of a member in that society. Otherwise, you're going to be destitute. You'll be living in the tent. You'll be addicted to whatever. It sucks. But this is the way that they behave. And they've been sort of lowering that bar gradually over the years. The centralized networks solve this in a way that we've never seen before. They solve it in a way that not only just eliminates the government from being sort of a required participant, even at the end of the line to get a service or to get a currency or whatever, it just removes them entirely. You know, Bitcoin is private in some ways and,

you know, public and other ways, but it also shields you from the sort of wrath of these governments. And as things get more and more difficult for them on the enforcement side and on the participation side, yeah, I expect the clamps to come down on Bitcoin, which I think a lot of Bitcoiners don't want to hear. One of my sort of most difficult conversations that I have on my show a lot with guests and with the live chat is the idea that Bitcoiners have of themselves is much greater than what would actually happen if push came to shove. I don't know a lot of people who would start a decentralized school system, food system, they're living kind of off the grid, at numbers that are great enough to attract government

attention, who would then also stand up to, you know, gun and munition when that gun and ammunition came to their doorstep and told them to, hey, break it up, get back to being an obedient economic union. It's a big ask. It is a big ask. It is a big ask. It shouldn't be a big ask because the government shouldn't have a problem with that. The government has gone so far away from the original sort of desired set of characteristics and has truly become like the Hobbs Leviathan, right? It's completely out of control now. What is that? What's the Hobbs Leviathan? Hobbs is a political philosopher from years and years ago, long time ago, And wrote this book about how basically left unchecked, government will always expand its power

because power expansion is the only way to guarantee its survival. And at the end of the day, this is the organism that government is. And what he didn't account for was the speed at which some of the more difficult things for government to deal with would pop up. And so we went basically from fax machines to Twitter in 20 years and government's not ready for it. We went basically from pennies being minted to Bitcoin in 20 years and banks are not ready for. for it. You know, I signed into my banking app the other day, Phil, and they're hyped up that now I can take a picture of a check in low light. Like, the bank's not ready for whatever's happening around them, you know? Like, they're completely, they're completely unprepared by what's

going on around them. And it used to be the case that policy would protect you from certain things as an entrenched institution. That's no longer the case. Not because they don't intend to try, but because the cat and mouse game is getting away from governments. And it's not just Canada and the U.S. It's everywhere. And it's not just on things that are meant to usurp government power. It's on a ton of stuff. It's everything from publishers being unable to stop AI from training on their books to banks being unable to tell people that they're only going to give them 1% in their checking account when USDT at Coinbase is giving you 8. You know, like these things are happening everywhere. And I don't think, I don't think a lot of people in power on the

political side, really understand how fast it's going to start to happen over the next few years. They're losing their grip. And as they're losing their grip, they're getting more and vicious about it. And look, you talked about this, there used to be this contract, right? Like, hey, I go to school, I keep out of trouble. I do the things I'm supposed to do, right? I know I'm going to have a house in a suburbs and two cars and a family and safety and just the basic things, right? Like that was the contract for the last, I don't know, 50, 60 years at least in America and Canada. And I don't know if that's still the case. I mean, you can't, you graduate school with debt and, you know, with home prices, what they are.

Like, you're playing catch up for so long. People say the reason why they're not having kids is affordability. Morgan Housel just tweeted. He said that he thinks so much of society's problems are downstream of affordable housing as a major issue. And this is all on the precipice, on the verge of. of AI and agentics coming in and taking, God knows how many jobs that we're about to lose. And we don't know. Nobody has a good answer for what happens then.

What happens then? What are people? You look at history. And every time, oh, you know, the typewriter is going to take away all the job. And, you know, we can't go from the horse and buggy, you know, to the car. And, and, you know, people have found a way. But, I mean, this just feels a little different. You know, there's.

Don't you think the AI thing is really a spectacular, like a spectacular firework show waiting to happen? Think about this. You've brought in in Canada, again, not to write on immigration, but it is like a huge issue in all over the modern world. You've brought in people who are broadly incompatible with modern culture through no fault of their own. This is the culture they came from. They are broadly incompatible with what you see, United States, Canada, most of Europe. You bring them in to do basically low wage work. So they're delivering food. They're working in warehouses. They're picking apples on farms, whatever. You brought in all these people to presumably help your tax base. We've, you know, we've talked in Canada. a lot about how we just need to increase the worker to pension recipient ratio. Otherwise, these things are going to fold. They're going to fold anyway, but whatever. The problem is all those jobs, like you mentioned, Phil, are going to be gone because of artificial intelligence inside of this decade, if not the next. And all these people are going to be here. They're all going to be destitute. They're all going to be rudderless. They're all going to be mad. And not only are you going to have this problem where your tax base is completely eroded,

but also now you have a million, two million, three million, maybe more if you're in Canada, people who came here hoping for something better and are getting something worse. And by the way, you know, there's also a general sort of fatigue around immigration, a general fatigue around cultural frictions, general fatigue around people coming from overseas and taking work for high schoolers. Then on top of that, you also have to deal with, okay, well, the housing affordability thing is not getting any better because the boomers are living until 95. You got 30 years still to wait until these guys sell.

They're going to keep voting for the same shit. I don't know if I can swear, over and over and over again. And they're not going to give up this power. None of them. And why would they? I don't expect them to act in a way that's irrational. But we can't pretend that these things are not going to be hitting the track at the same time over the next decade or so. And then saying, oh, here's how we'll fix it.

We'll send out a check, inflation remedy check. here you go two grand like it's it's insane that this is the level of discourse in the modern world about problems that are so simple to diagnose so simple to diagnose there's there's a there's a there's a there's a saying an ancient greek saying from uh um that society goes great when men plant trees that they know they'll never get to sit in the shade of right and you look at you look at the policies that we have now in the west and it's like these are people who are trying to sit in the shade of trees that they're never going to have to plant. They're stealing from future generations.

Imperation is great for bringing in people to, yeah, deliver my door dash real cheap. And also, by the way, now we have more people coming in to fund social security and to, you know, people who are going to buy my boomer homes and all that. It's very, we've pit generations against generations. And, you know, I don't know if, you know, how can society last when an older generation acts against the interests of the younger ones. Like, who does? It's never happened.

You'd never do it in your own community. And, you know, it's frustrating because it is true that the boomers have really extracted every ounce of value. And along the way, by the way, they've become completely insufferable. Every one over 60 that I know thinks they're a genius investor. Like, you're not. You could have done literally anything over the last 30 years, except, like, the only way, if you, like, spent all your time in strip clubs, you know, banging in perfect.

Roberts Row on the stage, maybe, maybe then, you didn't do okay. But everything else, whether it was investing in the index, investing in housing, investing in whatever, you did fine. I like to tell this story, you know, not to pick on my father, but his financial advisor has made him a ton of money over there. He's got a private financial advisor. Do you know what he was doing before he was a financial advisor, Phil? He was a Thai salesman at Wolko. Like, this is not a financial advisor. This is a guy who rode a monetary wave like we have never seen before where every asset ballooned in value, thanks to going off the gold standard, among other things, as Bitcoiners like to remind people, and now you have boomers who have extracted

every bit of value, while the kids who are underneath them, who they will need at some point to drive them to the doctor, have a negative societal equity. You can't fix that, and you're seeing the response now. I think on the all-in podcast around the time Trump was elected, David Friedberg made this great point that I disagreed with at the time, but man, as he turned out to be right, while all the other guys on that show were celebrating the end of the communist impulse, the end of the left, the end of the woke. Freedberg said, you guys are wrong. You're going to see a communist wave rush through America and the modern world like you have never seen before. And those other guys

laughed. Chamath and J-Cal Sachs, who's in the administration. They laughed it off. No way. Well, here we are. You got a mayor in New York who's never had a job. I think he's got a degree in African Studies. He's talking about free food and free buses for everybody, had a couple of what he would probably consider hard-hitting questions about his policies from somebody on morning talk the other day. Well, Mayor, Mamdani, how are you going to do this? The state has basically told you that you're not going to, they're not going to raise taxes. All we're going to find a way. Okay, well, good luck. In Seattle, you may have seen they just elected a mayor. I think her name is Katie Wilson. She's 43, lives with her parents,

and recently delivered a stump speech about how private grocers, will no longer be allowed to close without reprimand just because they feel like the business is not viable in a certain area. We can't create food deserts. These are sort of the least economically literate among us and they've risen to power in some of the most important metropolitan areas

in the United States here in Canada. Same thing. It's everywhere, Phil. And it's not, I don't know how to fix it. I have no idea. Still organic? Does it feel inorganic to you? It's hard to say.

Part of me says that there's always a possibility that some of these things are being funded by groups who want to, incite division. Like you said, there's clearly a class war and a generation war going on. There's fault lines that typically just never rise to the surface when things are good. No one cares how many mosques are in their area when your GDP per capita is going up. But when it's not, suddenly people praying on a street corner during a festival is national news. Okay. So these problems come to come to the surface when there's issues.

And there's, of course, beneficiaries to those sort of fights. But the other part of me says, just look at the demographics. Boomers are slowly, as I mentioned, but, you know, starting to die out. And more and more young people are coming to this country from other places. And, you know, we're born in Canada or the United States or come here from wherever. And they're looking at this and they're voting in a way that's to their self-interest. You know, why would I ever vote for somebody? Like, if you look at the electoral landscape in New York, you're going to vote for Cuomo?

What self-respecting 25-year-old is going to vote for Cuomo? especially when the girl you're trying to take to bed is wearing a hot girls from Mamdani shirt, right? Like all these things work together and give you an outcome that you should have expected but seems at the time where you're trying to predict a counterintuitive. But then once you see it, you go,

oh, this guy hasn't left his house or gone to the gym in six months. He doesn't work. He has no place to demonstrate excellence. And so the only place he can demonstrate value is by voting for the same person that the girl he wants to nail, you know, the shirt she's wearing.

you want. This is so obvious. And the language is harsh and it's pointed, but it's clear. It's so clear once you see it. The other side of it are transplants. People who aren't going to have kids are not going to be here. They're not investing in the long term of the city. They're coming from outside from all over the country, wealthy people who are getting supported by it. And you have people that come out of academia that think they know things that have been just misled and miseducated, right, for years. And then you have, you know, the worst of it are the people who, imagine, well, I love communism because I, in my virtuous, you know, I am such a better person than everyone else. I'm more kind. I feel things, right? So I'm a better person. So I'm going to

be the communist who generously deploys the capital equally to everyone else. I am the savior to all the poor people. I'm going to help people. And what these idiots don't realize is, first of all, they themselves are going to be corrupted, obviously. Second of all, that they're not going to be the person who's benevolently handing out, you know, money to the poor and being celebrated and hoisted on their shoulders, that's not who you're going to be. You're going to be the one, you know, sent to the gulag. You're going to be the one like in the cultural revolution in China. You're going to be the one, you know, they're going to turn on you.

And these people are very stupid and they're very naive. And I think their stupidity and their naivete has been taken advantage of by people with sinister ideas, like in the case of Mondani. And it's a very dark, very, you know. Okay, let's go down this road here. Who is, we've talked a bit, like we've been on this for 45 minutes. And we've kind of danced around this like, they. Who is the royal they?

Who is they funding? Who is they doing the sort of intrusion into politics, the intrusion in economics, the intrusion in academia? Who is this they? This is the problem that once you start to espouse these ideas and polite company, eventually the question comes, who are you talking about? And this is when you sound crazy. I don't have a good answer for this. But clearly, there's some steering force behind all this.

Who is it? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there are some very well-funded campaigns on social media, like misinformation campaigns. And, like, it's very clear. Everyone, you know, the gelman amnesia, right? You're an expert. You know about one topic and you can see, oh, all this stuff is bullshit, right? Everyone has it all wrong.

And then you go on to the next topic and you just kind of go with the crowd because you don't know or you trust the sources. It's like that with Israel, the amount of misinformation and the amount of, like, evil positioning about Israel, it's like, it's outreach. It's like to anybody who's like been there and knows anything about the conflict. The amount of stuff that people say unimpeded, not by the New York Times, not by Harvard. There is no lie about Israel that is dark enough that that someone on the left is going to stand up and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't think that's actually, I don't think it's. The New Yorker just ran a piece on Fuentes like two weeks ago. They had his mug front and center. It's probably the best picture that kid has ever taken.

And they ran the people in the world that they can glorify him. The same with that Piker guy gets the, you know, invited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the people, because somebody's funding, somebody's paying for them to be placed there. There is clearly, on that topic, there's clearly a well-funded campaign on these other things. I don't know.

I mean, I don't know. It makes me wonder, you know, what the sort of desired outcomes are. That's a path you don't have to go down. The frustrating thing for me is that this is something you expect from kind of youthful exuberance. It's sometimes a natural outcome from people thinking, I see the injustice in the world

and I can change it and while this has been tried before it has been tried by my generation my generation has the energy we have the you know like everyone has been like this everybody has been like this I'm still like that sometimes I'm in Bitcoin I still feel like that

but well how do you excuse it from a 35 year old you know how do you this is the thing that really I kind of laugh at I don't know whether to laugh or cry but how does a 35 year old who lives in New York who's got an apartment that costs, you know, him or her $4,000 a month.

They're not working a steady job. They're living with two people they don't know. They have no privacy. They're not eating well. Life's not good. How does that person still think that the fix is wealth redistribution? Like, this is my frustration. There's a lack of consideration by these people.

And more government. The government fucked everything up. So I know what to do. Ooh. Yeah. I have an idea. Let's give me. I got to be in the government.

My guy will fix it. Right, right, right, right, right. My guy's uniquely caring and uniquely generous. I don't know. Mom, Donnie is an interesting case. Like, he's obviously charming. He's the handsome guys young. I think he's like younger than me.

I'm pretty sure he's in his early 30s. You know, for a guy like that, I kind of get it. And this is, to your point, I think this is the best, this is the best way to reason that there's been funding from here for this, for this, from some, you know, shadowy group. Because if you put a guy up there who's in. his 60s with a 32 BMI, okay? Suddenly, the free buses that just not hit in the same, like the kids would say, you know, but they find this guy who's, like, charming, he kind of looks cool. He's eating the rice with his hands in one picture. He's got the suit on. He's yelling in the bar. He's yelling on the stump. You know, that's like a sort of synthetic made-in-a-lab type politician.

And to me, the other frustrating thing, not on the funding side, or maybe sort of on the funny side, I guess, but with the inverse result. The best that the sort of Republican base can muster up is Cuomo. This is the guy. You know, like, it's, it's almost, it's almost unbelievable. You know, it's like how did that guy? Well, it's almost like I have stood up the opponent that I want to stand up, right? Yeah, maybe. What Hillary engineered that we know through the Democratic email at least, I mean, look, I don't think Mamdami has a lot of personal agency. He's a front man. He's a frontman for an agenda that is sinister and that is not in the interest of most New Yorkers, and he's the guy that they put out front. But I don't think he has a lot of personal agency in conflict with

this agenda, which is not a good agenda. But all this, all this social discontent and all these anxieties that everyone has about the economy, about AI, and about all these social issues, they're expressed in different ways, and there's not a lot of good, healthy ways to express them. think the way that they're expressed in capital markets right now these days is through to bring it back, but is through this trade, this Bitcoin trade. And I think that's something that you've expressed and that you understand. And I don't think a lot of people that aren't in the trade really get that. And I wanted to kind of bring it back to that. Why do you think that this is so appealing to people who feel like they've exhausted their other options?

I think that the concept of decentralization feels right. And I think the concept of investing in something that is outside of the mainstream economic structures feels right. Okay. I think you're overweighting decentralization. I think a lot of Bitcoiners don't really understand it because they're sort of new in the game. If you're a 2020, 2021 entrant, you haven't had to deal with things like soft fork wars or, you know, different code merges that raised hell in the community. These were these were important conversations that happened in 2016, 2017, 2018, when things were really dark. You know, the price of Bitcoin was $2,000, $3,000, whatever it was.

People who are in Bitcoin now, I think, are in it for a few reasons. And they all sort of come from this desperation, this idea. that this is the trade that's going to do it for me. And the reason they're in it at first, sort of the road they take there is it's kind of a dark one, honestly, Phil. They can't buy a house. So they can't invest there. That's sort of an easy way to think about investing as a young person. I got to buy a house and then the house goes up in value. You may not understand things like home equity loans and stuff like that, but you understand that the house goes up in value and this is a good thing. So you can't do that. You can't really take a consistent equity position.

At least you couldn't till recently because there wasn't things like partial shares and there wasn't things like, you know, wealth simple in Canada and cash app in the States. And these things are fairly recent developments, let's say the last four or five years. And so that wasn't an option either. You can't really think about starting a business because you don't have the wherewithal or the community or the network or the capital to do so. Banks are very difficult to deal with. And maybe most importantly, you come out of your formative years with six-figure debt.

And so you have to think about how to get out of that debt. That is the thing that weighs on you the most. I was fortunate not to be in that situation. I graduated many years ago and just kind of before this whole run-up. But the idea that you would have that debt and not think about it every day is hard for me to believe. And so you get into it for desperation. But if you stay, if you stay, pass the number go up. What you will find, as you mentioned, are people who are pure of heart, who will guide you and help you and be there for you posting,

Pepe memes and McDonald's uniform memes on days like today, and they'll be there for you to tell you how to use your Bitcoin as collateral for a loan instead of selling it to avoid tax burdens. They'll be there for you to help you if you need health insurance. You know, Bitcoin, did you know there's a Bitcoin focused health insurance company called crowd health? Like, these things are going on all over the place in Bitcoin. It is a community that is well-equipped, well-capitalized, and very competent.

If you stay long enough to get past number, go up, like I was saying, you will find these things. And the best part about Bitcoin is that that desperation turns into hope because as your habits change and your time horizon changes, you will notice differences in yourself. You know, I never wanted to get married in 2017. I was with the same woman that I'm with now, but I didn't, I was like, I'm getting married. It's a terrible idea for a man to get married. The contract is all. but like that's actually not it's not as bad as you think you just got to find the right person it's not as bad as you think you just got to be sure about your decisions and put yourself in a position where you can let that seed grow whether it's marriage or your physical health or your financial health or your business or your education but if you're not in that kind of community if you're in a community where time preferences you know not as valued as it is in bitcoin what are you going to find you're going to find yourself you're going to become a widget enjoyer as they like to say you know You are being led from one widget to the next.

It's a Barbie movie and PlayStation and I got to get this. I got to get that. But what do you have at the end of the day? You're empty, you know? It's the generation of kids who come home from a shitty job that they had to fight like hell to get. That, you know, their education is sort of a burden to them now because no one wants to hire them.

They're too good thanks to going to college or whatever the case is. They come home to an apartment they don't love in a community where they can't build and have no ownership. There's no pride of ownership. And so they don't learn those skills. And before you know it, you're 30 years old. And what happens when you, you know, like these things get difficult. Not to poke fun, but like, you know, you lose your hair, 30.

You know, you get fat at 30. And everything gets harder. And the problem that we've put ourselves in is that you're pushing people to make the most difficult decisions at a time when it is the most difficult to make them well. And that was never the case 15 or 20 years ago. It was getting worse, but it was never as bad as it is now. And, you know, I know we're getting close to rapping. I'll just, I'll say something.

You can tell me if you agree or not. You're a father who's got way more experience with it than me. And I lived at home with my dad until I was 28 years old. I bought my first house at 28 with my now wife. And one of the things that he told me is that the reason he never kicked me out, even though I had a good job, even though I was making money and had a steady partner, is because he was in a position to keep supporting me to make, sure that he was an influence on the three most important decisions that I would make as a man,

even though I didn't realize that at the time. It was who you're going to partner with, where you're going to work, and where you're going to live. And the way that we treat kids now is go out on your own, make something to yourself at 18, 19, 20, and find yourself, find your road. It's not the answer. It's not the answer. The answer is to go to people who have been there, done that and done so successfully who can help you avoid the mistakes that they didn't avoid that their parents help them avoid that you know there's a compounding good decision making effect here down the bloodline that you can benefit from you can benefit from if you're in a position to do so and if your parents are in a position to help you with that but more and more

feel it's just not the case and we are seeing the outcomes of that now people are making big decisions without that help divorce rates are high poverty is high kids are born out a wedlock There's a lot of problems. And I think, you know, we've talked about it all afternoon. These are simple issues to solve if we want to solve them, but it doesn't seem to be the case. It's a good place to leave it. Where can people find your podcast? Where can people find more of you?

Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. We are live on Monday nights with a very lively, sometimes hostile public chat. That's a fun place to be. And you can find me on Twitter at Joey tweets. There's three E's and tweets. Lots of places to find good Bitcoin. I'm not the only place, but I'm happy to be your top of funnel if that's what you're into. All right. Well, thanks again. Thank you to the audience for your time and attention, and we'll be back next week.