The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim on his Bitcoin Strategy | The CBP (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. 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   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠www.easydns.com⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer. D-Central Technologies - https://d-central.tech/ Your home for all things mining! Whether you need a new unit, a unit repaired, some support with software, or you want to start your own wife-friendly home mining operation, the guys at D-Central Tech are ready to help. With industry leading knowledge and expertise, let the D-Central team help you get started mining the hardest money on Earth.

Friends and enemies, welcome back to the Hating Bitcoiners podcast. I usually start these Tuesday shows by saying weird day, weird time, but I am burning the candle at both ends because as you guys know, Len did such a bang up job handling every interview, every Monday night flagship, every tweet, every comment from the haters over the month when I had my newborn. So I'm trying to make it up to him and I'm doing the best I can here, banging out interview after interview. Breaking a CBP rule tonight,

we joke on the show about how we get interview requests from CBC, from certain other Ontario media outlets, newspapers that we talk about sometimes, as well as from politicians. And we typically say no, honestly, because I think most of the time politicians are in a guarded stance and rightfully so. They are under attack. The barrage is never ending,

especially if you're the mayor of a big city. But tonight we're making an exception. Mayor Ken Sim is coming on. He's obviously been in the news. He's become a bit of a Bitcoin darling here. I don't want to use the D word, but I think it's appropriate because of his recent comments around considering Bitcoin as a treasury asset for the city of Vancouver. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about some other stuff too. Mayor of a big city is a difficult role these days. We dunk on mayors almost every week. Although I will say Ken is in the green room now. Ken, we have never dunked on you, buddy. So you've been doing something right. If we can't find any stories on you, that's a good thing. First, as always, the sponsors, EasyDNS. EasyDNS is a partner of ours and they've been a partner of ours. Mark, obviously,

CEO and founder, great friend to the program. EasyDNS is where you want to be if you're going to start a business. Why? Because they will help you with everything related to your registrar, your domain, emails, email security, domain security, virtual private server stuff, you name it. So whether you're going to do something as simple as sell hats, something as crude as sell pictures of your feet, or something related to Bitcoin, Mark's got your back. So when you start with Mark, you can either buy a website through him, buy a domain through him, or you can port a domain over. Easy in either case. We've actually done both. Both times was smooth sailing, not just because Mark is a sponsor, but Mark will help you

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around your house. You want to buy a couple of trinkets. You want to show off your Bitcoin savvy. These guys got you. No promo code. It's a partnership of love. Definitely head over there. Patronize the boys. They have the best stuff around. And of course, happy to be partnered with such a great Canadian company. Mayor Ken Simmons here. Before he was the mayor, he was a overnight janitor at Wendy's. Mayor, how many Frosties have you stolen in your entire life? And how many Frosties did you give away to your friends as the overnight janitor at Wendy's?

Well, it was at, I worked from midnight to eight o'clock in the morning. So, uh, and I was in grade 11. So, uh, I didn't work the drive through window. So I didn't give any of my buddies, uh, Frosty's, you know, I had a couple, um, you know, it was actually, it was actually a pretty good gig. I bet. I bet. Call me Ken. You don't have to call me Marisim. It's just.

Ken, listen, I'm happy to call you that as well. I want to thank you for coming on. It takes guts. Like I said to you before the show, like I said during the intro to come on a podcast like ours, we are unforgiving and critical where it is deserved. But we also give a claim where it's deserved. And I think you're, you know, you're in that latter camp. Maybe before we get into the Bitcoin stuff, that's obviously why you're you know you're in that latter camp maybe

before we get into the bitcoin stuff that's obviously why you're here i want to get to know the man a little bit so you know in doing some uh research for the show i noted that there is a or notice i should say that there's a number of stories from local vancouver news over the last year or so two years or so about what i would consider to be one of the best things a mayor could do, repurpose an underutilized boardroom as a gym. And do you want to tell me about the in-house gym, available, by the way, to any City Hall staffer that wants it? I think a lot of the city staff could use it if they choose.

They may choose to or not choose to. But I love this. As someone who takes fitness very seriously, you do a better job no matter what your job is when you have a clear mind and you've had an elevated heartbeat for some time that day. And working out and physical fitness does that for you. Tell me a bit about that decision. I love that. I want to hear more about it. Well it it wasn't a story until it became a story uh the long and short of it is uh we have an office that's uh that is connected to the mayor's office and it was always part of the mayor's office and uh it was being used as a boardroom now the problem

is that boardroom uh it's not soundproof and And so you can hear everything, you know, on either side of the door. And we do work on some pretty confidential things. And so we basically moved that boardroom table to another room, literally 15 feet away. I bought some gym equipment and said, hey, look, because we can't really use it for anything else. And, you know, we paid for it with our own money. We didn't use a cent of taxpayer money. And then we invited everyone and we said, look, anyone can use this, including the opposition councillors. And unfortunately, we live in a world of politics and there's some dipshits.

Did I say that out loud? I'm sorry. You know what? We're going to be kind here. Basically, you know, some people made it a political thing. And, you know, the disappointing thing is, like, I don't really care. It's not a big deal. But what got lost in the noise was at the same time that happened, you know,

Collision, the big conference in Toronto, it was going to leave the country. And we supported a bunch of people and groups in Vancouver to help land collision. And it's coming to Vancouver for three years. It's probably going to be, you know, maybe $500 million to the local economy, 40,000 delegates that come to the city every year. Technology people. And it's going to be great for the local economy, but it's going to plant a bunch of seeds. Crickets on that. But 11 outlets showed up to see me sit on a Peloton, right? So whatever. It's politics. It's kind of gross. It's kind of

ridiculous, but that's what sells. So you just have to deal with it. I did love the story. Now, I got to say, I don't usually glaze the guests like this, but it looks to me like you could probably move some weight. Can you bench two wheels? Are you benching two wheels if you get under the bar? I'm sure I probably could. It wouldn't look pretty, but I don't do a lot of that, actually. I do a lot of, contrary to popular opinion, I actually ride my bike a lot, so I'm a road rider. And then I do a lot of higher reps, lower weight.

I like it. Listen, I'm all for this. I think that people don't take, like I said, fitness seriously enough, both as a sort of, you know, health issue, but also as a productivity issue, you're, you're better at your job. You're better, uh, husband, better partner, all these things when you're clear-minded and fitness does that for a lot of people. Now, have quite a story um a lot of mayors especially in bigger cities typically at least in hamilton we've become a retirement option for failed provincial politicians um and so in your case you are not a failed provincial politician you are a an accountant and entrepreneur give me a bit of your history and why, man, did you decide to get

into this politics thing? I can't for the life of me come up with a good reason to ever foray, especially into muni politics, but I want to hear sort of your background and why you made that decision. The reason you want to is you get a parking pass that works across the city. It's amazing. You got to park it on its own. Awesome. No, okay. You know what? Look, I'm a pretty humble guy, but I think, you know, when you ask me questions later on and we talk about Bitcoin and we talk about the debasement of currencies, I think it's important that your viewers understand what my background is.

So business school grad, went to UBC. It used to be called the Faculty of Commerce. Now it's called the Sauter School of Business. I was a finance grad, couldn't find a job in finance. So I ended up at KPMG. And I love KPMG, by the way. So all the alumni there, don't lose it. Don't lose your shit.

It's the best experience I ever had. Became a chartered accountant. And then I actually got into investment banking on the mining side. And so I worked in Vancouver. I worked on Bay Street twice. I worked in London, England and the city and then back in Vancouver. And then I went into private equity at CIBC Capital Partners back again on Bay Street, working in technology when the bank was trying to web enable their business and so did that um i absolutely hated it um i hated the politics around it i hated you know it's just a you know a lot of great people but a kind of a gross industry for me for other people it's great i'm not knocking in the street just wasn't my calling and i always uh deep down inside i i was

always an entrepreneur like i remember um you know when i was a kid i used to i i found um a comic store that would sell comics for 10 cents and the another one down the street that would buy them for 25 cents so it was almost an arbo opportunity and that was when i was in grade five right and so there was always this entrepreneurial spirit in me. And so I quit my job when, and my wife quit her job too. We were actually, or we weren't, she was pregnant. I was along for the ride and came back to Vancouver and tried to start up a business. And then my wife went on emergency bed rest and, you know, we had some bad experiences trying to hire someone to take

care of her. And so that led to, you know, us starting this little company called Nurse Next Door with a business partner. And actually, you know, I'll throw in some information that's kind of relevant today. When I quit my job, I read this book by David Foote called Boom, Bust and Echo. And it talked all about demographics and it had a five page section on home health care and sort of put that in the, you know, the memory bank there. Didn't think much of it. And then we when we had the opportunity or when we ran into the situation, that all came to light. And that's why we started the company. And now Nurse Next Door, which is our company that we co-founded, we're in four countries.

We have about 400 active locations. We have about 15,000 team members. We're a franchise system, by the way. We're in Canada, the U.S., Australia. We just opened up England. The second company we have is just a really small retail biglory in Vancouver. We have three locations. It didn't pan out. We Vancouver. We have three locations.

It didn't pan out. We thought we'd have 500 locations, but you know what? That business wasn't really scalable. So, you know, lessons learned. And so that's my background. And it's interesting because I referred to David Foote and Boom Bust and Echo. I feel like we're in the same situation where, you know, know it's obvious but you sort of have to do the work and i remember when we started nurse next door we used to get chased out of you know hospitals people used to say how dare you you know try to take advantage of people

you know and then five years later they're like where were you five years ago? We were. So that's a bit of that's a bit of the backstory. One last thing I do want to add, because the question always comes up, why politics? I hate politics. I have no aspirations to be a premier or prime minister. You can pay me enough. If someone offered me like fifty thousand bitcoins to be the premier i'd say no because i i would hate it but this being merit it's a passion project and i say that in the most flattering way um our four boys don't see or didn't see a future for themselves in vancouver and uh you know i didn't want to be someone that whined about it but did nothing about it and so we decided to put our tools down and try to change the direction of our city.

And I always say we because it's bigger than any one person, including myself. And that's what we decided to do. And the great thing is I'm not afraid to be fired. So we get exactly who we are. We get to swear sometimes in the media and we get to do what's right even though it comes at great political cost because frankly we don't give a shit and i believe if if people do what's right two things happen one great things happen or two if it doesn't work out you can still hold your head up high totally compromise your values and so that's why we're

here today and that's why we're talking about bitcoin i think that's a great answer landmine listen i think that's a great answer ken and you know i when i think about politics now for myself and and you know my city i live in uh dundas which is kind of a suburb of hamilton here in ontario and one of the things i see i joke about obviously this being sort of a retirement home for provincial politicians, but it's true in some respects. And we get people who want to hang out, really, and just prolong their careers. And so they never really take a stand. I never find out what they think or what they care about or what they're passionate about. And it's fair, I think, to say that describing a trip as mayor as a passion project, that can be a good thing. If the person who is

taking that seat is passionate about the city, is passionate about doing the right thing, and isn't concerned about making sure they have a paycheck for life at the taxpayer's expense, I think you fit that bill, Ken. And so I applaud you for that. Now, we have to talk about Bitcoin. This is a Bitcoin show. Listen what what possessed you to try and become the first city in the country to look at review consider bitcoin as a treasury asset this thing is it's toxic for people who don't understand it i think for two reasons one this is my view i think the people who don't understand it at 110110,000 or whatever it is, $1,000 US, are probably at least a little bit jealous that they missed it.

And two, I think the people are scared somehow that this is still a scam or that it undermines the currency, things of this nature. What made you decide that this is a thing we got to look at for a city? I mean, for a city treasury, I don't know what else you guys have on your books, but I can't imagine there's anything even close to this. No, we have about $3.2 billion of debt instruments that are yielding 88 basis points to, which means they're only losing, I don't know, 10 to 15% of their purchasing power every single year, which is crazy. Like, think about it. Like, we're losing, what, $400 to $500 million a year in purchasing power. And that's the safe investment.

So a couple of things. I think your question has to be answered in two ways. One, it's the sound financial thing to do, and it can set us up for the next 100 years. And I truly believe that. In fact, I think if we put Bitcoin on the balance sheet, it'll be the most meaningful thing that I, not we, but I will

personally be involved with in the city during my entire tenure here. So that's the first thing. The second part of the question is why now? I actually thought we could wait another year or two to do this. But with what happened on November 4th, you know, with Trump getting elected, it just sped up the timeline because all of a sudden it became it was thrown in everyone's face with the strategic Bitcoin reserve. And we could, it's not that we're going to miss it, but we'll miss a big part of the opportunity. Because I think, you know, as you know, I'm a Bitcoin maximalist. And so I think like the technology is already proven and it's going to happen. So I think, you know, if you, but if you're not in that space, it's, you know, really, it's either going to zero or it's going to infinity. Yeah. And so it's not going to zero. And by the way, everything I say, disclaimer, I'm not giving financial advice. I'll lose my letters as a CA. So I'm not trying to so everyone, you know, don't trust verify. But the thing is, you know, if if we're looking at, you know, doing what's right for the city of Vancouver, and if you actually think that, let's say, let's make up a number in the short term, you know, in the next 10 years, Bitcoin is going to go to 10 million bucks. Wouldn't you rather buy it at 100 grand versus 2 million?

Sure. Like all of a sudden we get 100 times leverage or we get five times leverage. I think that's a fair point. And you're in a realm where we talk a lot on the show, Ken, about the reasons why people don't adopt Bitcoin as a treasury asset, the reasons why advisors or professional accountants or anyone who's lettered in the financial realm, what is the rationale for them not adopting Bitcoin or buying Bitcoin as a treasury asset or taking Bitcoin for payments. And oftentimes we come up with basically one reason that rules them all and it's career risk. And so you're in a realm there where there's significant career

risk as well, mostly because politicians, especially at the municipal level, at least in my view, it's hard to make hay with a good move, but it is really easy to get attention for a bad one. And when you talk to your colleagues, those who are aligned with you, wearing the same jersey and those who are wearing different jerseys, what are the most common rebuttals you hear for this? I mean, this is still very new. It is in its infancy, this consideration. What were some of the things you considered before you went public with this? What were some of the issues you heard from your peers? You know, was this always going to be something you did regardless of the feedback or was the feedback positive enough that you said, you know what, let's let's go with this. Let's give it a try. risk so in vancouver and in canada for that matter uh we have a weak mayor system where i'm just one of 11 people in that chamber and so we need the votes now i know i i think um like in ontario you guys changed it a little bit where you have uh some mayors have superpowers

like about 50 of them by superpowers do you mean that they can take like taxpayer funded trips to foreign countries under the guise of trade trips? Is that what you mean? No, no. Any American can do that. That's the answer. By the way, I pay for all my own trips. Thank God.

Thank God. You know what? There are going to be colleagues all over Canada who shit on me after this. No, by that I mean, I can't approve a budget by myself. Right. Whereas I believe Mayor Chow in Toronto can't. Like she has to defend it and what have you.

There's a process, but basically it's her budget as an example to a greater extent. And I do want to defend, you know, my council colleagues, the people on my team, because we agreed to a 94-point plan when we ran. We all agreed to it, and they've been great. You know, whenever something comes up on that 94-point plan, we do it. I also don't believe in surrounding myself with yes people. And so, you know, the great thing when you have people that think differently,

you know, they won't necessarily agree with you. The crappy thing about that is sometimes you don't get stuff passed. And so that's all leading up to our counselors are at different stages of their journey on Bitcoin. And like most people, you know, like I started as a pessimist. I totally didn't believe it at all because I hadn't been I didn't do the work. And so that's a long way of saying, you know, this is really a three-step process and I'll put it out there for everyone so everyone can see what we're working on. There's going to be no surprises. The first part was just passing a motion saying, let's explore it. And I can tell you it was challenging because, you know, to give people context on any other motion, like to say, let's explore

something. It's like, it's a no brainer. It's like we're not committing anything. We're just like looking at it. But because of the negative connotations around Bitcoin and because of the reward system where politicians just get absolutely hammered, there was a little bit of apprehension among some of our own party members. We did get it passed. The second part is actually getting the report back and then passing that report. And so hopefully the report comes out and it's well-informed. And if it's not, you know, I'll take the political risk of filing an amendment and saying, no, this is what, you know,

I'm going to make a stand and this is what we want to do. And, you know, we'll vote on that as well, but either way, the race really is on to get our people educated so they can make an informed, like they can complete an informed report and then getting all the councillors inside of our party and outside of our party up to speed so they can make an informed decision on how they vote. And so once we do that, the third leg and stop me if I'm boring the crap out of you, but the third leg is getting the provincial government up to speed as well, because we're governed by this thing called the Vancouver Charter, which means that we

do agree to put Bitcoin on the balance sheet in this example uh the provincial government has to approve it and uh they've openly said that they're not going to approve it um at this point in time they have a lot of other things that they're working on and so you know you know we have a good working relationship with the uh provincial government so we'll take them at face value on that one. But like I said, I, we didn't, we didn't follow this motion to virtue signal, get a couple of votes and try to, you know, say, Hey, we understand technology. No, this is one. I'm only going to speak for myself, not the other counselors because I can't speak for them.

This is one where I'm willing to die on the Hill on. And if that means I don't get reelected, that's okay. This conversation is way too important. I think those are, first of all, those three legs are, you know, it's an important sort of explanation about the process around these things. I think in Bitcoin, God, especially in the Bitcoin media space and on Twitter, everyone expects things to happen quickly. There's, I think, a shortcoming in Bitcoin, especially for people who have been around

a long time. This idea that because I get it and it's sort of clear to me, you should get it and it should be clear to you. And if you don't, well, have fun staying poor, right? The old meme. I think that we've done a poor job in the Bitcoin space. Again, I'll speak for myself, especially early on in my sort of journey,

just dismissing people who didn't understand it. Now I try and help curious people, though I don't evangelize the way I once did. And I think that you guys are going down a similar path. Now, there's a good question in the chat here. This has become national news, I think, in a lot of ways. Maybe I'm in a bubble a little bit. Have any other mayors reached out to you? Have any other city councillors from other places

reached out to you and said, hey, Ken, this is a good idea. I'm also a BitCorner, or I've also been thinking about this, or my 20-year-old kid is bothering me about this stuff. Is this something I should be looking at? Or are you just sort of on an island here in Vancouver and no one's talking about it with you from other jurisdictions? From a political perspective, and I'm going to apologize if like if I'm missing someone but no a lot of people have come out of the woodwork there are a lot of us that were closeted whole communities are coming out and

not just in Canada but around the planet you want to help out but not a lot of politicians I know and I don't want to mention the jurisdiction because I don't know if they're doing this in confidence or not. There's one other jurisdiction in B.C. we know was looking at it. And so I don't know where they are. But I think, you know, it's unfortunate. Like, it's a scary topic. It's a scary topic. And if you're a politician. So I get it.

I guess so. But you guys had, if I remember correctly, a number of what I consider to be high quality Bitcoiners. So I get it. you adopt Bitcoin. It's this idea that Bitcoin is not meant to replace these other treasury assets. You don't have to do that right away. You may do it in the long term. You may find that position sizing makes a difference and all these things. But the point is that the other assets are, as you mentioned, on purpose at this point, losing ground in terms of purchasing power, in terms of preservation of wealth and all these things while bitcoin's function is to do the opposite again on purpose with with uh you know very deliberate intent we're not going to give up purchasing power we're not going to be debased

do any of those uh addresses or any of those short comments stick out to you things that you think landed with your colleagues it's a different crowd than i'm used to talking to and probably in a lot of ways honestly ken a different crowd than I'm used to talking to. And probably in a lot of ways, honestly, Ken, a different crowd than you're used to talking to on topics like this. Any of those statements or comments that you remember really land? And, you know, maybe the second part of the question, what is the best way to talk to a city councillor about this stuff? And I asked that for two reasons. This is a long question now, but see if you can remember it all. Yeah. The reason it's hard with the city councillor a city councilor is because you're not that long in the tooth. I don't think you're even 50 years old, if I remember correctly. And when I look at municipal politics, it seems to skew a little older for some of the reasons we talked about earlier.

It's a hard topic to discuss with someone my age, let alone somebody who's 55, 60, 65. What is the best way to handle that crowd on this topic? Yeah. So thanks. You should be in sales, man. I'm 54. Hey, nice. No, I think, you know, with all the different counselors, you know, different, you know, different things resonated. For example, we have this big pool, Kits pool. And, you know, to heat it costs a lot of money.

And having a Bitcoin miner actually, you know, like basically change the model where you can actually mine Bitcoin, use the heat, heat the pool and turn a cost center into, you know, a money generator. Right. A lot of people are like, wow, actually never thought about it that way. It's actually good for the environment, too. Right. So, you know, but I think, you know, I don't know what your journey was like, but like all of a sudden, you know, when you have all these things hit you, then all of a sudden it kind of clicks. And so I don't think, you know, I still think we have a lot of work to do for people to go from the, you know, pessimist to curious to evangelist. And so, you know, that's the work. What resonates with councillors? You know, I really do think, and I say this respectfully, we have to think of the reward system that we as voters create so it's not even their issue um but you know if we can educate people and have um the whole community come out

and you know show why this is a good thing and why it actually matters and the community is going to be vocal and they're going to vote their conscience um i think that goes a long way in swaying you know people that are running for office again um And what was the third question? Well, I just, you know, sort of in the same vein, I think you answered it there. But is there, you know, a gap that you find when you're talking to your peers between maybe your younger peers and some of the some of them that are a little bit older? You know, you just can't make the same sales pitch because of, you know, I don't want to be insulting, but like this sort of technical lack of understanding, right? Or lack of technical understanding, lack of technical literacy in some regard for things like, you know,

the difficulty adjustment or decentralized networks and things like this. These are things that for me, you know, I grew up using Kasa and Torrance. And so, like, you know, I have a point of reference that I can draw on. But these older folks, there is no sort of maternal language, right? Everything they're hearing, there's no relative term for them. And so it's a different conversation to have. Yeah, you know, I think, and this is just a general comment. It's not even about Bitcoin now. If you can explain it to a 10-year-old kid, you go a long way in being able to, you know, get people to

understand it. And I say that respectfully. It's all in the beauty and the simplicity. Like, think of someone that, a kid that uses an iPad, you know, way back in the day when iPads were a thing, like a two-year-old kid could just figure it out. So the beauty is in the simplicity. And I think if you capture the emotional side of things, you go a long way so how do we do it well forget about bitcoin for a sec do you feel that it's things have gotten more expensive over the last five years right like of course groceries have basically doubled cpi i don't know hugh's cpi is running at three percent because my basket isn't three percent a year it's only three percent if all you eat is like honeycomb cereal and glue but if you know

anything else i think they've actually take i could be wrong here but i think they've taken food and energy out of the cpi because it does yeah yeah right too volatile yeah yeah and so you know um and people understand that it's like yeah i yeah, I feel that. Right. And you go, OK, well, great. So the first thing, forget about Bitcoin. If you don't even understand what your problem is, the problem we're trying to solve, let's educate you on that. a trillion dollars every 100 days the debt like i i look at um elon musk and um for him to bridge that two billion dollar two trillion dollar budget deficit per year he has to cut two of the following three the military budget all the interest on uh the debt and medicare medicaid and so if you cut the military budget guess what uh the whole world order changes if you uh like don't pay the interest you default on the debt and if you cut Medicare Medicaid you probably have a civil war in the U.S and you have to do two of the three just to get to even and you still have 36 trillion dollars

in debt the the debt's already insolvent and it's getting worse and so um when people like and i think people understand that and so you once you describe that problem then it's like all right well what's a good store of value um you can look at gold and we can talk about gold um and remember i was in mining so i actually like gold i'm italian so i like it too. Yeah. And gold's like a really shitty analog version. It's basically a fax machine compared to an AI bot and that, that AI bots Bitcoin. And you know what, I'm still like, I was orange potable, what, five and a half, six years ago by Jeff Booth. He's a friend. Luxury. Yeah, no, he, and he is, he's a great guy. He's just a great a great human being um so what you see is what you

get with him um but you know it's uh now i forgot what i said i'm so enamored with the gold oh yeah um you know um i'm i'm on my journey still and i i continuously learn and something just hit me literally last week. We all know that, you know, Bitcoin's finite, like twenty one million. And we all knew that, like, it's the only thing that's finite on this planet. You can't think of another thing like it's the greatest invention. I knew all that for years, but it really hit me just in the last week. What does that actually mean? That's fucking massive. It's huge. It is huge. And I had an epiphany just this past week. And so, you know, if we're still discovering new things, what about

the person who, you know, hasn't even started their journey and all they see is what they see in the media and how this is bad for the environment it's only used for organized crime and it's a ponzi scheme and it's a bunch of code that you can't even touch it doesn't mean anything and there's a you know another 10 000 shit coins out there or 15 000 like that's the world they live in. So it's a fascinating journey. I'll ask you sort of a mayor-facing question here as opposed to a Bitcoin-facing question. I know in Hamilton, we have a lot of the same problems Vancouver has with stuff like substance abuse and stuff like drug and crime. And we've got a housing crisis here. The housing here is just

unbelievably expensive, Ken. And I know Vancouver, we don't hold a candle to Vancity in that regard. You know, I could imagine some of the blowback you get from certain parts of your constituency about, you know, why is Mayor Sim looking at Bitcoin treasury asset nonsense when I can't afford my rent and my landlord won't repair my unit and my kids can't get proper health. These sorts of things that are really valid concerns because they're so tangible for people's lives. You and I are making the argument that Bitcoin is a thing that can help you get out of that spiral over a medium term, longer term time horizon if you choose to invest in it. But how do you square the circle for those people? One of the things we talk about on the show, for example, is it's not that people don't want to find a solution, Ken, to all these things. It's that they just don't have the time or the bandwidth.

And it's frustrating when someone else tells them that they've been wasting their time or that they have to spend what little time they have finding out about this new thing. How do you talk to those folks? That's a difficult conversation, right? Yeah, it is. So, wow, there's about 16 things I want to add there. So first of all, all their concerns are completely valid.

I think people have to understand, you know, it's, you know, it's one thing if you can sit here and say, you know what, it's great. I'm not worried about my job and get fired. My background, and I know this, this background's, you know, a lot of people have this, and this isn't like a sob story. It's just to give context uh son of immigrants my parents immigrated here in 67. my dad struggled to find a job he was an entrepreneur and he wasn't the great he was an incredible father he wasn't the greatest entrepreneur um and so my mom was a primary breadwinner she was a typist uh in typing pull up bc packers so basically raised five kids on the secretary's salary.

I went to five elementary schools in seven years because my parents couldn't make rent. Okay, so that's context. And so forget about like Bitcoin in the future, thinking about 20, 30 years, setting up the city for the next hundred. There are a lot of people who are like losing their minds and they're terrified

because they don't know where the next meal is coming from. I think people have to empathize with that um you know when they're making decisions so the answer is we're doing both right um we're working on speeding up the permitting process so homeowners uh more home builders can build uh more homes faster and they don't have to like you know be burdened with all the holding costs we're making the place safer um by adding more police officers as we before like we still have to get to the root cause of why the streets aren't safe and it's a lot of mental health issues or substance use disorder and so let's treat it as a health care issue um making it easier to run a business in the city of Vancouver, you know, reducing,

getting our financial health in order. So, you know, we don't have to increase property taxes beyond the rate of inflation. And we're setting up our city, regardless of Bitcoin, to do that and then some. So how are you doing that?

I got to hear this. That's a great talking point that I have not heard any politician make. How are you guys doing that? Look, I like I'll preface this with, you know, we never try to be the smartest people in the room. If I'm the smartest person in the room, that room's in the wrong room. And we have amazing people throughout the city of Vancouver. So on the budget, for example, we actually had, we set up a Mayor's Budget Task Force. We had 58 incredible individuals, you know, leaders in business, chartered accountants, CFAs, people from the left, people from the right, people from the middle, First Nation involvement, a bunch of students at UBC. And they ripped through our financials and they

gave us a playbook. It's literally that simple. We crowdsourced the solution. And so, you know, and we're not getting political. We're just like, we don't give a shit where you come from. Help us fix this city and make it better and have your say. And so that's one of the many things we've done. There are a lot of, we had a couple of projects, you know, our little thing called the Stanley Park train,

it was about to be shut down and it would have taken us forever to get the funds allocated and the know-how to fix it. So instead we basically made some phone calls. We got an expert on trains to come in, any gifts, advice. And then we got 10 guys to, 10 people i should say to cut a hundred thousand dollar checks and donate it to the city to fix it and by the way our people at the city of vancouver they're absolutely incredible uh they just uh are working in a broken system and so with that support they were able to do amazing things they want to do amazing things. They want to do amazing things. So that's how we do it. And

we live in the same environment as regular folk in the city of Vancouver and in Ontario. And you can see the debasement, you know, the rate of debasement is in excess of what we can, you know, increase property taxes by. And so at some point we're going to come to a head and if we don't do something about it, our city will not work and it's enough to go, look, we're going to triage the current situation. But if that's all we do, we're wasting everyone's time because this thing's driving off of a cliff and it's not because people aren't smart. It's just like this this whole thing's set up for our city uh to lose

and so and and people to lose as well yeah and so i want to make sure that we can afford to pay our police officers and our firefighters and our sanitation engineers and know, our bylaw officers and our park team members, a living wage and then some. But if we don't, you know, if our money is losing 15 percent a year, it's not going to happen. Yeah. You guys have some of the most beautiful parks. My wife and I went to British Columbia for our honeymoon years ago. And I got to say, you know, we we I've I've seen some pretty cool stuff in my time. I've been fortunate. And I still think that those, what is it? The cathedral forest or whatever the, uh, the name is with the giant trees out there

in BC. What is that? Um, God, I can't remember what it's called, but that was like the most incredible thing I've ever seen. You're not talking about in Vancouver. You're talking. No, no, no, no, no. Though we did spend time in Vancouver too, and enjoyed parts parts of that as well not every part but some parts that

was before you were the mayor so i won't uh pin that on you it's it's interesting you know when i think about big cities and when i think about how big cities now are at they're operating at a scale that i don't think anyone saw or even considered to be possible 50 years ago and yet you're stuck using a lot of the same systems, whether it's transportation, transit, roads, schools, hospitals, or your budget and tax receipts. And so I'm curious, you know, we're talking a lot tonight, Ken, about problems with currency debasement.

And you are not causing those problems. You can argue the province also not causing those problems. So the natural next question is, do mayors of a city that's as relevant and as large and as prominent as Vancouver or Toronto or Ottawa, I mean, Ottawa, of course, but others across the country, do they interface with the feds and say, look, there's too many holes in the boat for us and I'm running out of thumbs. And I need help because the currency is really causing me problems that I can't fix unless I adopt a new treasury asset. And I can't imagine you're the only mayor expressing these concerns,

even if the solution being considered by other jurisdictions is different. Do you guys talk to the feds about this? What is the attitude when you speak to Ottawa about these problems? Yeah, we speak about it. And look, just being really blunt, I don't think things are going to change. And we're not going to whine about it. We just come to the realization, it's like, all right, we're going to control the controllables and do it on our own. I just think of, you know,

like, what is it? What are the federal what's the federal government going to do? My opinion is there's nothing they can do. But maybe you have a different one. Yeah. I guess it's, I think the only play they can, once again, not giving investment advice, but if the Canadian government just, you know, printed a bunch of money and just bought Bitcoin and turned fiat crap into a hard asset, maybe we have a chance. But you take a look at the numbers in the US and what I just described, you can apply it to Canada. The same thing is basically the same equation. And demographically speaking, you know, our population is aging. So there's going to be less people in the workforce contributing tax revenues.

And there's going to be a bigger drain on the system just from, you know, and that's why you're seeing our healthcare system. Totally. And so, you know, what are they going to do? I don't see an out for them. So we don't complain about it. We've come up with our solution based on what we can do. And that's why adding Bitcoin to the balance sheet is so important,

in my opinion. And hopefully the city staffers, they come to the same conclusion and the councilors vote for it. And then we can convince the province. So we're not looking for a handout. We're looking, look, we just, you know, want to run our city and give us the opportunity to run the city or then bail us out. If you don't like, because I can tell you one thing, if, if we don't solve this,

get someone like, I'd love to hear someone come up with a sane solution as to how we can avoid this if we don't you know put our money in gold or bitcoin and can come come closer come closer yeah yeah yeah nothing stops this train okay nothing stops this train and that's just it so the the sad part of it but the great part of it is I truly believe that in whatever, be it five years or seven years, we're all going to be on the same program. So now the opportunity, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. So why don't we choose to join sooner and reap all the benefits of getting in that much earlier?

I think it's a great idea. Ken, you've been a great guest. I have two questions left here that I don't ask every guest, but it seems to me that you will have good answers for these questions. And it's two things that I deal with in my personal life now. And a lot of Bitcoiners, especially the men, deal with in their personal lives. And it's how do you keep your wife sane when all you want to talk about is Bitcoin? And do you have any tips for preserving your marriage when every time you pull up Twitter, you just want to share a good meme or another good Bitcoin win? What does your wife think about all this? Is that too personal a question?

I don't know. I don't know. I can say with a lot of confidence, I'm probably the wrong person to ask for a relationship advice. But yeah, if you want to go down that deep, dark rabbit hole. No, you know what? Like a lot of relationships, there are lots of ups and downs. But it's funny, actually, Tina's been listening to a bunch of podcasts. Love it. Yeah. And so, but yeah, no, well, you know what it's like once you get deep into it, you find religion and you can't shut up. That's right. That's us as well. But a lot of people are getting enrolled in the conversation and I don't actually really care how they get enrolled.

You know, a lot of people, they see the price going up and they don't want to get left behind. So now they're asking the questions so great you know um and yeah we we do spend some time apart as well so that's the marriage saver listen you don't tell me i i you know we were talking before the show i've been doing this show now for four years ish five years maybe i forget now but uh one of the reasons i started is because my wife was just sick of talking to me about it. So I picked up with my now business partner and said, we got to start doing this. So our wives are happier. Your wife's probably happier to have you talking to me than talking to her. Fantastic. Other question, Bitcoiners are all sort of for the

first time now coming into a little bit of financial security there. I think there's a lot of Bitcoiners who are around my age and a little younger i'm 37 i'll be 38 this year i just had my first child a few months ago and thank you and i'm curious you know you have four kids i think i heard you say yeah and i you know i want to know in a world where the traditional institutions and traditional investment vehicles and traditional understanding of how the world works is starting to erode a bit. What advice do you have for parents talking to their kids about things like Bitcoin,

talking to their kids about things like investing, about things like, should you be going to a university? Should you be doing these things? Are these conversations that you guys are having or thinking about having or are different than you imagined 10 or 15 years ago thanks to all the things that have happened in the last uh decade ish oh man i'm gonna get in trouble now you know uh and by the way i i love our like i i'm a very proud alumni um of our university

never a good way to start an answer but okay okay, I'm looking forward to this now. You know, I do think, you know, we're like, to a certain extent, we're teaching the wrong stuff. And I say it respectfully, like I think of, you know,

I think finance, for example, we might have had this whole thing wrong. Like I remember seeing a podcast or like a, like a little short video, this professor from Stern and, you know, he understands sharp ratios and finance and all this stuff. And then you've seen the same one, right? I don't know. Maybe. I mean, I've heard a lot of guys talk about Sharpe ratio in the last five years.

Yeah. And then he basically said, yeah, no, I guess his epiphany was during the pandemic. He saw that the S&P return basically matched the increase in empty money supply. Spot on. And then he started looking around and was like, wait a sec. Oh, my God. Great. I've been teaching all this stuff. And basically, it's because of how much money is being printed and he ended it with uh by

bitcoin you know what what i would uh suggest um is be curious great and question everything and yeah i'm gonna you know this is uh one of jeff's analogies you know imagine you have uh your um galileo and you you look uh to through the stars with the telescope and then you're like oh wait a sec we've had this all wrong right and then you start talking about this to all your buddies and they're like oh where the hell did this come from you're an idiot who are you right and so the the point is you know be curious and always question um and look at i know people that are trapped in the current financial system right now there's a lot of fear and apprehension and there's a lot of people have given up and i'm sure it's the same thing in Hamilton, Halifax, Toronto, Fort St. John, Nanaimo, where it's like, I can't afford to live here. I'm going to have to move away somewhere.

When it's every single like sort of medium and large sized town, not just in Canada, but across the planet, you really got to question what's going on. It's not a supply and demand thing. Like in Vancouver, we have a supply and demand issue don't get me wrong that's one piece of it though we have one piece of it one piece like i don't know if you um i gave this uh analogy uh on the natalie uh show so someone told me that housing prices uh't changed in Vancouver since 1930 when priced in gold. So I had to prove this to myself. And so I went back to 1995 and then 1995, the average house price in Vancouver was 500 grand. And at the end of 2022, it was 2.43 million bucks or yeah, it's gone up about 383% or whatever that number is. But when priced in gold, it went from 958 ounces to 957 ounces.

It remained flat. Now, look, people can say I cherry-picked those numbers. It was just by dumb luck those numbers came up. But if I were to go over the same period and strip out the outliers, the couple of high ones and a couple of low ones, the range is pretty tight. It's only gone up or down about 11 percent in terms of gold, but in terms of dollars, it went up. And the problem is our salaries, our wages have not gone up by the same rate. And so the governments are basically reallocating wealth through the debasement to currency. And that's why people are suffering right across this country and right across

this planet. And when you wake up to that, um, then, you know, start looking for alternatives, uh, be it by a boat, which surprisingly enough went up, uh, uh, pandemic, which is, um, didn't go up or dollars went down gold, which is, you Didn't go up, our dollars went down. Gold, which is the second best hedge. And then there's Bitcoin, which is, in my opinion, a trillion times better than gold. So whatever. Yeah, it's a no-brainer, I think.

Do you know what BOAT stands for, by the way? The acronym B-O-A-T? Bring out another thousand or something? Yeah, bust out another thousand. Nice. No one really knows that one. That's like, I thought that was really well known, but I'm glad you knew it.

Maybe we'll finish with this. I haven't asked this question in a long time, but we had Jeff on the show a while ago. He's a friend of the podcast and I've met him in person a couple of times. I asked him once upon a time when we were sort of in our infancy, what we used to do was punch up the chain

with this last question to try and get guests that otherwise would not have given us any attention. I don't have to do that now, thankfully, in no small part to people like you and listeners and viewers. But I'm going to ask it now because I think it'd be fun next time you see Jeff. Can you beat Jeff in a 40-yard foot race, you think?

If I punched him in the knee. Come on. He's like a lot taller than me. I don't know. I don't know. It's not something we've ever sort of brought up. But maybe we will now. I'm going to ask him next time I see him.

I'm going to send him this clip. Mayor Sim, Ken, you've been fantastic. I couldn't have asked for a better. No, man, it was my pleasure, really. Like I said, looking into a bit of your history, the things that you're doing in Vancouver, the attitude with which you approach a job that oftentimes has people, you know,

really expressing their most timid tendencies. You've done the opposite. And I think the people of Vancouver should appreciate you for that. Canadians should appreciate you for that. And I know you for that. I know that our listeners and viewers will appreciate that about you. Before we go, tell people if there's stuff they can look at, ways

to support or share the Bitcoin mission in Vancouver. The floor is all yours, buddy. A couple of things. Thank you very much. Thanks for all the work you do by spreading the word out. Your viewers, they they can, your viewers, they can help Vancouver, like literally, if you're in Vancouver, the region, support us, get out, spread the word, get your community involved, reach out to the councillors, reach out to the members of parliament and the MLAs. And more importantly, like from a purely self-serving perspective, please do that if you want. But this isn't a competition as well.

And so we actually want to spread the word and help all the other cities across Canada. Because I know even if every single city in Vancouver got onto the Bitcoin standard, it's not going to move the needle. And you know what? Wouldn't it be great if all our cities could set themselves up for the next hundred years?

And so if Kelowna or Nanaimo or Pickering, you know, Hamilton, whatever, you know, if they need help, if that's the community you live in, do the same thing. And if any of those communities want help from us, we're literally one phone call away and we'll help you and we'll share all our knowledge and we'll rally around you as well because it's important. We're talking about the future of our cities and our communities

and our country, and it's a battle worth fighting. Absolutely. Totally agree. Mayor Ken Sim, thanks, everyone, for listening, watching. We'll see you next time.