The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 164 | The REAL Story Behind the FTX Scandal | Marty Bent | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

On the surface, it appeared the FTX scandal involving Sam Bankman-Fried created yet another crisis for cryptocurrency. But that’s not the real story. On this episode of "The Glenn Beck Podcast," Glenn gets a “Bitcoin for Dummies” guide from Marty Bent, who explains what actually happened with FTX and where he believes the markets will go from here. Marty has devoted his career to safeguarding financial freedom from the tyranny of the government and elites — a major focus of his newsletter “Marty’s Bent” and podcasts including “Tales from the Crypt.” He’s critical of the globalist vision for our financial future, which he sees as the result of a “progressive” movement to get rid of God. And he warns that the FTX scandal could make a convenient excuse for centralizing Bitcoin and ushering in more state control, mass surveillance, ESG, and social credit scores. In fact, the Federal Reserve’s push for a digital dollar has already begun … SPONSORS: Forget the high prices and low quality of the grocery store: This is your chance to inflation-proof your meat budget with Good Ranchers’ Black Friday savings, including $70 of free USDA CHOICE steaks, and an additional $25 on every box when you subscribe. Go to https://GOODRANCHERS.COM/GLENN or use the code “GLENN” at checkout to grab their best offer of the year.   Whether it’s a refinance of your mortgage at a lower interest rate, or a consolidation loan to get you out from under things like those high-interest credit card bills – or some other type of loan entirely – American Financing is here for you. Call American Financing at 800-906-2440 or go to https://AmericanFinancing.net If you're one of the millions of Americans who suffer every day from pain, there is hope, and it comes in the form of Relief Factor. If you want a drug-free and natural way to get your life back, go to https://ReliefFactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF to get the $19.95 3-week quick start. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is a significant threat to the globalist vision of our financial future. This vision is something that progressives have only been able to dream about in the past. But technology has caught up to their wildest fantasies of control. They envision a near-term future in which the greatest means of control over you, your money, can be turned on and off like a tap. when your money is fully digitized under government control, every transaction no matter how small it will be, will be monitored and logged. And if you say the wrong thing, support the wrong cause, associate with the wrong person or group, you will be brought back in line when the access to your own money is denied. My guest is a threat to this progressive globalist design because he dares to believe in the fundamental American,

view that individual freedom is a good thing. He has this crazy notion that you should be able to control your own money, that money in a way is speech. He is a threat to their design because his whole career has been devoted to building a way to maintain financial freedom in the face of governments drunk on power and control. He believes the best way to do this is Bitcoin. To that end, he founded TFTC.io, a media company focused on Bitcoin and Freedom in the Digital Age. He's a partner at 1031, a leading investment platform focused exclusively on investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem. He is also the host of Tales from the Crypt and the co-host of Rabbit Hole Recap, both podcasts about what else, Bitcoin. In a world barreling towards more centralized financial control, all of this work in Bitcoin makes Marty Bent a radical.

And as you'll hear, he's just fine with that. Today, please welcome my podcast guest, Marty Bent. We begin in just a minute. First, let me ask you, how long did you dream about owning a home before you bought one? Did you spend time in your 20s thinking about what it would be like to have a place of your own? with your own mailbox and your name on it. Did you see your future kids playing in the yard, jumping on the trampoline,

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Welcome, Marty. Glad to be here, Glenn. Thank you for having me. You bet. You bet. I want to start with news of the day, the FTX scandal. I mean, I don't know anything about them.

Just looking at the CEO of the hedge fund who looks like she's about 12 and sounds like she's 12. And him, wow, these people don't instill confidence, but they, people loved them and a lot of really smart people got behind them. Yeah, it's astonishing. Sam Bankman-F-D-SbF, as he's commonly referred to, has become this character, a wonderkin that is going to be the next trillionaire. And it seems that he was just running a big fraud, a Ponzi scheme, in the literal sense, for many years.

I've been suspicious of SBF and FTX, specifically for a bit over a year now. Their whole origin story is a bit odd. And that starts with Alameda, the trading company. Right. And then FTX spun out of that. So the trading company is like a hedge fund, right? Yes. Okay.

So it's a hedge fund. And his girlfriend runs the hedge fund. runs the hedge. I mean, it's just like all kinds of flares go up immediately. Wait, your girlfriend is running that one. And they ran into trouble, right? And took Bitcoins from FTX? They didn't take Bitcoins, but they took.

So in a big theme in the broader cryptocurrency space, particularly the exchange world, is these exchanges will large, what they call an exchange token. Binance has BNB. FTX has FTT, which was FTX token. And the idea behind these exchange tokens, I think it's a bit scammy.

It doesn't really make sense from first principles, but the idea is they pre-mine a token, I believe in FTT's case, a couple hundred million of these FTT tokens. And what they'll do is they'll release that to their users and their users can buy that token and use it as a people. equity in the exchange overall, getting some revenues from the trading revenues as well.

Wow, that sounds like a scam. Yes, it is a massive scam, in my opinion. But the mechanics of these exchange tokens a lot of the time is they'll pre-mine them, and they'll only release a certain amount to market to freely float, and then they'll hold the rest. So they're able to inflate the value of those tokens pretty easily with some spoof trading. And it seems like that is what FTX did is they launched this FTT token. And then they kept a lot off market, gave a lot to Alameda.

And then Alameda was using that token as collateral to get out loans of better money, like dollars and Bitcoin. Oh, my gosh. Yes. That just, I know there's, you know, it's an unregulated space, but that seems like just common sense. Yes. And would be regulated. any place else, would it not? Yeah, it's an overt unregistered security.

Yeah. Okay. So they were playing games with tokens. He's supposedly, you know, some philanthropist that really, do you buy into any of that? No. I mean, I don't I don't not believe

that he believes he's a philanthropist, but from what I understand, he's very heavily influenced by the effective altruism movement headed by William McCaskill out of Oz. Which is what? It's this, it's an extension of utilitarianism. And these people believe that they are the smartest people on the planet and they can

identify where humanity has the most pressing needs. And the whole idea of effective altruism is to get as rich as possible, identify the problems that exist that they believe are most pressing and then allocate as much capital there. but when you dig into the underlying philosophy and some of the tradeoffs they're willing to make, it does begin to get a bit evil. Ends justify the means?

Yes, exactly. He was a huge donor, promised a billion dollars to the Democrats. If Trump was going to win, he was supposed to donate, I don't remember, 300 million this cycle, and then the next cycle he would donate the rest. obviously never happened. I'm trying to remember 30 million, 30 million, right?

Or billion? Remember when a million used to be a lot of money? Assume we're going to be saying trillions of this context. Yeah, I know, I know. So he donated that money. Everybody was with him. Was this another hedge? I wouldn't be surprised.

there's an odd history not only was Sam in the Democratic Party and Gary Gensler and it seems like for the last year, two years he's been trying to buddy up with people in D.C. to develop a regulatory moat for FTX and what he's doing and potentially get through some loopholes as is coming to the fore, particularly with Gary Gensler. but yes it seems that like he is trying to use his money or his user's money to get influence in DC to protect himself and that's one of the big things of the last year he's really been posturing like hey we need to regulate this space and only exchanges like mine should be able to operate do you have any idea on his on his ledger i think it just said trump to stop trump or trump to lose what is that do you know i don't know for certain uh however f tx and during the 2020 election the lead-ups for that election they launched a prediction market for the election where you could bet on the outcome of the election and the uh basically you vote trump win trump lose or by to win

biden lose and you you'd place your bets there and those those were the names of the token so when it comes to this trump to lose position is a bit obvious because it seems like he may potentially, we don't know for sure, but he may be developing that position before the 2024 election even begins. Wow. When I see somebody want their company to be regulated, I'm immediately suspicious. I've never, I'm an entrepreneur, I've never at any time said,

you know, it would be really great, is if we could get more government regulation in our building. That's insane. He was actually wanting to centralize Bitcoin and its usage, right? Yes. Well, actually, which is interesting here, SBF, Sam, is not a fan of Bitcoin. So what he really cared about was regulating the casino. Again, I think there needs to be a clear distinction between Bitcoin and the rest of the

cryptocurrency space. I truly believe Bitcoin is the signal and all the altcoins are simply forms a sceneryage that these people use to gamble and try to develop war chest. Explain for people who don't know the difference between the alt coins and Bitcoin. Many differences. I guess we'll start from first principles. I would argue that Bitcoin it had somewhat of an immaculate inception where it's not going to be able to be replicated. So once Bitcoin was launched, that was a pretty incredible feat that Satoshi Nakamoto brought to the world. And then as Bitcoin became popular, people saw, hey, Bitcoin's gaining in value. Maybe we should launch our own.

It is open source code. We can form the code and create our own tokens. I would argue that Bitcoin is the, the only cryptocurrency we're going to have a pure launch and it actually be like a free market development. Everything after that has a lot of attention. People know when it's going to be launched and they can essentially game when the system when that coin is launched. But even going from there, if Bitcoin is going to be successful, if any other cryptocurrency that's claiming to be the next Bitcoin is going to be successful, they have to be sufficiently decentralized at the base layer.

And it is glaringly obvious to me that there is no alt-coin that compares the Bitcoin in terms of decentralization. The amount of individuals who are running the software, verifying transactions on their own, not depending on a third party, the amount of mining computers that are spread geographically throughout the planet, the amount of wallet software that's been developed in the space really sets Bitcoin apart from these alternative currencies. But these alt coins, what people promise is, hey, we're going to give you the next Bitcoin. But time and time again, through these cycles throughout the decade, they just turned out to be pump and dumps. So he was for the alt coins. Yes. So he runs an exchange that really makes most of their money by allowing people to speculate on these alternative currencies that can speculate on Bitcoin as well. But the majority of his revenues are probably driven by speculation on these different cryptocurrencies.

cryptocurrencies. So tell me, like, tell me the difference between them and, like, Coinbase. Not much other than Coinbase is probably not. I would, even though I'm not the biggest fan of Coinbase, I don't think Brian Armstrong and team are running like an overt Ponzi scheme. Right. Okay, that's good to know. That's good to know. Is there anybody that you can trust in that space? Yes. I do think so. So Cash app is an app that many people, people have they offer Bitcoin only there's an exchange river.com River is a Bitcoin only exchange I typically recommend that people only interact with these exchanges that have a pure focus on Bitcoin why because I again I think that's where the signal is and I actually honestly I believe

Bitcoin is an imperative as we transition into the digital age we get the CBDC world or we get a free market money where people are not subject to the digital panopticon. I think the altcoins are distractions. And again, going back to first principles, Bitcoin has the best chance of ensuring that we have freedom in the digital age, particularly around a monetary network. AI is moving fast across the enterprise.

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So before we get into all of that, things like FTX going down, that just makes the case of the government so much stronger with anybody who's not paying attention. Yes, right? Yes. It's a great shame. But it also highlights something that Bitcoiners have been opining on for years, which is Bitcoin, since it's a digital bearer instrument, it's like cash in the digital world, you can hold it, you can possess it. There's a very famous line in Bitcoin circles, which is not your keys, not your coins. So if you're not possessing your Bitcoin, if you're not downloading a wallet and actually taking it off in exchange,

and taking it into your possession, you are beholden to the whims of that exchange that you're trusting. You essentially have an IOU when you hold it on an exchange. I don't trust my. I could just see myself being that guy who, like, had all his bitcoins and they gold storage and took it out and he puts it. He can't remember his keys. And that's just me all over. Well, I get that. And that's a very common sort of response to this of fear.

But I would argue practice makes perfect. This is a new way of interacting with money. And what I recommend is people start small. You buy on an exchange or maybe you have a friend that will give you Bitcoin. After going to dinner, you pay for the bill and he'll pay you on Bitcoin to make up for it. You download a wallet and you practice receiving, sending, and then backing it up. And then two other points is the user experience around this process of receiving and securing Bitcoin is getting significant. significantly better over the years.

And I think it will continue to get much easier as we move forward. And more developers and designers come to make it easier for your average day or your everyday person. And then number two, there's other services that you can use where you do what's called collaborative custody. So there's a company here in Texas called Unchained Capital. And via Bitcoin, you can set up a condition to spend Bitcoin where it says, hey, I can't move this Bitcoin unless I have a, two signatures out of these possible three signatures. And so what this allows you to do is to engage with a company like Unchained, where you can set up a basically conditional wallet that says,

hey, I can't move this Bitcoin unless I have two of three signatures. You hold two wallets that will allow you to sign two of the signatures, and Unchained holds one. In this model, you don't have all the risk on yourself, but you also do have certainty that your Bitcoin is where you think it is. Right. Because that's the problem. I mean, this is what makes it a fiat if we don't know.

We don't know where they go. I'm convinced there's no gold in Fort Knox. I mean, I'm sure it's all, you know, split between all of the countries and been, you know, re-hypothecated a million different times to different countries. And that's the big fear and the big advantage of Bitcoin. if you have it, and you know where it is, you know its value, you know it's not being sold over and over and over again and leveraged against something else, which would provide a much more stable economy.

Yes. And I mean, this goes back to FTX. This is exactly what they were doing. Their users thought that they were holding their Bitcoin, but it turns out they were re-hypothicating it their trading arm that was losing it on crazy leverage bets. there's ways, again, with Bitcoin's native properties that you can ensure that your Bitcoin is not being re-hypothicated. So let's talk about, I mean, I remember I went to a Catholic school growing up and we studied the end times. And they talked about the, you know, the mark of the beast where you won't be able to buy groceries or do anything.

You won't be able to travel unless, you know, that little chip that's in your hand, you know, is somehow or another. scanned before we even had scanners and everything I look at what's coming between ESG and central bank digital currency I'm not saying it is the mark of the beast but I'm not not saying that either that is total and complete control of your life right and they they openly admit it I'm not sure if you've seen the clip from Augustin Carstons who's the head of the Bank of international settlements, which many people think is the, uh, the biggest boss of all the banking institutions in the world. He's overtly come out and said that we want a central, uh, central bank digital currency because it will allow us to have complete control over people's money.

We can drop, air drop money into their accounts. We can take money away. We can institute negative interest rates. We can tell them, you can only spend this money at this place within this amount of time. That is crazy. So, that's really what they mean when they say you'll own nothing because you won't really own it they can take it no and that's that's why i'm again so passionate about bitcoin because you can truly own it and the the prospects of it not existing and the prospects of the future in a world in which bitcoin doesn't exist are very gloomy when the alarm clock goes off in the morning you open your eyes and the first thing you think about is pain it used to be for me i'm going to face another day

of this for years I suffered from depilitating pain in my hands yesterday because it turned so cold here I had the same pain and I almost couldn't do the show because all I could think about was the pain I had stopped taking my relief factor a few weeks before because I'm feeling pretty good I grabbed the relief factor and really by the by noon by the time I took the second dose I was feeling much much better please try Relief Factor. It's not a drug. It was developed by doctors to try to fight inflammation. Try it today. See if you can't get out of pain and get your life back. Three-week quick start is 1995. Just try it. 1995 Relieffactor.com or call 800 for relief. Relieffactor.com. Before we get into the alternative, set the stage of what has to happen for a, a central bank digital currency, a CBDC.

How close are we to that? And what has to happen? And then I want you to take me through. How do you stop that? Okay. Well, today there was just an announcement in the consortium of commercial banks here in the United States are going to do a trial run

with the Federal Reserve for a digital dollar. I'm not sure if you saw that, but it was literally a couple of hours ago that was announced. what needs to happen, they need to develop the technical prowess to create the actual apps that will basically get this into the hands of everyday American citizens, which,

looking at the history of the government, they're not very tech savvy, so we may have time on our side in that regard. Right. But one only has to look to China and their social credit scoring system, it is possible. They have done it.

And so essentially all they need do is get a consumer app. It doesn't even need to be a consumer app. They can integrate with other apps like Twitter or WhatsApp, whatever it may be. They essentially just need to turn on a switch at the Federal Reserve where the Federal Reserve starts handling individual accounts instead of Federal Reserve. Are you familiar with the Hamilton Project up in Boston? I don't believe it was the Central Bank, Boston, or Federal Reserve, Boston. was doing a test of something called the something they called the Hamilton Project. It was a central bank coin.

And they were testing it with MIT. They say it was ready. And it will require that you don't have a bank account at a regular bank anymore. Your bank is the Federal Reserve. And, you know, hey, come get your, come get your Bitcoin. Because you can spend it now and turn in your dollars. and your dollars are worth a dollar today. You know, a couple weeks down the road,

there might be worth 70 cents, and then they're worth nothing. Yeah, or you can't access them because he said something wrong on Twitter. Yeah, so that is the model. The Federal Reserve will essentially cut out the commercial banking system, and there's some interesting theories

about what's going on with overarching Fed policy and why it has been as aggressive as it is. many people think it's a signal from the commercial bank saying, hey, we don't want the CBDC world. But, yeah, essentially, if the CBDC does become a thing and it does become widespread, the Federal Reserve will have complete control over everybody's money.

It will be digital dollars, but those dollars will. Are trackable 100%. Oh, yes. And, you know, I remember, during the energy crisis in the 1970s, if your license plate was odd numbered, you could only buy, you know, gas on these days. This is individuals.

You're not essential, so you don't get to buy gas. And you are only going to be allowed to go here so you can buy just that amount of gas. I mean, it's down to the individual level, which... Yeah, we saw that you had two stakes last week. That's too many. It's too much carbon emissions. You're not going to be able to buy gas this week.

That's how granular they can get with this. When it comes back to vaccines, I mean, they tried to roll it out with the vaccine passports. I think that was botched a bit. But I believe that was an attempt by them to begin to seed this type of government-run app into the populace. So when you, I'm sure you saw the black mayor with the social credit court score, I remember when I first saw that, I knew what was going on in China. And I'm like, don't, don't laugh. They're trying to put this together in China at the time.

And now it is here through ESG. And I don't know if you saw, but in the news, I think it came out yesterday. We talked about it this morning on the show. The World Bank is moving into that. And Freddie and Fannie are now moving into. to the S part. And they say they'll have another 37 million people that will be able to buy a house because we won't just look at your score, your credit score.

There's going to be a score on other things, not to find, other things you can do that don't have anything to do with money or savings or ownership that will raise a score for you. and we'll start to have 37 million new homeowners, which will drive the price of everything through the roof. And control. And control. Not only control, it's just self-centered.

Control via self-centorship and forcing unnatural actions on people. Or maybe they'll go out of their way. This is what we see in China. People get scored on how good of a neighbor they are. And you'll find people going out of their way to just knock up. on people's doors and say nice things so that their social credit score goes up. It's really, it's exactly like the black mirror episode of you brought up. So what has to happen for it not to go that way?

I mean, I think first things first, people need to get vocal, very vocal about it, which I'm happy that you are and many others have been is saying, hey, this is a line in the sand that we're not going to cross. This is anti-American. This is... Look how far along we are on ESG. and they're still saying it's a conspiracy theory, even though Vantage score, you can go to their website

and you can see it now in practice. The E and the S, not the G yet. I mean, that is... It's scary, but I actually think ESG is taking a big blow this year, particularly with the European energy crisis. Yes. So Germany obviously moved first with their attempts to go to zero carbon, net zero,

and they decommissioned a bunch of reliable natural gas, coal, and nuclear power plants in favor of wind and solar. And there's a good argument to be made that what's going on over in Ukraine is only possible because Germany was in such a position of weakness because of their energy policy. Right. I think many people are waking up to that. And then I do think people are beginning to get very fed up with the woke capitalism that exists in our world today as well. And I do think ESG has taken a blow. And I think as people in the media are talking to family members and friends, we need to really lean in to the winds that freedom has gotten this year. Because the overt hypocrisy and overt insanity of ESG is being acutely highlighted this last 12 months.

And then Bitcoin is the other way to fix it too. So people speak out and say we don't want. that and and Bitcoin in the world where the central government you know it it's absolutely destined to happen if there's an economic collapse you just reset everything you close the banks and then you say new currency and it's all digital I think that is on the horizon for sure what happens in that situation with Bitcoin. How would you use it or how could it keep you free? Yeah, well, luckily, Bitcoin's a globally distributed network.

So individuals around the world are holding a state of the ledger and of the consensus rules. And so, I mean, Bitcoin, as long as people had internet access would operate as, as advertised as designed. And it runs parallel to the incumbent system. So if they crash the incumbent financial system, flipped a switch on the banks one day, Bitcoin would be perfectly fine. It's running on a completely different network that is run by individuals.

And can it be tracked? There's nuance here. I mean, so Bitcoin can be tracked. So the way the ledger works, you have these outputs that can be tracked through the ledger, but unless you attach personal identifying information to that transaction output, you can transact in what's known as a pseudonymous way, where the network has no idea who you are. The only way people can track you on the network is that they have a connector between

your personal information and a particular output that you associated with that. So an example of that is buying on a centralized exchange. where you have to do the K-Y-C-A-M-L requirements where you have to give them your name, your address, you buy Bitcoin there. And then if you send it to a personal wallet, the exchange essentially assumes, like, hey, I'm going to assume that this address on the network

is associated with the information they gave us when they signed up. Crap. So what is... Wait, because I have it in Coinbase. So how would I get it out without marking? So there are tools that allow you to, basically disconnect your

future spending of Bitcoin from the historical spending. These are collaborative transaction tools known as coin joins. There's companies like Samurai, which run a coin join coordinator called World Pool.

You have to be, no offense. Yes. But you have to be either your age or a total incomplete geek. Well, I'll make it even easier. The best way to do that is to work for Big. is to spin up an address or spin up a wallet and sell services for Bitcoin directly to somebody

who's not going to ask you for your information. So for my website, it's connected to a wallet that I control. When somebody wants to pay me, they spin up an invoice and that invoice is created for my computer with an address that only I know. So in that instance, only the person who pays me and I know that I control that address. And the government hates that because you could wildly understate your income. Potentially, yes. I'm not that you do. No, no.

It's horrified if you. We are above board. Yeah. Okay, good news and bad news for you. And then we get right back to the podcast. First, bad news. Looks like beef prices are probably going to increase by another 20% early next year. Isn't that great? Nothing like the largest increase in meat prices in U.S. history to cheer you up right before the holidays.

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premier breeds of cattle for high-quality beef. So you don't have a normal Black Friday this year. Have yourself a black Angus Friday with two free stakes from good ranchers. American meat delivered. Can we go through just a couple of a couple of things? Who's the guy who started it again? Satoshi Nakamoto. Okay. Nobody knows where he is, right? Or who he is? No. They, she, nobody knows. Okay. Has his Bitcoin been touched? No. Has, has, uh, has never moved. Is there a possibility he lost his key or forgot his key? There's many possibilities.

He could have lost his key. How much? How much? There's 21 million? Yes, there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. About just over 19.2 million have been distributed to the network. Okay. So it's almost all out. When it's all out, then Bitcoin mining stops, right?

No, it does not. Okay. Explain Bitcoin mining. So Bitcoin mining, essentially, you have a bunch of individuals around the world who run these very specialized computers. And they're racing to find a special hash that allows them to add a block of transactions to the ledger. When they do that, they get rewarded in Bitcoin, a miner that adds the block, gets rewarded in Bitcoin. and there's two parts of that reward. The one that you're alluding to

that will eventually get us to 21 million Bitcoin is the subsidy. So right now the subsidy per block is 6.25 Bitcoin. And then the other half of that reward is transaction fees. So when you send Bitcoin, a lot of times you'll attach a transaction fee to it

because the availability of the amount of transactions that can get into a block is scarce. And so individual users compete to get in their transaction confirmed by attaching a fee to it. So when all 21 million Bitcoin has been dispersed to market, mining will still exist, but the minor revenue will be driven by the fees that are attached to transactions.

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world prefer. At part of this, we're grandie. Trouve of little enterprises like the

onuch on oner. So is this what they talk about that it has limited

capability for real heavy global traffic it takes too much energy and

it's going to be a lot slower at some point is that any of that true? So not every...

I told you before we started. I have just enough information to make me wildly wrong and dangerous. So you view the protocol layer as a settlement layer where since there is that scarcity of block space and only so many transactions can be included in each block in the future when Bitcoin is widely adopted, many believe it will become a settlement layer where large transactions are settled. But what you can do with Bitcoin is lock it up in second layers that allow you to transact instantly and relatively cheaply without having to wait on a transaction to be confirmed at the protocol layer. So the most famous second layer solution right now is lightning, the lightning network. And via the lightning network, you can send as small as a hundredth of a penny, a small amount as a hundredth of a penny to 1,000. of dollars over that and you don't have to wait for something to happen at the protocol layer. Why isn't the protocol layer, again, forgive me.

Isn't, I'm trying to. It's like, you know, it's like talking to a golfer to guy who's never seen the golf course. In the protocol layer, though, where it is verified, isn't that the key to Bitcoin that it is, it's independently verified, right? And so you know the money exists and you know you can verify where it is going. If you don't verify it, how do you stop false transactions? So with lightning particularly, what you do is you lock up a Bitcoin at the protocol layer and you anchor to that.

So you point to that amount of Bitcoin that you've locked on the Lightning Network and that is your verification. And you can only move that amount within what is called a channel. So you open up channels with counterparties, each putting up some Bitcoin that they want to transact freely and cheaply and quickly. And they always have the verified transaction output that they can point to. And if that's not there, they can't operate or spend and receive on the network. So isn't, and I'm so sorry, man, I apologize.

This whole thing is just going to be a bloodbath, ugly. but isn't Ethereum doesn't Ethereum have I thought that's where the Lightning Network came from aren't they doing these other coins are being used I guess as a backbone

a spine for something else do you know what I'm talking about yeah Ethereum market itself out of the gate as the world computer so Bitcoin comparing Bitcoin to Ethereum Bitcoin is slow dumb and stupid it only does a few things but it does them very well, and it does them in a very distributed and robust matter.

Ethereum saw what Bitcoin was doing and say, hey, we want to do more. We want to do complex scriptability. We want to make all these applications. We want to make all these other networks using the Ethereum network, which I have done successfully, but in doing so, they made a big tradeoff, which is to do all that, it's computationally expensive. It takes a lot of data. So what we've seen over the last six years since Ethereum launched is the amount of data that is associated with that network has gotten so large that it is nearly impossible for individuals like you and me to run our own nodes at home to make sure that the network is distributed.

So while Ethereum and similar networks can do all that cool stuff, at the end of the day, it's all for not because they're completely centralized. And if the state wanted to come in and flip a switch and say, hey, you guys can't do this any. more. It's becoming relatively trivial for that to happen. Whereas with Bitcoin, you'd have to go around the world, find all the individuals who are running nodes and physically have them unplug. Explain what a node is. So a node is essentially a computer that you run that has the rules of Bitcoin that allows you to verify that other participants are acting within the rules of Bitcoin. So you'd have to shut down the entire internet, wouldn't you? Because you could, because you couldn't find the nodes.

Or can you? No. I mean, you can run them behind tour VPN. Right. That's hard to find. And I think that is the best thing about Bitcoin myself is it's not going away. No. And do you know with even quantum computing?

Can it open? I mean, because the quantum computing, we are so close to being able to hack into anything. Is this going to change the underlying technology of Bitcoin? There's been a long, ongoing debate about quantum. And people, particularly the protocol engineers working on Bitcoin, seem to think that if quantum did come, there are certain cryptographic libraries that can be ported in to make it quantum resistant. But many of them would also say they don't think it's as close as many others think it is.

Okay, that's good news. the long term I mean I invested in Bitcoin Mark Andriesen said to me just before he opened up Coinbase He said you know much about

Bitcoin I said no And he said You should take 10 grand and just Invest in Bitcoin And I remember leaving his office And my wife said What is the Bitcoin thing And I said I don't know

looked into it, I don't understand it at all. And Warren Buffett said, if you don't understand it, you shouldn't invest in it. And it was a fraction of a penny at the time. I wouldn't be here at this table if I had done that. But, you know, when I did buy it, my wife and I just said, let's just take money that, you know, we're fine losing and just put it in and then just hold it. Because who knows, It was the closest thing I could think of as what it would be like if you would have invested with Alexander Graham Bell. It's a game-changing idea, and it doesn't come very often. Do you think it still has the future with all the stuff that's going on with the government now? Do you still think it has the future of $100,000, $200,000 a coin?

Yes, certainly. I mean, I'm not going to try and predict when that will happen. Yeah, yeah. I think. Here's what I'm wondering, because I keep watching it go down. And, I mean, we've made it packed. We weren't going to sell any of it. Just hold it.

And as I'm watching it go down and I see what the government is doing, you could see a future where it's just over or not. I don't think so. Why? There's too many. Because Bitcoin provides a step function improvement on utility of money from an asset perspective where it's very scarce. It's better money than the dollar, which is being inflated away.

It's better money than the bolivar. It's better money than PESA. So from the aspects of a monetary good, it's just objectively superior in terms of the qualities. It's scarcer, more saleable, more divisible. You can verify it very easily. So it's better there. And then the network, the peer-to-peer network, allows you to transact.

directly with the counterpart. So a lot of the use cases that we've seen to date and Bitcoin happen with remittances in emerging markets. A lot of emerging markets that are sanctioned from the U.S., like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, other areas where you have individuals who don't really like their government either, but they are punished because we have this just overarching sanctions that really restrict

them from sending money back to their family matters. Bitcoin has allowed them to do that for the last 13 years. And the activity in that particular use case with remittances has never gone away. It's only increased. And so that inherent utility, uh, in one use case being, being able to send money back home to family members isn't going away. And it is, Bitcoin is the only network that allows these people to do that. And then, how come, um, uh, how come it didn't take off? Like when Venezuela. I mean, that was the perfect case for Bitcoin to come in and just say, yeah, forget the Fiat. We're going here. Why didn't it take off? It's so new. Like you said, this is an Alexander Graham Bell like invention. It's so foreign to individuals all across the world. It's a new

monetary good. And new monetary goods just don't show up once a decade, once every year, once every half century that happened once every millennia arguably. And so we're in the early, early stage of Bitcoin where humanity is simply getting comfortable with what it is, how it works, how individuals can interact with it. And that's one thing I tell people is everybody says, hey, how come Bitcoin's not, if it is the best money, if it does have the best properties, how come not everybody's using it? Well, I go and go back and say, you don't monetize a new monetary good over the course of a decade right probably going to take longer than that and during its monetization phase you're going to see a lot of price volatility which

scares people and that volatility will scare people but if you pay attention for long enough you'll see that that volatility leads up into the right and with every boom and bust what you see is is more people basically setting the floor after after every bus so more and more people are beginning to realize the the inherent fundamental value and utility that it provides during all these cycles. I do think at some point in the future, there will be a tipping point where everybody realizes like, oh, this isn't going away and this is better. We just have to be able to do it.

I have to tell you, I mean, the central banks over in Asia and Russia, they're all buying gold, all of them, tons and tons. We're selling ours. I mean, that seems brilliant. If I were the president, I would have taken what? money we have and said gold, Bitcoin. And, and let the chips fall where they may. But I wouldn't want centralized control. Is there any country that is, that's a decent sized, you know, not a, not a rebel country. Is there any good country that is looking at Bitcoin and saying,

we're putting our bet here. We're going to use Bitcoin as our currency. Not yet. Not yet. I think what you're seeing, it's actually more grassroots than that. You're seeing cities, like there's a city in Switzerland, Luongo. They've adopted a Bitcoin standard where they're accepting Bitcoin at all the stores there. Obviously, El Salvador has made Bitcoin legal tender, and they're trying to integrate it into their economy. But I really don't, I don't think that's going to happen, nor do I think that's wise for a state to just say, hey, we're going to buy Bitcoin. not me personally because I do think it's it's got to be an emergent grassroots movement where individuals decide it's not thrust on them and I think that'll actually be better for the long-term viability of Bitcoin where you have individuals getting access to it whether they're buying it or accepting it for goods and services in my mind that's a much better path and that actually gives agencies to the individual the individual shouldn't have to wait for the state to say are we're going to do this you can do it today unfortunately

a lot of people are going to. They're going to wait for, you know, because it's, I mean, they don't understand. It's like everything today. I think it's going to come down to a photo finish on who gets there first. Does the information about

slavery for the rest of you and your family's lifetimes, as far as you can see, does that get to the finish line before, hey, there's a collapse. You've got to take this because we're rewriting absolutely everything and everybody's starving and so you got to go there. I mean, it's, it's going to be close.

It's going to be very close. And again, that's why I'm so passionate about. That's why I run the podcast. I do. That's why I work at the venture firm. I'm a partner at a venture firm where we're investing in Bitcoin infrastructure. Again, I think it's imperative and I'm doing my best personally to build out this network because, again, the prospects of the alternative are extremely scary.

people don't like to use the wear it, but it will be digital slavery. It will be. Yeah. It will be. I mean, when I used to run the blaze, mainly into the ground, but when I ran it,

I was all for Bitcoin. I was like, let's be the first to take it. Let's go. What is the adoption rate? Because if we're forward-thinking, you know, back then, and we wouldn't do it. What is the adoption rate for companies?

So when will we see this at your grocery store or, you know, big stores? I think relatively soon. So there's a company strike that has entered a partnership with NCR, which is one of the biggest point of sales companies in the United States or in the world. And they're working on partnerships with Whole Foods, Wendy's, Walmart. And so hopefully within the next year, you'll have the opportunity to go spend Bitcoin over the Lightning Network at these retailers. And then on top of that, obviously Jack Dorsey with Block and Square, he's been a very forward-thinking

Bitcoin advocate and seeing what they've done with Cash App, building out that suite of Bitcoin tools in that app, I would not be surprised if he begins to enable those tools for individuals who use this point of sale system as well at Square. Are you concerned, for instance, like PayPal and what they've done or what the banking system has done to Kanye? You know, you'll have strike in between the user and the store. You have somebody in between there. you concerned it all about

no so the way strikes set up with NCR is they're essentially providing a back end API that will allow them to accept Bitcoin but from the user's perspective I can go and spend from a wallet that I control where

the the Bitcoin invoice that I'm paying to doesn't really know anything about the history of my transactions or who I am just knows that I'm spending a valid Bitcoin transactions. Okay.

That's helpful. Yeah. I got this question from two different producers. And I was surprised because they're both relatively young. And they said, I don't know. I mean, it's just such a renegade thing. Definitely is. You know, that's a sales point for me.

But I guess, talk about the renegade. you hear that that people don't want to do it because it's too renegade for them? Yeah, it's scary. Not only is it renegade, but it takes a lot of personal responsibility. I think we live in a day and age where personal responsibility isn't really respected as much as it probably should be. Wow, that's fascinating. That's why it's so freedom-based. You have to have personal responsibility.

If you don't have personal responsibility, you don't have freedom. Yep. Yeah. So that's part of it. And then it is renegade. That's why I like it. I mean, I was born in Philadelphia, and I grew up, I'm going to Catholic school in Philadelphia as well,

and I always had this draw to the founding fathers and the story of how this country was founded. And when it comes to Bitcoin, I think you think of what the founding fathers fall for, they would have loved it. It protects private property rights. It protects freedom of speech because you're able to send it to anybody you want to. There's nothing anybody can do about it. It's sound money.

It checks all the boxes. And considering how far we've gotten from the original vision, the founding father set forth for our republic, I think Bitcoin is something, if they were alive today, they would be rallying behind as well. When you see companies like Black Rock or Goldman Sachs, they're going in opposite direction. And yet they open up these trading desks for digital currencies.

why? First of all, the first promise from people who were Bitcoiners said, well, once they open it up, and once these places start opening trade, where you can get big institutions to put their money, then it's over, then it's everywhere. Did any of that happen?

And why are they going, BlackRock in particular, why are they going so hard down a, digital currency road for the government at the same time getting people involved in Bitcoin. Any theory on that? I just want to make money. And they can make if people, their clients, if their clients want access to Bitcoin, they can make money off the trading fees. They're going to do that.

But I would recommend people to not buy their Bitcoin exposure via Block Rock. Because that's what it will be buying is exposure. I doubt they'll allow you to actually take possession of your Bitcoin. Yeah. And when you talk about rehypothecation and paper Bitcoin, I wouldn't be surprised if Black Rock is able to not, again, I'm not calling Black Rock and over Ponzi, but FDX had people buying Bitcoin. Correct.

But it turns out they were claiming to have 70,000 Bitcoin, but they didn't have any. Isn't paper gold kind of like a Ponzi scheme? Because there's not enough gold in the world to cover all the paper. Oh, yes, definitely. And that's where Bitcoin is an improvement on gold, where it's so much easy. easier to take possession of and verify that you have actual Bitcoin, whereas taking possession, as saying gold to prove that it's actually gold, it takes much more time and it's much more expensive. What do you say to people that say, yeah, but it's not gold? It's not, it's not gold.

I know, but they say that it's, it's nothing. This is, this is, um, Warren Buffett and his partner. I just saw him on CNBC. And he's like, I don't get it. I wouldn't give a sock for it. because he says it's nothing. There's no value there, he says. Yeah, well, he's an idiot. I mean, it's like it's impossible to deny. Again, going back, Bitcoin allows you to do things that are impossible in the traditional financial world. So that in and of itself has value.

The fact that you can send these transactions that you're not allowed to send on PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, the fact that you can save in a currency that's not being debased, that has value compared to the traditional system. And then on top of that, there is a connection between energy usage and Bitcoin. You mentioned it earlier, but you have to do work to actually produce Bitcoin. And that takes a lot of energy and electricity in the world world. It's not just being printed out of thin air. There are people taking significant capital and execution risk to ensure that Bitcoin is producing blocks roughly every 10 minutes.

That's one of the big arguments, so is that it takes so much electricity. It's going to use more. this is a good thing. We need to start rejecting their frame. I love that. Energy consumption, increased energy consumption correlates with human flourishing.

I saw you had Alex Epstein on. Yeah, I love him. Yesterday, I believe, or last week. Yeah, last weekend. And I think what he's doing in terms of trying to change the framing of the argument

is incredible. And I think that's what beyond Bitcoin we need to do as humanity saying, hey, this, this aversion to energy usage increasing is completely assinine. It's anti-human. It's not going to end well for us.

It really is. It's very anti-human. It is. But when you dive into Bitcoin, particularly, Bitcoin does use a lot of energy. But when you look at that at the surface, it's like, oh, no, Bitcoin bad. And I can see how people may think that. But when you dig in what you'll find, again, going back to individuals taking capital and execution risk, Bitcoin mining is ruthlessly competitive.

It's ruthlessly capitalistic. and miners have to produce a profit on their operations. And one of the most important input costs on their operation is electricity. So they're highly incentivized to drive that all in price of electricity down as low as possible. And what we're finding over time is that the cheapest energy is energy that would otherwise be wasted or stranded. Right. So Bitcoin mining is using a lot of energy. And it will continue to use more energy.

However, when you look at it, Bitcoin mining, miners are like the scavengers who are finding the inefficiencies throughout the energy sector. Is it China where they're using it right by the hydroelectric dam? They were before they mined it a couple of years ago. And that was only just because they wanted control of their own central bank. Yes. Yeah. But even though they banned it, there are still miners within China that are.

God bless them. Evading the bands. you have you have a few feelings about the new British Prime Minister I believe you said that you described him as a robotic humanoid yes why as you just look at him speak it's doesn't seem human the way the way he presents himself in public it's reminds me a lot of Justin Trudeau

and a lot just into down in New Zealand You look at a lot of these people, and you can tell that they're not really talking. They're reading from a script. They're not really talking from like a place of passion or anything. They're humanoids that have been told to go out there and read a script about a CBDC or a lockdown or a buildback better. It's amazing how I think this is why Donald Trump had to be destroyed by the progressives all over the world. because he won't play the game of, I'm in everybody's little system.

You know, he likes the, he's, he's a renegade. Oh, yes. And it's amazing how fast people change or are replaced now if you're not towing the line on all of this stuff. Lizz trust lasts at what, 44 days? Yeah. Yeah, that's scary. And again, that's another,

I don't want to bring this right back to, Bitcoin, but that's like Bitcoin, I think, empowers us to get away from these people. Didn't Trudeau shut down people with Bitcoin? Didn't he take? He went to, so this is why it's important to take possession of your own Bitcoin and hold your own keys. He went to the centralized exchanges, the FTXs of Canada and said, hey, don't let these people move their Bitcoin out of your centrally regulated company. whereas any individual who accepted Bitcoin to whilst they controlled during those protests was not affected at all. So if you, but if you take it out, I mean, this is one of the scary things too.

You move Bitcoin or you spend Bitcoin. Tax law is a little kind of fuzzy a little bit and you're and nothing's really been settled and they're just itching to, you know, slam people for Bitcoin. is that calming down at all? I know Senator Lummis and I believe Hildebrand are working on a bill that would create a de minimis spend tax exemption. But now I think the capital gains tax law, especially as it pertains to Bitcoin, is very restrictive to enabling more people spending it here in the United States specifically. it's a shame. I think it should change. I think people should be able to spend Bitcoin

without the burden of having to do capital gains tax. But we do live in a government that wants complete control over us under a government that wants complete control. So I don't expect it to happen here anytime soon, but this is why I like to tell people to just use Bitcoin as a savings account if you need to.

And then if you need to spend it desperately, you'll be able to. So if you take it out of it. and you put it in a wallet, you take it out of the system, so you have it, okay? Are you charged then? No. No. Only when you spend it.

Only when you spend it for another good or service. And is that all the honor system? I believe so, yes, at this point. That's why they hate it so very much. You said recently money, energy, food, health care, education, governance, all are being corrupted by men who think they can predict and control the emergent. order. The only way out is the misery that exists today is to smash the points of centralization and let the emergent order do its job. Explain. I think that's the overarching problem of

the world today is centralization. A few men trying to control very complex systems, whether it be the Federal Reserve and other central banks controlling money. Money should be a free market good that individuals decide on in an emergent form government obviously the federal government here in the United States has got into the point at which it's the largest government to ever exist I think there's a lot of bloat there and I think the individuals in DC trying to make decisions for people spread all across the country are not fully equipped or would ever be it would ever be possible for them to solve the problems of everybody throughout the country just from a pure information systems perspective, they're so disconnected from the source of information on the

ground across the country that they can never make good decisions. Well, isn't that why they say they need CBTCs because they were on modern monetary theory. The only way, I know, it's hard not to laugh. With modern monetary theory, their theory is we won't have inflation because we will have the ultimate stop buying this control if they have a central bank. So it's like technology has caught up to their arrogance. Yes, but again, they'll be making central decisions on how to react to that information on the ground, those local areas where they're not the best people to make those decisions. The people who have those problems are the best people to make those decisions about what

they need most urgently and how they want to allocate their capital. Do you do research much on AI and AGI ASI? Not as much as I've been falling down the the what is it called. I don't even know what it's called, but the AI producing. Transhumanism. I know transhumanism. I've had Whitney Webb on the show quite a bit. She's great.

We've dove into the transhumanism trend quite a bit. That scares me. Yeah. I think it's pretty evil. It's very hubristic in my mind. Oh, big time. Yeah. Big time.

I think the world is entering at time. If you just feel like we should be having more philosophical discussions right now. Like what is life and how far do we push things? And what is the purpose and the meaning of man and of life? Because it's going to actually start mattering very soon. I mean, I think a lot of what we're seeing is what happens when you live in a society that rejects God. And I think there's, I do believe in good and evil. And I think there's a lot of evil out there that is garnering a lot of power these days.

It's, I mean, evil, I think by its biblical definition is the one that makes the choice for you. You know, it will tell you how to live where good highly recommends, but allows you to make those mistakes so you grow without any kind of personal risk. There's no growth. No. There's no growth. No. is not good these days, and it's,

we're not considered good. I think it's very good. I think, I think it's essential. I mean, there's, don't get me wrong. As it's happening to me, I want it just to stop,

but all of the bad things in my life, that's where I've learned the most. It's not in the good times, you know, and it's certainly not, if somebody else makes the decision, I can bitch and moan and say, well, they made the decision. Oh, look what happened, of course. And you just become bitter against whatever.

The only time that you really learn is when you're failing on a machine that you built and you're going your way and then you're like, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. I think I want to stop some of the pain here. Maybe I should do it this way or that way. We don't, there's, there's, we don't have the telephone. without personal risk. Oh. And that's what I don't think we'll have freedom in the digital age without the risk of going out there

and trying to usher in this new monetary system in Bitcoin. That truly enables people to take risk. I mean, particularly in the energy sector, that's one of the places I've been most involved in on the mining side is it's insane the amount of risk that entrepreneurs in the mining sector are taking and the innovation that they're, bringing to the world with that risk. One example is Bitcoin mining is being used

as a flare mitigation technique on upstream oil and gas wells where in the Bakken down here in Texas, you'll see the famous flares where since the natural gas doesn't have a pipeline to get the market, they simply light it on fire and waste it. Bitcoin miners have taken capital

on execution risks to invest in the services that will show up and reduce that flare and use it, that gas, it through a generator mine bitcoin. See, that is something a centralized government will never come up with. I'd like to, sometimes I like to describe Bitcoin as Digital's galt,

uh, gulch, where you can simply... John Galt. Yes. Yeah. Galtz gulch. It's, uh, that's the beauty of Bitcoin. It's open source. You don't have to wait for permission from the government to do something. You don't have to get a permit. You don't have to get a license.

It drives me nuts. You can just show up and start building. And it's fun. It's invigorating. You know, I talk to people overseas and they'll come over here. And I'll be like, you have no idea. This is not America. And they still say, are you kidding me? This is still much better than any place in the world.

But when did we become this group of people that waited for permission? It used to be, really? you don't think I can, okay, I'll show you. You know, that's been the main driver in my life. You tell me I can't do something. I've pretty much guaranteed that I'm at least going to attempt it, you know. And we're not that anymore. I've seen a lot of that in Bitcoin.

It's good. It's like the digital wildcatters. There's like a great frontier. And that's the beauty of it, too. It's in the digital space you can build software. Yeah. Due to the mining, it's in meat space in the physical world as well. There's so many things to build.

There's so many efficiencies to be gained. And what we're finding is by becoming more efficient in our Bitcoin operations, we're actually creating efficiencies in other parts of the economy, whether it be payments, energy, accounting. I remember 10, 15 years ago, I went to Silicon Valley. And it was the most exciting time. You go there. And it felt like, wow.

West America, but like anything was possible. And it concerned me because a lot of the companies were very, very leftist. And they kept saying to me, no, no, no, we don't like big government just like everybody else. We're no, we're very libertarian in our approach. I'm like, uh-huh. And now it's just one with big government. You feel the wild catters are not. No. Well, no, I mean, right now, certainly not.

Individual, there's a lot of individuals like myself who are into Bitcoin because they don't like what the government has done to our money or freedom. That's the other thing, again, going back to Bitcoin being a globally distributed network, where I'm seeing a lot of traction in emerging markets, even if we were to become or the U.S. government was to become overbearing in terms of regulations and things like. that Bitcoin would survive. Americans just wouldn't be able to reap the full benefits of Bitcoin because of their government. And then you get into the concept of jurisdictional arbitrage where at some point if the government becomes too overbearing and we see all these people in other parts of the world reaping the benefits of Bitcoin and we're saying, how come we can't do that? You have one of two options. People either get up and leave and you lose your tax base

or it forces changes for the government to say, okay, you guys obviously want to be more like these people over here. So we'll readjust our priors and let you experiment with this and use it freely. Most likely they'll regret not building the wall at this time because we'll all be trying to crawl over it the other way. Marty, thank you so much. Glenn, thank you. It's a pleasure.

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