The Last American Vagabond - Mitch Burcham Interview - How The Government Commandeered Bitcoin & Its Decentralized Future

Episode Date: January 4, 2025

Joining me today is Mitch Burcham, Director of Advanced Studies at the Blockchain Academy, here to discuss what he sees as the true vision, the original vision, of Bitcoin. We discuss whether Bitcoin has effectively been hijacked or commandeered by power structures to suit their interests of control, as opposed to what many feel was Bitcoin's original direction of decentralized interactions between individuals, specifically peer-to-peer transactions without the need for banks or governments. This has become a very contentious topic in the world of cryptocurrency as well as for average people who have justifiable concerns regarding any digital currency. We discuss the concepts of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and how they can be used like any tool, as a weapon or to build something new, and how now is the time to strike that new path.Source Links:Bitcoin Academy Sign Upbitcoin.pdfScreen Shot 2025-01-03 at 10.44.05 AM.png (712×934)New TabBlockchain 51% Attacks - Lessons Learned for Developers and Trading Platform Operators - LexologyNew TabJustifying a CBDC TransitionBrazil’s CBDC pilot contains code that can freeze or reduce funds, dev claims(33) The Solari Report on X: "BTC and the American Intelligence Community Are Connected at the Hip @_whitneywebb @markgoodw_in @Bitcoin Using Bitcoin and Stablecoins to Expand Dollar Dominance with Whitney Webb and Mark Goodwin By Catherine Austin Fitts As the world struggles with the dangers of central https://t.co/B65XVv189w" / XNew TabThe Co-Opting of Bitcoin: BTC Nashville, Peter Thiel, Donald Trump, and Rumble‘Tone deaf’ — US moves $2B Silk Road BTC after Trump’s stockpile pledgeNew Tab(46) Bitcoin Archive on X: "JUST IN: Artificial Intelligence agents can now directly hold+manage+spend #Bitcoin on the Lightning Network thanks to new tools launched by Lightning Labs in partnership with Langchain ai. 😳 https://t.co/DAu42zbXf8" / X(22) Documenting ₿itcoin 📄 on X: "Artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT have learned how to send bitcoin payments. To put this in other words... Machines can pay other machines. https://t.co/j9VtLxpJc8" / X(30) Documenting ₿itcoin 📄 on X: "Co-founder of the technology giant Palantir, @JTLonsdale says, “There is one type of #bitcoin buyer that could be very important, AI agents. AI will use crypto to coordinate” https://t.co/pGMGUwaTGd" / XNew TabFILE_8436.pdfVanessa Beeley Interview - Evidence Points To EMP In What MSM/DHS Call "New 9/11-Like Threat"New TabBitcoin FastTrack™ Online Early-birdBitcoin Donations Are Appreciated:www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/bitcoin-donation(3FSozj9gQ1UniHvEiRmkPnXzHSVMc68U9f)The Last American Vagabond Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Last American Vagabond Substack at tlavagabond.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to The Last American Vagabond. I recently went to Sedona for an amazing conference, a libertarian conference, and we talked about that a lot in the show, really powerful for me. I met somebody really, really impactful there. His name was Mitch Bircham, and we discussed something, a very abstract conversation around Bitcoin and blockchain and a lot of things that people are really just now trying to grapple with understanding myself included. And we had this really in-depth conversation about the worries of where this is going, the

obvious concerns with centralized government control, CBDCs, digital IDs, all these different overlapping concerns around how this could be applied. And he also had a really inspiring kind of perspective on this on how blockchain and Bitcoin, the real vision of this, how it could be used to actually benefit society, how it could be used to improve our living conditions, how our government structures in a decentralized way could actually exist, and how this could apply and help all that come about. And it was really powerful thing. And open. in my mind to a lot of different things. And so I wanted to invite him on today to discuss, you know, where, you know, the obvious problems that we see developing with, at least in my

opinion, and we'll get Mitch's opinion on this and where the Trump administration is going with this and discuss as well how this could be used and in the origin vision of this and how it could be applied for a peer-to-peer economy that could circumvent the control structure. So Mitch, thank you for joining me today. I'm honored to have you on the show. How are you? I'm doing excellent. Man, that, that intro got me psyched up. That was a great intro. I'm so excited to be here. This is going to be a great conversation. As you mentioned, I mean, that in-depth conversation we had, the first night we met was fantastic.

And it actually just explaining it, you know, brought a lot out that, you know, connected a lot of circuits. So I credit you asking the good questions. That's, you know, that's your job. That's what you're good at. So let's get into it. Actually, I can introduce myself a little bit more. So my name is Mitch Burchum. I am the director of advanced studies at the Blockchain Academy, as well as the founder of binary distributed technologies.

That's a technology company out of Wyoming that is building on top of the original Bitcoin protocol. And you are working on a book at the moment, right? I mean, we were talking about that a bit. That's right. So I'm working on it's it's more from a book into a more of a national security report. I wanted to direct it. I wanted to be a little bit more pointed. It doesn't need to be about me.

It needs to be about the vision. It needs to be about getting things done while we have some tailwind. I believe that the stars have aligned to get things moving towards deregulation, decentralization, and ultimately the vision that you and I have. I've been discussing, and so I'm really excited to get that out to the public. And we can discuss that today. I just finished up my final draft, and we're working on getting it distributed now. So it's called The Grid on the Edge Report.

Fantastic. Yeah, and he let me see an early version of that, and we're going to be touching on that a little bit later in the show. And it's a, you know, gets into the potential direction of where this could be, should be going. But let's start with an important conversation about, you know, the origin point. And this is something that I myself was, I guess maybe kind of just surface level aware of, but really didn't understand how important this was. And even recently, there was a pretty good interview on this, but I think it stopped short on the real point about where this, you know, the real vision, but an interview that

Tucker Carlson recently had. And I thought that was a pretty, at least an opening the door conversation to why like Bitcoin cash was a bit more of a real version of Bitcoin. But this goes back to the idea of the origin white paper. There's the Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. And in this, it discusses very important things about specifically peer-to-peer, no middleman, no bank, no government, and talks about honest nodes and how all this, you know, basically the system that can be built, and if following this protocol can continue to scale and become something that can circumvent all these control structures. But it appears as if that has been, you know, deviated at some point. So start wherever you want on this.

You know, if you want to go in more in depth about the origin idea of the peer-to-peer and what it was supposed to be, but talk about how it is transitioned, right? where the blockchain size and how it was kind of capped and how they've ultimately veered off and now we're calling Bitcoin something that I guess, you know, we would argue is not the real Bitcoin. Right. So what's so interesting about, I mean, just the first sentence of the abstract is a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be directly sent from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Now, if you look up the definition of cash, now that's the real interesting.

part, okay? Because cash, we're talking about, we're talking about currency. We're talking about, and when we talk about currency in today's day and age, we're talking about negotiable instruments, which is securities, bills of exchange. It lists everything, right? And if you go down the UCC rabbit hole, I don't know if you've been down that rabbit hole, it's deep, you'll realize that cash is everything. It's everything that is an agreement on value. or a promissory note. And so what Satoshi Nakamoto is really saying here is that he's developed a peer-to-peer version of electronic cash, meaning that you can tokenize anything.

That's the idea. It wasn't that Bitcoin is the cash. It's that Bitcoin is the substrate for the tokenization of everything else. And that's what's been lost primarily. I believe that it's been corrupted. As you know from that interview with Tucker Carlson and Roger Ver, there has been strategic moves to change the ability of Bitcoin to tokenize things. And as a result, we've seen the expansion of the blockchain economy towards smart contracting,

where we can tokenize stuff. And all of that was was built on the premise that Bitcoin couldn't do that. But in the very first sentence, it says that this is a tokenization protocol that will allow any payments to be conducted without a financial institution. And that is the true power. It's frictionless cash. So real quick question on that. So what you're saying there is that the original concept from the white paper, the way it was. originally designed would arguably not necessitate the addition of the smart contract act like so

you're saying that with originally it could have been complete without the addition of these new things being added to make that happen today is that what you're saying yeah so there's actually a famous quote by satoshi that that says um when he issued version 0.1 it was set in stone for its lifetime and then he goes on to say and because of that i had to create a very robust scripting language so that any use case could potentially be implemented. And he even had, you know, some specific use cases like a gambling app, online casino, as well as, I believe, some marketplaces. And that was already built in.

And a lot of those operation codes, op codes, have been disabled over time. And now they're completely non-compatible. with the current implementation of, let's say, Bitcoin Core codebase or Bitcoin Cash codebase. And it would take the intervention of a centralized team of developers to reintroduce those. And that's the point, right? We're talking about decentralized cash, but you're requiring a centralized team of developers to make that change. And that's really the fundamental, that's the crux of the thing. Is it decentralized?

Right. If you can change the protocol, is it decentralized? I'd argue not. But it's a contentious point and a word that has to get accurately defined in this space, in my opinion. Yeah, most definitely. That's important. But so in that, it's definitely your opinion. It's hard that you can't ever know someone's intent.

But do you feel that that was something that was done with nefarious intent? Like the many different examples, the capping it on one, megabyte per block or the, you know, I guess what's crazy to think about the way you're describing that is this kind of completely built out like far more than just a currency for what design, what Bitcoin, the original core Bitcoin concept was designed as, and that's been just shut down so it could be added to in ways that keep it kind of centralized, right? Do you think that was nefarious or, you know, how do you see that? I think that the initial block size cap could have been done in good faith.

I think that it was an okay idea at the time. Okay. You know, we're using small CPUs to mine these things. If someone wanted to spam us, they could. They would overrun us, right? That was a soft cap in the beginning. When it turned into a hard cap, that's when we ran into problems. Now, the rest of the protocol changes, the Segwit Fork, which segregated the witness

data, that was nefarious. And that was directly, that was an intentional move because the key aspect that allows Bitcoin to be a digital commodity, a substrate to build on top of, is that there's a chain of digital signatures. If you go back to the white paper, we'll read. It will say Bitcoin is defined as a chain of digital signatures. When you eliminate that. Well, it's no longer Bitcoin. That's for sure, as Satoshi would have called it. Then what is it? Well, I guess I don't know other than that it's probably a security that's being issued by the miners. And that's something that we have to really think about and and extrapolate to other networks as well. Because if the core development team is issuing the, you've got this

weird structure where the core development team is issuing updates to a mining infrastructure that's technically supposed to be the rulemaker, but they're being forced to to accept these changes. Well, let's take a step back for because I guarantee there are people, I mean, even I'm new to a lot of this, there are people that are kind of, you know, trying to struggle to understand this. So taking a step back to the point of what you're highlighting right there is that, so the change we were highlighting there is. So I guess as best you can, I know this is a complicated topic. to explain in a brief sentence, but the idea of the origin, so Bitcoin core and how eventually, as people understand it, we had the fork that went to Bitcoin Cash and then later another

fork to what is called BSV, which stands for Bitcoin Satoshi Vision. And the simple point being that, you know, the megabyte block cap size for Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash was, I think, extended two gigabytes versus one megabyte, whereas BSV, I think, is rivaling Visa at this point and so on. So explain what that is and the point about why you think that Bitcoin cash more than Bitcoin, but BSV more than all of them is in fact the origin or the real continuation of the blockchain and like what that means as best you can. I know that's complicated. But yeah, it's actually we can make it as pretty dead simple. Okay. The if it follows the original white paper, it's Bitcoin by definition. Okay. Bitcoin white, white,

paper does not specify any block size limits. It's a free market system. Okay. And in fact, it says it should be scaled, right? Correct. It's intended to be scaled as a peer-to-peer digital cash system. Okay. That means that the block sizes should adjust based on demand.

So no block size limit. In good faith, they put one, they put a soft cap in the very beginning of the network to protect against spam attacks. Now you have two. two forks of this network that each still have a block size limit. One, BTC is one megabyte. I believe BCH is 32 megabytes. Oh, so I was wrong.

Okay, 32? I believe it's 32. I'd have to check two. The BSV, on the other hand, is running gigabyte size blocks on certain days, right? They don't need to have that capacity all the time. time. But if demand is requiring it, then the miners are incentivized to invest in that infrastructure. And that is really, when you look at Bitcoin and you read the white paper, you understand that this is an economic system. This is an incentives engine. It's a change of incentives inside

the internet where the miners are a decentralized commercial internet. that are incentivized to build their infrastructure to serve you rather than take advantage of you, which is how it is today. Every day our data is getting stolen. Well, now we're going to pay a minor, a micro transaction potentially. If they can scale big enough, if they can handle the throughput, we're going to give it to them. Because what's fundamentally happening is we're taking back our ownership of the data because the fundamental digital commodity that is Bitcoin that is the substrate of this new commercial internet is ownable.

And that's the real paradigm shift. You can own it definitively. I have the keys to this. It's mine. And you can create the legal structures around that. It's compliant. This isn't some new paradigm. it's it's just a it's a better way of accounting more transparent way of accounting things

anything and that's what it says it's a digital cash system well what is cash everything it's everything right everything is a negotiable instrument and you can tokenize all of that to make it so that the transparent accounting system is accessible and available and cheap to use for everyone And it runs on a fundamentally intrinsically valuable digital commodity. And so I actually outline the properties of a digital commodity inside of the grid on the edge report. I don't know if you've got that ready, but we can pull that up and really dive into it. Because I think that that's really the crux of understanding Bitcoin is we know that, I believe it's in the beginning of part three.

Let's see. Go ahead and get into. I'm sure I'll get there in a second if you want to just get into it. I can't wait for me. We know the SEC has said Gary Ginsler, whether you like him or not, he came out and said that Bitcoin is a commodity. Everything else is a security. Well, what Bitcoin was he talking about? Well, he was talking about the white paper.

in general because that's the definition of Bitcoin. You couldn't be talking about anything else. Well, if that is true, then let's look at the white paper and let's figure out what the core principles are that make this thing a digital commodity. So we can scroll down and look at the key components of a commodity ledger, which is a digital framework that operates by trading an intrinsically valuable digital commodity token. Number one, we've got fixed supply. That's how we mimic traditional monetary commodities like gold and silver. Those, obviously, who knows what Elon can find in an asteroid somewhere, right? But I'm pretty sure we've got a fixed amount of gold to work with for the foreseeable future.

Transparency and accountability. There has to be common accountability. on the network. I have to be responsible for the data that I upload. Unbounded scalability. Block space has to be common in order to have a commodity ledger, meaning that it has to be dynamically changed based on demand. And the point is ultimately that the current iteration of Bitcoin,

which is deviated from the original idea, doesn't apply to those definitions, correct? Absolutely, absolutely. Two and three, definitely. Let's go to four. Let's see if it applies there. Economically competitive. So this applies more to like a proof of stake type system.

If a node isn't incentivized to keep the block space common by economic competition, then it's not a commodity. They have to be incentivized to keep growing the network to keep everything common to everyone. And that one's very interesting. And that's why proof of work is really the fundamental engine of this thing. Right. And for those that don't, that's, that is the concept of the miners and the, you know, the cryptographic effort to essentially find the solution and the demonstration of the work,

that proof of work and the, in the provability of the, like, what you talked about is the trustless system and ultimately the incentive visit, the incentive. visit the incentivizing them to act in like I mean unless I'm explaining it wrong give me a quick explanation of what that is for people that's exactly right so it's a it's the proof of work competition where you are basically brute forcing a a cryptographic proof that all of the transactions that happened inside a block are there and then you timestamp it boom when you solve that problem you timestamp it it goes onto the blockchain then you take the block header and you put it in the next block and then hash all that.

That's what the blockchain is. So you have a trail of digital signatures, a chain of digital signatures all the way back to the Genesis block that is commonly accountable and commonly accessible with a fixed supply of tokens to access the network. Now, the fifth and most important part of this is that you, have to have a one a neutral starting point and that once it has started it can never change again. Right. That's what keeps the creator honest. That's what keeps the entire system honest and common to everyone. So Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper and then two months later, the Bitcoin network was created.

Obviously, we know that Satoshi Nakamoto actually rose. the code because he was he was giving you know public updates on it but it could have been anyone anyone that read the paper could have designed the same system and shipped it before satoshi did that's the common neutral starting point well that's actually an interesting point right there by the way for those that have you know justified skepticism about the you know reality of who that person is the origin about whether even right there even if satoshi is a person acting in good faith that you could have argued somebody right there could have entered in and built this network for a different agenda.

Like, it's interesting to think about, right? This is a tool that can be used as opposed to inherently one way or the other, you know? Exactly. And I feel that the intent of the creator was to have just a super neutral, indestructible building foundation, right? That's the key. And what I describe in the grid on the edge report is just, just how indestructible this thing is. Yeah.

Because. And I think it's clear from the origin point that you can see that, you know, I mean, unless I'm missing something, the way that it's designed seems to be very counter to what any kind of centralized government control structure would want. So to me, that simply signifies that the origin point was most likely not. But I mean, I'm always, I'm always, you know, I never discount the possibility of some kind of government manipulation. That's just me.

But I think it's important to see that this is very challenging, I think, which I now is why I think it's been changed and co-opted manipulated for place. a centralized version of it to exist, you know? And as you pointed out, so again, back to your point you were saying before, is you have the Bitcoin version now, the BTC, not the other ones, which we're arguing are the actual continuation of the real Bitcoin vision and blockchain, is that they've now created it to where it essentially can't be changed. But like the idea being is that where these things can evolve and change based on the input

of the miners in the community, but it's what you're saying, if I understand it correctly from before, is that now Bitcoin can't, right? Not in the same way. That's super important. Can you explain that a little more? the protocol, right? So if, if we want a, so here's what we want. And here's what Satoshi, here's what I think Satoshi wanted. I think Satoshi wanted the government to be accountable for its actions. Right. That's what we all want. And so how do you do that? Well, you have to create

the, you have to first create a digital cash system that's ultimately reliable and resilient. And that, that means it has to be distributed. So that's what a distributed ledger technology is. That was the initial design. It's ARPANET, but public, commercial. It's the ultimate manifestation of a military, you know, super resilient network, but it's been given away for free to anyone who could click a button back in the day, which is amazing. But also why people are very skeptical, and I get that.

Right. And so what he, his ultimate vision and what I think he was after is creating a network that was so good that it had to be used from the top levels, but because if it had to be used, it had to have specific properties that forced them down the avenues he wanted to see, which is ultimate transparency, reliability, accountability, and immutability of these transactions. Now, there is privacy built into that, but if, If we have a network that's overlaid on top, so let's say the the US dollar is now overlaid on top of the Bitcoin network, then, you know, the government can do what the government does. The government's going to mess with you.

It's going to do that. What's important is that now we have a trail. We've got a triple entry accounting system where I've got a story. The government's got a story and Bitcoin's got the story. And I get to say what happened and how it worked and everyone can see it. There's no more of this of this obscurity and darkness in these, in these situations. I can show you what happened immutably forever.

And that's what they're after. But hasn't that arguably now changed with the Bitcoin BTC version? Right. So this is what I'm really worried about is so address the, address that privacy point as well, like the visible aspect of the hash information, but the actual privacy anonymization of it as well. But I'm worried about how they are presenting a version of, you know, transparency,

using the idea that we all understand of the origin Bitcoin and pretending that's the case, but giving you a version that it's not even remotely. And then I want to get into the 51% attack version of that as well, like how that overlaps. But, you know, that is very concerning right there because people are now leaning into this as if that will be the reality. Like I've been talking about like the idea of using blockchain to like for the Pentagon, you know, like let's let's get their spending accountable.

But my point is I don't think that would ever be allowed to happen unless they use this as a version to make it look like that's happening. Do you have any thoughts on that? I think that they intentionally separated the witness data, basically the digital signature from what you actually uploaded because they didn't want that accountability. And then they shipped Bitcoin as Bitcoin, which is, defined as a chain of digital signatures. So that's fraudulent, right?

It's just fraud. You say that it is, but the definition of it has nothing to do with what you're selling. Okay, so that's fraud. And that is malintent. And there's a purpose, and it's because if they were actually using the original protocol, they would be commonly accountable. But now they're not. So the Epstein's of the world, you know, they're using this.

They're using the other side of things. And that was never the intended purpose. And that's why Satoshi left. You know, he saw WikiLeaks and he saw Silk Road. And he was like, holy moly, I'm out of here. I'm going to go, I'm going to go figure out how to make this thing foolproof myself. And in the meantime, It got corrupted and the government's accepting it.

And they're going to use it maybe if they have enough time to. But as you know, so I think we should preface, right? Like you said, you got to come on the course that we teach on this stuff. And you got a real inside look at the economics of this and how it is going to play out. And so this is the blockchain academy. We're doing an early bird session for our online course. You came on the live course. I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that,

but you can see totally and transparently exactly how this played out. It's obvious. And once you have that knowledge, you can just accelerate yourself into a future that holds the systems that you are using for your everyday life to the utmost. accountability because it's permanent. It's permanent. You cannot change it. You cannot explode it. You can't blow it up. You can't do anything to it. It's there forever. And as long as there is a way for one minor to profit off the system, it will be used.

But I will address. We'll touch more on that toward the end. I definitely want, I think it's a fantastic course, by the way. A lot of what I, I mean, most of what I'm learning today is, you coming from what we've discussed and what have been taught in that course, it's important. But so what you're saying there, though, is it's, I mean, getting back, the point about Bitcoin versus the rest of it, though, is that, so this is the confusing part for people, is that, you know, like you just said, they're coming out with this idea of what they're using and calling a Bitcoin, but it's actually not the vision that would be, like, it doesn't have the tools anymore to actually be used the way that they're pretending it can be.

Right. And so when you get into things like, like the anonymous aspect, right? So, like, as we understand the origin point of it, it is. you know, the information of transactions is public to anybody, which I think is, I think is actually a good thing, especially since with the, with the cryptographic information, the hash in general, it's, I guess, as I understand it, and you can touch on the quanting computer point if you like, that ultimately that seems that it's impossible for anybody to find out who it was, unless you publicly post that. So that seems like a good thing, because that that

enables there to be tracking systems for things like the government, as we can all look at, but anonymizes personal details, especially when it comes to individuals, but I guess my point there is that is that now the same for the BTC version? Or is that just what they're claiming it is? And the old, the real Bitcoin is the one that has that kind of dynamic. You said what I'm saying? Like, I just don't trust anything that's coming through this now manipulated version of the chain that they're calling the real one. Yeah, it's they're not, BTC is not using that system. Everything is completely obscured in Bitcoin. There is no chain of digital signatures. You cannot track and trace where funds came

from. And you also can't tokenize. So it's it's basically completely useless. And then what they're trying to create it for in a government purpose. Other than digital gold, which is what is what it was. But the original Bitcoin protocol and the original intent is exactly what you're talking about where we have the ability now to completely audit, but the data and the in the personality of the person is firewalled from the system right the actual data can be you know encrypted like crazy you can do it 500 times you can do it as much as you want the data doesn't matter to bitcoin it it just crunches it and throws it through it is what it is um it's just transacting on the substrate of the satoshi which is of course um the the the finite unit

of a Bitcoin. So there's 100 million Satoshi's inside a Bitcoin. And that's the actual commodity. It cannot be divided any further. That's the substrate. You can attach anything to that Satoshi and send it anywhere peer to peer. So that data that's attached can be obscured. Your personal identity can be obscured. And no one needs to know who you are, but now, now, I have a record that this transaction happened. You have a record that this transaction happened and Bitcoin has a record that this transaction happened. And so when you go to a court of law, things get a lot easier, a lot faster.

You know, Enron, if Enron is using Bitcoin, it doesn't exist. It doesn't happen. The Enron scandal does not happen if they're using Bitcoin to keep track of their things. Right. which is why I don't think this will, you know, my opinion is that that's why it's been diverted and what ultimately they won't allow it to happen in the sense that we'll hold anybody else accountable other than, you know, I guess maybe applied in a ways we might get, we, you know, like the guy used against us in a negative way, essentially.

But can you touch on what you just said there and like using any, like so beyond the financial aspect of it? And I wasn't going to get too much in this today, but I'm just really interested in that. Like so the idea of where this, well, I guess this does kind of dovetail with where we're going to go and what it could become, but we'll get you more in a second, but the idea of what else it can be used for. Like other than financial transactions, you said it could be attached to anything. So I guess just briefly explain more of what you mean by that. Yeah.

So like I'm actually interested in building, you know, trust structures that are. So these aren't necessarily financial transactions, but you can upload a contract, a private contract to the blockchain. You can hash it. It's completely, you know, safe. But you have a hash of a particular. contract. If any part of that contract changes, you'll see that the hash is now different. It's instantly verifiable, right? But you can also have a token of that contract. So if that

contract outlines that someone owns a one, one hundred thousandth of your car, then that's immutably trackable. And it's, it's very simple system for for anyone to implement in their estate dealings. So that's, you know, that's one way to go. It's basically in an infinite use case. You can do, like I said, anything with it. Your mind is really the limiting factor on this. And unfortunately, it's been taken out of the mind share of humanity for, you know, the last seven years. And we're missing, we're missing a big part of the creative power that could be coming on to this network and, you know, bringing more life, more prosperity, more freedom, more truth to humanity.

And, and that's really, like I said, that's what I, that's what I educate on. I just want everyone to come on to come on and see that what we have here is, is the ultimate cornerstone of a new type of society that we get to we get to create with without any bounds. There is absolutely no rules. There's regulations that are based on governments, but this is a completely compliance system. It was designed that way. And if you just work within the structures, you can create anything you want that is ultimately going to be more efficient and more free and more.

and more transparent and just more secure long-term because this is this is an ultimately resilient network and it gives you the power to control your own destiny and that's what's so fun about it I mean I don't know if you get as excited as I am just thinking about the potentials of it's it's kind of mind-blowing when you really get back and look at go ahead sorry go ahead yeah I mean like what what kind of creative stuff can you do even with your own businesses like look at your business and and take a look at what

bitcoin actually was and just meditate on it yeah see how you can implement this to to move the incentives in the way that you think is is most aligned with a more free humanity right that's all bitcoin is it's just realigning the incentives from and i say this a lot but bitcoin bitcoin Bitcoin made honesty the most profitable action. Maybe for the first time ever. That's the incentivizing them, essentially the system built in a way that incentivizes, which I was going to say a second when you brought that up before. It doesn't mean there might not be somebody who just decides still to be dishonest,

but the point is that it incentivizes, like it's more profitable to do it the way that's designs, which is why most people do. I think that is a very interesting point. But let's put a pin in the positive side of it because I want to get more into that to end. But at the same point you're making right there, dovetails with the two things I want to get into next, which is for the same thing you're highlighting right there. Like even what you described, and I know you understand that because we talked about it before, that where the world is going, the recent aggressive push of the

reset, the reimagining the world, which seems to be in the same way rolling out through the Trump administration with a different flavor right now, people are very, a too, very rightly so skeptical and concerned about anything like the way you laid it out in regard to anything that's overlapping with the government that is changing the way we live. And I get it. But at the same time, that's why I want to end with the reasons why you think that we should be open to, you know, seeing like the same thing I say every time in regard to anything like this. A hammer is a tool. It can be built. It could build a house or it could bash your head in, right? It's how you apply these things that can be used. And I think that's an important way to end.

But before we get to that, talking about, well, you're just highlighting there in two different ways, which is ultimately like what this has become, which we're just basically highlighting. It's now been deviated into something that is, I mean, it's just been co-opted by the governments and different control structures for the obvious reasons because this could be used to make them be held accountable. And so I want to talk about what's called the 51% attack. Now, I've talked about this in recent IMA panel and different discussions and it is about the idea of the computational power, the CPU power and the mining aspect

of it. So if you can explain what that is and why that's different than just simply who holds the most Bitcoin and explain what the 51% attack is describing and then I want to get into whether that is possible already happened and so on. Yeah. A 51% attack is a group or one singular minor that takes over more than 51% of the hash power. And so what would happen then is that they could potentially send a double spend transaction and move coins that weren't supposed to get moved. or weren't authorized to get moved, and then hash that into a block because they've got the most hash power.

Once that's hash into a block, then they can send it out. And because they can continue to, you know, build on top of that. Because they have 51% of the power. Right. Yeah. Because they have the most chance of finding the next block, they could potentially continue to do that. Now, go ahead. The issue with that and the reason I don't think that that's really a threat is because it costs so much money to do that.

Right. The scale of the network already is so huge that to do that for even a day would cost potentially millions of dollars. And to do that for a week, we cost a lot more in a month. And you have to keep doing that forever with the eternal risk, the, the, immutable risk that everything that you built could explode and be worthless. And that it never mattered in the first place because everyone could just continue on with the real chain. And for those that don't understand, the point being that ultimately, you know, as Mitch was describing earlier, you have the, at least in regard to BTC, the one megabyte cap size blocks that continue.

And every time, you know, and basically once it's proven, the blocks, you know, it becomes a block and it continues forward. And what he's saying is that if hypothetically a group controlled 51% or more of the CEE, that they could divert from that chain and create a new direction and that arguably nobody would know that they either double spent or what I want to get into what else they could do and ultimately hide that. And I agree with you. financially, it doesn't seem feasible for somebody to try to make money, but I can see why it would matter for a government trying to hide something, right? Like if it's that important for them to do so. So other than being able

to spend money twice, like being able to, you know, spend a million dollars in Bitcoin, then deviate the block. So nobody knows that. So you kind of retain the money, the double spending aspect, you know, what, what in your mind could that also amount to, right? Like, because, and to be clear, as we, I think we discussed this in the course, right now, there are two groups outside of the other many groups that actually already control together more than 51% of the power. And so maybe they're working together. We don't know that. Maybe there's government power behind them. And we don't, you know, the worry there that it seems very possible already. And so what other things could that mean when we get into how the governments are using this?

And again, back to the point of like the, the feign transparency using. the early idea and pretending that you guys can all see what we're doing, but in reality, they're able to kind of, you know, again, double spend or what else? Like, what do you think is possible there? Well, let's consider, let's consider what happened. So like you said, BTC is already extremely centralized. There's already two miners that own 51% or more of the network, of the network cash power, rather. So at the first split, right, BTC to BCH, BCH, let's call that a 51% of Okay. Interesting. And not in the way that maybe you're thinking of it, but because it's a 51% attack is actually the only reason that you want more hash power is because you want to be able to claim that you were the original chain. Because you're you're building all the blocks and you've got all the hash power. So what did that benefit? Well, they got to keep the name.

Right. Right. And now Bitcoin Cash, which was essentially, The real Bitcoin is now called Bitcoin Cash while they get to keep BTC and Bitcoin as the ticker. That's what they won. It wasn't a double spend. It wasn't anything. It was the brand. They won that brand. And rather than doing a double spend, they corrupted the network from the inside, from the, from the core developers standpoint.

Yeah. Full 51% of the hash power and kept the brand. And that's been the prevailing thing that has maintained its prevalence. If it wasn't called Bitcoin, no one would give a crap. They wouldn't even touch it because it's useless. And so the Bitcoin version of it, you're saying, is the, you know, so basically Bitcoin Cash, hypothetically was the continuation of the original chain and the attack was able to divert away from that.

But they gained, because they are controlling enough CPU power, they were able to maintain the actual brand. And that's, that's really interesting. I'm just kind of rehashing it in my mind. And so then BSV comes into play, and that would be the same thing in your mind? Yes, V. BSV had the same thing happen to it.

There was a hash war. They call them hash wars, right? You're trying to get as much hash onto your different networks, right? And then eventually splits. And in this particular case, there was an actual hard fork of the code base from the inside. So the inside got corrupted rather than like a double spend. So those are the sorts of two actions that could have

happened. So the inside gets corrupted and it splits and there's a hash war and 51% of the hash goes to BTC and now that's the longest chain and they get to keep the name. Same thing happened at BCH with BSV and now BSV's got to switch the name. So BSV ultimately is the closest to what the original white paper was talking about. Would you say closest or is it not, is there any deviations from the white paper on BSB? There aren't any deviations, but you have to be very careful about the way that you speak about these things because, you know, we don't know who Satoshi is. And we don't know.

All we can do is look at, you know, his writings. So the closest thing is to the vision of Satoshi is Bitcoin Satoshi's vision that we have. And that's not to say that there could be a network that's even better. But the reality is that's the one that we have that is the closest to the definition. So if what you're highlighting there is that hypothetically, I guess maybe even verifiably, you tell me if that's how you're saying that, that ultimately that the 51% of that power is already on display more than once now in maintaining the BTC brand and going forward,

then what does that mean? We already kind of highlighted what that means in a lot of the different downsides. But what are the implications of that for where, this goes and getting into how it's being used right now. Well, it means that they're liable to lose a lot of money. Who's they? The miners running the 51% attack. That's how it always works.

Okay. The 51% attack is disincentivized because they stand to lose a lot of money if it's found out that that was not the original chain. And that's the risk. That's the existential risk that they're running. Assuming they're in in this for just making money. And that's my kind of weighing of it right now with how it is being very clearly co-opted by power structures and governments. And you know, you just wonder whether these massive hangers full of CPU mining power is actually just a company or something just funding behind that.

You know, that's where I'm going with that worry, you know. And as that now dovetails with the idea of, you know, the, I mean, let's just get into that next point about centralized, you know, central bank digital currency conversation, right? And the idea that this is not necessarily the same thing, but in reality, a private version, which is, of. where I worry this is going is worse in a lot of ways, right? And so as, and then Mark Goodwin from the Unlimited Hangout from his chain series wrote, stable coins are not an appropriate scaling mechanism for a new financial system. It is simply a worse implementation of the current debt-based monetary system with privacy, programmability and surveillance concerns in regard to the overlap of that with like tether and the stable coin conversation. But go wherever you'd like

on that and like where you think, you know, so right now clearly it seems like that's the direction, whether private or even just a CBDC, despite what people I think are, you know, would believe they would accomplish. But whether through JP Morgan or whatever else, that seems to be coming to fruition. And now they're talking about a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, which is not the same thing. But give me your kind of perspective on how you see that going forward and the risks, positives, how you see it. So, yeah, I've got a lot of ideas on this. And ultimately, we already have a CBDC. We have a central bank digital currency.

And it doesn't run on blockchain. It's completely, you know, obscured. But they get to issue as much, they get to type in as many book entries as they want. They're saying, I want 10 million of these. Well, what are these? Well, it's an unconditional promise to pay between the Federal Reserve and the treasury. All it is is an IOU. It's a promise.

They're taking out loans. They're sending check. on an empty account and then they issue this note. This is a Federal Reserve note. It's worth $1. Well, what's a dollar? Well, it's a promise to pay. Well, what's the promise?

Are you paying it? They're like, no. And you're like, okay, what am I, what are we doing? What is this? Well, it turns out that it is just literally numbers on a screen. Right. So the best case scenario is that we, we can put that at least on a transparent ledger so that we know what's happening.

So it's at least public. Now, do I still want to, do I want to use that system? No, I don't want to use that system. It's a crazy system. Like, does it have its advantages? Yeah, we get instant liquidity from this centralized authority. And is that helpful? I don't know.

You know, if I want to go buy a car and I need to convert my negotiable instrument for my car into Federal Reserve notes because the car dealership accepts those, let's do it. All right? I'll go do that. In the future, that may not be the case, but right now that's what we're operating on in this CBDC world that we live in currently. Well, the interesting thing, though, is the only difference there, as you would highlight, is that the business or whatever the other side of the transaction just chooses not to accept potential, you know, whether you have a cryptographic address and exchanging digital currency in that way, right? So that's the hindrance right there. It's not that they couldn't do that, but that they're not incentivized to do that.

Right. And they're just not programmed. Like the people have been programmed to accept this for value. Right. Because it's a dollar. What's a dollar? Right. It's literally a number on a screen.

And if it's in paper form, it's literally a piece of paper with two signatures on it. That's it. That's the only thing that gives it any value. It's a promise to pay. And if I agree that that's worth a dollar, whatever that is, then it is. And what I'm suggesting is that you can do that yourself. If you build, if you build that now the issue is, of course, that the CBDC is governed by a centralized authority. The interest rates change based on the dealings of one particular group and that's a private corporation and they get to do what they want.

How do we build, how do we build decentralized systems that allow users to vote on that particular? potential inflation or, and that's, that's sort of where I'm going with this, because a central bank digital currency is what we have now. It's just not accountable. So best case scenario, it's on top of Bitcoin, but better case scenario is we build our own because it's just numbers on a screen that we agree on, that we agree on a value. Okay. This number is worth one of these. Perfect. If you and me agree, let's do it. Right. And if you can get a lot more people to agree, we've got, we've got our own, we've got our own little country. Well, ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, and that's the reality of the original point of the peer to peer. We don't need somebody

between dictating how we can use that. I do have one more point I want to get to before we go deeper into that exact point, which is something that, you know, has really stuck with me since we had that original conversation. And that is the idea of, so Bitcoin we've discussed, which is hopefully for the average person, even I think it's been a good job really kind of breaking down the basics of this. And I think that it's, you know, we're seeing it as a currency right now, despite obviously a just untapped resource for other type of applications, you discuss the overlap of artificial intelligence and how essentially this could build out in the direction it seems to be going through the government in a way that is kind of terrifying in a dystopian way around

whether it kind of becomes artificial intelligence or merges with that or becomes some kind of massive carbon tracking instrument. And a thought that came in our mind, then I'll let you address this, is during the war on terror, war of terror, the U.S. basically scooped up endless amounts of data.

And it'd been going on long before that, but that was the rationale at the time for just this massive scoop of information. Now, we're told, and who knows if it's the truth, but we were told that at the time, and now in general, that they were, at least before them, we weren't able to digest it all at the moment

because they didn't really know what they were looking for. They had such a massive pile of data. So the problem became, we don't even know where to look, so you don't literally mean anything until after the fact and you know where to look and then you find the data. So this seems with this conversation of applying this kind of artificial intelligence level, the tracking discussion, a way that solves that problem. So now they can have just this all encompassing data absorbing system and then using this,

basically real time look through that information. So that's one thing that stood out to me, but I'm sure it gets much more alarming than that. So how do you see that going forward, you know, the potential dark side of how that could be used? And let's get into the ways that we should actually use it. There may not be a truly dark side of this because I believe that artificial intelligence, like any tool, right, if you opt into using a tool and you are, so let's say, let's take the Hammer example, right? Hammer could be used to build a house or kill you. Well, don't go to a building site with a bunch of freaking psychopaths, right? Go build a house with the same

Hammer with a bunch of really great guys who you trust. Maybe you go to church with. It's like, let's do that instead of going to the place where they're going to kill you with it. Well, just to be clear, my point ultimately, I agree completely is what you're saying, is that with exactly that same mindset. So in the case of a government or a control structure deciding to use it in a negative way, how would you see that being implemented? Like, let's just address like the carbon tracking dynamic.

Because the reason I bring it up is because right now we are seeing this rollout pretty predominantly for the first time in this country's history, like openly addressing, using, leaning into Bitcoin, digital currency, cryptocurrency, well, I guess cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, digital's been going on for a minute. But the idea being that through that Trump administration, rolling this out right now, but in a very alarming way contradicts something that most of his base would resist, which is the idea of carbon tracking at all, you know. And so I'm certainly just as possible, he's not aware of any of that possibility. But just all that being said, address that potential use and how you think that, you know, might be used and why that should be alarming to us.

Then let's get into, you know, again, how this can be and should be applied. So definitely within, so an artificial intelligent model isn't going to be able to track the entirety of the system, right? There's too much going on. It's like trying to track everything that's happening in your brain all at the same time. You can't do it. Your consciousness can't do it. There's too much input.

Now, could you isolate certain things? So within a network, like you're talking about, a carbon tracking network, an artificial intelligent model could, could track and trace, right? It's got the neural pathways that it can see where things are going and maybe predict things. Now, that can be used for tyranny if you opt into that system. If you are moving into that system, you can be controlled in that way. And that right there is Bitcoin versus the other options, right? That's the correct. So the entirety of Bitcoin is untrackable.

It's too big. You cannot, there's so much happening globally at, you know, millions of transactions a second that no artificial, no central artificial intelligence model is going to be able to say, oh, there was, there was Ryan. He, you know, he got a donation and now we're going to track and trace everything that went through. There's just too much going on. Exactly like what you were saying. the data dump is so big. So in order for someone to build a system that is actually going to be able to do what you're describing, they have to do it in an overlay, a fenced network that allows that model to really dive in deep into just that network.

And those fences have to be explicitly defined. There's going to be contracts explaining where those lines are. And if you walk into those lines, they're most certainly can implement. the rules that are associated with that overlay network. And that's something that everyone needs to be educated on. And really, that's why I do what I do is because without this level of education, without this level of training, you're going to walk into these systems unknowingly. Right.

And that's the fear, right? That's exactly what happened with BTC. People are walking into this system and they don't understand what it is. And there's existential risk. So you would argue that the current Bitcoin is exactly what you're highlighting right there. And so people are being tricked into that version of it? Is that, is that the outline? Right, right.

It's, it's all about, it's all about knowing what you're getting into. And if you understand fundamentally, know thy enemy, right? And it's, that's number one rule. There's no what, what's going on. And they're explicitly tricking you. And it's, it's not even, they're not even really hiding it that good. It's just like, it's pretty obvious. She's like, hey, we changed the Bitcoin network.

We call it a Bitcoin. What are you going to do about it? Yeah. And yell freedom and everyone. And no one has really done anything about it. And that's really what gets me so fired up and so excited to see, you know, the level of people that are getting interested in taking the course and moving forward with these conversations.

Right. Because, you know, we're getting so much. We're getting such a great response. And it's so exciting to see the power coming out of people and the creativity. of knowing where to go with the information, because exactly what you're saying is that if you don't know that, you're going to wander into a building site with a bunch of psychopaths with a bunch of hammers,

and they're going to hit you on the head with it. And you're not going to understand what happened. Because all the other guys down from church are building a beautiful house, and they're all getting along with the same hammer. And that's fundamentally what it's about. And so you're right to be, you know, cognizant and nervous about how these things are going to get rolled out. But, you know, knowledge is power and taking that back and getting it to the people so that we understand how to build these things. We understand how to use them.

Right. I mean, I think the obvious point is that we're, you know, I get, again, I get the skepticism, but that is never in my opinion a reason to just disregard, right? Consider, engage, question everything. while considering all possibilities, right? That's just the way the world exists. And so in this context, like the point is, yes, be skeptical of this, watch where it goes, but ultimately realize that, like,

they're building this anyway, right? So if we don't engage in this process, it is going to be what he's describing. It's going to be the co-opted illusion of Bitcoin under a guise of transparency, you know, and as you say, people wander in being, you know, all the partisan hype right now,

you just discover Bitcoin for the first time. And on the surface, it looks like this is going to save the world, you know, is what Mitch is going to get into is that it potentially can, but not the way they're rolling it out right now. And I think that's a really powerful point. And I am more skeptical about that than anybody, because I'm just a, when it comes to government, when it comes to these kind of things, what I see them using, I'm very skeptical. And I think we all should be. But like I said, very much open to the

reality of what he's about to tell us. So let's get into the idea of, you know, what it could be. Right. So whether we're talking about, well, I guess you can address it as like, is it possible to continue the Bitcoin BTC version in a positive way? But I, you know, you know, you. even get it if you want to. But so the original version, BSV, the original continuation of the origin, appear-to-peer dynamic, what could that truly become in ways that could circumvent what's happening, that could, you know, create more liberty, freedom, you know, as you talked about that origin conversation, like an actual utopia, how that could be possible.

Right. So I'll preface by saying that I don't think, I don't think utopia exists necessarily, but I do think if you were to ever find it, you'd find it where a competition is highest. And so all I want is to build ultimately competitive systems. That's what Bitcoin is about. It's a competitive system. That's what keeps it fair. That's what keeps it moving.

We have to be moving forward. If there's no competition, we're stagnant and it gets stinky quick, right? We're all smelling it. There's a dead bloated thing living in Washington, D.C., and it's stinking up the place. So we need to introduce some competition and get things moving again. And so the grid on the edge report describes one way to do this, within energy markets, power markets and the electric grid, and reintroducing competition and the right incentivizations to create an ultimately resilient electric grid

because we are looking at one of the dead bloated things that's posing an existential risk, to the health and safety of Americans is the power grid. And I don't know if you have gotten into this in past shows, but this is, I've partnered with, I'm a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, and they've worked with me on the grid on the edge report. I've included a part of their report inside of the grid on the edge report.

And it talks about risk of EMP attack. I mean, we saw the balloon go over. there was a balloon over the United States. There's drones going over the United States right now. And what's happening? Any one of them could be potentially an attack for some, you know, exactly. There's infiltration. Right.

So you've got, you've got three, you've got three grid interconnections. Only three. You've got the east, west, and Texas. And if you've got, you've got drones flying over New Jersey constantly, if one of those things has a EMP on it and detonates over the eastern interconnection, 70% of Americans lose power. And if that happens in a cascading blackout, we lose 90% of American lives. 90% of people will die in that situation. What he's referencing is, you know, there's a lot of, like, scientific background to

the, like, gaming out what would happen in these events. And that's basically, and so I'm sure you're probably familiar with. I think it's called like one day after. I think that's the right or a day after. It's about the exact dynamic. And go ahead. You want to have a comment on that. Yeah.

So I've read, I haven't read that book, but I have read Blackout Wars by Dr. Peter Pry. He was the founder of the task force on national and homeland security, formerly the EMP task force. And, you know, what he describes is ultimately, the reality that we only have really two electric grids. And then Texas is sort of in its own thing. And Texas is a great place to start building ultimately this competitive environment that we're looking at. But the rest of the United States is so vulnerable. And what needs to happen is we need to start islanding smaller portions.

We need to start breaking these towers, these janga towers up. because when they fall, it's going to be a disaster. So let's just make them a little smaller at least. And then we can start moving them around. And then those things can compete and reorganize and compete and reorganize. And then all of a sudden you've got this very dynamic system that is fostering resilience because everything is coming down to the edges. Everything is moving outwards to the edges of the network.

And that is ultimately going to be the most resilient. infrastructure. So that's one aspect that Bitcoin can help in because we can create the peer-to-peer networks that allow these nodes to transact with each other. Well, let me read something you wrote in the paper that is that point, which I think is important. You know, and it's just interesting how you can see the, like what you're describing is the beginning of decentralization, right, of a very centralized system. And you wrote centralized solutions, or this might have been a quote from somebody in your paper, but centralized solutions have failed to meet the systemic risks of our power infrastructure.

And again, I argue, I think as you kind of outline in a bit of the paper, that this is not by accident. And ultimately, it's like you said, trading long-term infrastructure stability for short-term political gain. And that applies to all of our government from either side of the paradigm. And I think this has been one action after another. And this is, you know, I think the larger problem. And I don't think it's just about enriching themselves.

I think this is in some level about the interest in centralization for power structure control. And I think that's very important. And so you discuss the smaller self-sustaining nodes, a decentralized power grid, as you're highlighting right there. And I think this is an important, you know, the way to think about the direction we should all be going. And it's, again, not just in the idea of cryptocurrency or Bitcoin, but the lifestyle difference. So I think that's important.

So go ahead. Please continue. Yeah, that's it. You're exactly right. It's all about creating resilient communities. From the ground up, we need to create resilient communities. rather than exporting all of our faith and credit out to wherever it goes to buy oil and bring it back. Let's build from the ground up in America.

Let's build it here. And let's start by strengthening our communities so that they don't have these existential risks. The people in Texas aren't risking blackout and death because of a winter storm. Let's start there. And let's build the economies that support that style of life. And then let's expand it outwards. And that's how we're going to rebuild this nation from the inside out. Can you explain how that overlaps with Bitcoin in particular, right?

Because I blockchain clearly, but is there, so with what you're describing, is that unique to the origin Bitcoin or is that just a blockchain concept that could be applied with different cryptocurrencies or different, I guess, technologies? That is unique to the original implementation of Bitcoin. Interesting. Can you explain why? because it is a digital commodity. It's unique because as you use it,

it becomes more intrinsically valuable. So what I've developed is what's called the MetaWat. So a MetaWat, meaning data attached to a watt. And that trades on the Satoshi. It's a new kind of money, which is directly linked to economic production, rather than, you know, debt-based expansion, right? So you benefit from the work you put in, essentially.

And that's what we need to rebuild from our base level infrastructure on top of. That's the point. And so it can only happen on a digital commodity or else it's a centralized system again. And we've got to do a bunch of stuff again. And so in the report, I outlined. you know, a digital commodity and I say that this is why we need to use it. But what other properties does it have? Well, fundamentally, a digital commodity is globally resilient. And that is the other aspect. It's not only globally resilient, but it's globally useful. So it maintains its

value even if there is some sort of electric grid disaster in America. If you've built on top of Bitcoin, it still exists everywhere else. If you've got a Starlink connection and a battery with some solar panels at your home, you can still transact globally. And really the fundamental risk that we risk, the fundamental extinction level crisis for America is that the power goes out and there's a bank run. Because as I described before, or it's just numbers on a screen that we agree we're there.

If they're not there, what do we agree on? Right. Which they're not there. And that's not there. Yeah. And so you go, you got a bunch of notes that you think are there that promises to pay. And all of a sudden, the lights go out and you go to the bank and they never had any of those to begin with. And you're looking around and you're looking at everyone else.

And they say, well, I don't have anything. Do you have anything? I don't have anything. how are we going to rebuild this? I can't give you anything that I have. I don't have anything. And the government can't help you because they're just going to give you more of the same thing that just disappeared. Those are useless.

What am I supposed to do? And that is, that's the, that's the existential threat that I, I believe that I'm really the first one to zero in on it. As I've spoken with, with the industry experts and the security experts on this type of topic specifically, the money aspect doesn't come up. And for good reason, there's so much to be worried about, but rebuilding afterward takes incentivization. And money is the incentivizer. So you have to base this thing on a super resilient money, which ultimately has to be a commodity, which ultimately only exists in the original form of Bitcoin. Right. Well, in regard to the not more than money, It's an interesting thought in regard to, like, let's say, you know, addressing, again, something that I think it's a very important conversation that we've talked about more than once in the past, about the potential EMP use and what that could mean.

I do want to point out, by the way, that I definitely think the balloon, drones, a lot of this is a very kind of hyped, a manipulated conversation, but the point nonetheless is the same that anything flying over us, which is so obvious that's continually happening could be capable of carrying one of these things or carrying it out. And that's the point is there is a very clear risk there. But so talking about the idea of a massive electrical grid failure. So Bitcoin and the blockchain power behind it ultimately could that be used more than just being able to maintain financial transactions? But like the, I guess the maintaining of the infrastructure information, but would it be able to maintain some kind of actual infrastructure usability even in the face of some kind of a power electric grid failure? Is that something that will be possible? Yes. Within overlay networks, you can automate and, um, and, um, and, um, and, track systems like I was describing. So this is this is one of the use cases of AI. Okay, let's have an

AI looking at a bunch of different overlays. Let's have it looking at the weather data. Let's have it looking at the electric grid and you know, subunits within. So we've got we've got one big system here and then we've got basically mini markets of aggregators is what they're called. So these aggregators basically tap in to a bunch of different batteries. So rather than starting up a coal power plant, what if we had an aggregator that created what's called a virtual power plant out of 10,000 home batteries? And we've got an artificial intelligence model that is modeling the economics of the grid and can instantly deploy however much we need at that particular time.

and arbitrage the, the homeowner's power, and lower their total bill by participating in these markets. That's some of the ways in which the automation of programmable money, which is Bitcoin, can totally change the fabric of our grid. Because, I mean, we're looking at, if you go, if you would ever go into like an ISO control room, It's literally guys, guys sitting in front of computers with telephones still, 2025. I'm not, that's not a bad thing. It's just, we've got so much room to improve here.

Like, we can automate so much of this stuff, but we have to have a resilient base layer to do it on or else it's a moot point. It's still vulnerable. So this is, this is a fundamental shift in the fabric of power structures, the literal power structures, but also, you know, expanded power structures of how the world and economies and people interact with each other. Right. And that is really, that's really what I'm interested in building. And that's what I'm interested in educating people on how to build and how to view these

things. And, and then just building a team of smart guys who've got the reach to get this. out to people and creative people who are willing to, you know, put it out on the line to make a change regardless of the backlash, regardless of everything that's happening in the world and all the fear and uncertainty and doubt the fud, right? Let's get to the truth and let's find out what this stuff can do and how we can use it and how we can coordinate to make things happen. And so I just applaud you, first of all, for taking the time. I know you did the in-person course.

That's an intense course, you know, and you handled it, you killed it. And now we're having a very high-level conversation. So I applaud you and I applaud your dedication to the truth. So. Well, thank you, Mitch. I appreciate that. And I really do. I think what you're trying to accomplish here is important.

And as always, I mean, you're going to get pushback on this because there are people that have just already decided that any. I mean, even people that just argue anything like digital is just immediately bad. And it's like, I get why that's such an aggressive overreaction right now. Like it just makes sense with what we're all going through, you know? But it's, and the concern there is that ultimately there's always an ability for a power structure to try to manipulate that. But I guess what you're highlighting is that the way this is being designed is in a way that

as you highlighted many different examples, incentivizes honesty or it's built on a trustless dynamic. And that's exactly why they're trying to deviate you into a verse. version that's an illusion of this, so you think that's what's happening. And I think that's what's important about this. But nonetheless, we should be engaging step by step even with the BASV version, with skepticism and concern because something else could happen. But nonetheless, we should be considering what Mitch is saying here, like actually taking a step back and asking ourselves whether this is something that could, in fact, change in exactly the ways that we're trying to

accomplish. You know, because I am the first person who is going to be immediately like, my red flags go up and I hear artificial intelligence. No matter what. what, you know, but at the same time, I'm trying to understand more about these things and just keeping my mind open to how, you know, like I've said before, like, or like even the internet, same point like the hammer, right, is that the internet was designed as a DARPA program and clearly was not meant to make us freer, in my opinion, but I think today it's obvious that that's not how that's worked out. I mean, they're still using it to censor and infiltrate and socially engineer, but we wouldn't be having this conversation without it. And I think it is

important to think of it like that. And so I really do, I think what you're doing is inspiring, you know and i hope people at least consider this and i'll i'll leave it on the the point about uh the course here for you guys to check out i'll include this so you guys if you'd like to check it out for yourselves i recommend it i think it's a it's a power like i literally i mean i'm sure you guys can even tell those that watch my show that i would telling you i was doing this course and then now you know i'm talking about things that i've never even begun to understand before this course and it is you know and really as mitch was pointing out like we could have gone there's so many different levels that he himself more than anybody could go deeper on and it just becomes it becomes

It sounds confusing, but it's important to continue that journey of learning around this because, as we said, like, this is the way the world is going. And whether that's what we want or not, it's pretty clear that that's being driven forward by those behind the wheel, you know? And so it's important that we continue to learn and find ways to fight back from within that system. So I really applaud you as well, Mitch. And is there anything else you'd want to leave us with on, you know, final notes?

And I really would love to kind of touch base with again in the future as this continues to develop. Yeah. So we're launching the online version of the course. It's coming out on the 10th. So if you get in early, you can save $100. And, you know, it would be, it would be amazing to see, you know, a gigantic wave of people coming out and saying, okay, I want to learn this basic information on how this technology works so that I can go create.

That's what we want to empower. That's the intent we're looking for with our students. And if you are interested in going with a live version of that course, we're pretty booked out, but we can make it work if that's the way you want to go. Again, I just am so excited that I got to come out and get this information into the hands of the people that are really looking to make a difference, the people that are looking to have liberty. in our lifetimes and that's what it's about that's what it will continue to be about um i'm i'm really really thrilled that i got to to be here today and and what an excellent conversation ryan i really appreciate you and everything that you do uh the grid on the edge report is coming out soon um working on a cover plate for it uh but i'll probably just release it after this

video anyway just so you guys can take a look at it and i really think that you know we've got the chance to make honesty the most profitable action that's what we have a chance for the for I don't even know how long deception and obscurity pain and suffering has been the most profitable action and we've got the opportunity today to take it back and make honesty the most profitable action for the foreseeable future and that is is the intent of all of my companies. That's the intent of the Blockchain Academy. And I hope that that is your intent moving towards the future.

So thank you very much. Thank you, Mitch. It's really just powerful. You know, I mean, people that watch the show, it's just, is we're forward about, that is right on the surface of everything we do, right? It is about integrity. It's about principles.

It is about honesty. I mean, I just, it's something that I think that is really going to resonate with people listening, that we should be building in that direction. So thank you again, Mitch, and I'm looking forward to talking with you again in the future. And again, I'll include this link. There is an affiliate link there

that if you'd like to join, it will support TLAB as well. So thank you guys for being here. And everybody listening, as always, question everything. Come to your own conclusions. Stay vigilant.