The Pomp Podcast - #871 Bitcoin Is For The Working Class w/ Blue Collar Bitcoin Podcast

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Josh & Dan are hosts of the "Blue Collar Bitcoin Podcast". They're two firefighters who focus on bringing Bitcoin education to the working class through their podcast episodes. In this conversation, we discuss their background as firefighters, how they got into Bitcoin, why Bitcoin is so important to the average American worker, and how they are helping to change the narrative around this asset class. ======================= Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It’s supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive charts let you view an asset’s price history and your portfolio’s performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the Trezor hardware wallet - making advanced security easy for everyone.  Visit exodus.com/pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or Playstore. ======================= Today’s episode is sponsored by Abra. Based in California and backed by top VC firms, Abra is an all-in-one simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral and earn interest with up to 14% APY on stablecoins and 8.15% APY on Bitcoin.  Join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account.  You came, you invested — now conquer. ======================= DeFi Technologies represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U.S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at http://defi.tech  =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Today's episode is with Dan and Josh of the Blue Collar Bitcoin Podcast. In this conversation, we talk about hardworking Americans, the middle class, why the hell is Bitcoin important for them, and what should they know about this brand new technology? I really enjoyed this conversation with both Dan and Josh. It was a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Exodus, the world's leading desktop, mobile, and hardware

crypto wallet. They offer beautiful, user-friendly blockchain products that sync across all of your devices, making it easier to send, receive, and exchange over 150 or more crypto assets in one place. And with world-class customer service available to you 24-7, Exodus always has your back. But the fun doesn't stop with staking and trading. They recently launched a new NFT marketplace where you can buy and sell your favorite NFTs on the Solana network. By partnering with the popular NFT platform Magic Eden, they're offering the full Monty unverified collection with more added every single day. Ready to check it out for yourself? Run, don't walk, over to Exodus.com slash Pomp for your free download today. Again, if you want the world's

leading desktop, mobile, and hardware crypto wallet. Go to exodus.com slash Pomp today. Today's episode is sponsored by Abra. They're based in California and they're backed by top VC firms. Abra is an all-in-one, simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral, and earn interest with up to 13% APY on stablecoins and 7.15% APY on Bitcoin. You can join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App Store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account. You came, you invested, now conquer. Abra, conquer crypto. Go check it out today. This episode is brought to you by DeFi Technologies.

DeFi Technologies represents what's next in the digital economy. They're providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance, and Web3 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. DeFi Technologies is currently listed on the U.S. Exchange at DEFTF Stock Ticker and the Canadian NEO Exchange at DEFI. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information,

visit their website at DeFi.Tech. I'm really excited about what these guys are doing. I've become an advisor to the business, and I highly suggest you go check them out. Go to their website at defi.tech today. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments.

All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion.

This podcast is for informational purposes only. We're going to do like a joint episode. Normally I interview people, Joe and John interview people, but we've never had anyone come on here and ask us questions. So that'd be weird. So instead what we're going to do is just have a little conversation. They're going to ask us questions. We're going to ask them questions.

We're going to keep going until we get tired of asking each other questions. So why don't, like a little Vanna White action, John, why don't we bring them on out? There we go. What's up, fellas? What's going on, guys? We're doing fantastic. How are you guys?

Wonderful. Wonderful. Man, with the four boxes, I feel like we're killing it right now. Where are the mustaches at, boys? You guys are going to Bitcoin 2021 without mustaches? Come on. What is this? I need some time.

How long does that one take you to grow out? I don't know, but it's majestic. That is a stick-on. I'm going to call you out. That is a stick-on. It looks good, though. Yeah, is that fake? Are you a cop?

It is. Thanks for having us, boys. We're excited to chat. Did you hear what my brother just asked? No, what did he say? Are you a cop? As far as you know, no. No, we're on the other side of the coin, man.

Everybody loves a fireman, and cops don't get that same treatment. That is true. That is very true. We get away with absolute murder. All right. Tell us before we get started so our audience understands what's going on with the Blue Collar Bitcoin podcast. which by the way, is just a baller ass name for a podcast. But what, what is, what's the general premise in terms of, uh, uh, the episodes you guys do? Yeah, we, uh, we've been at this for

about a year. This I'm Dan right here. Josh is the, uh, unmustached fellow. Um, we've been at this about a year. We are both career firefighter paramedics near Chicago. We work together. We're good friends. Um, and we've had sort of lifelong passions and interest in finance econ philosophy. We have been in Bitcoin since 2017, and it's more than fun and games for us. We think it's super important. We're convinced that it's key to our demographic surviving the economic pandemic ahead. And we've been privileged enough to talk to some people that we've respected and read and been diving into for a long time over the last year.

So we're just exploring as organically as we can. we're being ourselves and, and diving into the implications of this paradigm shifting protocol. I love it. Do the other, uh, firefighters you guys work with get it, or do they think you're crazy? We, uh, we've been in a year's long process of figuring that out for them. And, um, I think they thought we were crazy initially. And at this point, I mean, obviously number go up technology has helped make us look a little bit smarter than five years ago, but, um, it's, it's, uh, people are getting it, you know, people are starting to understand that you shouldn't get shaken out when this

thing goes down 50% or 80%. And, uh, in the longterm, it goes up into the right. So it's been, uh, it's been easier and easier as things go along. We've got, uh, the, the department we're at, it's about 50, 50, uh, firefighter paramedics. We got nodes running, we got cold cards galore and I'll tell you boys this much. If this thing does anything remotely close to what we're expecting, there may be a wave of unexpected retirements.

what is this uh the name of the city or the town we uh we do not dox that information okay unfortunately this is gonna be a whole town that's like oh shit we better not fire the whole fire department quit there's a whole village secession planning model we've got 16 firemen that we presume have this much bitcoin right here we gotta start replacing some guys so uh uh i don't know if you guys uh ever heard the episode i did with rachel feinstein who is a comedian and she's married to uh a new york city uh fire chief and so she told me this hilarious story she's like when i first met him uh all the firemen would come over to uh the house and they'd be like you know hey billy fuck the government hey billy i read this conspiracy theory on the internet what

you think all the conspiracy theories man alive and well in the fire we've got guys that are into ancient aliens that take this stuff like this is gospel i think there's a bible of ancient aliens in that firehouse gentlemen there is nothing rowdier on planet earth than shift change coffee at a firehouse i mean it is it is rambunctious if you guys think you're rambunctious you got to drop by at about 8 a.m at our agency it gets nuts i can only imagine the things that get said inside of a firehouse around this stuff. And she was telling me this story because she was like, by the way, they all love Bitcoin because they just they're they're questioning everything right nonstop all the time. They question everything. And so Bitcoin is this like source of truth.

So help us understand in terms of what's been the biggest like question that the other firefighters have had. Have they been more concerned about the technology? Do they just think it's like a Ponzi scheme? What's the biggest like obstacles in their mind? I think the biggest obstacles are are basically what everyone experiences which is when they start understanding this they start going down the rabbit hole and then these shiny objects that we all call shit coins get involved and they start following those and into you know spending just putting tons of money into random uh low liquidity shit coins and getting wrecked eventually that is the biggest problem that we see and that's primarily why we started this thing and why we are so we think it's so

imperative to help people understand why Bitcoin is very different from the rest of these assets, because it's very easy to get distracted by a whole lot of other smaller nonsensical things in the space. NFTs come to mind, ICOs in 2017. And each one of these times that the price pumps, there's always a new shiny object that people seem to chase off of a cliff. And so what we're trying to do is basically guide people away from the lemmings jumping off the cliff into something with some substance and help put some guide rails up so people don't end up getting hurt. I think the other thing too, Pomp Boys, is that we're not trying to make enemies and we're on this learning journey with anyone else. We're not looking to be dogmatic and closed-minded,

but we are saying in this space, Fidelity just released this piece, I don't know, a couple of months ago, Bitcoin First. And I think our message to a lot of our listeners and peers is, hey, understand the implications of this protocol first, and then you can branch out from there if you so choose. But as members of the middle class, median wage earners, we just don't have cash flow to waste. You know what I mean? So a lot of what we're trying to do is push people down the learning journey. Don't do what we're saying necessarily. We're here to try to motivate you to go learn and understand and grow on your own. And fortunately, having been in this since 2017, the space is so much more right. There's so much more education material. It just

abounds. And there's many places to go to learn more about macro, monetary history, Bitcoin, altcoins, the whole gamut. When people come to you guys in the firehouse, what do you tell them to go do first? Read books. We've got a list of articles and books. I think I've filled notebooks full of them already. But I mean, it's a lot of the major ones like the Bitcoin Standard. The Bullish Case for Bitcoin is a couple that come to mind. One that I love, which is probably something that most people would just fall asleep reading, but it's really good, is Nick Szabo's Shelling Out piece. If anyone listening hasn't read that and they're interested in the history of money, amazing piece.

I mean, he goes back thousands of years from the beginnings and kind of helps you understand why money is really just a mental construct we all agree on. And that's something that it's kind of like that old tale of the fish in water doesn't realize it's swimming in water because it's been in it its whole life. The money that we use today is really only 50 years old or so, and it can change quickly. And understanding that these mental models can change

because it's all about trust. What is the thing you trust? Everything Dalio has ever written is early in our recommendation. Just a holistic, basic understanding of macro, like Lynn Alden's blog is unbelievably high on our list just because, you know, Lynn Alden is, first of all, the intellectual integrity is off the charts. The genius is off the charts, but she's also approachable. She's the kind of writer and thinker that a firefighter who spent 40 hours learning macro can still kind of trace through her articles. But yeah, as Josh said, the first order of business isn't haul out and buy Bitcoin. It's, hey, start asking some fundamental questions about what's going on in the economic landscape around you and then begin the learning journey.

And then obviously we think Bitcoin fits in that equation, but don't trust verify, baby. Don't do your own homework. Absolutely. I know one of the things that you guys spent a lot of time on and would be valuable to talk about is this idea of like Bitcoin's role for the average american or like the hard-working uh average american and when you think about this how much and my brothers and i've talked about it a ton is like there's the investment case there's the like censorship and and seizureship uh resistance as a uh as a value proposition but to me it seems like the most uh simple way to wrap your head around this is just savings technology right it's like the average american isn't worried whether they should be or not but they're just not worried

about somebody not allowing them to transact or coming and confiscating their wealth and again maybe they should be but just if you go when you polled the average american they're not going to say that is a concern for them they also for the most part uh the average it does not think that they are going to uh the casino and going to triple their money overnight some younger people that maybe they do think that but like the average person who just goes to their job every day doesn't think that and so is that aligned with kind of how you guys have seen people talk about this and kind of wrap their head around it. It's just like, oh, okay. I've been told my entire life that I should save my way to financial security. But it seems like if I do that in dollars,

it ends up getting eroded away because of inflation or I have this feeling of I can't get ahead. Now, if I do it in this new asset, then there's some ability for me actually to preserve my wealth. Or how do you guys kind of have those conversations right now? I love, yeah, we resonate massively with everything you just said. I think what makes us slightly unique in this space, and I don't mean to undermine everybody else's experiences with what's going on with debasement and inflation, but we are in a subset of earners that we are feeling this right now. We are feeling inflation. And when you think about real wages and the implications of 7.9 CPI prints that show no sign of abatement and our wages are going up, let's say 1% to 3% a year, you have declining

real wages. You have asset price inflation that impacts people's ability to say, buy homes. We talk on our show a lot about how I've been on five years, Josh has been on 10, even since we got on and bought our houses. It's different for guys we have on probation that are trying to buy homes. Things are changing rapidly for middle-class members, and you need to do something to protect yourself, both from the implications of a long-term debt cycle unwind and pension risk. right? We talk a lot on our show about pensions. We just had Foss and Pishon, I don't know, a few weeks ago talking specifically about pensions and just the implications of fixed income exposure mandates. And if the system really implodes, that's in jeopardy and that's what a lot of people are relying on. So this is far more from just a fun theoretical joke for us that we really, the two of us believe strongly and have for years now that this is insurance on the traditional fireman investment account, if you will.

And even to jump in on a very simple level, the incentives behind this make saving so much more aggrandized for people. Like people traditionally saving with dollars, even though they may not realize it, they're watching their purchasing power just dissolve. But when they're over the longer period of a couple of years watching the amount of money they've saved in Bitcoin increase in value in dollar terms,

It incentivizes the saving on a much grander scale. And we see that at work too. People are DCAing in more and more as they understand the implications of all this and that they're actually getting ahead by saving in Bitcoin instead of in a money market paying them 0.02% at Chase or whatever their alternative is. This is the best savings technology available if you have the balls to just withstand those 50% drawdowns. You just have to be educated well enough to understand that this is a long-term proposition and you can't be shaken out of it at 50% down, and then you'll be rewarded. I think the other thing along this line that needs to be introduced is we have seen,

gents, that this does change financial behavior. It changes time preference, right? As you learn and grow and understand Bitcoin, it lengthens your time preference. We often call it a financial decomplexifier. The current system is so complicated and there's so much you need to know and understand to even stay above water. Bitcoin really simplifies that. And then this is going on more long-term, but we believe firmly Bitcoin will restore an actually sensible, non-clownish cost of capital, which will probably disincentivize unproductive debt to some extent, which we also see a lot of our peers involved in, right? There's a time and place to have productive debt, but if you're driving cars you can't afford, buying homes you shouldn't have,

and financing TVs, your cashflow isn't freed up to buy productive assets. And part of the reason people are incentivized to do those things is because interest rates are manipulated so low and we're not looking at a true cost of capital. So the implications of how this affects portfolio performance and investment behavior, they're tremendous, we feel, for us and our demographic. Yeah, absolutely. When you start to think about pay, hopefully I'm not wrong on this, but I think that your pay is determined as a firefighter by the local or state government, depending on kind of what the network is that you're in. And it's set at predetermined percentages as part of the annual budget. And therefore, if inflation explodes, they don't

necessarily have the ability to come and change pay to react to that economic environment. So when you have kind of a peg to pay, it's not like you guys can show up, you know, the fire chief and be like, hey, you know, big dog, I need I need a 5% raise that there's no ability, right? There's no ability for them to do that. No, that's absolutely true. Um, the way ours works is we're based, basically they choose, they choose a bunch of comparable fire departments in the area and they, they give us the, I think we're number three out of like 10. And so we get slotted in right in the number three spot between 10 other departments around us. So, and yeah, nobody's getting 8% raises to keep up with inflation. I can guarantee that it's going to probably be a 2.3%

or something. And to be fair to the private sector, like that's not unique to us. Everybody's gonna real wages are gonna lag for most people obviously we have uh some people suckling from the qe what's going to be yield curve control teat um but in terms of like you know most salaried employees public and private um you can bet your bottom dollar your real wages are going to lag um but they have to there's just a mathematical guarantee i know you guys talk about this on the show all the time there is a mathematical guarantee that we're going to be in a, unless you're positioned properly, a harmfully inflationary environment for the foreseeable future. When you guys tell folks that you're into Bitcoin and also a firefighter, does that make

them more interested? Like, I always think of this idea of like, if a Wall Street banker in the suit and tie cologne, slick back hair, you know, the shitty fake watch, like they step out and they're like, let me tell you about this financial investment. People are like, I'm good, man. Like, like I just, I'm out of here. But when you hear it from not your friend, because you're, again, you don't believe your friend, you don't believe like your parents when you're a young kid or whatever, but it's somebody in the community that you respect. And I put firefighters up there.

Does that change the conversation at all from what you guys have seen? Or do people not really look at the occupation as part of the conversation? And they're just like, oh, here's two guys who seem to have a good understanding of kind of economics and what's going on in the world. I think that at least the guys we work with, I think they understand that the two of us have done our homework a bit. As far as Dan said at the top of this, that the two of us are into economics, finance, and all that stuff. And this has been a long journey for me before Bitcoin, and the same for Dan. We've both been invested in the S&P 500. We haven't really been stock

pickers traditionally, but understanding the way money works, I've been huge into Austrian econ for years. And I thought gold was going to be the thing that was going to save the system until 2016, 17, when I understood the implications of Bitcoin and what this actually means for things like gold, which are, you know, barbarous relics as some central bankers would have called them. But the, I think the thing that gives us some gravita in this, at least with the people that we know is just the simple fact that we've both dove down deeply into some of the books of guys like Ray Dalio and tried to have a real holistic understanding of macroeconomics, which I think is fundamental for having any idea of where this is going and why,

most importantly, why. Dan, you got anything? I think it can cut both ways. You can kind of have the assumption that it's unlikely we're going to have something to contribute. That could be on one side of it. You also have a hardcore libertarian bent in the Bitcoin community. So a couple of municipal government employees talking about Bitcoin can rub people the wrong way. But then I think on the other side, there is something unusual, let's say, that unexpected about a couple of firemen barking this hard about this. And then you on our show, I think one of our goals is to have robust, substantive, meaningful conversations, but also make names and people you've heard a lot of in this space more approachable. You know, that's one of our goals with having these people on our show is to explore both the superficial and the deep. And I think what we do for a living and being sort of down to earth and tactile in our vocation allows us to be sometimes more approachable for people that are sick of hearing, not sick

of, but tired of hearing the next finance guy talking about Bitcoin. Yeah. When you really boil this down to it, this is an innovation that takes thousands of hours of study for most people if they're really going to try to get a grasp of it. You've got everything from economics, the two, you know, the Austrian versus Keynesian. If you want to understand that, that's hundreds of hours of reading and research to understand just that the history of money. And, you know, we talked about the changing world order and shelling out and how those

are great resources to understand what money is. That's another couple hundred hours to really get a grasp of that. The game theory, reading something from like John von Neumann from basically the guy who invented game theory and understanding the incentive structures are what really matter here. like if you, I forget who said it, but you show me the incentive system. I think it was Charlie Munger and I'll show you an outcome. And that's really like theoretically where this thing goes is what, how are the incentives set up? What does that impel people to do? And then you can kind of

see not exactly, but you can get a rough idea of where this is all going. And then the software side of it, the tech side of it, which is, I would say, Dan, in my weakest point, but it's, it's imperative to have at least some, at least flimsy grasp of how the software works and why this is such an ironclad system. If you don't mind, Pop, I want to flip it over to you three. What are some of your guys' thoughts, speaking to our audience, about why you think Bitcoin might be an empowerment tool for the middle class? Maybe dive into inflation if you got any fresh thoughts. What are the Pop boys thinking on that side of the microphone here? 45% of Americans have no investable assets and they're fucked.

I mean, point blank period, right? Yeah, yes, they are. And they don't even know it, which is like the worst type of dire financial position is that you think the solution to pursue is to simply save money. And actually what you're doing is you're making it worse and worse in some way.

The other thing is obviously there's a huge debt crisis in America, whether it's student loans or other types of debt. And so I always say to folks that like the rules of this game are pretty simple. It's like spend less than you make, get the hell out of debt, make sure that you get invested be super patient and just chill and like and they're going to do

the work for you and it sounds too simple but like the key is actually to be consistent and disciplined over very long periods of time and so i think that bitcoin is uh got this very unique structure but more important than the structure is that it helps people focus and when people focus they then get out of this game of like oh how do i go and trade or or try to do anything that would be, quote unquote, risky. Instead, all I need to do is go to my job, be great at it, get paid, take that money, spend on whatever I need to from an expense standpoint,

and then go and just save. And that savings type technology allows you over long periods of time. It's no different than real estate, right? If you really think about real estate, now, yes, there's cashflow associated with it. And there's some tax ramifications that can be potentially positive.

But at the end of the day, all you're doing is your dollar cost averaging into a hard asset and you're essentially just arbitraging time so that the dollar gets devalued against the hard asset so bitcoin does as well and so i think that like that to me is the most powerful piece of this is just getting people to understand money getting them to understand what the challenges are uh in the financial system and then just saying like look you don't have to be a genius i think that's what scares people it's like oh i don't even know how to you know open a stock brokerage account. Well, Robinhood and SoFi and a number of these businesses all solve that by

dropping the friction so low. But if you think about what these platforms are having to do, right? And the reason why we actually partnered with SoFi is it's not just about trading or buying equities. Like it's a whole, it's like a holistic financial experience. And so when you think about it, it's like, how do I get out of debt? Right? Well, I got to refinance. I got to be able to get out of that debt so that I can actually have money to invest? How do I get exposure to various financial assets, right? Okay, I've got to figure out how do I get the money? Then also, how do I think about banking? And like, if you really think about the average American, like they go into a bank, the bank screws them, right? Like whether it's because they don't allow them to get upside

in certain opportunities, or it's because they sell them shitty products. And so when you start to kind of look at all of that, and you just boil it down to a first principle standpoint, like what is the problem it's corruption of the money and the incentives get tossed absolutely in the wrong direction and so now it becomes a zero-sum game and in that zero-sum game guess what one person versus a corporation good luck right and i think that to me is like the big thing and so i always sum it up with uh a statement that everyone always like oh my god that's such that's so bombastic but I genuinely believe this. The adoption of Bitcoin globally

will do more positive impact than all global philanthropy combined. And the reason being, it's the only first principle solution to a wide range of problems, which is if you uncorrupt the money, you set us back on the right path. And what other thing affects 45% of Americans

and changes and closes that wealth inequality gap? There's nothing. Yeah. And then and then to zoom out, you know, internationally beyond these domestic issues we're exploring, like we had Gladstein on last year and the freedom implications, the liberation implications of this technology are an absolute mindfuck. I mean, it is crazy what you got 3 billion people globally that are unbanked and they're never going to be banked. You know, that's what the crazy thing is. You look at the uptick of peer to peer usage on Bitcoin and say Nigeria and countries in Africa, they are going to absolutely leapfrog the banking system because of this technology. And it is mind-blowing. I had my dad over the other night who I've been working on hard for years and he's starting to get this. And what really, really brought this home for him and really clicked, this was just two nights ago, was seeing Jack Dorsey and Alex Gladstein on the main stage last year at Bitcoin 2021. And Jack saying, there's going to be nothing else like this in my lifetime. Talking about him and Jay-Z doing work in Africa and saying, I'm dedicating the rest of

my life to this technology. It is magnificent what the implications are going to be, not just domestically, but internationally for all people that have been cut off from and disenfranchised as a result of this current exclusionary financial system. It's great to see that that's what puts them over the edge, right? Is to see the conviction of it. I don't know, Joe, John, what do you guys think? I was just going to add, it's not even, unbanked is certainly a large part of it, but just financial sovereignty in general is a huge part of it. We've seen what's happened not only in Russia, but in Canada, right? When they're freezing the bank accounts of people that are protesting against things they don't believe in, right? So just the sovereign individual,

I think is obviously going to be super important. And Bitcoin is a large part of that. Yeah. Yeah. The billboard after billboard is Dan and I like to say that has been put up in the last couple of months alone is, is extremely compelling for anyone paying attention. um a country like canada which i think most americans dan and i would probably agree are we view them as americans almost i mean they're just above you know they're right over the border they're very similar they have a very similar structure to us and to watch you know a first world western country censor its uh censor its citizenry with almost with no cause just this is what we're doing today because we didn't like what you did yesterday no court order nothing

We're just going to do it. And it's scary to see that stuff happen. Yeah. And then to see it recently transcend the individual to the sovereign nation state level. I mean, we're no fan of what Putin's up to, but when you can just freeze FX reserves, it doesn't take a genius to realize we're going to a different global settlement layer. I mean, it's crazy when you think about how I mean, it's an innovation. that's time has come. I don't know what else to say. It can be almost exhausting and infuriating when people have been exposed to it and don't see it, but we need to have patience. We've all been there before and it takes a lot of pecks on the head before this thing clicks. And that's how it is for most individuals. Pecks on the head is such a good description. Yeah. I think it was Laurie on

show the other day that said all these third world or developing countries like in central america they're having to describe subscribe to a nuclear power right they're going to choose the eastern or western side for this because it's going to bifurcate why wouldn't they choose an independent structure of money that they can't be censored i mean if you subscribe to the eastern one now you've got china and potentially russia being able to censor you you subscribe to the western one the us can censor you why would you choose to have any ability to be disintermediated just pick the censorship resistant money at the baseline what do you guys think like uh is the is the biggest thing that us certainly but other people also can do from an education level is it

just telling people to listen to podcasts and read books and stuff like that because in my mind right like and i think you're guys too this makes a ton of sense once you start to do the homework and you understand that uh maybe you have to do a thousand hours or a hundred hours or whatever it is but you start to get it right and i think at some point it's just how many more people can we tell about how many people can understand it. So is it just education in your mind or is there something else for the average individual? I think personally, it's something different for everybody. So just exposing yourself to as much as possible in order to cast a wide net, I guess I would say, because eventually you're going to run across that one article for Dan's father. It was listening to

Dorsey and Alex Gladstein. And for me personally, it was reading the book Sapiens back in 2017. There was a chapter on digital currency in there and I'd heard of Bitcoin, but after having heard a couple of times about Bitcoin, two pecks on the head, and reading that chapter in that book, something just clicked. And I just had to read everything I could find on it, but that was the moment where it happened for me. And I don't know what it is for most people. It's probably very different for people just depending on their disposition, what it is they're interested in. But I would say if you have any interest in this at all, try to just read a wide range of things, because one of those things is probably going to be the the linchpin that finally sets you off on the right angle. As you guys talk more and more about Bitcoin, I'm sure the community around you has like basically seen you as, hey, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's more educated than I am when we reach out to him.

Why are people reaching out to you guys if they are about Bitcoin? Is it the price appreciation? Is it the technology aspect of it? Why do people come to you guys or just think about Bitcoin in general? I think that people are more aware of artificiality in the system right now than they ever have been before. I'm 32 years old, so I've now been investing for roughly 10 years. The ball is really rolling downhill and there's more things to grab onto right now. So you're seeing people ask fundamental questions like, hey, during one of the biggest economic crises of the last 100

years, global pandemic. Why is my fucking retirement account at all time highs? You know what I mean? These are things that aren't making sense to me. Why is my house up 28% in one year? There's just more evidence right now. Why is meat twice as expensive as it was six months ago? There's more entry points. There's more touch points where people are recognizing there's something going on bigger than they understand, which I think is prompting people to want to learn more. So that's one side. The other side is just number goes up, man. I mean, we, we were first started, we were talking about this when it was at four grand in 2017 and it's 10 X. So it's, uh, it just, it's shiny, it's bright. And that is, you know, as much as price

can be a deceiver, it's also very important. I, you know, I was drawn to it because it went from a thousand to 20,000 right in that cycle in 2017. And that'll be the same thing when, when we go from whatever our low is here to new all-time highs. It'll draw people in and that's fine. We've all been there and those are opportunities to seize. I think Josh said this off the top and Anthony, you hit on this a second ago. The main priority though is to get people learning because if your habits aren't in order, if you're impulsive and emotional and reactionary, and you think you're going to generate wealth by trading stuff around, you're sorely mistaken. And that's the beauty of this asset is it gives you an opportunity to kind of sit on

your hands, man. I mean, we firmly believe if you're in our shoes and you free up your cash flow and you DCA over the next 5, 10, 15 years, you're going to be okay. And it is that financial decomplexifier that allows people to sort of get out of their own way with personal finance. because we do have a lot of peers who are swing trading and momentum trading and excited about this and excited about that. And they're almost assuredly late to the market. Because if you're a fireman and you're thinking of stocks sexy, you're probably late to the market. You know

what I mean? So there's just not that many asymmetric opportunities out there for a firefighter. And I'm here to tell you, this is one of them. And it's a thing of beauty. tell me more about uh the nodes do you guys have miners like what's going on in the firehouse in terms of uh uh what i would consider not just the knowledge but the actual like activity that that's going on there we've got dan's got a node running i i think we've got like five or six guys running nodes at this point miners are just out of reach for a lot of people because you know they're twelve thousand dollars for uh an s19 at this point plus the fact that residential power is 11 or 15 cents a kilowatt hour whatever it is it's almost it's almost pointless you might as

well just just uh just buy a dca with the money personally is my view um a couple of guys are shitcoin mining with uh with uh video cards in their computer to buy ethereum and then flip it for bitcoin stuff like that but yeah no one no one that i know at least is mining right now it's kind of this road to sovereignty in this thing because i mean we're we've been long time cold card users. We're running our own nodes. We're routing our cold cards through our own nodes. But that's something that's happened over years and a lot of messing with this protocol and using it. So you got to be careful with the cold storage thing. I mean, we're constantly barking like cold store your Bitcoin, but we're also saying there's a large disclaimer saying don't

do it until you're ready. And that just comes with experimenting and time. But yeah, we have a lot of dudes cold storing their bitcoin on cold cards at our fire department i would say we have the highest cold card per capita usage of any fire department in for sure in the united states i think there's no argument no argument on that point what what is uh uh significant others what are their thoughts on all this stuff is this just like oh like my husband boyfriend you know whoever uh and his crazy friends and like at the firehouse and let's just ignore this or has this spilled over? I S I think I see, uh, quite a bit of, uh, Bitcoin paraphernalia all in the backgrounds of, uh, of both of your shots. So it seems like maybe this has infiltrated the home as well.

Yeah. We're we, yeah, we're both married. We have kids. Josh has two. I have one. I actually have another one on the way. April 1st, which is one is absolute bullshit that it's coming April 1st because I'm not going to be at Bitcoin 2021 too. I tell you, I messed up, man. Hey, word to the wise here. You got to keep the wife at arm's length nine months before this conference because this is bad timing. I think our wives trust us. You know what I mean? We've been disciplined, non-impulsive investors for a long time. They've also watched the number go up over the last five years so they're okay with it um i think my wife might watch the price of bitcoin more than i do i actually think i know she does which is hilarious is she watching it

because uh it's part of her paying attention to like what's going on in the market or is she it's criticizing me when it's not going well and then on the other end it works the other way you know it's a double-edged sword it's all right yeah if it makes you guys feel any better uh When my daughter was born, my brothers over here said that I was screwed. And my wife reminded everyone that the baby cannot receive Bitcoin yet. And so I feel like every family, as they get educated on this stuff, it becomes obvious, right? Yeah. In terms of how valuable it is.

I think having kids has made me even more interested in this, which has demonstrated to me how important it is. Because I want to provide for my family. I want to have a stable situation for all of us and to pass on. And I think in some ways that's been a good introspective checkpoint of haven't been a dad for a couple of years. I'm actually taking this more seriously than I was before. Yeah. Dan and I've talked a lot too about how funny it's going to be in the future

when either this podcast recording is still around and like our grandkids listen to it and either a grandpa was a complete idiot or B grandpa was a genius. There's going to be no middle ground. It was going to be, maybe it'd be both. Maybe like, damn, grandpa and his friend was an absolute moron, but at least they bought Bitcoin.

Hey, I got a question I got to get in for the three of you. And this is the most important question of the segment. I'm out. Okay, so just brace yourself. So fight breaks out in the pom-pom. I win. Hands down. I'll punish these guys.

Oh, that was easy. I'll put their heads in a toilet seat. Fight breaks out. Hold on. Fight breaks out today. not 2015 not 2005 not in the glory days okay today get up and do it this isn't noogies and charlie horses this gets real this goes to the floor their tempers are flare and emotions are high rank the brothers not just top dog rank them top to bottom for us there's only there's only two

people in this room that are hitting the floor and they're sitting next to each other over there i was just gonna say i'm top dog the other two don't matter no i don't know if you guys have uh siblings or brothers but we have five boys in our family and uh what used to happen there's two things that were important first was when fights would break out you it was kind of like the geopolitical chaos going on right now like if you weren't involved in the fight you better pick sides quickly because you can get caught in the uh the crossfire so it's like all right who i think is gonna win who i think is right and it kind of all that happened the second thing is that uh there's this amazing story where uh i don't know

how my dad thought this was a good idea but he bought uh two pairs of boxing gloves at one point uh joe and john were probably i don't know five and seven or something like that and uh uh myself and my two other brothers were older and so we decided that it would be a genius idea to give our two youngest brothers joe and john boxing gloves i took one of them as like i was going to be the corner man another brother took one as the corner man and then the fifth brother was the referee this lasted for under 30 seconds obviously the difference between a five and a seven-year-old is like pretty significant at that age oh yeah joe punched john and as soon as one literally one time one swing as soon as john got hit he just looked at all of us like oh shit he's about to

cry and it was just like keep him from running upstairs and telling our parents and he had a A bloody nose. He ran upstairs. Boxing gloves never made an appearance in our house ever again. Yeah, that's right. Your boy gave him a bloody nose. Hey, when's the last time things got chippy in the Pomp household? Like some wine going at Thanksgiving?

No, there hasn't been a bloody nose in a while. But yeah, there's some verbal sparring for sure. Who's the guy who's punching someone in the balls when they're losing? Nah, like this is the thing. is what no when when you're when your brothers growing up the way that we did there was basically two rules one was you ain't go too low because that was like that that was like you you disrespected yeah it's just not cool and then the second one was we never punch each other in the face because that would leave obvious damage that would then lead to more punishment from our parents

but everything else was fair game throw things tackle whatever we could do we did which now i'm going to flip it on you guys what goes on with the fist fights inside the firehouse we know what we haven't had like a knockdown throwout brawl but there's definitely like wrestling that goes on like somebody will somebody will do something stupid or say something stupid get tossed over a lazy boy and go to the ground you know just for some wrestling like no punching none of that just yeah who's gonna hold out obviously if our chiefs are listening we're totally kidding um i do i do have another uh i have a firehouse dilemma for you guys all right so this is like a little bit of like what goes on at the coffee table of course not at our

organization no other organizations surrounding us no none of us but um so you guys have two choices there's two doors to choose from door a is janet yellen in lingerie dolled up hot and bothered ready for the the three of you guys to enter door a door b is christian lagarde swinging in a chinese basket which one of you guys choosing a or b boy is there a c no that's it man i can't wait to be a firefighter i'm definitely going to become a firefighter this sounds like a lose lose that's like the situation the fed is in right now man rocking a hard place it's like inflation or recession pick your poison of course well the old yelling lagarde uh rock in a hard place bed dilemma people are people are putting the throw up emojis in the chat

well i'm sure lagarde gets down she's european you know listen the the one thing that i will say is uh uh in the military there was always uh uh mary kill right as oh yeah the three uh as the three options and that that game goes to some weird places real fast in conversation it does sure does so uh uh i'm not going to answer which is me bitching out uh but uh well the people in the chatter seem to be answering they said what's the poll going to what are we calling here they said lagarde is kind of spicy yeah there's some some nonsense going on in here but she seems like the winner we'll let the community go ahead whole community engagement project today um all right where can

we send people to uh to listen to the podcast and and find you guys on the internet if uh i guess you guys technically aren't on the internet as much the podcast on the internet yeah we uh we're active on twitter way more than we should be we're at blue underscore collar btc our wives like hate twitter at this point like we're so glue you know i'm sure everybody's been through this but it's fun. It's fun. It's fun to engage both seriously and jokingly on there. And then we have episodes coming out weekly. We're on every podcast platform, blue collar Bitcoin podcast. Awesome. Now, I will say one other thing is as as firemen, obviously, you need to be well rested, which is exactly what our sponsor eight sleep is help people be well rested because they have a thermoregulated

mattress. What do you what is your guys sleep schedule? Do you guys get eight hours or is this like one of these things where uh you're getting woken up all the time when we're when we're on shift it's almost always guaranteed you're getting up at least once in the middle of the night you might get lucky once or twice a month and actually get some sleep but um that's why we have two days off so we can come home and get some sleep yeah it's it one thing that's uh i'm handicapped on every episode because i'm coming off a poor night's rest and josh is well rested we're on different shifts so i'm always coming out like i was on duty last night we only got up once which was nice but uh man sleep any you talk to any fireman we love our sleep like when we're at home

for those two nights in between shift out like a freaking light because they have an eight sleep mattress yeah hey we'll give you our addresses yeah you can send them over we'll test them out by the way you guys are the only two smart podcast guests we have ever had who realized that yeah that would probably be a smart ass hey we've got let's test them we've got like between our, the three firehouses in our town, we've probably got around 30 mattresses guys are on. So if you could just give us a 30 spot pump, we'll give you the address. Not, not an issue at all. We'll just, uh, not sell any of our Bitcoin to try to send you guys mattresses. We appreciate it. Awesome. All right. Anyone who has not listened to the podcast,

please go listen to it. As much as we're joking around here, uh, both of you guys have a very strong, uh, understanding of economics and kind of really just money in general and kind of what's going on in the world i've been uh been pretty impressed um so please keep up the uh the great work and uh no they don't have any uh any bed bugs and uh people in the audience are saying you guys are hard workers which is bullshit because just because you have a mustache doesn't mean that you're a hard worker right but that is start growing them boys take that thing off john joe anthony let's go get these things rolling it's the new laser eyes don't be caught without it down in Miami. I love that laser stash to get that thing off. Thanks for having us guys. We

enjoyed every minute of it. We'll definitely do this again in the future. Keep doing what you're doing. Thanks guys. Later guys. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to palmscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to palmscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.