The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Is The Last Free Market | Jeff Booth, Author Of The Price Of Tomorrow

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Central Banks continue to endlessly print money in the name of “growth,” fighting the inevitable forces of deflation caused by technology and putting the global economy on a path of assured destruction. Jeff Booth, author of “The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future,” asserts that Bitcoin is the last free market and can serve as a bridge to a more abundant future for those wise enough to hold it through the impending collapse. Jeff Booth: https://twitter.com/JeffBooth --- Matcha: Matcha is the easiest way to trade in DeFi. Matcha enables you to trade across all the major DEXs so you can be sure you’re getting better prices than going to a centralized exchange or Uniswap. Connect your wallet and start today at https://thewolfofallstreets.link/matcha --- Harmony: Build on Harmony, run on all chains. Harmony is your open platform for assets, collectibles, identity, governance. Be the ONE to bridge to all blockchains. Harmony is an open and fast blockchain. Their mainnet runs Ethereum applications with 2-second transaction finality and 100 times lower fees. Harmony’s secure bridges offer cross-chain asset transfers with Ethereum, Binance and other chains. https://thewolfofallstreets.link/harmony --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co ーーー Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members

This episode is sponsored by Harmony and Matcha. Stay tuned for more information on both of them later in this episode. Let's go. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, where twice a week, I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin,

finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics, basically anyone with a good story to tell. Now, the last time I had Jeff Booth on the show was September of 2020, when the price of Bitcoin was around $10,000. I think it's safe to say that a lot of things have changed since then, some for the better, probably more for the worse. Notably, a lot of what Jeff predicted at the time has come to pass, both with regard to Bitcoin price and monetary policy. It's my hope today to get Jeff's thoughts on the macro market environment and that he can help shed some light on the economic and political train wreck that we are all watching in real time. Jeff Booth, thanks so much for coming on again. Thanks for having me again, Scott.

So listen, the Fed recently announced that the U.S. saw 5% price inflation from May to May, although we all know that the real numbers are likely much higher. What are your thoughts on this increase in context of what you expected? Fed policy, they're stuck. They have to print and they have to keep printing. And so you can expect that that won't stop. There's going to be a lot of talk about it stopping or interest rates going up, but that's what it'll be. It'll be largely talk because if the Fed stops printing for any length of time, you're going to go into a deflationary depression. So they're caught in that trap. And one thing that's worse, and I know when you say inflation is actually running hotter than what you think, which is likely true. It's also, there's another aspect that people don't talk about. And that aspect is the natural

market is actually deflationary. And so you're not measuring from zero, you're probably measuring from negative four. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And obviously, I mean, that's what your book is about. And that's what you talk about quite frequently. So what do you just may be, it actually probably is. And, and if you think about all of the things that are being pushed up right now, because a staggering amount of stimulus, and that stimulus push makes all prices go up, but for inflation to be long term move into this rates for long term or hyperinflation, one or two things has to happen. The currency has to collapse. It would move into hyperinflation, which is not likely anytime soon. And the other thing that needs to happen is, or labor needs to be able to demand way higher wages. And what naturally happens, so now think about this in a whole bunch of different scenarios.

House prices are rising a lot right now. Lumber prices are rising a lot right now. They went up three times. So what happens when they ease money, they stop printing as much money, and the base rate on their inflation calculation is three times on lumber and up on pricing of housing and everything else, and that falls? You're going to move into deflation pretty quickly. And what that means is it's going to look like policymakers were right. Right? So there's going to be a whole bunch of people complain saying that inflation, we're going to get hyperinflation. We're not. And then it's going to reinforce the policymakers were right all along to print money. That isn't that

that's actually why I talked about that in the book, they are trapped in a system that has to keep doing this. And it's going to get worse and worse and worse and pick it in the theft of the middle class and poor gets worse and worse and worse. So the real tail risk comes from societal breakdown. That's what that's, that's what ends up happening, or other countries, because other countries are going to hit hyperinflation before the US and you'll see it in other areas, but you won't see it in the U.S. right now. And they'll look like there's room. So we're living in a macro deflationary environment that is exponentially deflationary. And on the other side of that policy is policy trying to stop that from happening.

Really important differentiation, because a lot of people right now are talking about the hyperinflation we're going to see. And then the Fed's going to stand up and say, told you so, we didn't. We have to ease more. Right. But you talk about them being on this treadmill. And obviously, your book is about the fact that there could be this abundant, beautiful world if deflation was allowed to run its natural course. But perhaps at this point, you would argue that's in a vacuum and doing it from here is effectively impossible. Yeah. So the system the system itself that's, and we can, we'll talk about Bitcoin, why specifically on that for me and my macro thesis and everything else and why it's a must own asset class, but the system itself cannot reset itself because the, because for the system

to allow deflation to happen, you know, people talk about the great depression and, and, and deflationary depression and everything else. And mistake what came first what came first was a rise of credit that couldn't be paid back which caused a deflationary depression which which reinforced on itself so when they when the credit couldn't be paid back there was just no way out of that mess. And so people mistake deflation or things getting cheaper naturally in a free market because of innovation and technology and getting cheaper and faster and faster and faster. They mistake because it boggles my mind that people get so confused on this. Because in your personal life, you're looking for things to get cheaper. We all make economic decisions in our own best interests that drive into we're looking for things to get cheaper, more valuable.

And that's how we make our decisions. Yet we believe in a system that does the exact opposite. Economists believe everybody else but us, everybody else in theory should want prices to go up all the time. It doesn't make any sense. But anyways, two different systems competing against each other. One system must drive prices higher and manipulate money to do so, getting worse and worse and worse. One system trying to give us more for less. And if you looked at two different curves, right, 30 years ago,

if you allowed the free market to work, interest rates would have gone up, not down. And you would have had a pretty big recession and you could have made a transition from one system to another system. Not easy, but easier. And then both systems are reinforcing in opposite directions, right?

One system, interest rates have to keep going down, manipulate money to make prices going up. And what would any rational actor in that system do if you're a CEO of a company? When your prices go up or you can't get labor or labor demands too much higher wages, wouldn't you try to remove that labor with technology? So again, these systems are feeding back in the exact opposite direction.

And the risk is a way bigger risk than people realize. The risk is the existing system ends in one of two ways, and actually maybe both together. Revolution and war, or concentration of all power in the hands of the state. It's the only possible way that the system, and you'll hear along that revolution, war, or concentration path of things like the great reset. I don't know what is so great about a reset, but you'll hear

things like that. And that is the way that system has to end, unfortunately, because it's abomination against the free market and people making rational decisions with their time and labor and everything else, and what their choices are in the market, are going to make different decisions than a bunch of people are saying prices always go up, or making prices go up by manipulating money. You talk about what could have happened 30 years ago. And I've heard you quote Taleb, lighting small fires to prevent the big fire at the end is scientifically proven to be the correct strategy, obviously, because the more you let something compound, the worse

the inevitable black swan event is at the end. So 30 years ago, they could have fixed it. Do you think that in 2008, if they had let the banks fail, and we had had a depression that we would be in a better position now than we currently are? So it's really hard to say. And this is, again, structurally, everything I'm saying is right. And again, you asked why Bitcoin at 10,000, why all of these things. If you understand the structure of the markets on what's happening, the first principle, first basis, like in my book,

you almost have a cheat code for where the world's going. You can make a ton of money, but that's not the real value. Isn't just the money you, you can hopefully, hopefully, and that's why I do these podcasts. You can hopefully align things. So more people can, can save themselves or families and everything else. And hopefully you can influence the direction of where the future is going. That's the hope. Now back to your question. 30 years ago, or sorry, 2008. You talk about $500, $750 billion in the marches on Wall Street,

ruining the free market. And everybody's, today, $5, $10 trillion, nobody's marching. But again, tomorrow, it'll be a way bigger number because it has to be. And that bigger number is just a transfer of control from individual people to the state. That's what's happening. And the wealthy get richer and richer and richer by that transfer. You know, all of this, but now let's say

one of my businesses in 2008, we saw literally one day the everything stopped. Our revenue literally went in in less than half in one day, everything stopped. Our revenue literally went in less than half in one day. Day to day, and then stayed at the new revenue. And worse, behind the scenes, we had letters of credit across different countries and everything else. And what happened is nobody would accept

our letters of credit. So you had money in a bank here. You'd been transacting with different countries for a long time, trusted parties, and nobody trusts, no other bank on the other side of the ocean wouldn't trust your bank. And so you felt like when Bernanke and everybody came in to the rescue of the financial system. If they hadn't, everything globally would have stopped. It would have completely crashed. Banks, banks would have failed. All of our institutions would have failed. It would have just kept on unwinding because what ends up happening is you

have a force of deflation against a credit-based system and a credit-based system must, there's nothing backing it. So once you, once you, once that feedback system on the deflationary spiral happens, that counterparty risk that happened in 2008, right? The different banks, well, you don't have money. You don't know. It's just credit and is your credit good and everything else. It just keeps on unwinding. And so I don't know the answer for what my life would look like right now, because it's such a different and what yours would look and everything else. And that system as if the unwind now is is a way bigger magnitude than 2008 and that's why they're trying to stop this and what every time they're trying to stop it it's making it worse and worse and worse that's

that small fire is becoming a mass of fires you're not going to in the end you're not going to stop stop this no matter what but the but the consequences are pretty staggering. So what I worry about, so let's say my book talks about deflation for an abundant future, right? Allowing technology to do the job because technology saves our time. We use technology to free our time. And that means we should,

if we're letting the free market work, prices should keep coming down and down and our time should go up as a result. So we should have more free time instead of working like on a mouse wheel, harder and harder and harder and harder to keep pace with rising prices that are only manipulated higher in the first place. So those are the two different systems. But to get from one system to the other system, it's going to be winter is coming. I wish that I wish I didn't have to say that. But from one system another, it is going to be it's a dark path. Because because we because because because of this action of constantly printing. It is really quite a spectacle to see how normalized

those huge numbers have become over the past 12 years. Like you said, 586 billion seemed like the end of the world, and now you can throw around 3 trillion like it's nothing, and nobody reacts. But it sounds like as it compounds, that the systemic risk now is far greater than it has ever been in the past. And that one slight, you know, gust of wind on the house of cards, and this is an epic collapse, larger than the Great Depression or anything we've seen before.

It is, it just quite simply is the credit credit bubbles are bigger than leading up to the Great Depression. Monetary policy believes it can avoid this, and it can't. The market has a way of clearing these. so these these feedback systems kind of reinforcing on themselves in opposite directions it's a really interesting way to look at the world because um and i think so so what i just talked about is what would a technology company do they would try to remove labor faster why would they try to remove labor faster because if they they didn't, you, me, everybody else wouldn't use their service anymore because it would be too, it would be priced too high. So they're not doing it to hurt people. They're doing it to ensure that there's value delivered and we make decisions based on the

value we get. So that's what the free market looks like. And so when you think about these two feedback systems, they're going in opposite directions. And inside those feedback systems, also going in opposite directions, are the wealthier that have access to all of the assets and stocks and everything else,

wealthier and wealthier, and the poor and middle class are getting poorer and poorer. And inside that is wealthy have tons of free time because everything's going up as a result of this. And the poor middle class and poor are on this, on this escalator that's going faster, faster, faster. They can't, and they can't catch up. And so those people, which is turning into a large majority of the population that can't

keep up, they don't know what the problem is they don't know they haven't ever thought about this problem what they think the problem is is those rich those rich people on the other side are stealing they they're getting they're getting rich not from a free market from crony capitalism but they don't know that. And so, so they're voting for people that say, say, we need to redistribute, right? We need to take money from those people and give it to you. And how are, how are those people redistributing? They're going to drive printing faster. So it actually doesn't redistribute. If you took 100% of all the taxes in the US in 2019, sorry, 100% of all profits in the US, all companies, it'd be about $2.25 trillion.

You couldn't pay what they printed last year, nor would you pay what they're going to print this year. So taxes isn't a solve to a problem that is being created by destroying money. And then inside that system, you have one system that has to, it's based on a fraud. It's based on inflation is needed for a society to work. And think about that fraud, right? And we believe it. A lot of people believe it. They believe capitalism requires inflation. And think about that fraud, right? And we believe it. A lot of people believe it.

They believe capitalism requires inflation. But they don't question what is inflation. So it's like saying, it's a requirement that my money loses value every year for us to survive. Doesn't that seem completely illogical? Insane. Insane. But a lot of people believe that. And then, so inflation is really a theft.

And that theft is imposed against the middle class and poor. It's like reverse Robin Hood. I walk into somebody's house and steal their money and I transfer it to the wealthy. And they think 2% is a good number. Okay. So 2% theft is okay, but 3% theft isn't. And so the rate of theft, and I know I'm using harsh numbers for a reason. I'm using harsh numbers because when we hear monetary easing, when we hear inflation, they're designed not to make us question that theft. And so when we hear that, and it confuses people on what's really going on. So now the theft is a lot greater.

And the theft has to become greater and greater and greater. So what's happening is inside these two feedback systems that are going the opposite directions, you have money and that whole system based on a lie. And if you have corruption in the base level of money, then you'll likely get corruption everywhere else and i think actually a lot of what we're talking about comes down to a whole bunch of conspiracy theories all around because when people realize that there's that ever a bunch of things that they've been taught is based on a lie they what would you do if somebody was bald face lying to you or your friend was lying to you, would you believe them on other things? And, and, and so what happens

is people chase conspiracy theories everywhere. Um, because, because the root of money is, and the root of money is our time. It's just a trade of time, is being manipulated. Guys, I'm really excited to be sponsored by Harmony. I know all of us have traded their coin one in the past, but what they're fundamentally doing is a game changer. Harmony is your open platform for assets, collectibles, identity, and governance. Think of it as the one to bridge all blockchains.

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I'm telling you, it will save you so much money and is such a superior experience. Do it now. It's interesting you talk about the language that's used. It's sort of misdirection or semantics. They paint everything in a positive light when it's actually a negative force. I think you could argue that the whole idea of growth falls into that, right? Because the only metric that matters is economic growth, job growth, right?

We talk about growth, growth, growth of everything. But that's the opposite of what would actually be ideal for the individual, sort of as you touched on. You can't create jobs once technology takes them away, obviously. You just can't. So you're just going to end up paying people to either pretend to work or to do nothing. Yeah. And as I use this in the book as an example, economics is about scarcity, not value. And the most valuable thing in our life is the oxygen we breathe, our air we breathe. Why don't we pay the most for it? Because it's the most valuable.

We don't pay the most for it because it's abundant. Just like we don't pay the most anymore for information on Google. Just like we don't pay the most anymore for our Waze app or our calculators or our flashlights on our phones and everything else. Because as things become abundant, as they digitize, that abundance creates a natural market force that drives them to free or nearly free. And so where do you pay for oxygen? You pay for oxygen underwater. We're in a hospital if you have COVID, but you don't pay for oxygen in your normal life because in those places it's abundant. And that's the same thing in economics. We're living in a system.

And, and again, it's a system change. I understand the confusion. It's so, because we're measuring the system. We're inside a system that's producing all of these negative externalities and we've lived in it our whole time our whole lives and we don't question the how that system was designed and it's bumping into a force that's a bigger force in our lives so these two systems are colliding against each other and obviously providing a whole bunch of confusion to most people. And they're trapped reaching for what it used to look like without wanting to question,

is that even possible anymore? What's interesting to me, you touched on the idea of crony capitalism and the lack of a free market. Clearly, the free market's broken. But I think if you ask your average person, they still believe the stock market is a free market, right? And I would argue that it's the most manipulated market in the world, obviously, because it's a farce created by money printing. But then you'll hear the same people talk about how Bitcoin is a manipulated market. And I'll make the argument that that's the last free market that we have left in the world. It is the last free market. Now, you could argue that every market right now is manipulated. Everyone. If money is manipulated, every market, including Bitcoin, is manipulated by that force.

Because if money stopped being printed today, everything would collapse, including Bitcoin, is meant to provide that for us. Because if money stopped being printed today, everything would collapse, including Bitcoin. Now, Bitcoin would grow faster on the other side, but it wouldn't be at the price it's at right now because the entire world would stop. And people would race to whatever they could do to pay their bills, which would be cash. Bitcoin, that would be a time. Back up the truck and buy as much Bitcoin as you can.

But you could argue, because I totally agree with you as far as Bitcoin is the only free market today. But every single market is biased by this money printing. So that makes sense. My argument is always just that at least there's no centralized force that's driving price action in any direction. You can consider whales or somebody, but that's just the free market and the result of somebody having more money or power than you do.

But that's still a free market. Or this. By the way, this is actually worth a thread to go down deep in a couple of things, because there are a lot of people that believe Bitcoin is manipulated and it's worth kind of exploring that. So yes, you could leverage and you could put a whole bunch of debt and you could short Bitcoin. And if you're right, you're going to win a lot of money. But if you're right, you're going to win a lot of money. But if you're wrong, you're going to lose everything. You could leverage the other way

and you could leverage long. And if it comes down, you're going to lose a lot of money. You could lose everything. That is very different. That is a free market. And yes, there's leverage being applied to the free market. But what a free market base is on is if you make a bet and you lose, you lose and you get wiped out. And so if you look at the existing market, if you make a bet and you lose, you go back to the taxpayers to bail you out. And so, and, and, and so, and then people talk about Elon Musk and his influence on the market and everything else, and they think it's manipulated. I would argue the exact opposite. I would, I would argue that it tells you exactly why you don't want to concentrate power in anyone's hands, because they can change their mind and change your entire life

as a result. And so, yes, Elon today has a lot of followers who believe everything he says. He is wrong here. He is completely wrong here. Now, he might be wrong because Blackstone tapped him on the shoulder and said, I'm going to sell down your stock if you don't walk back your idea on Bitcoin, or you're going to lose your carbon credits because of ESG, or any number of reasons. But no matter what those reasons are, actually reinforce why Bitcoin is so important. Because anybody pulling a curtain curtain strings behind our backs, telling us one thing with misinformation and doing another should be frowned upon. I agree. And also, if you're selling something from the stock market, you might be selling to

the Fed. Right. That's what I mean. Yeah. And so in the Bitcoin market, you may be upset that some whale was able to, you know, move the market thousands of dollars, but there was a bid on the books for every one of those those sell orders. Right. So, I mean, whether it's one person who capitalizes or not, there's a buyer for every seller. You talk about the stock market as an example, and it is, but it's just, so there has been $185 trillion of stimulus prior, in the last 20 years, prior, so $250 trillion of debts before COVID to run an $80 trillion global economy with $185 trillion of that debt coming in the last 20 years. 20 years. Now ask yourself this, what would your house look like without the $185 trillion? What would stocks look like without the $185 trillion? And you find the answer is pretty easy to see. But people believe houses will always go up because the $185, because it has in the last 20 years, as you've manipulated

prices by, by juicing the economy. And so it took that $185 trillion. It was $4 of debt for every $1 of GDP growth. And, and now it's worse and it will be worse again. And it will be worse again. Obviously unsustainable. So where does Bitcoin fit in? Let's talk more about it on a philosophical or economic basis. If you know that all this is happening and you accept it, what's Bitcoin's role for an individual or a government or a company? So let's start just wealth because a lot of people are going in there. That's actually not what I care about at all. But let's start wealth.

It is the best asymmetric bet of our time, maybe any time, I believe. That almost no downside, almost unlimited upside as far as a bet. Now, why won't people see that? If everybody saw that, having an asymmetric bet requires most people don't understand it. And so most people aren't doing the work to understand it, to understand what this means. And they're believing a whole bunch of the FUD that's in the market and everything else. And they don't understand this because they haven't done the work. I would encourage anybody listening to your show. Most people on your show

probably have already done the work, but I would encourage anybody who hasn't just learn with an open mind, just learn why this might be true, because it's true it might also contribute to a whole different world for you and it's worth you it's worth you it's worth understanding so that's on the that's on the money side and that's on your wealth side on the on the way up why is it important from a system perspective and that's that's way more important for me to kind of the, the, the path for my kids, what it'll look like for them in the future, because the existing system has to concentrate all control and government. And, and you don't want to live in a dystopian society where, where everything looks like China with more and more, more power

and, and they can remove you from the financial system at any point and not only looks like china today looks like china with ai and robotics so very few people at the top with control and everybody else now they could be benevolent dictators but but who gets to decide for everybody else if you think that these certain a very small number of people get to decide for the entire world then you want this system to continue and it will look like that or war and reset on the way to avoid that system, I believe, is Bitcoin. And that's a really harsh, I know how strong that is, but I've looked everywhere. I've tried, you know, when I wrote the book, I wrote the book a long time ago, it's playing out exactly, signposts everywhere,

it's playing out exactly as I predicted. And the only way to avoid that is Bitcoin. Because the system is incapable of changing itself. You hear all the people talking about the Fed or the Bank of Canada and everything else and all of the different noise, or all the noise about climate change or noise about this noise about this, that is all part of a system that can't change itself and i use an example in business all the time like blockbuster couldn't change to be netflix because they had 9 000 stores and they had all peop and then the economic model of netflix was completely different than economic model of blockbuster so what did blockbuster do They had added candy aisles to their stores. And we laugh, right? But that's a really good analog. Same thing as Kodak did, even though they invented the digital camera. And we use billions of photos today. No cost for editing software, no cost for everything else. Complete abundance in photos. Andx gone um despite having 80 of the market share of photos

in the old world when systems change and technology changes the rules for how we get value and create things abundance an existing system is incapable of seeing how fast that's changing and so what they do is use a predictable they predictable, they try to fight it and they make it worse and they fall off a cliff. By stopping creative destruction in the free market, all that happened is creative destruction and moving up to the monetary level. So why Bitcoin, going back to why Bitcoin is what you always see in the free market, what you always see in capitalism or free market, if you buy what I just said and look at evidence everywhere, is the system change is impossible from the system. It requires something outside the system to change it.

And that requirement on Bitcoin is actually also a really positive development. Because that positive development, it means the system can keep flailing around and people can offboard. And if enough people move into Bitcoin over time, you can get an easier transition from one system to another, it won't be easy, but it will be easier that more and more people on Bitcoin. And for the people with Bitcoin, it'll be much easier. But system change requires somebody from the outside and Bitcoin is outside the system coming to attack the system. I don't think I've ever heard it expressed that way. So Bitcoin effectively can act as a bridge that softens the blow of the transition between the systems. I always sort of looked at it as a hedge and opt out. You're lucky if you got it, you're kind of screwed if you don't. But as you

said, if enough people adopt it, you could sort of have this intermediary system as there's a reset. That's why I try. Now, by the way, in this, I want to be careful. I completely understand why there's a whole bunch of toxicity in Bitcoin. And it's part of it. it's a free market and they can people can say what they want and and and and by the way and a bunch of those people are also my friends and and and so but and and so and i understand if if you have if you're kind of fighting against lies and injustice and over and over and over that can take its toll and you just lash out and everything else and you say you say things like have fun staying poor and everything else

so I don't care that they do that or anybody because some of them are my friends and they do that and everything else the reason I don't um and sometimes it's hard because you hear things that are like, are you kidding me? Like, really? The why I don't is I want more people on this asset class. I want more people to learn. I want more people to really understand because it's really important that more people understand it. That's what that's what that's that's the reason for not, not kind of biting on all the bullshit and everything else, because I want more people to learn it. And I, and that, and that bridge is going to be really

important. That's so interesting. I love the blockbuster example and Kodak because, and I don't know if it's ever been expressed in this way, but you talk about companies and banks that were too big to fail, but now you have these structures like those companies that are too big to succeed. Yeah. Cause they, they, like you said, it was impossible to pivot because you can't close 9,000 stores and fire all of your employees so that you can start a streaming service.

That's the fed today. That's the government. That's the Fed today. That's the every bank today. And so if you're in that system and it looks like that and you have no idea how to get to the other side, what do you do? Print. And you print, you keep on printing and you keep on printing and you, and you, but again, as a by-product of printing, you have to make up more lies and you have to, and you have to deceive, which brings more people onto Bitcoin faster because more people see the truth. More people are opening up their eyes to the truth of that fraud that's inside the financial system, not through bad people, through, through, through a system doing everything it can to survive. And then the other side of this is very few people will move from entrepreneurs, a lot of

Bitcoin people that have gone through down the rabbit hole. What they do is they go through and they imagine a better future. And then all of the energy goes into creating that better future. So that's what I do in every business. You don't start a business to say, I know how to take stuff from people faster. You start a business to say, I have this idea that this doesn't make any sense in the existing system. And I'm going to create something of value for people. So what ends up happening inside that is those people design a better world for us to move to. And they have a picture in their mind of what that world looks like.

And as more and more people see that picture there's hope for a better future and they move to they move from one system to another system and so today we have we have a system that we can i don't think anybody could say this system works really well for everybody right is a real and and it's even people caught in the system, even people saying, but, but you can see something clinging for life getting worse and worse and worse and negative externalities everywhere. And you can see the divide of society and everybody having their idea of

what's wrong that are two, two kind of two spots away from the first principle driving it all, from the root cause driving it all, this inflation technology-led deflation. But they're talking out here. And so you have flailing around over there. But people normally don't leave a system out of fear.

So there needs to be a system out of fear. Right? So there needs to be a place to go to. And so in Bitcoin, if we talk about the citadels and we have citadels and we have everything and nobody else has anything, more people will stay stuck in an existing system out of fear that that's not the world they want to live in. And I don't think the world looks anything like that citadel world. In fact, it's not a world I want to live in. I don't want to walk out of my house and have 99% of the people starving. It's not a world that I want to live in. What I want is truth. I want a free market. I want truth. I want, instead of taxes

being hidden in inflation that hurt a whole bunch of people, I want governments to tell me the truth and say, hey, if I'm going to compete for your dollars and your business, here's what taxes need to look like for roads, firemen, everything else. You don't want firemen? You don't want firefighters in your community? Okay, there's going to be lower taxes. But I don't want a system that just abruptly stops and goes into Bitcoin. It's not a world. I want a transition mechanism, and I want more people to tell the truth.

And that truth, what that means, what that would force on, because, again, people in Bitcoin as well, now if you argue the other side of what's happening here now in Bitcoin, they are misrepresenting what it would look like in a Bitcoin-driven world to what it looks like now. With Bitcoin, government has to get way smaller because they have to tell the truth. And so a lot of the negativity that a bunch of Bitcoin feel and they lash out against the existing system, it wouldn't look like that at all in a new system that's driven by Bitcoin.

But anyways, the point is, it's way easier for people to move from fear to hope if there's a picture painted of what the hope looks like, what it looks like on the other side. I'm happy to get there. It's interesting that you talk about truth, and obviously that if you're going to print more, it requires more lying and more deceit. I question sometimes, though, if it's purposefully deceptive,

purposefully deceptive, or if they believe their own lie. Because I'm inclined to believe that your average central banker probably has been raised in that same system and believe that they can print their way out of it and that their policy is, you know proven and and that's the end game so it gets it it's even worse than that and you're right i think many don't know but then then even if you even if you bring this to light which is it's impossible to irrefute what i what i've laid out in the book it's impossible so it's been 18 months it's been bestseller in a whole bunch of countries. And the only people that talk about it don't give any reasons to to to to kind of any factual reasons. They throw stones and say it's it's it's about the book. So so again, the typical fud that you'd hear, no inflation is critical and everything is

this guy doesn't understand economics. Okay. The, but, but nobody has debated me on the first principles of what I'm talking about or said I'm wrong. That's kind of staggering. So, so in, in, in, in that long, and I'm open to that debate all day long. You bring on Powell, bring on anybody else. But now let's go into what you're talking about. So, and this is where it gets, I don't want to say sinister,

but that word's too strong. But when a system is feeding back like this, it's easy to delude yourself that you're doing it to help other people. Because if you didn't, the world would collapse. And, and what that, that, what that creates is, but I have to, to help other people. And that's the lie people believe. And that's the, and it tries to, and they have more and more power

as they take more and more freedoms away from people because they believe they're put on this earth to be able to do that because only they can help. And that's the lie they they believe and if you see if you see dictators if you see if you see what happened in in the 30s if you see what happened in in throughout germany nazi germany and everything else a lot of people fell into that because they wanted to drive a better society and everything else and they believe they truly believe that that's that they're helping more people by doing that and

it just and and as human beings we are very gullible to those things and and so i don't want i don't want domain over other people i want uh but a lot of people do want domain over other people. I want, but a lot of people do want domain over, over other people. It's, it's my idea. It must be me. I'm the savior. So it's either, it's either they believe that it's for your own good or that they're choosing the lesser of two evils. Well, this, so even if they do understand, they say, well, it's bad, but it's not as bad as depression so we're gonna and and so let's let's let's play both sides so we we just walk through a situation where where there's a whole bunch of people that don't know or they

know and they're making decisions lying but they're making decisions that they're trying to uh uh trying to help let's walk um through let's walk through the opposing scenario on central banks and said they know they all know right now but if they say hey we better go to bitcoin right now everything stops all. So even if you knew, I'll tell you this, if I knew, behind the scenes, I would be architecting a path. In every country,

I suspect in any freedom-based country, I bet you there are people architecting paths right now for Bitcoin. We just don't see it right now because if they signal that path, then everything starts collapsing. So if I'm inside the government and I know, then I'm trying to architect a path. I don't know if I believe that, that that's what's happening. But it's certainly happening in some countries. I think they're probably trying to architect a path,

but not as many as we would hope would be doing it towards Bitcoin. That's my feeling, is that they have some old archaic economic system where they believe they can hedge against inflation. But Bitcoin, they don't take seriously enough to be the answer as of yet. But blows my mind, though, these collapses always happen. Right. And then there's always an excuse. We had bad data. We had bad information. We didn't see it coming. And that is so like, it makes you feel like they think you're so stupid. Because you wrote a book about it. We all see it. We're sitting here

talking about it. And it's going to collapse at some point. And they're going to say, well, the housing data was wrong for the last year. And we didn't know that that collapse was coming. And they're going to ignore the entire systemic risk that they built for decades and even centuries to some degree. So what's the answer? So that's why I say Bitcoin's a path and it's through. But think about this when this collapse happens. Let's say they stop easing or stop easing for long enough that it starts to unwind and and they have to go in and maybe nationalize banks maybe do something else because that unwind but in that

scenario in that scenario do you think anybody that's that says deflation creates an abundant future would look smart. I would look like a fool. It's still true once we get to the other side, but people would conflate what I'm talking about to the debt bubble that's collapsing. And what that would do is it would give more power to the government to say you're in control because we we need money right now that's what happened in 2008 that's what happened that's what happened in coven march of last year you're you're ceding control to solve

the short term that's and the problem is created by by short-term thinking that's constantly trying to, essentially getting elected by promising more than you can give and constantly promising more than you can give that has to explode and more and more. You have to keep making promises and more. So that path, unwinding that path is not going to be easy. But now what would people do? Who would people vote for? Let's say you and I are politicians and we're competing to be, I'm in Canada, but we're competing to be President of the United States and your policy is, don't worry, I'm going to pay you more money. I'm going to increase minimum wage and I'm going to print money to increase minimum wage

and I'm going to print more money to have all these infrastructure services so you're working. And my policy is free market and the collapse that's going to happen. But on the other side, you won't be a slave. You'll get more and more for less forever and your time will go up. Who wins up? Me, of course. And I think that a huge factor in all of this is the fact that politics became a career and not a public service with time. And so your incentive as a politician is always to keep yourself in office and not lose your job. Yeah. I wish that that wasn't the case. And maybe certain people go in with one assumption to really

help. But then again, they're in a system and the system keeps on feeding back. I spoke twice to the House of Commons in Canada. And on my speaking part, so I was asked to speak to the finance committee at the House of Commons. So a bunch of politicians on this thesis and everything else. What I realized from those talks is because you're waiting your turn and there's about 15 other, 16 other people in kind of a slot of time that are going through the same thing. All 15 other than me, every other one was this entire part of the economy collapses if I don't get this much money. This does this.

So it's everybody all day long. They hear these stories about their constituents on what's going to happen. And then central bank says i can solve it for you right here we'll just print more money so what the the bias what normally happens they don't know they're making long-term damaging conversation making it worse and worse and worse they don't they're sitting in a system that must make it worse. But I understand that. Plugging a hole in the boat while three more holes are gaping and thinking that you're not going to sink the boat. But it probably trickles down not just at the political level, but down to

your average individual as well. Because even understanding all of this, I doubt that many people would choose a decade of pain for long-term gain over send me my check now. It's why Bitcoin is required. It's why the system can't solve itself because the system will keep reinforcing exactly what we just said. It will over and over and over and reinforce. And it's not bad people. It's short-term thinking and people don't want to face the consequences of moving to this they can't see where this moves to so they will always buy us towards doing uh doing that short term

and so and then and then we we look at those people and we go what are you doing but we don't actually empathize with what we might do in their position yeah if you can't pay for your food for your family you don't have the education that you might have Scott or I might have that, that, that, or the curiosity and that curiosity only came from having privilege enough to let it to go through this and then then dig deeper and deeper. If you didn't, if you were growing up in the ghetto and everything else and and and and didn't have access to anything else how would you see it and what would you what might you what might you do you're going to feed back into the system yeah you're saying to someone starve so that society can be better

in 10 years yeah nobody will make that choice and so so as you as you as a system forces inequality on a whole bunch more people and tries to consolidate power as a result, the natural byproduct of that system is a whole bunch of people go to the system that's creating the problem to be able to try to solve the problem, which makes it all worse. And that's why you have to have a different system that competes against that, just like in any business. It's like a battered spouse coming back over and over again, because they're too afraid to leave. But if, but, but again, we see it, we, we laugh at these things and we look at other people through, through a sense of what we do

instead of what we might do in their situation. Sure. I 100% agree. I know that I would choose food for my children over a theoretical future. Exactly. And so if that's true, then you understand how much reinforcement the system has

and how much power the system gains by that reinforcement and why media is part of that system and everything becomes part of that system is that vortex takes over all conversations. When I said corruption in the base level layer of money, that's what I'm actually meaning. That corruption has to take over their entire system and over and over and over. But you cannot totally understand why, again, rational actors acting in their own best interests will make decisions based on that system and what the repercussions

of that will look like to society. And so if you look at Bitcoin as a bridge through that, I think that's the best way to look at that path. So you touched on it very briefly that government would necessarily become smaller if we were living in that world that was based on Bitcoin. What other things do you see if the world moved to a Bitcoin standard? What would the world look like? So to me, the key aspect in this, and this is really, this is so hard for people to wrap their heads around because they're measuring their house prices, everything else in a system that's inflating all the time. They can't understand what it might look on the other side. So this is hard for people to get. But technology frees our time and makes things more abundant.

Everywhere you look, the only reason you use technology is time savings make your life better. Same for business. And that time savings comes with a labor savings. So labor goes down. And if you let the free market work, then your time goes up, you get more for less, you don't have to work forever and ever. You don't have to have two income families working forever and ever to because the prices are going higher and higher and manipulated do so. The other side of that equation, and people also, it's not a deflationary currency. It's a currency that allows for deflation. It's a currency that allows the free market to work. So if I'm wrong on that, and AI, robotics, everything else doesn't produce less and less jobs over time.

If I'm right, what happens is prices fall along that natural access, that natural pattern. And as labor is removed, prices fall by that corresponding amount. And you can live with, you could get more and more for less all the time on a constant trend. One of the things that people, so, okay, so that's if I'm right. If I'm wrong and there's massive new industries created,

then jobs will go up, prices will go up against the jobs going up and everything else. But what it does is it takes manipulation out of the base money. And it's a currency that allows for deflation as a result. And deflation is a good thing because it means our innovation in a free market forces prices down.

So I can't see any single plausible path because I believe most of the deflation is in front of us. The $185 trillion to try to stop it over the last 20 years will look like child's play going forward. Because most of what's happening is we digitize and move online and everything else. I used to buy CDs for $19.95 a CD for music. And there was an entire recording industry of people who chose who could get seen,

who could get distributed into record stores and everything else so that I could choose that music. And so tons of people on one side who wanted to be stars, who could never get through that path. Tons of people on the other side who wanted to buy music and it was expensive to buy get through that path. Tons of people on the other side who wanted to buy music and it was expensive to buy music through that path. And in the middle, you had people choosing for us, whole cost structure, distribution and everything else. And then music turned to information. And what it did is now all of those billions of people could try to be stars and price of music went through down as as as everyone

competed to be stars there's a whole bunch of musicians that are stars today or tiktok famous or anything else that would have never been seen in the old world most so exactly so it created a whole new who is who whole new control the free market one all of those people competing and price and price went down as a result and now i have unlimited music for 9.95 a month where i had limited music for 19.95 per cd per thing where does that 9.95 show up versus all of the record store jobs all of the distribution jobs all of the the sony music jobs all of the jobs that used to be in music, where does the reduction in price show up in positive GDP? It doesn't. That's the point. How about your photography? Right.

How about all of those things, all of those things. How about your, how about the maps I used to buy that are now all free on Google or Razer and everything else? And just look at the apps on your phone or look at the apps in the app store that are all free as a result because it's a line of code that does that. And you'll see that all of those things are negative GDP. By trying to drive up GDP against that, you're obviously going to concentrate all the wealth in very few companies and people because that's the natural order of where things are going and prices should fall as a result of that calculation. But when we think about those things,

we've just started to touch on some of the things that are about to happen. So moving forward, that type of power moves into our health. That type of power, education is already free. We just don't know it yet. It's free right now. Yeah, the structure of it is not but the uh but to find it yourself go to youtube and get a video or right or exactly certification is

not free and and we hold on to a construct and the only reason we hold on to that construct is again tied to the jobs we hold on to that construct and and we try to get our kids into harvard and everything else because we believe they'll get a better job because of the certification i can tell you for sure after hiring thousands of people it's already broke that constructs completely broken for me i hire the best best people and a lot of those those best people are now active learners all the time. And they're learning. They're constantly curious. And education is completely free right now. The most talented people in technology didn't learn it at an Ivy League school. And listen, I went to the University of Pennsylvania. I paid for my certificate like anyone else on the same

idea. I just think it's changed dramatically. I mean, how is a half a million dollar education that's effectively already disproven wrong by the fourth year because information has evolved so fast, better than being a teenager and learning to code on YouTube and having a marketable skill forever. So information wants to be free, right? And so as you turn things into information like CDs, like, but by the way, things like chairs with 3d printing and everything else and other things are going to be information. It's information. Now those atoms are combined in a way that's structured in a physical way to ship them to China to be able to make them and everything else. And as that information is information into the cloud and being able to be reformatted at your home, it just has dramatic implications everywhere. you put artificial on top intelligence on top of that. And I wrote this in the book, but intelligence is error correction. It's all it is. So, so we learn,

just like we learn a sport by correcting our errors. You're a two-year-old, right? We'll put something in his mouth that burn his fingers and everything else. And we'll do that again. But, but we practice something, the more we error correct, we learn. And it's actually the same thing that's happening in computers. So artificial intelligence, you could just look at as error correction. And so we are going to lose our domain of the smartest over time to artificial intelligence. That could be, that could sound scary and everything else, but it, it doesn't. So now think about what that means. So you have artificial intelligence that in some domains right now is way better than us.

Sure. Narrow domain names, not broad. We're still way better at broad domains but in narrow domains you have and and the best of us get paid the most so uh in a narrow domain right if we're if we're five percent better we might get paid 300 times what the some somebody else is because that's how the free market works. And now artificial intelligence in some of these domains is way better than the best. How could that not be deflationary? How could that, because it doesn't cost money to do that. It gets better and better and better. And it removes, now add robotics to that, what's

going to happen to robotics. And I'm close to some of these industries, really close to some of these industries. I have really close friends that are building some of these and seeing what's happening. And so most people don't realize how fast this is happening. And all of those things, all of them, provide a rate of deflation that is faster and faster and faster on the other side. So what I believe is that that future that we're moving to, it's a requirement that you have a digitally native currency that allows for deflation that is not controlled by any single person or any single state. And if you don't, every other path concentrates wealth and power as a result.

And so if I just go through that logic kind of that path, the only thing I've found is Bitcoin. That satisfies us. Well, there's about a thousand more questions I'd like to ask, but I know we're out of time. We're going to have to do this a third time. I'm sorry. So I absolutely love that conclusion, by the way, because it's not just philosophical or theoretical or maximalist, you know, advertising, it's just logical. So where can everybody find you get the book? Are you going to follow it up with

another book? I would say likely no, but I'll never say never. But again, I didn't write the book to try to make money off the book or this. I wrote it for my kids. And so the book's called The Price of Tomorrow, Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future. And best place to find me is just on Twitter at Jeff Booth. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this again. Always so incredibly enlightening and nice to get some confirmation bias of the things that I think I see in this world. So thank you for that. Thanks, Scott.

Speak soon.