The Wolf Of All Streets - The Case for Bitcoin: Escaping Government Control with Jeff Booth

Episode Date: July 7, 2024

Jeff Booth, Entrepreneur and the Author of the bestseller The Price of Tomorrow, discusses the future of Bitcoin, and explains why he decided to quit fiat money and go all in into Bitcoin. Jeff Booth: https://www.jeffbooth.ca/ ►► Sponsored by iTrust Capital Invest in Bitcoin, Crypto Assets & Gold with Your IRA Using iTrust Capital. 👉 https://bit.ly/itrust-scott ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►► The Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities!  👉https://thearchpublic.com/  ►►OKX SIGN UP FOR AN OKX TRADING ACCOUNT THEN DEPOSIT & TRADE TO UNLOCK MYSTERY BOX REWARDS OF UP TO $60,000!  👉https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. Use code 'TENOFFSALE' for a 10% discount. 👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd  ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #JeffBooth Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:18 We are losing control 5:38 iTrustCapital 6:36 Bitcoin standard vs. fiat 8:06 Living off Bitcoin 12:00 Taxes 14:00 Elections 16:00 Real estate 18:38 Custody 24:00 Our system is corrupt 26:40 Learn about Bitcoin 28:00 Building on Bitcoin 34:40 Will Bitcoin repeat the path of gold? 40:00 When all Bitcoins are mined 43:40 What’s next? 51:20 Nostr vs. centralized networks 58:00 Follow Jeff The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

There's a fight. There's a massive fight in the world today. Start with one. Start with 1% of your time learning about Bitcoin. And as you do, your life will change. Even yourself, Scott, like I've watched your journey kind of through this. And you're becoming understanding more on Bitcoin as you go through it. I remember talking to you four years ago. Of course, for years, of what happens to miners when all the Bitcoin is mined? This is a decentralized and secure protocol bounded by energy. It doesn't care what politicians want to do to it. People often laugh at the notion of living on a Bitcoin standard or of Bitcoin becoming a global reserve currency. I can promise you that if you listen to Jeff Booth, the author of The Price of Tomorrow, that you won't laugh when he explains exactly how it works for him, exactly how it could look in the future, and of course, explains just why the current system is so difficult to live in, why it's so criminal, and why it is such a scam. You never want to miss a conversation with Jeff Booth. You and I have had countless conversations about the economy, the importance of Bitcoin,

all of the problems with the current system. It's an interesting time, I think, to dig into what's happening right now. We're entering an election cycle. We have two of the largest spending presidents ever as candidates. And we have a quote unquote strong economy, if you believe in the metrics that were being presented, right? Unemployment still relatively low. We're adding jobs. We can dig into the nuance of that, of course, in the revisions. Inflation is coming down. Bidenomics are working. That's what we're being told. Is that really the case in your mind? Yeah, I don't think anybody actually feels like that's the case. All they need to do is open their eyes, unless you're a government employee and the government jobs are increasing and when you say two of the highest spending presidents in in history for those that don't know my thesis

i wrote a book five years ago called the price of tomorrow that articulated why the free in the free market prices must fall it's deflation um because we use entrepreneurs create more value than what was there before and if they don't they fail and we use the things that create more value so we're part of that that that action and so the free market in that and then we trade with people all over the world so the free market in that system has to be deflationary. And that means every year you would get richer, even if you did nothing. That's the way the world should work in a free market. So we call what we have now a free market, which is nothing like a free market. And by the way, anything that stops what I just said is not economics.

It's not a political system. It's a control system that must steal from you and get stronger. And so as technology moves faster, as we have exponential deflation, or we should have exponential deflation, in other words, you getting richer every year because prices fall in the free market, we have to have exponential money printing to be able to stop that deflation, which is exponential theft from you, which is exponential more control and loss of individual rights and freedoms from you. And no matter who is on top of that system operating from that system? They are reinforcing that system.

So whether it's Trump or Biden or anyone, if you are operating on that monetary system and you're getting elected and saying you're going to help these people, really what you're saying is who gets more of the theft? So I've just completely tuned out the rhetoric of the political system. And so the only way to price what I'm suggesting is something outside the system. And that's what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is because it's a protocol bounded by energy that creates energy abundance by its very nature. It doesn't care if you want to price Bitcoin from pieces of paper being manipulated. If you're pricing it from pieces of paper being manipulated, it will look to you like Bitcoin prices going up. And I can prove what I just said.

Look at it in price in US dollars or US pieces of paper that are being manipulated, and then go look at it price in Turkish lira or lira or or in egypt or in argentina and look at the exact same day and the price in those currencies or pieces of paper that are being manipulated and you you will see that there's a whole bunch of people all around the world that believe in their pieces of paper too um and you laugh at those people because they have a higher rate of inflation than you and or a higher rate of theft than you. And you think you're smarter when you also have a higher rate. You have a higher rate of higher rate theft.

And Bitcoin is just repricing the entire in the entire system. And it doesn't care about the other. So if you price in Bitcoin, you're my house was 300 Bitcoin four years ago. It's 22 Bitcoin today. It'll be two Bitcoin four years from now. The free market is working perfectly in Bitcoin. It's pricing everything falling to the marginal cost of production. Crypto investors in the United States face some major challenges. One of them is that there's almost no way to get exposure to the asset class inside of your traditional investment vehicles. The other thing is the taxes. They are absolutely

atrocious. What if I told you there was a way to solve both of these problems? Well, there is, and it's with a self-directed IRA from iTrust Capital. Guys, not only can you open a new self-directed IRA and fund it with the limits each year, but you can actually convert over from your 401k, your Roth IRA, any other IRA that you already have, and you can do that tax-free, just transferring over the balance. And then you can go to cash, buy as much Bitcoin as you want, and not pay taxes when you sell it. You absolutely have to try this if you are in the United States. Use the link down below.

It's bit.ly slash itrust-scott. That's bit.ly slash itrust-seott. You have to try this now. It's interesting to be a lone individual who's operating on a Bitcoin standard and who understands that. But is that viable for most people who are living in this fiat system? Because the system, I think we can agree, unless it explodes and there's forced change, nobody's going to willingly change it because of the political unpopularity of what

it would take to move into that deflationary system that you talked about. We know that their much bigger fear than inflation is deflation. As much as you and I know that that would be utopian, getting there would be the most painful process, arguably, in the history of markets. So no. So deflation cannot happen from a credit-based system or the credit-based system collapses. That's where people are conflating this in bitcoin it is happening not not might be happening it is happening and you can look it back at any time frame over four years and you can see it is happening so it's only a measuring bias and so people that are moving to bitcoin are already living in the future and they're living in a free market. The prices are falling. And so nothing is changing. The existing system is consolidating more.

It's consolidating more power. It's stealing more. It's getting worse. And all you have to do, Bitcoin is a permissionless, open, decentralized protocol founded by energy. All you have to do is move your time to it. And you're living in the future, too. So, no, it's really easy. From a day-to-day perspective, living on a Bitcoin standard with that as your base currency, what does that look like as far

as paying everyday bills? I had Jack Mallers last week. We talked about it. He said, listen, I own two things, Bitcoin and this house. He said, I basically take credit lines that I pay back. I don't sell my Bitcoin and life goes on. But I think for the average person, they would obviously have to be moving in and out of Bitcoin probably to live their daily life. Yeah. So like any technology, technology is a bottom-up disruption. So technology does not favor the monopoly, typically. So technology that's new or kind of a protocol that's new, most of the times if you're the monopoly, you fight that with everything you have. used the blockbuster Netflix example, right? And many others, Kodak and digital cameras example, it happens everywhere. And the monopoly doesn't see it coming because it kills their core, everything that is gained by the monopoly. In the US and people higher and higher in the financial system, you're closer to the monopoly of money. And and the more money you have the more closer you are and

your financial system isn't as broken as other financial systems around the world because it relies on those those markets failing and then their labor gets cheaper for you and the US got strong the US dollar gets stronger so so so you live inside there and then as a result of that, the innovation doesn't happen as fast inside those markets around the spending layer on Bitcoin layer two and layer three, but all around the world where you have more broken money than the US or that money is broken as a cause of the US system, you have major inflation rates and you have major problems. And in those worlds, those are the people furthest away from the monopoly. And what's happening is they're going first. And this ecosystem is growing faster than the

internet. You have actually a base layer of Bitcoin that's growing faster than the internet. And then on top of it, on that protocol, you have Lightning, which is growing faster than the internet. And you have Noster, which we can talk about, which is growing extraordinarily fast. And the integration of these protocol layers, Fetament is another one, the integration of the differentiation that you can provide on top of this layer is giving massive adoption in places first that are further away from the monopoly. And think about this from a, if you had to go down, if there was one person in your town that took Bitcoin, let's say a baker, and you had to get on a bus to go spend Bitcoin or lightning on Bitcoin to go to the baker, no one would do it. Because it would take too long. It would be a hassle. It's the hassle curve of your money that's in the monopoly that works just fine today. But if there were a whole bunch of people in their city taking it, you would do it. And then

the more and more would come on and we'd create a network effect in that local area that's what's happening in regions all around the world it's just happening less less quickly in the u.s canada western worlds because because we're closer to the monopoly so for me personally i do exactly what Jack does. I try, I live in this, I denominated it, I spend in it every day. But there are times I can't spend everything in it because of where I live. But sometimes when I travel, it is my, in some of the regions, I spend everything in it. Well, a lot of people point to the tax implications. You're not American, but you know, living in the United States is every time you want to the tax implications. You're not American, but living

in the United States is every time you want to spend Bitcoin to buy a cup of coffee, the old sort of meme, you have a taxable transaction of the sale of an asset. And it becomes, just because of the logistics of doing it and the tracking and the tax implications, becomes effectively impossible to do that here that's not the case everywhere obviously play that forward and when I said control mechanism right protecting the Monopoly what do you think's happening and why is it the free market is more effective that and and the more more governments try to tax this or block the exits to it, the faster the free market moves elsewhere. And the market moves again.

I just want to be this kind of sound really firm, but it is. This is a decentralized and secure protocol bounded by energy. It doesn't care what politicians want to do to it. It doesn't care if politicians want to do to it. It doesn't care. If you want to price your world in an eroding piece of paper, and if you want to give more power to governments that are taking power from you because they have to in that control system, then you can do that. And that'll drive fear in you not to move your time to the system that is repricing the world. But this is such a giant transition all over the world because this isn't negotiating. It's not negotiating. It

doesn't care. It literally doesn't care whether Trump's elected or Biden's elected or somebody says, I'm going to be for it and then not for it or try to co-opt it. It doesn't care. It's bounded by energy. It's just repricing the system. Now, you should care, right? That was my next question. Literally, my next question was, Bitcoin doesn't care.

But I know you've moved off X onto Nostrad. We'll talk about that more. But if you are on crypto Twitter off X onto Nostrad. We'll talk about that more. But if you are on crypto Twitter or X, people really care. I've never seen a time when people have grabbed the mantle and run with politics more obviously than the lead up to this election, because it is so important to them how it's viewed through the lens of politicians, because that may dictate regulation and legislation moving forward. So Bitcoin doesn't care, but the people who own it certainly do.

You know, there's a fight, there's a massive fight in the world today, a transition that most people don't know that they're giving more strength to the system that's taking away their power. And they're in it yelling it every day and inside that system especially on social media you will find both sides of this debate so crazy but that debate is it mostly on who gets to steal more of my money from the existing system it's crazy just have somebody debate me on why the free market the natural state of the free market isn't deflation. Have anyone debate me on that? You can't. So we know that's true. So that means every single thing you do inside the other system is a control system that steals from you. Because the natural rate of inflation shouldn't be measured from zero. It should be measured from the implied deflation rate. So that might be

negative 5% today. And so when they say inflation is coming down, theft is coming down, you're measuring from zero instead of what it should be. And your pockets are being picked a crazy amount to expand government to remove the free market. So if you can't argue with the first thing I said, then you should probably look for something that resolves that conflict that allows you to live in the free market. It's interesting because that metric doesn't apply to everybody equally. As you've said many times already, even today, if you're closer to the money, if you're closer to the top of the system, it affects you disproportionately less. In fact, you can make the argument that it benefits you. So the wealthy who are able to own hard assets,

Bitcoin being one of them, can historically, to some degree, outpace inflation because they get the benefit of that system. So it's fair to say, I think that it hurts poorer people who don't have the ability to save in hard assets more than it hurts the people at the top of that pyramid. Yes. But even if you look at real estate, if you look at real estate, the long term average on real estate is about eight and a half percent compounded. The long term money supply growth in the US for the last over 100 years is 8.5%. It just matches the debasement of currency. It only looks like it's going up relative to everything else that's going down. And then you have taxes and maintenance on

that real estate. And yes, and then as society breaks because of that divide of society that you're taking from some and giving to others, and as all of the incentives make that stronger, what do you think happens to real estate? What happens to real estate in countries where currencies are failing worse? And you can see what ends up happening. That might be a long time out. But I would argue that that's not a very safe bet. And even the rich inside that, people that are playing that game are playing prisoner's dilemma in a system that everybody is getting worse, including them. But they think they're winning it because they're winning it

relative to the other people. But to your point, if you're measuring to zero or negative five, obviously you're still losing. Exactly. And so this takes a long time to understand. Bitcoin is really hard. You and I have talked about this before I wrote that article, Finding Signal in a Noisy World, because so many people were talking about altcoins and everything. And today it's layer twos. And they clearly didn't understand what Bitcoin is, is a protocol. And if you understand there's a protocol instead of a technology, and if you understand it's bounded by energy and it gets more and more decentralized and secure every year, you realize it's the foundation that everything is building on top of. And you stop worrying about all the noise of the existing system having to go through

this transition. The scary part is the custody of that Bitcoin outside of that system for a lot of people. Because listen, I was a Voyager creditor, as we know, that was a huge mistake that I made. And it becomes increasingly more clear how big of a mistake that was as the prices go up, of course. But even me who preached self-custody at that time and still had the bulk of my coins in self-custody, I find self-custody still terrifying to some degree, right? Which I guess you should because it's so important. But I also fell to some degree for the yield trap, but largely because I trusted the people who were running Voyager and they were

friends of mine. And I find it very hard still to comprehend going full Bitcoin, but then also fully self-custodying all of that when, you know, a bump on the head or something happens and maybe your system is not in place for the people that you love to gain your coins or to, you know, be able to trust that you're going to always have them. Yeah, I don't find this hard at all, like not in the slightest. But you have to do the work to understand. The first time I did it, I thought, oh my God, this is... Remember the first time you sent a Bitcoin transaction? The first time I sent a Bitcoin transaction, it took 12 hours. Yeah. And you can see this getting easier and more able to understand. Throughout history,

you could just say this. If you could steal a little bit of people's money over time from the free market and they didn't know it, inflation or consolidation or banking, you would. In banking, what used to happen is if I had the gold pegged one-to-one, I couldn't make enough money. So I'd do two to one or one to two. And I keep having less and less gold. And I could give more of a return through that. People trust the higher return and the market consolidates to who gives the biggest return. And then when I want my gold back, it's not there. So the bank fails or the government comes in and says, oh, I'll make you all whole. Where did the money come from to make you whole? It came from everyone. It came up from all taxpayers. So that's why this consolidates. And you can see throughout time that if you had

something that centralized because of that, it would get co-opted because you can create a lot of money and power on co-opting the free market. And people wouldn't notice. They'd be losing like 2% inflation. A couple things in my house stolen each year, but I don't notice them. And it compounds and it has to get worse and worse. And so people wouldn't notice they would grow up in that system. They would see their friend. How do you get rich in that system? I hold more assets. They would see their friends do it. They would get, they would do the same thing. All of these incentives would accrue and it would get worse and worse. So we know for sure throughout history. And then by the way, when it breaks, as it breaks, you first have to divide your society and create an enemy within your

society. If you look at politics today, and then, and then because that can't solve it, you have to create an enemy outside your borders and you have to convince your people to go to war to create a high inflation rate. Um, if you win the war, you reset it to your, the new currency and you say, we promise we won't do it again. And then it starts again. The entire history of humans could be looked through that lens because we know we'll cheat. And what resolves that going forward is Bitcoin can't be cheated. And but that ties to self-custody too we're so used to trusting institutions to protect us

that even though we know that the institution i've said this i think on your podcast before we have regulation on top of a system designed to steal our money we have regulation to protect our money on top of a system designed to steal. And we believe that's safe. It's crazy. And so from that lens, if you're looking at Bitcoin self-custody, it would look hard because you have to trust yourself. Instead of trusting the institution, you have to trust yourself and you have to do the work to make sure it's safe for you, your family members, everyone else. But after you do that work, you realize how different it is and how that protocol is so different from anything we've ever experienced before. And you start to move more of your time and energy to it.

Even yourself, Scott, I've watched your journey through this, and you're becoming more and more understanding more on the, on, on Bitcoin as you go through it. I remember talking to you four years ago. I remember talking to you four years ago. And that's, by the way, that's every single person on the planet is going through this, this journey of, of trying to get an understanding, something that has never existed before. We've never had decentralized security

together before. All of our knowledge base comes from prior. So all of our history books have all of these error codes in the history books, from economics to how we design a system, politics, how this looks. And it's all built on top of this flaw that could stop the free market from working. Interestingly, though, I find being programmed into Bitcoin and understanding Bitcoin is not the harder part. It's the deprogramming of accepting the faults and the criminality of the existing system that's so hard. Because you up in it you're taught your entire life to believe in it as you said you these are trusted institutions even though rationally you can see all the reasons not to trust them you can look at history but it's very hard to say i'm going to be the trailblazer who does this a completely different

way based on this single asset that's been created and to completely dismiss. So I think the path for most people is the slowly letting go of all the things they've always believed more than it is of slowly embracing Bitcoin. Yeah, I say often, I think about Bitcoin in levels, kind of layer zero, level one, you think it's a scam or level zero. You think it's a scam level one. You might buy it in an ETF level two. You, you, you start to self-custody level three at level three, you're buying a whole bunch of other coins because you think you're making money in the existing system. And as you go down that deeper and deeper, that's exactly what happens. It touches everything because it has to touch everything because what do we do in the world? We trade with each other to create more value.

And the free market is a way better arbiter of that trade because there's more shots on net. So we try to create value all the time is if you don't, as an entrepreneur, you fail. And so you're solving, as entrepreneur, you fail. And so you're solving as entrepreneurs, you're solving problems. And then what's used is the problems that are solved in a way that helps society. So the output of that in the world we're talking about is faster and faster deflation as AI and robotics merge. It means instead of the deflation rate being implied deflation rate being 5%, it moves to 10 or 15% per year, compounding per year. Meaning the entire world is getting richer on that system. Now, most people won't do this. Most people will say yes, free markets,

deflationary, and go right back to the world they've always lived in to reinforce through their actions the world that's stealing from them. And so what I try to say is, because it was true for me, it's true for you, it's true. Unlearning what you've always learned is a hard process. Start with 1% of your time learning about Bitcoin. And as you start to learn, move it to 2%, move it to 4%, move it to 8%. And as you do, your life will change remarkably for the better because you'll stop yelling at the existing system

that's making you system that's that's making you that's designed to keep you stuck that's designed to keep you on a treadmill designed to to make you believe it's some other person stealing your energy because it's the only way to control you and you'll start living in a in a in a world that doesn't look like that at all. It looks like 99.9% of the people on this planet are incredible people. And when you build a system for those people, what do you think you see? You see all of those people. So I'm living in that world and building and investing on top of it. And I cannot tell you how much richer it is. I'm not just talking money here. I'm talking

how much richer my life is in this system because of what it stands for. You talk about building on Bitcoin. Obviously, you were very early to that, investing for years in things you believe in with Bitcoin as a base layer. There's been this sort of explosion, I'll say, of building on Bitcoin, largely because of Taproot unlocking the ability to do ordinals and runes and talking about satributes and all of these things now coming to Bitcoin. I would argue 90 plus percent of that is the same cash grab that we've seen on other protocols before. So does it concern you at all to see this much, quote unquote, building? Although I think

I would say it's more predatory on Bitcoin now. Or do you think that that same free market eventually sort of eliminates the passersby and really we see adoption of the things that are important being built on Bitcoin? I mean, do you think we should be building on Bitcoin at all? So yes, but some of what you're talking about is, you know how long I've been at it, and you know the thesis and kind of record speaks for itself, you could say.

And you could look at the portfolio companies that we have that are building without tokens, without anything else, that are actual protocol design layers and expanding Bitcoin in a way that I just talked about. Abundance for 8 billion people on this planet. I would argue if in the last 100 years, but specifically in the last 30, most of the money was made through financialization of assets, then most of the people that have made the money, including the VCs, are trying to financialize Bitcoin to make more money in a system that their prices are going up. But it actually doesn't matter because Bitcoin is repricing all of that too. And if you think you're getting a 20% IRR with massive risk on ordinals or something like that and bitcoin's ir is 45 like you do you right the the free market will will do this and a whole bunch of things are going to get liquidated it's not going to work um this this stuff like l2s today i actually most most of the l2s that people

are talking about lightning doesn't work I've seen 52 L2 projects and we see every deal. I was going to ask you that. I was going to say there was a two-month period, sorry to interrupt, where I must have seen, and I'm not even a very active VC, but I must have seen a hundred pitches for Bitcoin L2s in a two-month period. Yeah. And we see them like a deep teams funded $200 million valuation nonsense. And these are all just token projects. And if you actually go into the sand on what they're solving and you understand how this technology built a protocol layer, there's no solve. They're just trying to use a token, just like they did on altcoins, just like to create short-term money for VCs. Now, I want to be careful because some of the entrepreneurs actually believe they're solving something.

I'm not saying that they're criminal or they have necessarily negative intent. Maybe they just, like myself in the past, they don't understand exactly what you're talking about. I'm going to give you a different framework. And I'm going to give you a different framework on one of the reasons we financed FETI over two and a half years ago. And I'd encourage you to look at it. Yeah, I have. And Fetiman. Fetamant. But I'd look at it today and play with it and see what... Because it's fully

functioning, working right now, scaling extraordinarily fast, doesn't need a token, that's been built right onto Bitcoin and solves a whole bunch of things. But through this lens, if you knew, I'm going to be careful of how I say this. If you knew that Bitcoin layer one was uncorruptible by governments, that you couldn't kill it, it was getting stronger and stronger because there was always another, there was always somebody else that would make it stronger. And if a government tried to stop it, another government would accept it and the game theory of it. And if you knew that Bitcoin layer one couldn't be stopped and it was a protocol tied to energy, like we talked about, then you would also know that if you were a

government that relied on taking money to gain control then you would have to control layer two you'd have to right because then you could suppress bitcoin price like you suppressed um gold price through derivatives um and and and you could keep the game going you could move the us dollar dollar from gold to petrodollar to Bitcoin. And if you knew that that had to come, and if you look at some of the news that you see out today, you knew it had to come. Not that it might, that it had to. Not just China is going to try to do the same thing.

All of this play would try to co-op layer two. And a lot of the things you're talking about, a lot of these things in L2s and if you said stable coins and such, that's what's happening today. When it's trying to co-op layer two because you can't co-op layer one. Now, it might not be intention in deep state trying to co-op, but the incentives around it are reinforcing trying to do that. And if that was the case, you would have to say lightning doesn't scale. You would have to say a whole bunch of things that these technologies don't scale.

And I'd argue the technology building Bitcoin scaling on the layer two and layer three in lightning liquid fediment is already there. It's already built. It's already scaling. It's too late. So by the time some of these L2s come out i just don't even know what the use function is make money for the people who built them and but but again that's they they'll be repriced most of these will go to zero right just have to have perfect timing in their exit yeah as is always the case but interestingly you talk about sort of the co-opting of governments through the layer two um but you talked about gold and effectively how they manipulated the price of gold through creating derivatives and paper versions of gold. Isn't that the path that Bitcoin's on right now with Bitcoin spot ETFs being approved? Eventually,

we're going to obviously have options and derivatives and more robust futures and everything that we just discussed on Bitcoin. So do you think that they'll be able to manipulate it in the same way that they did gold, at least price-wise, obviously not the underlying protocol? So that could happen for a time, but as more and more, let's just play that game forward, right? You have manipulation, a bunch of Bitcoin. Once an insight is known to market and enough people know that insight, what will they do with that insight?

So if that price was manipulated, eventually you would have more and more people removing to self-custody, which would create a short squeeze of such epic proportions that it would take down the entire financial system because there's nothing backing it. That could take a long time to play out, but it's inevitable anyways, right? It's actually inevitable even if you won the L2 game for a while, it would just take a lot longer to play out. But with what's happening on L2, like in our portfolio and what we're seeing on the scaling on Bitcoin, native to Bitcoin, without all of these ClueG tokens, it's just going to happen faster. So more people know this.

More people are going to remove their coins to self-custody. More people are going to use Bitcoin natively on a protocol that just makes more sense where they don't have to take that risk some people are going to get burned along the way just like you got burned at celsius because there's so much there's so much abuse in the market to be able to centralize your bitcoin but but but if you just start if you look at the other side, just a game, there's just too many people that know what I know. And as they know more, just like I said, level one, two, three, four, as they know more, they remove from exchanges. They're immune to all of this.

And cheating used to win. In the existing financial world, if you got too big to fail, heads you win, tails you win. So cheating pays. In the new system on Bitcoin, because it's outside of that system and it's bounded by energy and it's decentralized and secure, cheating, you eventually get liquidated. It's no moral hazard. Yeah. Effectively.

Yeah, it's really interesting because when we saw the sort of proliferation of ordinals and the beginning of that, it actually was so prohibitive to use Bitcoin layer one as a result, right? And it made it And it caused me to think deeply about it. Obviously, I believe in the layer twos and I believe in the scaling. But there was a while there where I said, well, Bitcoin is really tough to use for remittances or for a poor person whose transaction is going to be in the mempool for days and they're never going to get it through unless they spend $20 to send $10. And it really made me start to question if Bitcoin was just an asset for the wealthy and that for the poor people who we've always said need to use it and should be using it and should be denominating their lives in it, it became basically dysfunctional for them for a short period of time.

And all that is is a short-term play on a market trying to fear and greed drive markets. And that's a short term. I'm going to make a whole bunch of monkey JPEGs on Ordinals and I'm going to create it. But that market will clear, right? The free market, it doesn't look like that. By the way, if you needed to,

there is zero reason to have an oracle in the base layer. It's just because it's way more expensive, right? So you would never do that. If you wanted to centralize something or have something somewhat centralized and trust in your business or your monkey JPEG business, then you would have that on a second or third layer where it doesn't cost the same if it costs that much and and then the first layer it'll fail by the way at the same time as that's happening what are what are all those companies doing they're paying the miners more fees to be able to decentralize the network faster sure well at this well at the same time,

the innovation is moving to the second and third layers faster to be able to create the markets there faster. So the whole thing just accelerates what we're talking about and a bunch of people get burned on the way through because they were playing a trading game versus a long-term game. Yeah, it was just at that moment, it's hard. If you were a person who was living in Venezuela, and I guess not using Lightning, I don't know how many people were talking about here,

but you really relied on the Layer 1. It had to be a shocking moment there when you couldn't send a transaction. They became exceptionally expensive. I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way you find it. But I do agree, it forces the acceleration and it forces to catch up. And it really did

quickly resolve. It just sort of shined a light on things that could happen in the future if Bitcoin is adopted for these other reasons. I would say the other, by the way, the other silver lining of all of that was that we stopped having the debate of what happens to miners when all the Bitcoin is mined. So that was nice because we saw that they could make a lot of money in other ways besides just mining Bitcoins during the night. By the way, my primary here is, remember, when Bitcoin's… We're talking 2140 when all the Bitcoins mined. Here's what I think most people are doing with this.

Forget the fees on Bitcoin because they don't matter, the fees that miners can make. By that time, we're going to be living in the world I described because the free market is going to drive it. And think about how fast AI and robotics is coming right now and what that'll be able to do that's so much better than you. So think about that. If a robot is a million times smarter than you and can work all day, what do you do? So, but in that world, right? If you live in a world that all of that productivity is stolen from you to make prices go up, then you're living in a control system that somebody is controlling all of that over you if you live in a world in bitcoin where all of that productivity is flowing to you you get richer and richer your time increases just like technology is always supposed to do it's supposed to increase our time as we

do is we don't we don't dig roads with spoons we don't dig roads with shovels anymore because the technology makes it make makes it better same same. If we allowed it to flow to us, it's a tool of empowerment. If we allow it to get consolidated from us, it's a tool of control. David Pérez- Now, tied that into Bitcoin mining. That means in Bitcoin mining, the amount of fees in 2090 that you're making from Bitcoin is enough for the network without all the fees on top of it, because it's being measured in Bitcoin rather than the fiat instrument. So why people think mining will fail is because they're converting Bitcoin prices to dollars, and they think that it's going to fail. But measured in Bitcoin, it's almost going to have infinite value. That's what we're

doing as a fund too. Like in Ego Death Capital, we're investing in companies that are adding more Bitcoin to their balance sheet each month because they're creating so much value on top of it. So it's like being in Argentina in the year 2000 and being able to invest in Google growth company and Google's cash flows in the US. So that's how we look at the building. We're building assets inside of Bitcoin that are actually attracting more Bitcoin. And as they create more value for the world and their balance sheets are expanding in Bitcoin, which is repricing everything else. Makes perfect sense.

I want to circle back to the very beginning of the conversation where I asked you about the economy and you kind of giggled, right? We talked about the metrics. We know that they get revised every month and nobody's paying attention and we know it's all cooked. But I've been exceptionally surprised, I would say, at how many levers these centralized authorities and governments have to pull to keep things, quote unquote, appearing stable. We've had the recession that's never come. I would argue that's not the case. But if you look at the media that there hasn't been a recession, inflation has come down depending on who you ask.

I don't think if you ask somebody about the price of meat, they're going to agree with that necessarily. But, you know, if you believe the numbers that were fed. So what comes next when they have no more levers to pull? Is it their feared deflation and a depression or is it runaway inflation in the other direction? Or how long can they continue to kick this can down the road a long time a lot longer especially in the us a lot longer you see japan starting to fail right now the dollar uh dollar losing value really quickly um and that has

implications to the us uh as well but remember every time another currency fails the US is essentially all of that labor and all of the raw materials just got cheaper for the US right so you you're exporting your inflation elsewhere by uh by doing and because they're functional currency in all of these other other places even in China is is the US dollar. As their currencies fail or their labor gets cheaper. And so now the US doesn't build most things in the country. And your entire military-industrial complex has been outsourced to other countries. Now that puts a geopolitical risk on kind of the war machine because your sovereignty is tied to the same thing. The US was grown through the free market. Actually, it created a superpower through the free market against,

like I'm talking in the 1800s hundreds and people moved all from around the world to take advantage of a more free market more shots on net more more innovation more growth which create which which created the uh that that thing is playing out all over the world on bitcoin um and and and you could choose to stop uh try to stop it and lose the innovation and somebody else will gain it. But that was the rise of the US and if the US tried to stop that. But from the existing system, I think one thing that you could drive a lot of views in fear porn or the whole system's going

to collapse tomorrow and you see i see that all all the time all the time and why do you why do we see that because our we slow down at a car crash and the algorithm looks for more car crashes so the more more crazy you are on there the more car crashes people will watch and they'll believe that this is going to be a light switch watch and they'll believe that this is going to be a light switch this is not a light switch this is going to happen for a long time and and the u.s system is going to be repriced by bit by bitcoin the free market is going to win because we weren't meant to live in cages it's going to be chaotic depending what system you're measuring it from, because so many different things are going to happen. You're trying to measure a nonlinear

system like it's a linear system. And that nonlinear system involves all of the different other countries. What do they do? When do they find Bitcoin? What does this look like? That nonlinear system says, China is going to create a whole bunch of gold, or not create a bunch of gold, buy a whole bunch of gold and we're going to go back to the gold reserve. Good luck. Try to audit the gold back to this. Plus, if the US said, we're going to revalue our gold if they did that, which they could do in the 1930s. And remove all their debt, which they could. That makes China and Russia way stronger. So when you're playing all of these cards together and trying to understand all these cards together, and most people haven't gone deep enough to understand all

of this, then Bitcoin is slowly repricing that whole thing. It might look fast from Bitcoin's perspective, like 45% per year IRR, which is the historical average IRR. It's slow relative to the overall system. Yeah, I just wonder if we need the deflationary depression in the 1930s and then coming out of that, you have to actually have politicians or leaders who solve the problem with a new system rather than... I know Bitcoin will happen regardless. I'm just saying in the shorter term, you say they can continue to pull these levels. I mean, levers, eventually we have to have a recession. Eventually we have to have...

US won't let it happen. I used to say this to a bunch of friends in YPO. They thought they were living in a free market. I said, at what point would you put up your hand to be able to stop the deflation that is natural in the market? 10% fall, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 80%. At some point, all of those free market people would say, print money like crazy, because every bank is failing. And so what you can see through that action, it's not the governments, it's you. There's not a voter

alive that wouldn't say print more money. And so you yourself are making that system stronger and then complaining about the problems within it. That's true. And so virtually everyone I know is doing the same thing that is spending all of their time in that system. And then they're talking about the externalities, the negative externalities. They're rising from their very time spent in that system. Yeah, it's fair if we can criticize the politicians for saying that none of them

would ever do the right thing and run on a platform of austerity, it's because the people won't vote for them. You wouldn't. You would throw them out tomorrow. Torture me. Because what would that mean? It would be a deflationary depression, but it wouldn't be just deflationary and depression. It would be way worse than the 30s because every bank would fail. The entire system is built on credit, and the credit would fail.

So what's happening today is other countries are failing as interest rates go up and liquidity is pulled. Other countries are failing and they need US dollars. And so that's creating a push. US dollar is getting stronger. That means relative, right? Not to Bitcoin, but relative to those other currencies. Those other currencies are getting weaker. Those other people are getting poorer. Those other raw materials and

labor all around the world are getting cheaper for the US. But it also comes with a caveat that it's hard to reshore your critical infrastructure when somebody's 10 cents on the dollar somewhere else. So this goes beyond Bitcoin, if you believe in disrupting or exiting centralized systems, obviously. And you and I kind of had a chat right before I said, I went to go see what you've been tweeting about, you know, for some context, and you have not been tweeting about anything. Now, I know you got SIM swapped and've been tweeting about, you know, for some context, and you have not been tweeting about anything. Now, I know you got SimSwapped and your Twitter got hacked, but you did get it back, but you never came back. My last tweet before I got SimSwapped was, you should be spending more time on Nostr.

And I wondered if that was part of the SIM swap. But anyways, even before that, I was spending most of my time and energy on Nostr just because of the centralized risk of any system. You can see it on Twitter. It's just a different, whether you like Elon, whether you don't like Elon, it's just a different massive power. And that massive power corrupts. And so I want to live in a free market system where everybody has a voice. And the best voices are seen because they're the best voices and the market tells them the best point instead of voices instead of a system where an algorithm uh is trying to sell me more advertising by by showing me more car crashes and if you're living inside that system you will believe it's totally true like you're because it's so siloing you you'll believe your view of the truth is so true inside that system.

And it's really hard to come out of that because all of your friends are in it too. And they reinforce to you and you want to matter and it reinforces. So any centralized system, especially if you add AI on top of it and what's happened and, and how AI will be able to essentially reprogram you to make it, you believe it's your beliefs all along. There's a very dangerous spot to be terrifying. So I've spent far more of my time in Nostra because it's a decentralized network.

It's early. It's still really early. Yeah, it's very small. But it's, I don't even know if you know this, but the network effects are at the protocol level. That means the clients on top have to work in service to you. If you don't like the client or the algorithm that the client puts on, you just move your new client and all of your

followers and all your content comes with you. There is no walled garden. It all comes with, so you're, you're building in service to you and your users forever. And nobody can stop that because the network effects are at the protocol level, which has, and then if you tie into all of the other things that are going to happen, I remember going through this in the internet. And in the internet, the first way of the internet was copy everything in the physical world, or in the world before. The second way of the internet was create different things that couldn't be done without the capability internet.

A good example of this is the BlackBerry phone, which is largely a phone and an email device or text device versus the iPhone, which was everything, right? Today, if you looked at Bitcoin, Noster, Fedament, Lightning, you're seeing the emergence of things we can't even imagine tomorrow because of the interoperability of all of these layers together native to Bitcoin. And so it's an extraordinarily exciting place to be. And that's why it's still early, but that's why I'm spending my time there. The other thing just tied in, if you were selfish on this, early on in Twitter, I wrote a blog post that said, why every CEO must be on Twitter?

Like this is when Twitter was just starting because I knew where it was going. And then the next day I was on the top 10 CEOs you must follow on Twitter because what was good for them, right? Fed the algorithm to essentially game the system. And then, and I was, I was getting probably 10,000 followers per day. Similar in Nostr, if you're there early as it's building and you're contributing, as the wave of people is moving from these centralized systems to something that's much more powerful, you can build an audience that can never be taken from you because you can move

it to that audience. So even selfishly, when people say, okay, is it early or there's not enough going on there, they should spend their time making more going on there because it's going to reward them really well. I've been deplatformed from multiple social media, SoundCloud at a time for copyright issues. When I was in music, Instagram, I had an imposter account report my account as the imposter. I got removed, never got it back. They're still scamming in my name over there. And people don't believe me when I say this, but not that long ago, I removed X from my phone. So even though I host Twitter spaces, I do it on a second phone just during that time. And I only look at it occasionally when I'm at my computer and people think I'm nuts. They say you're supposed to be an X personality or

whatever it is, which is never what I viewed myself as by the way, right? I just believe that I interview people and hopefully they pass on some insight to myself and my audience but i can't use it i can't look at it i can't read it i have identified that it's emotionally triggering at times or that it's just low signal and i i can't i you know i just don't know how people spend their lives anymore staring at social media. Yeah. And I think that's the inside it, inside your little echo chamber. It feels like, I say this quite often, everything you do is in service of love and belonging. And inside your, even hate.

Right. Because there's a whole bunch of other people that like you for hating something. You have to all hate the same thing. And it feels like love and belonging. I matter. I stand out. And so these systems are programmed to take advantage of that in you. And so it's really hard to leave them because it feels like leaving that. It's hard to see what's unseen until you're there. So if you're in there, it's a drug. It's keeping you trapped in that. Lots of people are stuck. Sounds like the fiat system.

Somehow, as always, I wish I had five hours with you or hours or anything I missed that you'd love to discuss before I let you go on to your inevitable next commitment. No, no, all good. We can do it again sometime. Perfect. Guys, follow Jeff. So how do they follow you on Noster? Let's do this. The first time I've said follow Jeff on Noster.

Yeah. Yeah. So look up my pub key, Jeff Booth. It'll be the one with probably the most, there'll probably be copies of me too, but find the one with the most followers. We got the copies on Nxter too it's all right it's already um but it but it's easier actually to find out the scammers there than it is uh elsewhere uh just if you looked at the user numbers and it's it's it's actually getting easier and easier uh because the things

they're doing with the social graph longer term do this. Follow me on or just go to my website, jeffbooth.ca because any social media account that I'm on or anywhere I'm on, I will always list there. And if it's not there, it's not me because I have the same thing. I have Instagram imposters. I have imposters everywhere trying to scam people. It's the absolute worst.

So when do we get the price up tomorrow, part two? I might actually write another one. It's the first time I've started to say that I might actually, I'm starting to, it's coalescing something that I feel like needs to be said. And so taking that path and then just extending it to where this actually takes us on a Bitcoin standard. Can't wait to see that. And anytime you need to just hash out some creative ideas, you give us a call and we could do this. Thank you so much, Jeff. Always really an honor and a pleasure to speak with you. Thanks, Scott. You too.