The Wolf Of All Streets - The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History with Jeff Booth, Author of The Price of Tomorrow

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Jeff Booth is the author of The Price of Tomorrow - Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future. After extensive experience developing cutting edge technology, Jeff began to observe that the deflationary course of innovation is at odds with our inflationary fiscal policy. Concerned about the course of the dollar and markets, Jeff offered numerous solutions to our government's mistakes - buy Bitcoin, hold cash, and invest in tech stocks. Both his book and this conversation offer valuable insight into a crisis that neither the rich nor the poor can avoid. Scott Melker and Jeff Booth further discuss working at the forefront of tech, hidden taxes, a Ponzi scheme of debt, the government propping up the market, Bitcoin as our life raft, the rich moving into missile silos, a non-existent middle class, time as our most valuable resource, creating generational wealth, going irresponsibly long on Bitcoin, overpriced real estate, inflation vs. deflation, tech monopolies, Bitcoin to $0 or $1,000,000 and more. --- ROUNDLYX RoundlyX allows you to dollar-cost-average into crypto with our spare change "Roundup" investing tool, manage multiple crypto exchange accounts in one dashboard and access curated digital asset content and services. Visit RoundlyX and use promo code "WOLF" to learn more about accumulating your favorite digital assets when making everyday purchases and earn $4 in free Bitcoin. --- EQUOS Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. That exchange, EQUOS, has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using equos.com/wolf. --- CELSIUS With the Celsius app you can earn up to 15% APY rewards on over 30 cryptocurrencies. Have crypto but want cash? Celsius also offers the lowest cost loans against your crypto with interest rates starting at just 1% APR. Enter promo code WOLF when you sign up and get $20 in BTC! Users must transfer and hold at least $200 of any coin for 30 days to be eligible for the reward. --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

I'd like to thank my sponsors, Celsius, Equus, and Round the X for making this episode possible. Stay tuned later in the episode for more info. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and you're listening to the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, where two times every single week, we talk to your favorite personalities in Bitcoin, art, music, politics, finance, sports, basically anyone with a good story to tell. This show is powered by Blockworks Group, a media company with over 20 podcasts in their network, and you can check them out at blockworksgroup.io. If you like the podcast and you follow me on Twitter, you need to check

out my website, join my newsletter, where I share all my trades, charts, analysis, markets, thoughts, and lessons on improving your trading and investing. You can check all that out at thewolfofallstreets.io. Now, today's guest is the author of a renowned book titled The Price of Tomorrow, Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future. Coming from a tech and entrepreneurial background, Jeff has noticed concerning trends in the economy that he believes to be both unsustainable and at odds with one another. I'm excited to learn more about his plans for the future of monetary policy, or at least what those plans should be if he was in control of the central bank. Jeff Booth, it's a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks for having me, Scott. So as I touched on in the intro, you have a tech background, a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit. Can you tell us about what you've done in the past and some of the technologies that you've worked on and are interested in? The technology that I've worked on is pretty broad. I started a company in 1999, a tech company called BuildDirect, and grew that to about a half a billion dollars, maybe just over that in US and market value, market cap. And then being on boards and helped entrepreneurs and quite a number of different technology companies. So I've been at the front seat of where technology is kind of eating the world for a long time.

And in that, just watched how fast things have been moving on technology. So I'll just kind of preface this with it's incredible what's happening in technology. There's still crazy opportunities for entrepreneurs and technology. It's just, if I said, that's not sustainable with the way the world is wired from a monetary policy. Can you explain a bit more deeply what you mean by that? So technology is inherently deflationary.

And when I say deflationary, it's deflationary on an exponential path. So technology removes labor. No single company, all the CEOs I would work with, are trying to make the world a better place by using technology to reduce price. But that comes at a cost to labor. Labor is removed and technology is moving, and that brings prices down. And that's a good thing for society.

It's a very good thing for society. In fact, every single monopoly around technology is created around you getting things for less, right? If you look at Google, you use it because it's free. If you look look at Google, you use it because it's free. If you look at Waze, you use it because it's free. If you look at Amazon, you use it because prices keep coming down, and then they add movies for free. If you look at your iPhone, everything on it is effectively free, right?

And so, and by the way, those free prices or those free things are with monetary policy as it exists today right so they should be way cheaper so your phone ice phone should be way cheaper but they're propped up against unnaturally printing of money so the natural course through history through technology is deflation that's that, right? That's what should be happening, and it should be happening everywhere. So if technology is riding the rails of exponential trends, we should be getting exponentially more for less along that same trend line. So it begs the question, why aren't we?

And because technology is up against today, a force that is almost equal in power until it's not, but monetary easing or debt creation and then monetary easing that is stopping prices from falling or as fast as they can. Inflation pegged by central banks that they need 2% inflation, otherwise the world collapses. And they're doing more and more bags of tricks to try to achieve that. It's actually causing the whole thing to accelerate faster. So we can go into that a little bit if you want, but that's what's happening. Sure. I think this begs the

question for anyone who might not understand it or have the background in it, because it's not something I think that your average person thinks about. What is their money, really? I mean, we're talking about monetary policy. We're talking about these sort of higher level concepts. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to what our money is and what purpose it serves, right? So maybe you can give a little background on monetary policy and how we got to this sort of debt-based inflationary environment. Well, so maybe I'll start with inflation and deflation because we grew up thinking emissions back, right? And so let's just look at those two concepts and say, it's not good or bad. It's good or bad for different people or different policies.

Right. Exactly. So inflation, all it is, is when your money is worth less and goods and services, especially goods and services go up in relation to your money. Right. Right. So if you want to know what money is, it's just a store of value that through time that you can buy more goods and services or less goods and services.

With inflation, you can buy less goods and services because that's that store of value on inflation is less. Right. So, so deflation is the opposite. Deflation is your, your goods and you can buy more with your money as prices come down.

So if you were just you and I were having a conversation in our lives and we said, oh, wow, wouldn't inflation be good because we could get more and more for less? That would be enough. Seems pretty obvious. So why do you think you use that? Why do you think you go and look for deals? Why do you think you gravitate as people to companies that are offering you more and more for less? It's natural. That's what we should be doing, right?

And that's how capitalism works. When entrepreneurs race into a system to create better value, they win, right? And so that's a natural course. So now on those two different pieces, inflation, you could say, is a hidden tax to society, right? So governments can't pay for all their services without hiding some of the taxes in inflation. Right. And so what they do is they inflate away their currencies because otherwise taxes would have to go way up to cover their services. Right.

But inflation actually is a hidden tax on most of society. Right. But inflation actually is a hidden tax on most of society. So it enriches some because if you have the assets and you drive inflation, those assets go up in price and you pay back the debt on your borrowing with cheaper money tomorrow because of the inflation. On deflation,lation is the exact opposite argument your currency value goes up and you buy goods and services for less so now where are we in this transition right so um one of the things i pointed out to in my book and it's predicted all of these events right it didn't predict covid predict COVID, but any, it just predicted

everything else. And the acceleration is, is if you looked at the natural thing into what's happening with technology, you would assume prices are coming down way more than they are right now, everywhere, right? That's where it would be natural. So the question, what has happened to stop that? And why isn't that happening? And pre-COVID, we had $250 trillion of global debt against an $80 trillion global economy. That was pre-COVID. Right.

And $185 trillion of that new debt was created over the last 20 years. Right. Right. So that leverage, that debt, isn't driving the same effect to economies. Debt isn't good or bad. It's debt that can't be paid back is really bad. Right. back is really bad. So if you have to create essentially $4 of new debt for every dollar of growth, and it gets worse and worse and worse, everybody realizes that you can't pay

back that debt. Of course. Right. And so that's when what's happening today is the rules are changing to not pay back the debt, right? To solve debt problems with more debt, right? To try to create inflation at any cost because central banks missed that this was a structural change to society, that deflation could be a really good thing. And they went all in on creating more and more debt leverage. And now they're trying to solve that same problem by creating more and more debt to leverage. And now they're trying to solve that same problem by creating more and more debt and leverage.

Because if you allow deflation to happen now, you have a depression. Asset prices, if governments stopped doing what they're doing right now, and let's argue both sides of this. Right, please. If governments stopped doing right now, and you're seeing today in what's happening in the U.S.

and as policy isn't allowing this next level of stimulus, you're seeing cracks in the market. That unwind without more stimulus, and actually without exponentially more stimulus, that unwind would take asset prices down by 80% or 90% across the board. House prices, a lot of people say, oh, housing is a great store of value, and it is against this deflationary. But they don't ask, what would my house be worth if in the last 20 years there wasn't $185 trillion of additional stimulus? Right? They don't ask, what would prices look like if there was a normal policy,

right, around. So you have a Ponzi scheme on one side, right, of more and more debt creation, more money printing. And people can make a lot of money in Ponzi schemes if you're out at the right time, right? If you're in the right assets, you can make money in a Ponzi scheme. So you have on one side of this, governments have two choices, central banks have two choices. Depression, to clear this.

And if they love depression, you reset debts and everything else. You wipe out the debts wiped out. You go through a multi-year depression. And banks fail. It's so ugly for society. Because the problem is so big now. So I suspect they're not going to allow that. I suspect that they're going to try everything to create inflation.

They've openly stated now that 2% is no longer the goal and they're going to play the experiment of allowing it to rise beyond 2% and see what happens. So where it was sort of this hidden policy, as you touched on before, now it's kind of coming out in the open that, hey, we need inflation and we're going to push it, right? Yeah, but now let's go a little deeper into that piece because a lot of people, this debate rages and everything else and say, when are we going to

get inflation and deflation? When? And this is just a time. So I can't predict exactly what policymakers will do. I can just say what the probabilities look like. And so if central banks use kind of what the Fed does today, Powell could say all day long he's going to create inflation. He has no ability to right now. Of course. Because by pushing through bank, if banks won't lend to the economy, right, and there's not a good enough economy,

and there's not a good enough economy because of the very thing that central banks are doing, right, then that will never get into the hands of enough people to create inflation. In fact, what they're doing is actually driving asset prices higher because it gets into the banking system. It's a direct injection into companies like Facebook, Google, as a store of value. It's a direct

injection into housing, real estate prices as a store of value, Bitcoin, gold. And very little of that is getting into the economy, right? Because people know what's coming next. So they're putting it in stores of value. And let me go. So that's going to change. So that will change, but it hasn't changed yet. And it's not just the Fed, it's global. Every country is doing the same thing. So that is actually more disinflationary in principle, because what ends up happening is to pay that back. If you assume it has to be paid back, taxes must go up on all of these things that destroy the economy for further. In fact, you're stopping the natural forces of capitalism from working and

entrepreneurial talent from, uh, from, from a free market from existing. And you're putting all power in the government by, by doing that. So I'll give you an example. So real estate prices were on zoom right now instead of meeting.

Right. And, and, and, and so are many companies. And, and I'll go a little deeper in a lot of main companies, especially technology companies,

are saying work from home forever. Yeah, this is it. This is it. So, by the way, that's step one. Step two to that equation is if you can work from home, and I'm a CEO of a company, wouldn't I hire the cheapest, the best talent, cheapest labor anywhere in the globe instead of just in the U.S.? Why pay New York City salaries to an employee in Bangladesh, right?

I mean, it doesn't make sense. Isn't that more deflation, right? So think about what's happening. So in other words, way more jobs are coming out of society than Eddie Payne knows. Staggering amount. And we're making it happen faster and faster. But that also means that real estate prices are way too high, right? Because 50% of the real estate,

if 50% of the people aren't in the real estate in the towers, then you think that the commercial real estate has to fall by that, and a lot of restaurants will close, and a lot of everything else will close as a result of that. But if that happened, then a lot of the commercial loans against that and the bond funds and everything else that hold their paper against that, including the banks, they also fail. So 2008, 2009.

I mean, it's a complete repeat of the same cycle. We've learned nothing. Exactly. So what does the government do? They prop up those asset prices by doing what they're doing and by propping up the asset prices they hold prices unnaturally high right and then there's a whole bunch of society that can't pay for those prices being high the system can't entrepreneurs can't pay for that they can't start business everything else or or in the real estate too and in residential real estate those assets prices are high

there's a whole bunch of society that cannot pay for the prices that you pay paid for and their food and housing and medical care is going way up and then it's not like their salaries are rising right i mean they have either the same or less money, arguably, to pay for more expensive goods, so they're effectively priced out of everything. Because the central is trying to create inflation, making their salaries less, and they live in a competitive

environment of what we just talked about, where salaries are going down or neutral as that competition comes in, or the companies are replacing that labor with technology. And then what would you do if you can't pay your bills and everything else, and you can't pay your food and housing and everything else, and it keeps going

higher and higher? Wouldn't it be natural if you were on the other side of that equation that you would say i need to vote the government in that gives me free money right of course so so by distorting capitalism and the free market economy you get socialism and you get a rise of socialism and this is predictable, an ebb and flow throughout history, like a clock ticking back and forth on a pendulum. This is a predictable consequence. And then essentially all of those roads lead to the biggest thug being in power and changing rules. So if you look at communists, if you look at Russia, if you look at China,

if you look at Saudi Arabia and everything else, power is controlled. That's the path, by the way, on both political parties in the U.S. That's the path that you're on. Because as you centralize power... It's not party-specific at all.

I mean, it's the very nature of the beast at this point. Both parties have no ability to stop what's coming. Right. Zero. And they're both, and one party is saying, oh, it's capitalism and everything else, and it's not capitalism.

Right. And the other party is a response to that. It's driving more socialism. Both parties have no idea what's going on underneath this that could provide abundance to society. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy.

And so the political discourse on both sides of this and people moving into silos, yelling at each other when it's a perfectly predictable consequence of monetary policy underneath on a structural change, it blows my mind. It's funny because we have extremely rich people literally moving into silos. I mean, you see them for sale like literal missile silos, you know, bunkers being sold all over the world to the wealthiest people for, you know, for when the world completely melts down. Yeah. And because if you just carry this forward, and that's what I talked about in the book a lot. And actually funny, COVID just accelerated everything I talked in the book. Yeah, it was already there.

It was already there. But the next response and after that, this is really predictable throughout history. You see it all the time throughout history. So I know this is a Bitcoin podcast, and I didn't talk specifically in my book about Bitcoin until the end. But that's actually what, because I wanted to understand this from a first principles basis. What are the options? Why are people making these decisions? What's likely to happen next? And then a response to that, what's likely to happen? And today, the beautiful thing about bitcoin is it provides i would say a life raft away from that's from from uh from what's happening and i can opt out and that life raft is i suspect is going to be incredibly important i am begging in my mind to uh to get

i think it's it's completely irresponsible to not have someone in your portfolio. Thank you. Thank you. I agree 100%. Even if it's 1%, 2%, 5%, the fact that that could be the only thing you have left that's worth anything down the road makes it a worthwhile hedge. And that it's idiosyncratic and obviously has its own value and risk that's a different risk profile than every other asset basically that you can own i've said this on a couple other podcasts but this is so so if you look throughout history right um why don't people move from their country when they see this coming Because they don't see it coming. Many do. Normalcy bias, though, right. I would actually argue that in one more republic with wheelbarrows full of money. Right, yeah. How could you not at that point? And even before that, and the rise of tensions, right? Before Hitler was elected, you could see the rise of tensions,

you could see the breaking of society. You could see it coming for a long time, right? Right. You can see it coming in the U.S. right now. For a long time, yeah. You can see it getting worse and worse. And these signposts that you're seeing are all connected to something else. People are looking at the signposts and saying, wow, can you believe that person did that and it's getting worse,

or that group of people did that. If you look back to what it's connected for, this is super easy to see what's going to happen next and after that. Really predictable, really predictable throughout history. So why don't people move? And in the past, it's because all their wealth was concentrated in a country. Their real estate was concentrated in that country, real estate wealth.

Their business wealth was in. It was all denominated in that currency, and they couldn't move it. And so what they would do is they would buy a citadel, they'd try to do it, and everything else. And they'd try to get political power and everything else and be concentrated. And they couldn't get it.

And getting out without the currency was like being in a refugee in another country. And so they would long for the time that it'll change instead of getting worse and worse and worse. There we are. And, and, and that's where we are right now,

right there. We're, we're, we're there right now. And I suspect that on both political parties, they're not going to change. I wish they would. I wish we could have a real debate about the core principle

instead of what's happening now, which is just a song and dance and media show. Because then really great minds could, how do we work to cause abundance and a great solution? But that doesn't seem to be happening. And so Bitcoin, if you just go where Bitcoin goes out of this, you can remember your passwords and move anywhere. You can take your wealth with you wherever you go. And so it's a lifeboat to what's going to happen.

That's interesting. You talked about why people don't leave their country and the implication there is like, why don't wealthy people leave their country, right? Like I've got all this money, it's coming, my net worth is going to be devalued, it's going to disappear, I need to move. Interestingly, with Bitcoin, that's an argument for the wealthy, but also for the poor, right? You see refugees at the border all the time paying whatever they have left, their mom's ring, their dad's heirloom watch and handing over their luggage and leaving, bribing the border officials to get across with nothing left. And if you have your seed phrases in your mind, that doesn't happen with Bitcoin. So it's really a solution at every single level from the poorest to the wealthiest.

And you see that too, Bitcoin in black America. I had him on the show. Yeah. And so when you start to see different people, this could be the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever seen to the middle class and poor, like without revolution, to the middle class and poor, because they can make the same vote right now.

That vote being buy Bitcoin and opt out of the system. Exactly, opt out of the system. So you obviously teed it up earlier. We know what the problem is. We have seen the future in the past, right? I mean, this is a repeating cycle. It's no mystery as to what's likely to happen. So you obviously have ideas as to what the solution is. Yeah. And I looked at all of the solutions. And, I was hopeful, very hopeful when I wrote the book.

Now, remember, I wrote the book in 2000, beginning part of 2019, and I published it in early 2020, just before kind of this all happened. So when I wrote the book, I was hopeful that there could be policy, that you'd move policy and have a gradual unwind, and that you could move policy and have a gradual unwind and that you could save or you save currencies. I no longer believe that that can happen. I wish,

I wish I did. But, but we've just made the problem exponentially worse, right? Governments have to, there's two choices. Default on currency through default. Both are default, default depression, default on currency through uh default uh both are default uh default uh depression default on

debt um drive hyperinflation default on currency there's there's only two choices from here and both those choices have profound consequences for how society looks today and a creation of new money. But if you look out past that, if you look at what I talked about in the book, why are we fighting so hard against gravity? Why are we forcing concentration of wealth through crazy policy and leaving society out because the natural order of things through technology is is we why do you use technology because you save time right and and your time is the most valuable thing in your life and um and and so technology if you let natural forces happen, distribute that abundance through the technology game

to society in general, a mass-driven society, you would have that abundance everywhere. People think economics is about value. Economics is about scarcity. And technology is opposite. It creates abundance. So as technology, it's going to remove the jobs anyways, right? And so as technology automates things,

instead of thinking I need to work more to pay for artificially rising prices that aren't natural, right? They're artificial. And I need to work longer and longer and harder to keep up with prices. And I need better paying jobs to do that when we know that that can't happen. Right. And so you're going to drive a whole bunch of system. So you're going to concentrate wealth through that.

And you're going to, you're going to drive revolution through that. Why wouldn't you just, as the jobs came out, drive prices down lower and lower and lower. So we would free the most important thing that we have is a time. Time. Time.

And if you look at hard money, if you look at everything else, it forces governments to allow the natural course, which technology would create abundance. Technology would create abundance for us all would look a lot more like star trek than it does terminator yeah and that's what would that's interesting so does the answer that i mean but what happens to all these people when they start losing their jobs and technology takes over. We obviously have like the gang, you know, universal basic income concept, which is just send everybody helicopter money.

Yeah. That could be further inflationary. Yeah. But let's, let's go into that. And just from a first principles basis. And I would love to have this debate with him, Kelton, anybody who believes that that is like, look through history. You can't create money.

And so I don't, but I understand these aren't bad people. They're putting a socialism fix on their bigger government, more control of government fix on a problem that can't be solved there, because they do care about the same thing. They just have the wrong solution. And so it's not they're bad people. They're just stuck in a framework that says, and a whole bunch of people, it's easy to say, oh, wow, if I don't have to pay, well, I need more money. I'll take more money without the consequence of wait i'm taking more money i'm taking what the government says they're going to give me is a tiny little

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wallet balance of $200 or more. Visit celsius.network, that's C-E-L-S-I-U-S.network, and use promo code WOLF, W-O-L-F. Right. And to that end, we talk about, and we've talked about here, the idea that prices continue to rise and that's inflation. But really, I mean, what people need to understand, that's not really what's happening. What's happening is your money's worth less, right? It's relative to your money. So, like, you can watch the rise of the stock market, but if you peg that against Bitcoin or gold instead of against the dollar, the stock market's not quite as impressive as it looks, right? Right.

You could argue that stocks are rising is not really the case, but in reality, the dollar is dropping, correct? So that's it. MMT, all of these proposals, just essentially centralize more power in government. And what created the problem, central banks and government, what created the problem, and essentially, we're going to have way more higher prices, we're going to create higher prices, and we're going to give you a little bit of that money to pay for the higher prices. And then the more you do that, the more you centralize. And when I said it looks like the biggest thug, you could hope in that case for enlightened leaders

that you're going to give all your power to. Now it happens. It never happens. Once you control a society, history shows it never what happens once you control a society and it's uh it just never history shows it never happens so um so well i again i'm happy to debate the first principle it's not bad people is uh the in a in an environment and a political politicized environment like this a lot of people say those socialists those communists and everything else. And on the very other side, not realize that they're saying the same thing about how capitalism works today.

I mean, yeah. And it's not a political statement at all, because like you said, you seeail it for the people in power who are seeing stocks go up and they're, you know, wealthy and they're being given bailouts and their corporate bonds are being purchased by the government. And then those are the same, very same people who are criticizing socialism when it's just corporate socialism. So socialism, that's, it's like, those in power believe socialism only applies to poor people. Totally. Right?

But rich people are the ones who are actually the benefactors of socialism in this country. And here's one thing I would say. I am blown away. The amount of... I've been blessed by what's happening on the book, right? The, the, this is getting into some major circles. Good timing. And, and, and so some of this stuff that's coming to me is staggering from some of those

same, some of those same circles. But I am, I'm blown away that way more of the billionaire class hasn't come in and said, this is what's because a bunch of that billionaire class has created, created actually out of the technology advancements that I'm talking about. They, they have to know better. Right. And, and they are actually the most at risk of if the system as a system fails, because if you keep driving it along this axis, their money will be vapor. Yeah. most at risk of if this system fails, because if you keep driving it along this axis,

their money will be vapor. Yeah. Not just their money. They'll be able to get out into Bitcoin and other stuff as well, but you won't be able to stop the march of pitchforks coming for them. Right. That's how things reset. And so,

so if anybody should care a lot about this, it should be the wealthy that look over the fence and say, a society doesn't function well, doesn't function at all, unless you have equitable rules in that society. I mean, like feudal lords and their castles. It's not very, I mean, you can go back thousands and thousands and thousands of years and the example never changes. So presumably then we need to let technology advance and do its job and free up more time. But how does that affect the average person if they lose their job as a result?

You know, what's the answer for them? So this is the hardest thing to comprehend, right? And there might need to be a transition and whether it's EBI, whether it's something. There might need to be some sort of transition, right, to how do we allow society to make this transition? Because that transition could be abrupt and dislocation everywhere. Just imagine, just do a thought experiment and say Bitcoin wins today. It's a million dollars a coin today right global reserve currency whatever right the whole narrative and and say can you imagine society in that nobody would have it and we'd be living mad max i mean we

would literally be yeah it would be so so even though a bunch of bitcoiners and everything else want this to go up really fast. I talk about this all the time. Yeah, we don't want this. We want this to go slower, and we want more people to have this. We want governments to understand it, embrace it, and drive adoption to it.

I'd rather have half as much worth twice as much, for sure, with more people having exposure. More people having exposure yeah more people having exposure and some of the the structures that provide a good life underneath it right because if it if it happened really fast now it'd be just a complete chaos at the end of the world i mean it really would yeah so um but but again if you're sort of going back to your point on what if you just let it happen. So let's say that, so the risk on the person today losing their job is they know prices are going up. That when I fall off this ladder, this crazy ladder, I drop to the, I don't know, I can't feed my family. I can't do anything else. The risk on a deflationary path, it would fall...

Imagine housing at one-tenth the value. All of the things you buy today at one-tenth the value. I use this example often, but the air you breathe is abundant. You can't press it. You get it for free. That's what technology creates everywhere, everywhere. And some things will still cost money as entrepreneurs race

into those opportunities to drive them down, right? And more and more of society will get thing the technology will be like air right yes there will be pockets of opportunity there's tons of opportunity in markets today but if you let the natural forces thing your flashlight app on your phone you don't pay for your camera on your phone you don't pay for your my guitar phone, you don't pay for. Your camera on your phone, you don't pay for. My guitar tuner, I don't pay for. And people think, oh, that's because Google or Apple subsidizes it. It's not.

It's because the technology to write that code costs nothing. It distributes across the world for zero. And so more and more of those things, not just in technology, but technology is a base layer in everything else. More and more of those things are going to happen. And if we could let that happen, and we could share the abundance that comes from technology, and capitalism would work perfectly. Entrepreneurs seeking opportunities to provide better value, if they're right, would drive along that axis

debt would work perfectly in that savings at first would be way more important and then my savings if i could get a return on my savings by betting on an entrepreneur and looking at okay you're doing this and it's going to deflate over time but you can create a big business and in doing that i would invest in that entrepreneur just the same as I would today. It would work perfectly. Stopping that, there is no, I don't see another alternative. You can't stop, yeah. It won't be stopped, right? So you only warp society by trying to stop it, and we're really warping society.

So the idea being that technology frees up so much time and the price of goods drops so dramatically that you don't really need a high paying job. If any, you can do something and be able to afford your life and live a better life with much lower prices and much more time on your hands. Renaissance, art, a whole bunch of things frees up your time instead of being on a hamster wheel to try to save enough money to retire the last 10 years of your life in relative comfort before that money is destroyed it just looks opposite it's really hard to comprehend because we've been conditioned our brains grew up then so they're wired for this other world so when i say this to some people they go no no no because they go back to the way their brains are wired. Right.

But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what central bankers want. I wanted a red bike for Christmas when I was seven, and I didn't get it. They can't stop this from happening. In the long run, short term, they can change the rules. You can, instead of the central banks, they can short term, they can change the rules. You can instead of the central banks, they can make the treasury de facto and you can print helicopter money to drive hyperinflation. But long term, we are going to have a deflationary world

because technology is a bigger force than the abuse of money. What's interesting is that, you know, your average Bitcoiner certainly like maximalist has always had the like dollar will hyperinflate. My Bitcoin will be worth something. That's the future, right? Dollar is going to hyperinflate. Dollar is going to hyperinflate. And it gives you this assumption that that's the fear of the Fed and the central banks.

But they're much more scared of deflation than they are of inflation, correct? Why is that if this is so superior? Because it's not for them. But the entire system collapses. Banks collapse. If you said that, I don't want to say these are bad people, but the entire system under which they've built the temple on the hill collapses entirely if they allow deflation. And so it doesn't look good, right? These are two choices and the probabilities are there. So it would be hard in a political environment like this to say, for a central bank to retain authority,

to say, we're going to let the natural clearing functions of capitalism, Schumpeter's law of creative destruction, happen. Because there's consequences because they didn't let it happen in 2008 and they didn't let it happen in 2000. They've made the debt bubble. So the debt bubble of all bubbles, the consequences are so profound for the world.

It'd be really hard to be on your watch and say, OK, we're going to let the banking system fail. That means they're just kicking the can, right? Well, eventually it's pop and they just don't want to be the one who's standing there holding the bag when it does. It's failure by a different route. That's what it is. Again, this is failing no matter what. Right. But the deflation, even if there was a seamless path to it, which we all know that there isn't,

but if this abundant future, if you could lay out a direct path with not that much pain, they still wouldn't want it because it's the very thing that threatens the core of their power and the entire system as a whole Right. I mean, yeah Deflation is the end of central banks. It's the end of it's the it's the end of the wealthiest people It's the end of this kleptocracy that we have and all the corporate socialism that we've talked about because it really Democratizes money and for the people. Yeah we've talked about because it really democratizes money for the people. Yeah. I would say...

They want that. Yeah. But if you look through history and everything else, and you just... Again, I can argue all sides of this. Of course. You have to. But capitalism isn't perfect either.

Like a free market... To say we're all equal, we're not all equal. We have very different skills. And in certain times in the capitalist world, like a total free market, those skills are valued by the market differently. And that creates inequality. Left unchecked, capitalism also creates an inequality that concentrates wealth and power and everything

else so so so it's just if you looked at a free market because there's only two ways to organize labor and capital at this scale right free market or socialism and and anything and and so so those are the kind of two ends of the scale. And in that free market, there needs, I do believe, there needs to be checks and balances against the pure capital free market so that you could provide a transition for societies to thrive. Well, we don't have, I mean, nothing we have right now even is reminiscent of a free, like people love to say that the United States is a free market, that capitalism thrives,

but we have neither of those things, right? It doesn't look anything like that. And then so all roads lead to the biggest thug in power, right? Changing of laws to create, to concentrate more power and more wealth. That's what it all does. What's the last society that we can point at or any society on earth that you

would actually define as a free market? Well, so, so if you think about what the U S look like for, for a lot of, uh, it looked like a free market, what produced the wealth and what produced the meaningful rise of the U S it looked like a free market. We're talking about a long time ago. Yeah, but what's happened, same thing as what's happening on the exponential curve of technology wanting to change this.

What's happening is exponentially the debt and the monetization of the debt is making it worse and worse. So how it feels today is so far away from what it felt in the 70s. And it slowly got worse. And now it's getting worse at a scale that is hard to comprehend. But what drove a prospering middle class, what drove the highest innovation... We don't have a middle class. Right. Yeah.

But what drove that for uh for generations that it is mostly a free market economy yes it was yes there was going off the gold reserve change that um and and it happened slowly slowly so and so it almost doesn't look it's not you can't even comprehend that well talk about talk, you just talked about going off the gold standard, which I always find a very interesting conversation. So we obviously went to this debt-based fiat. What was the compulsion behind that decision? What motivated that?

So, and I talk about this in the book too, but it's just game theory, right? So people, Keynes would not be an advocate of what's happening today. Clearly. And so he proposed a Bancor on a unit instead of the U.S. dollar tied to gold because he knew that if the U.S. currency was tied to gold, eventually they would go off the gold standard. And what they did is effectively they couldn't pay their bills.

Taxes were really high at that time. I think they were 90%. Yeah, 90% for the wealthiest at some point. 92% it topped out or something. And they couldn't inflate away, and they couldn't take taxes up anymore. So they, so they took their problem and they exported it to the world.

Right. And now that gave them control of a fiat currency that they could manipulate at will. And if you look at what happened to, it started slowly, right. Started. So,

and it just got progressively worse. And every country's response, every country's response to that is do the same thing. So now you have competitive devaluations of currencies all around. And how do you trade with somebody if you can't trust their currency? And so then you have trade tariffs coming in

and all of it is a function of not having sound money. Right. I mean, our government, I think it's pretty clear. I mean, our president has said he wants a weaker dollar to be able to compete. And then China wants a weaker dollar too. And then Euro wants a weaker dollar too. So it's just a competitive value.

And all of that's going into like, how do you trade? If you had your own economy and you didn't have to trade, you didn't have to buy raw too. So it's just a competitive value. And all of that's going into like, how do you trade? How do you trade? If you had your own economy and you didn't have to trade, you didn't have to buy raw materials from other countries or anything else. That was completely self-contained. I don't know. Maybe you could get away with it. If you could, if you could trick your society for long enough. You could argue that, that money is certainly this structure of money was created in a world where you didn't really

have to worry about the rest of the world. Right. Right. I mean, these were national currencies pre-real globalism before we had multinational corporations all over the world, before we were trading at this level, before everything we used was being made in foreign countries and things like that. So maybe as, you know, I guess, playing devil's advocate, these currencies could work if it was very insular and very within your own borders, right? I mean... And again, you know, history doesn't exactly repeat. It rhymes, but it doesn't repeat. We are living in... So what's happening today in technology? Just keep coming back to that. And I'd encourage your viewers to keep coming back to that. If they knew what's happening and how this AI is moving,

if they knew it's borderless, it doesn't care, right? It doesn't, I was, here's a crazy irony. I'm on, I'm on with the House of Commons in Canada, their finance committee, all the politicians in Canada presenting what's happening and everything else. And we're using Zoom. And there isn't one job in Canada on Zoom. And they can't understand what's happening.

And that mobility of labor to be able to create the best platforms is completely borderless. No government's going to stop it. Right. And it's getting increasingly so over and over and over again. And it's going to move, not just from what we're looking at now. If you saw some of the stuff that's on the radar, if you saw some of the stuff that I'm very involved in now, it's not widely distributed yet.

People don't know about it yet. They just see glimpses. But if you saw some of the stuff that's coming, you just go, there is no possible way that net-net, there's way more jobs in the globe with what's coming.

There's no possible way. Yeah, I had recently, very recently, I put out an episode with Humayun Sheikh, who's the CEO of Fetch AI. I had recently, very recently, I put out an episode with Humayun Sheikh, who's the CEO of Fetch AI. And he was, you know, one of the leaders

on DeepMind, you know, which sold to Google and everything. He definitely got my wheels turning and put this in perspective for me, how much AI is going to, I mean, machine learning, AI, these things are going

to control everything. I mean, you're not, you know, we were joking about me telling my daughter that she's never going to drive a car whenever she asks because she's five. I mean, it's just the future is, I think it's clear that technology is the future and that, you know, most can we can have this conversation and then we can go back to say saying okay well how do i get the biggest highest paying job in a world that looks like that and if you just zoom up a level that's what's happening all over the world right because and we're forcing that to happen because of a inextricable, we have to have prices rising all the time. So that we have to have more jobs and we have to have ever higher paying jobs when it's actually

not the order of things. It's not the natural order of things. It's the opposite to the natural order of things. It really is. Yeah, it really is. So we've obviously, let's get into the solutions. We've talked about for your average person, talking about the solutions for the government, obviously we've gone there, but Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin, right? That's one obvious solution. It's an obvious hedge. Even if you can only buy a little, you know, your downside risk to buying a little is very low. Your upside potential is tremendous. What else can we do? Yeah, so where I would place my bets right now is

Ralph Hall said he's irresponsibly long bit claim. I am too. Me too. But I would say I would also have some in cash, even though that I know that the likelihood, the high likelihood is governments are going to destroy their currencies. If we have any misses in policy and we go to a deflationary spiral,

that cash will be worth having. So I would say, and US dollar, people think it's going to fail tomorrow. It's not going to fail tomorrow. It's not happening. It's the world's reserve currency. By the way, when you say cash, do you mean literal cash in a bank or mattress, or do you trust your bank to be holding that cash for you? Because if the bank fails and there's a run on the bank, your cash is not, I mean, your cash right now that's in a bank is being lended and is not sitting in the bank anyways, right? Yeah. So as I understand, the banks in Canada are way stronger as far as... So it depends on what bank. And Canada wouldn't be strong if it wasn't.

But I would be careful what bank. Some actual cash on hand. Because if it was was depression then you could buy assets for pennies on the dollar yeah of course that that's where the real wealth is created right the people who actually have cash during a depression during a deflationary environment and and so and then uh tech companies are a really good store of value against this because because they're constant consolidating wealth faster as a value against this because they're consolidating wealth faster as a result of this.

Anyone who's listening to this, look up network effects, explore network effects. Network effects are 70% of the value of most technology companies and they get stronger and stronger and stronger, really hard to break. Actually, Bitcoin,

the whole internet is a network effect. Bitcoin is a network effect early in its days, so that's why it has such potential crazy value. But look up, explore what the network effect really is. And for me personally, I get to construct companies, and I get to work with incredible founders. So for me personally, in technology, there's crazy wealth that's being created in technology. It's staggering because if you understand how to construct these and you have people that are working with you on them,

you create that wealth by, by positively impacting humanity at a, at a really great scale. Right. Your average person isn't doing that. So, I mean, maybe your average person spends their life savings on one share of

Amazon. So, you know, it's still, unfortunately, and I think this is a pattern that has been, and will be repeated forever. The little guy is going to get screwed no matter what. Right. Well, I don't know. So, you know, it's still, unfortunately, and I think this is a pattern that has been and will be repeated forever. The little guy is going to get screwed no matter what, right?

Well, I don't know. So what does an entrepreneur do? And this ties into an investment thesis, too. What does an entrepreneur do? What did I do to gain my wealth, right? I had an idea that could help people and i went all in and when you do that when you're concentrating all of your time all of your everything all of your resources into one thing i've sold my house into that thing i everything into that one thing if you're right and you do

and that's why capitalism is such a it's it, it's, it's incredible in that regard. Yes. But, but, but it, but it's, it's, it's most people fail, right? And you, they go to zero and it, and that, that competitive environment about competing with the entire world and trying to, trying to win a part of the market and that market to only way to win is to actually create value for other people is actually what the, and it's, it's hard. It changes you. The person who started the company looks totally,

I was a totally different person. The learning, the whatever you have. And so if you're lucky, if you do that job well, then you concentrate wealth. And it's all in one thing. And what does that person do that minute? They diversify. Yeah, of course.

Because it's too much risk to be able to concentrate. So what is a derivative of that? Going all into something is concentrating your energy, time, resources, and it is high risk, high reward right so if somebody wanted to have high risk high reward go all in bitcoin go all in um i personally wouldn't do that but i'm in a different spot than uh then you don't have to i don't have to and so how do you protect different conversation how do you protect wealth? It's a different conversation. How do you protect wealth? Diversify.

That's not how you get it. That's not how you get it. And so it's really important for your viewers, your people listening to this, to understand that, what they're doing. Because I don't suspect this is any probability, any possibility from where we are now. But if Bitcoin went to zero, it wouldn't hurt me.

But if you were all in, it might hurt you. But if you're younger and you want to learn, bigger than all of those things. Age. But bigger than all of those things against what created everything for me and i'm talking my family life my friends everything around and and wasn't specifically the entrepreneurial journey it's what it did to me to understand everything else it was my curiosity it was my learning it was when i say time is your most valuable asset, it's where are you putting your time into hopefully impacting other people's lives that if you do that really well, you win on all scales, right?

Because it forces that learning for you to continually do that, and that learning is the most valuable thing in your life. I mean, I talk about that all the time people think i'm corny that i am heartbreak on a point but i always say that the only reason to have money is to buy time not to buy things right so it's so it so it doesn't and when you really understand what that looks what what that looks like um is uh and, and even more valuable than, it's not, the most valuable is when you feel like you make a difference in other people's lives.

When you show up and the most valuable thing, like counting dollars at the end of the day, what is that worth? What is it? Uh, the, um, it's hollow. If you just have like, what, what amount of money is enough, right. As some sort of endless, I mean, it's the golden handcuffs, you know, you, uh, get the a hundred thousand dollar apartment out of college when you get your investment banking job, but then you want the $500,000 apartment. So you need the job that pays 10 times more than you scale up everything.

And eventually you're a slave to earning more, no matter how much you have. You're on a mouse wheel. I used to say this to a young president's organization, to other people who couldn't see this and why they were doing this. I said, you say that your value, your family is most important. I said, open your calendar. And their calendar blocked

everything, business and everything else. And, and you can, it's easy to tell us a lie, right? Tell ourselves a lie that we're all doing it for somebody else, but it feels really good in business when, when everybody says you're great and everything else to go all there. And, and, and then you wonder why your family is breaking, right? And that is breaking because you're not being truthful with yourself on where your time's going. That's true. And they know it and you know it, but you don't, you end up getting on this mouse wheel and forgetting those things. So it is about time. It's about time impacting the people that you care about the most. It's interesting. So many things you've said echo, you know, my own thoughts and sort of the things

that I attempt to preach often less eloquently that you've done it than you've done it. But like the one thing we kind of just touched on is age also plays a huge factor because like you said, you know, if you, if Bitcoin goes to zero, you'll be fine. I mean, if Bitcoin goes to zero, I'll be fine as well. I wouldn't be happy, but my life would go on. But if you're all in when you're 70 on something versus all in when you're 20, it's a very different conversation as well, right? So this ties back to a couple of things we said about before. And so if you're all in on a currency and all your stuff is in one currency denominated and you're 70, that's a huge risk.

Yeah. It's a huge risk. But people don't know they're all in on one asset class because. Because they don't understand systematic risk. They don't understand that literally everything they own goes down together. Exactly. Yeah. It hasn't been long. We have examples.

If you were retiring in 2008 and then you couldn't retire but also didn't have a job, we've seen this. We've seen people lose everything that they thought they had saved in safe investments for their entire life. Here we are again. Lebanon today, Venezuela today. This happens all over the world and people that think that they're safe are now on the street, right? And that can happen anywhere and it can happen. By the way, it's going to happen.

It's just a matter of time. It's the cycle. Yeah, it's the cycle. So we should buy Bitcoin, save some dollars and invest in technology. I would say. I think that's a good way to end it. So where can everybody keep up with you after this and follow your journey? Twitter is probably best, Jeff Booth.

I do these podcasts for the same reason. The Twitter is probably best at Jeff Booth. And I just, I do these podcasts for the same reason. The book sales, it doesn't matter. The book sales actually I care about because I care about a whole bunch more people understanding what's happening. It's the impact, not the money. Of course.

I don't need to. So, so I do these just to, so hopefully more people are saying the same reason you do them. Right. So hopefully more, more people can understand what's going on and they can make their own choices and to help help help protecting themselves and their family. It's hard though. I think we, we, you know, we all preach it.

And I think that we do it, you know, but it's just so hard to change those deeply ingrained feelings and thoughts that people have about money and society and the things that are truly important. I get caught in the trap too. I mean, it's not like I don't buy stuff, but it is really a very hard message to deliver. But maybe if people hear it a hundred times on different podcasts, eventually they'll start to truly... what ends up happening is one of these things we've said today will grab somebody and and that person will want to think deeper about this and and maybe question some of the things they learned and and and that's what's happening with the book that's

what's happening it's. It's been amazing. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine the feeling of having that level of impact. It's something I think everyone can certainly aspire to. I mean, that's how we all, that's how almost everybody who like deeply believes in Bitcoin, we all got there sort of in that way, right? There was some spark. I came because I was a trader and I wanted to make dollars, you know what I mean? But then somewhere along the line, I was like, this is actually important. This makes a difference. And I think that that's what happens when you see the value of your portfolio go down like 70 or 80 percent.

You actually start to think about what you're investing in. Right. So what you just said, the amount of people, the number of people in this community, in the Bitcoin community. Yes, there's some hard edge there's the one that that it's all against other people but i would say that by and large the the amount of people in this community that really just are unbelievable people looking at first principles it's been it's, I've met some just awesome people through this adventure. It's just been probably, I would say that writing the book, that's actually been the best, best

outcome. So all of the people that I've met, uh, through the adventure and this, it's just been, it's been fantastic. Yeah. I say the same thing about the podcast is people are like, why'd you start a podcast? I said, because BlockWorks group of producers came to me and said, hey, do you want to do a podcast? And I was like, yeah, why not? It wasn't some great thing. But the real benefit of it is that I get to sit for an hour with people like you and learn about something that I'm not a master at.

It's like I'm getting paid to get a college education. It's a really incredible thing. So thank you so much for your time. I know we got to go. I really do appreciate it. And I'll be keeping up and I have to say that you made me think about a lot of things that even, you know, send me deeper down my own rabbit holes, I think. So I really do appreciate that.