We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC174: Is Bitcoin Property, Currency, or Both? w/ Parker Lewis & Will Cole (Bitcoin Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey, everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On today's show, I have Will Cole and Parker Lewis on to talk about some of the more interesting things happening from a payments processing standpoint. We start the show off talking about billionaire Bill Ackman's recent comments on Bitcoin, what he might be missing. We also discuss Michael Saylor's comments on Bitcoin being more of a property as opposed to a medium of exchange and much, much more.

Starting point is 00:00:27 This is one you will not want to miss from two. of the most thoughtful people in the space. So with that, here's my interview with Will and Parker. Celebrating 10 years. You are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. I'm sitting here with Parker Lewis, Will Cole. Guys, I'm so thrilled to have this conversation and just dive into all things Bitcoin. Thanks, Preston. Glad to be here. Yeah, I was good to see you on the Slash. a couple days ago and we turned right back around, no days off.

Starting point is 00:01:14 Did Parker tell you he saved my bacon? I did not hear. It was really easy that helped get pressing his son down the mountain. I mean, they were doing great, but his son just needed a little bit of a boost. Let's just say it wasn't one of my finer moments, Will. It was getting a little dicey, a little disastrous on my side. And Parker luckily was behind me and I didn't know he was there. And he came up and just kind of rescued us a little bit.

Starting point is 00:01:48 So, yeah. I'm like, all right. Let's get the skis on. Let's go. Well, what was all it took? You know, that's my home mountain. Oh, yeah. I had to cancel last minute, but the FOMO was there.

Starting point is 00:01:59 It's not an easy mountain. It's a very difficult mountain. No, it's super challenging. Yeah. Devert. All right. So I'm going to start this off in a very weird spot. Have you guys seen this NFTnick.

Starting point is 00:02:08 dot-eith guy that he's like be rich and just like the scammers are coming back in full force and just it's getting weird. And we just destroyed a couple of my brain cells. I don't think so. They'll tell us about him. Will, have you seen this on Twitter? Oh, I have seen him. I was, you know, scrolling through at night.

Starting point is 00:02:28 I thought he was like a rapper or something. And then I turned on the volume and he's just like talking about being rich. Yeah. I'm concerned because we're not even at the having yet. We're not even at the having. And typically, you know, in previous cycles, this is stuff that you would see in like a year and a half from now or whatever. And like it's already cropping up and it's already getting crazy.

Starting point is 00:02:49 And I think a lot of people are seeing all this building that's taking place on top of Bitcoin and they're thinking that maybe we're not going to see another scam rugpool cycle. And when I'm seeing this online and it's just going crazy and everybody's talking about this guy and we're not even at the having yet, I'm just kind of concerned as to like, what to expect here. So you guys are super based. Let's help the audience like just be aware. Like what's the advice that you have for friends and family that are that are now going to be coming to this probably for the first time and taking it serious because the fourth time it still isn't dead. And I think everybody's going to start waking up to what's happening here.

Starting point is 00:03:28 So like what kind of advice do you guys have? Well, you know, first of all, I'd say Nick in this case, the NFT guy seems to be like overly concerned with the haters, I believe. This is who he's concerned with. A lot of haters out there. I didn't even know he existed until a couple days ago. Apparently he already has haters. But so don't listen to the haters. But really, first of all, I mean, like, this is why most of the high integrity people I know in the space have always said, focus on Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:03:55 Yes. And don't focus on the rest. It's the catch-all cure to protecting yourself from 90% of the 95% of the, 95% of, of the grifters and scammers out there. It'll keep you focused. Now, there's still some of the Bitcoin world as well. We have our own NFT scammers running about, not necessarily, you know, showing off their homes and things like that. But if you stick to Bitcoin, then you'll avoid 95% of it. And then what I would add is, I think that so much of this is human psychology, people, Bitcoin's hard to understand. And on top of it being hard to understand people late,

Starting point is 00:04:34 And then if they're told a story about art or digital and it's easier for their mind to map to it, then they can try to play catch up essentially. They want to, you know, they're being told a story about how this is going to be better than Bitcoin and they can use these things to actually earn more Bitcoin, that it starts from a position of fear that you're late and that this is somehow a way to catch up. And in reality, it's going to be a way to impoverish yourself. and that it's not just stick to Bitcoin. It's actually study it and learn it

Starting point is 00:05:09 because it's not rocket science. It really isn't. And it's pick up a book. Will had a great comment when we used to be at Unchame where we was talking about holding keys and saying, you know,

Starting point is 00:05:20 it's not really harder than driving a car, but if you don't know how to drive a car and get behind the wheel, you could do a lot of damage to yourself. Bitcoin is not the most complex thing in the world. It's also not easy to understand. It just needs some dedicated attention. and intentionality.

Starting point is 00:05:35 And so don't feel late because if you pull the world, there is no way that one in a hundred people understands Bitcoin. And if you start to survey the people around you in your own life and you feel late, and then you accept that fact that no fewer than one and a hundred people actually get what's happening here, you're not late. And if you study Bitcoin, you're going to find the signal. But if you skip right past that to take what some alchemist is selling you and selling you something that is too good to be true,

Starting point is 00:06:01 then you're going to set yourself back and you won't just lose money. It'll probably further impair your ability to want to jump in and understand Bitcoin. People will hear that and they'll see the price of $72,000 per Bitcoin and say, how can you say I'm not late? Because they're looking at that sum of money and it maybe exceeds their entire life savings and they're saying, I'm very late. Like how much higher can it go? And I think that that's a very fundamental missing piece.

Starting point is 00:06:30 they don't understand the problem, first of all. And then they don't understand how the problem is actually going to resolve itself through this appreciation of Bitcoin. And so help people understand in your framing, like, where is $72,000 per Bitcoin in this timeline or this adoption curve from your point of view? So I'll get my perspective and then maybe we'll can add his. I really, one, the dollar is our unit of account. Well, I'm not going to say a number of dollars that is.

Starting point is 00:07:00 it's going to be worth in the future, but the dollar price of Bitcoin is an output of people adopting it as either property or money. And that really re-anchor on the idea that if an adoption wave of Bitcoin happens and say 10x the number of people start demanding Bitcoin as property or money,

Starting point is 00:07:23 and you can't create any more of it if there'll only ever be 21 million, then you have to bid the price up in order to deliver value to an existing holder of the currency to then get your X percentage of the pie of the amount of currency. When I talk about why 72,000 is still very early,

Starting point is 00:07:42 it's that they're printing trillions upon trillions of dollars and only 1% of the population at best understands this. And literally those other 99 are the ones that are still yet to adopt it as money. And so it really is the best anchor point to understand how early is, and it's to index your own population or a group of people around you because if you're the person that you think is probably most in the know, but you still don't get it, and then you look at your parents and your extended family and then go to work and just see what

Starting point is 00:08:15 the, you know, the poll test is that it's very obvious that very few people get this. And then, and then if you compare it in the relative side of saying Bitcoin is just worth over a trillion but the Federal Reserve printed five trillion between 2019 and 2021. In aggregate, I believe, global central banks increase their balance sheets by over 12 trillion of base money. I think the total number of broad money is 80 trillion. The total global credit system is 400 trillion. That Bitcoin is a new form of money that's replacing all other forms of money.

Starting point is 00:08:50 And very few people understand that you can experience that your own life. and 72,000 is a very small number. It's even smaller than 21 million, but 21 million of the total Bitcoin that will ever exist is incredibly infinitesimal relative to the 400 trillion global credit market. And that's the thing that's collapsing. Just to piggyback on that, it's just giving someone a sense of scale. And I think that's the hard thing to do, right? Bitcoin at a trillion dollar market cap.

Starting point is 00:09:17 What does that mean for other assets, other monies for the economy in general? it's only very recently that anyone dared utter the T word trillion. That wasn't part of the way we talked about money in 2008, when Bitcoin, 2009, when Bitcoin was first coming out. The original tarps were 600, 800 billion, something like that. There were still under, no one would say the T word. So giving them a sense of scale that one trillion is actually on the global scheme of things fairly early. I mean, we're still talking about gold at, what, 12? 13 now. Yeah. It's a very small part of the financial world in this moment so small that there are

Starting point is 00:10:01 many use cases that it can't serve right now. And if you think that Bitcoin is ultimately going to serve some of those use cases like other companies other than micro strategy holding, exposing themselves to Bitcoin on the balance sheet, at this price point, it's not even useful to a company like Apple with hundreds of billions of dollars. Yeah, which is mind-blowing to think. also that was a good point i mean i like i was somebody who had to understand why gold was money in order to then understand why bitcoin was money and the the properties that were inherent in it that that are now inherent in bitcoin that are that are causing global adoption of bitcoin but people don't have to understand gold in order to understand bitcoin so as i i did personally

Starting point is 00:10:43 but if you think about like this question of how early it is someone doesn't have to understand why gold is emerges money but they generally know that it did they're familiar with a gold standard and the reality is that gold emerges money over thousands of years. And this is year 15 of Bitcoin. So the amount of time where it is today versus where it was at inception, and then the relative few number of people that actually get what's happening, and you can test that in your own environment. And then it costs nothing to print a trillion dollars.

Starting point is 00:11:16 It costs nothing to print $5 trillion. And that's really the problem that we're here solving. Recently, we had Bill Ackman, for people that aren't familiar, very famous value investor. He tweeted and is now talking about Bitcoin all of a sudden. I'm going to read this tweet. It's a little long, but I'm going to read what he said. I'm looking for your feedback and your thoughts on the comment. He says, Bitcoin price rise leads to increased mining and greater energy use, driving up the cost of energy, causing inflation to rise and the dollar to decline.

Starting point is 00:11:48 Driving demand for Bitcoin and increased mining. driving demand for energy in the cycle continues. Bitcoin goes to infinity, energy prices skyrocket, and the economy collapses. Maybe I should buy some Bitcoin. Some serious tongue and cheek. What are your thoughts on this comment? I mean, Bill seems to be waking up to quite a few things recently, not just Bitcoin, but he's learning a lot about the world. This is like a coming of age moment for Bill Ackman. I know he's a lot smarter than me in a lot of ways, but it's very encouraging. and everyone goes through their own path. But no, what I would encourage him to do,

Starting point is 00:12:25 and I know several people reached out to him on Twitter, but in case he listens to this, is to actually listen to the heads of the grid systems in the United States, those like TVA and ERCOT, where the presidents of those, like, critical infrastructure, have talked about the fact that Bitcoin is helping them, not just stabilize the grid, but lower energy costs. Now, his ultimate conclusion there is correct that he should be buying Bitcoin,

Starting point is 00:12:49 but not necessarily for the reasons that he stated, namely that Bitcoin's interplay into the energy markets is actually one that to date, and probably for the foreseeable future, will be drastically lowering the price of electricity, which, again, the biggest operators of the largest grids in the United States are already recognizing and sort of competing over getting that business.

Starting point is 00:13:12 I'd say, like, Bill is just lost in a very scary fiat world, and he's just, he's kind of, he's very fiat-minded. You know, it's hard to get out of that fiat mindset when that is your life. But that point that will make it slightly different, that end about like Bitcoin driving the price of electricity down. And everybody has this idea of the dollar price of electricity. Well, if you're a Bitcoin holder and the price of Bitcoin is going up,

Starting point is 00:13:38 what is getting less expensive? Not only everything, but particularly electricity. The value of the currency is buying more and more electricity. So without even having to make an argument about what Bitcoin mining will do for energy, it's just this fact that if you are a holder of Bitcoin the currency, the price of your electricity in the Bitcoin denominated world continues to go down, down, down. The other thing that he just missed about economy or the ways that, quote, economy works and doesn't collapse is that he's right that a rise in the price of Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:14:12 will result in an increased demand to mine Bitcoin, which will increase. the demand for power, the massive thing that this Wall Street genius just missed was, in result of a rise in prices, does come supply. So if there's this resource power and on a relative basis, there's a bid for it, then what do people do? They build more power. That's the way that money works. So it's, hey, you use money, you turn it into, you know, you trade it for resources, you then sell whatever you create, for more money and that what we're actively seeing happen, you know, here in the state of Texas where there's a lot of mining, there's more demand for power. And just in the last two weeks,

Starting point is 00:14:58 there's been an announcement of a 1.5 gigawatt facility and a 900 megawatt facility. So in Ackman's like circular thought process of like higher price of Bitcoin, more mining, he didn't think about, well, what about supply? You know, what about supply for power? And he also, I don't think, or at least he didn't intimate it, the understanding of the power problem, the duck curve, and Bitcoin, and to Will's point about the CEO of Irkot, the president of TVA, understanding just how valuable a large, flexible load is. And so it is that Bitcoin is perfectly complementary to grids. It actually solves a problem for grids. That's why, on a fundamental level, it will drive down the cost of power. Second thing is, as the price of Bitcoin goes up, your power costs go down

Starting point is 00:15:45 if you're a Bitcoin holder. That's a good thing for you. And then the third thing is that the actual increase in demand for power drives increase of supply. Money is the one thing that cannot have or if you have good money like Bitcoin does not have a supply response because it is finitely scarce or in other forms of money in terms of gold. It was relatively scarce, but it was also relatively harder to go get more gold out of the ground relative to producing other things that were more readily available or could be produced from more readily available resources. So supplies the key in this equation bill. We can turn on tens and tens of gigawatts of power and it's going to be great for everybody. I'd throw in one more piece of advice for a bill here,

Starting point is 00:16:26 which is like, I don't know if there's a word for it, like an anti-appeal to authority, which is, you know, all those professors and administrators that you just found out know nothing about the world and in fact are infecting people's brains at Harvard, and specifically your kids, they all think Bitcoin mining's terrible, running up energy prices. And so that's a counter signal to you. Yeah, we'll have to get him a, we screened a copy of Elena Mediavia's stranded documentary, which is a short of her dirty coin. So we'll have to see if we can't get old Bill Ackman a pre-screening of that.

Starting point is 00:17:01 I'll call on a favor for him. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year, bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors, and builders from all over the world, many of them operating on the front lines of history. This is where you hear firsthand stories from people using.

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Starting point is 00:21:19 is we're incentivizing energy infrastructure the cheapest that we can build it, right? It's being built in areas that incentivize four cents or between four or five cents. per kilowatt hour in today's prices. So like, that's the part that I just find miraculous that people can't piece it together that you're creating this incentive structure of the most ESG friendly thing that's ever been done without public policy playing a role in trying to build more energy. It's not me saying this anymore. And another Bitcoin are saying this anymore.

Starting point is 00:21:55 You literally have BlackRock putting on these large summits in the past month. And they had an entire section for Wall Street banks that they're providing this for, that they're saying Bitcoin is ESG friendly. And they're having speakers of people within the Bitcoin space that I know up there literally talking these points, Troy Cross being one of them. If you would have told me this three months ago, I would not have believed you for a second that you would have an entity like Black Rock basically propagating these true messages that have been so lost on. everybody for so long. So, like, what do you guys take away from something like that? Is this, I mean, this is good, right? I don't really know what to say, but I'm just blown away by it. My view is, I completely agree. If somebody gets one layer down of Bitcoin mining, they will begin to understand that Bitcoin miners have every incentive to go find the cheapest sources

Starting point is 00:22:56 of power. And then the next layer down, you'll figure out that the cheapest source of power is closest to the fuel functionally. Now, there are other reasons strategically why it might not be closest to the fuel in terms of acting as a balancing effect to large city centers. And so that point is right. It's just that for me, the key of this, and I do think it's not curious that BlackRock once they got into the Bitcoin ETF game, that they would change their tune on what is and is an ESG.

Starting point is 00:23:27 I think that there was like weapons of mass destruction can be ESG, depending. on, you know, who owns the company. And so I think what happened first was they figured out that there was an incentive to make money issuing a Bitcoin ETF. If they didn't do it, someone else was going to do it. And the next part of that was, well, we can't keep parroting these ESG things because this, you know, we've been saying that Bitcoin's bad for the environment for so long, but us is BlackRock, we want to make money. So now we're going to drop the term ESG, which Larry Fink said that they would do in June of last year. And now it's not curious that they've, they've shifted it around to now explain that it's actually good because it aligns with a profit incentive.

Starting point is 00:24:06 And so I think all of that perfectly maps. It's just in order to understand why Bitcoin goes out and seeks the lowest cost power, you got to understand something fundamentally about Bitcoin and energy. I wasn't using that as an explanation because it was just this more broad economic fact that as you bid the price up of something, people supply more of it, particularly in the context of power, then that actually drives down the resource. the more that you can deliver of it, you know, drives economies, the scale drives costs down. And that's, that is what is going to happen in Bitcoin mining in Texas to give you an understanding.

Starting point is 00:24:39 I think the peak demand last year, which was a peak ever, was about 85 gigawatts. The average demand is 40 gigawatts. And that difference between 80 and 40 or 85 and 40 causes real havoc for reliability, particularly in certain parts of the year, where the type of things can swing from, from day to night. And Bitcoin mine is going to incentivize 40 more. more gigawatts of power to be online. That creates economic incentives for the power companies to lower the cost broadly. But then in addition to that, we're probably going to build another 80 gigawatts in Texas to support not just Bitcoin mining, but other economic or sources of

Starting point is 00:25:13 demand that generate real economic activity. And so I think it's great that BlackRock is now recognizing all of the great benefits for the world and sustainability that come with Bitcoin. I happen to believe that their number one motive is profit. Yeah, and Preston, it's going to be hard. I mean, I do agree with the premise of your comment. However, it's going to be hard to get me too excited over, you know, the idea that Bitcoin being ESG friendly is a good thing for the world or that notion is a good thing for the world,

Starting point is 00:25:47 given that the premise of ESG is completely ridiculous on its face. However, I do get your point that like the gatekeepers that there are on Wall Street, in the world financial market saying Bitcoin is good for the environment is probably good for us. Yeah, I love your point, Will, because it's like you're almost playing into their hand by even saying ESG and talking about it as being a valid objective talking point. But yeah, I just find it quite miraculous that they're like totally leaning into what are very valid and true. Like if you sit down with somebody who deeply understands this and you go very deep on the facts

Starting point is 00:26:25 around it. It's a little refreshing to see some of the legacy talking heads really start to embrace these ideas that we know are true and valid. I mean, Preston, I don't know what you think, but I thought what was more remarkable about Larry Fink's comments was not the ESG side, but the fact that he came out and said, if you're worried about your government, if you're scared of your government, if you're scared of money printing in the jurisdiction that you live in, like, that's not someone who's gone halfway down the rabbit hole. Oh, you're right. That's a pretty advanced understanding of the value proposition of Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:27:00 Just when he started, this is, I think, in the summer time frame, when he started saying the word hope in the same sentences, I was like, okay, Michael Saylor has a website that's literally hope.com and like all this stuff's laid out there. It seems like he was binge watching the Breed Love Sailor series and like whatever else, right? Anyway, speaking of Michael, so he was on CNBC today, purchased another 12,000. BTC for $821.7 million U.S. dollars. They now have $205,000 Bitcoin. Wow, that's more than me. No way. 205,000 Bitcoin at a basis of $33,706, which were more than double that now. This is crazy. This is crazy. But the part that I found really interesting, and I think that, what you two are building really kind of plays into is a little contra to maybe what Michael was saying in this interview. It was like, I don't know how long, maybe seven, no, it was like 12 minutes long, this clip. He was really delineating the difference between Bitcoin as a property

Starting point is 00:28:12 and Bitcoin as a currency. He's been kind of beating this drum for years now. And one of the key talking points that he said in the video in the clip, he says, medium of exchange is only worth a trillion dollars, whereas property makes Bitcoin worth $100 trillion. And it's almost like anytime Bitcoin is brought up as a currency, he is really pushing back and saying, no, no, no, no, this is a savings technology. You've got to treat it like property on Fifth Avenue. Hold on, I got another quote here. This is a quote that he said during the interview. He said, no one is trying to buy coffee with the equity that they hold from a building on Fifth Avenue to reinforce this idea that he thinks Bitcoin should be viewed as property.

Starting point is 00:28:52 What are your thoughts on this? Is this constructive? Is this, I think this is the real question I have. Is this a G7 in a very developed economy talking point versus maybe how the rest of the world sees Bitcoin? What are your thoughts on some of this stuff between property and currency? Well, one, I guess first, we're building a company for Bitcoin payments. Yes. Previously worked on Bitcoin custody and kind of understand long-term store of value, premise, and rationality.

Starting point is 00:29:22 for Bitcoin, but also where we're coming from is we're building a Bitcoin payments company because we believe that it's important to do and take that with an inherent bias that exists. Also that I personally won't speak for well, but no, he shares a great degree of respect and appreciation for both Michael Saylor personally as well as micro strategy as a company. And that what they're doing both for Bitcoin, but then also strategically, you know, in terms of the corporate strategy and the results that it's having for their shareholders is quite smart. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:56 And I'm a shareholder. Let me tell you. I'm very, very happy. I'm a very happy camper. Go ahead. I don't own any public equities or any securities that aren't equity in businesses that I've helped run. But if I did, the only one would probably be micro strategy.

Starting point is 00:30:12 So. Yeah. And that I think that my personal perspective is that if it comes to owning Bitcoin through a security, that micro strategy would be better than. owning it an ETF because he's actually trying to generate more Bitcoin per share. That being said, we're going to have an inherent disagreement about, you know, his opinion of Bitcoin as property or money and that, you know, he made the comment about, you know, there's no one who's trying to buy a cup of coffee with a fraction of the equity of their Fifth Avenue

Starting point is 00:30:41 building. And I think the point is that it's because building isn't, isn't money. And the thing that he didn't distinguish is that money is property, but not all. property is money. And he was using the analogies of real property in the case of real estate, but for the same reason that real estate can't facilitate the purchase of your cup of coffee or the purchasing of software as a service or purchasing of a building is the same reason that Bitcoin can and the distinction between money and property. And so the same reason that real estate can't serve as money is the reason why Bitcoin is emerging as property. It can be easily transferred. can facilitate transactions large or small for a cup of coffee or a building. And I also think that

Starting point is 00:31:27 there really isn't a distinction between a store of value and a medium exchange. Money does both. And even Michael Saylor is intermediating a series of exchanges and storing his value in Bitcoin. He just today converted dollars into Bitcoin and he's going to hold those Bitcoin hopefully 100 years, but then he's going to exchange it at some future point in time. And so really what he's talking about is the difference of time horizon and the type of transactions. But the mere fact that Bitcoin can do that is why it's such a good form of money. Yeah. I mean, I'm not a mind reader, but I can try to put myself in Michael Saylor's shoes on this. And like Parker, I have a lot of respect for him. But if I'm operating a public company and I've just pulled off one of the greatest

Starting point is 00:32:11 speculative attacks of all time, ever, stacking, stacking stats the way he has been, I'd want to portray myself as the least threatening way possible to regulators and to the jurisdiction that I operate my business in. And so again, I have no reason to believe he's not saying exactly what he thinks. But if I are in that position, I would portray that is what I think about Bitcoin because it makes me less threatening. It does not challenge the ultimate status quo, which is, you know, the US dollar. And there's no reason to rock that boat if I'm Michael sailor. I'm perfectly happy portraying Bitcoin as a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue. And that's okay, but we don't have to view it that way. And I don't think most people that have Bitcoin or,

Starting point is 00:32:57 you know, have knowledge about Bitcoin, think of Bitcoin outside of his, you know, monetary use cases. I totally agree with your point there. And I've always kind of felt like that might be the reason why he kind of goes about it and talking about it in those terms. But I think for people that deeply understand Bitcoin, especially when you look at it from outside of a G7 country. Like if I'm out of the United States and I take myself to some other developing nation state and I'm dealing with a local currency that's getting to base by 70 or 100% a year and I can't get access to a bank account and all of those types of things, I'm looking at Bitcoin. I can see layer two, I can immediately settle and I can conduct payments.

Starting point is 00:33:39 And I'm saying, how in the world is this not the currency, Bitcoin as a currency? It can be property and currency. Parker's very thoughtful point. How in the world am I not saying, and if somebody comes to my store, let's say I'm a store and I'm a vendor, like I'm looking at me like, you can pay in Bitcoin and take that that Coke or that coffee or whatever it is or else you can just leave. And I'm not going to give you this proof of work thing that is sitting in my store because I'm not accepting the worthless currency that's debasing at 100% a year.

Starting point is 00:34:11 Like, I'm sorry. I think that's where the world is moving. very quickly, especially in developing nations. And, hey, maybe 10 years from now, 15, 20 years from now, it's a way bigger payment role in developing nation states. But I guess I can't understand how somebody couldn't see it that way right now. Yeah. I honestly thought at the beginning of that interview that he was going to sort of change his tune because he's been saying mostly this for at least a year, if not a year and a half now around this like Bitcoin is property type thing. But when he was comparing Bitcoin to gold and talking about Bitcoin overtaking,

Starting point is 00:34:45 eating up gold's market cap, he was mentioning, you know, what if you had gold that you could send to Japan and a matter of minutes? A teleport. Teleport to Japan and a matter of minutes from the United States, which again was, I was like, oh, wow, he's going to go on that angle, which is basically talking about, you know, its monetary qualities as a medium of an exchange, at least partly so. I think that there's a little bit of the use cases that will help Bitcoin overtake gold or also why it's a better money to any other commodity or property. But yeah, I just thought that was interesting. Yeah, and I think I really personally don't distinguish between, and I understand the places are

Starting point is 00:35:25 different. You know, he, like he uses the example, even to your question. There's a lot of the world that doesn't even have access to the dollar as, you know, from a store of value perspective, as bad as the dollar is. But it's functioning and it buys you a lot of of things. So it is a far more functional than a form of money that doesn't even do that. And that could be it in Africa or it could be literally anywhere that's either experiencing hyperinflation today in some country or just doesn't have access to a form of money that the rest of the world will readily accept. But he made the comment, I believe, something like, you know, if you're in Africa, what would you buy, like, you know, real estate or a house or, sorry, or Bitcoin. But if you flip it around,

Starting point is 00:36:09 it's really the same thing if you're selling goods or services. So like, what are you saying? You should, you know, if you're in the U.S., you should sell goods and services $4 and then turn around and sell those dollars to then get Bitcoin to do what he's doing. Or why not take out the very costly step? You know, Bitcoin's gone up by 20% over the last week. It's like if you're just taking out an unnecessary step if you actually want the Bitcoin, right? If I could take dollars, which I do in my business, but I also take Bitcoin, but the dollars that I do get, I then convert to Bitcoin. coin, the same thing that he's doing for his business. So the point is, why not just do that on a direct basis? My number one point is at some point, your form of money is, it's going to stop working. And I get that that's controversial to say, but the fact that it's controversial doesn't

Starting point is 00:36:55 change the fact that it's also the reality of printing a lot of money and that you really... Is one trillion every 90 days printing a lot of money? That's a lot. That's a lot of money, well. It's actually too much. It's so much that the human brain cannot even conceive what it represents in terms of some tangible value. And so when you start to realize that it's like we actually have the same problem that everybody else in the world has, regardless of if we're in a G7 country and we have the global reserve currency. The problem is that our values being debased and that our currency is being destroyed. And we need to solve both of those things. We have to find a better form of money that stores value. you, but it's part and parcel. If it's not easy to exchange, then it's not going to store value. It's going to store value because it's going to be easily exchangeable with 8 billion people who all have first probably bought Bitcoin on their balance sheets and then figure it out at a later point in time that if they want to acquire the Bitcoin most efficiently,

Starting point is 00:37:57 they can because unlike a building, it's actually possible to transfer it. In this case, in Bitcoin, it's possible to do over a communication channel. But then also, like, there's a reason why you can't go into your grocery store and buy groceries with a treasury bond or a security or a security like micro strategy. You can do that with Bitcoin because of its properties. Not just that it has a fixed supply, but you can transfer

Starting point is 00:38:20 it without counterparty risk. You can transfer it with counterparty risk too, but stock or a bond is not capable of being transferred without a counterparty risk because trust is core to the nature of a security and the trustless nature of

Starting point is 00:38:36 Bitcoin is core to, it's ability to function as both a store of value and an ability to exchange it in return for real goods and services or dollars. Let's not miss two very obvious points as well. One is Bitcoin is literally money. I mean, it's legal tender in at least one country. That's a good point. And it's used to the tune of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars every single day

Starting point is 00:39:00 is a medium of exchange right now, today, even in its infancy. Number two, though, is not everyone has the same sort of, not everyone has the balance sheet or the savings that Michael Saylor has to buy Bitcoin the way that he's doing right now. And if they want to obtain Bitcoin, one of the best ways to do it is just to sell a good or service or your time, receive it as payment. Instead of receiving dollars, taking the counterparty risk, the fees involved with exchanging, you know, being a 4x trader, you just take Bitcoin on a principal basis

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Starting point is 00:42:36 is 7.8%. Past performance does not guarantee future results, current distribution rate as of 1231, 2025. Carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income funds prospectus at fundrise.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. I had mentioned earlier that in some of these developing nations that have like really bad currencies with a lot of inflation that the store owner would just say, hey, you're either paying with Bitcoin or you're going to get out. But Ben Perrin, when I was over in Madeira, him and I were having a conversation. And he had just recently was, he has this amazing video, by the way, for people listening if you want to see how Zap right with Peter and Will have built. He has this. Parker, Will. It's all the same. He has this amazing video that Parker and Will. have built with ZapRite that you can see how to use it, how the API works for people that are

Starting point is 00:43:37 trying to integrate it. But one of the things that he said to me when we were over there was, he's like, Preston, there's this really important, like, mental breakthrough for me when I was setting this up that if I'm selling a good or service and the price is X, I have another price that's in Fiat that is 20% higher than X. for anybody that wants to pay in Fiat instead of Bitcoin. And he's like, it sounds so simple and just so like, it's almost like it's not anything. But he's like, I think it's a really big jump because instead of it being a discount, if you pay in Bitcoin, he's like, I think people just mentally are looking at it and say,

Starting point is 00:44:17 well, of course I want to pay the lower price. I don't want to pay 20% more. And he's like, it's a really big deal. And it struck me. And I just kept thinking about it. And this is, kudos to you guys for implementing this. But going back to the store owner, I don't think it's going to be this leap from, you go into that store one day and they're accepting both their legacy currency and Bitcoin. I think it's going to be almost like a checkout or like a mobile phone. And it's like, here it is. You can pay in Bitcoin for this price. And if you're paying me with this really terrible currency, I'm just slapping a 40% additional fee on top of it because I don't want that. Like I'll take it, but I don't want it. And this is the, I think that's how. it's going to slowly progress and take hold all around the world is you're going to see this,

Starting point is 00:45:04 this model that you guys so thoughtfully constructed play out. So I don't know if there's a question in there or that you guys have anything else that you want to add. No, it resonates a lot. I mean, like it was very intentional to frame it as a premium. I think that was Parker's brainchild, actually, although who knows at this point, we just sit together all day talking. So I can't come up with these stupid ideas. Yeah, I think it was Parker's brainchild, but really it's about, you know, signaling preference, right? And that if you own a store, if you're selling something online, or if you're a dentist that owns their own dental practice or lawyer or something like that, you have unilateral control over how you bill your customers in charge for your products.

Starting point is 00:45:44 And when you show a preference like that, like you're likely to get what you want. And if you want Bitcoin, there's probably not a better way to signal that preference then Parker always distinguishes between Bitcoin accepted here and Bitcoin preferred here. And now you're saying Bitcoin, I prefer you pay me in Bitcoin. In fact, I will give you a discount if you pay or you'll have to pay a premium if you pay in Fiat. One company I like a lot that's been doing this for a long time is Mulvad VPN. They've had Bitcoin as an option for years and they've always, always, always given a discount if you paid in Bitcoin. Now it's framed differently, but the signaling of preference is the same.

Starting point is 00:46:23 And I'm pretty sure they've stacked quite a few stats through that. Do you think the framing is important? I use it with my book. And I can just tell you that when I put a 10% premium on my book, if people want to pay in Fiat, my view of it, and I'll talk about it in the broader context of the importance of Bitcoin payments, is that there's a cost.

Starting point is 00:46:44 It's like Bitcoin is a better form of money. It's a better form of money because it allows you to store value better, but also there's not a single point of failure in terms of how you are receiving it or that doesn't have to be. And that if you're getting paid directly from your customers, you have not only a more liquid form of currency, but you also have a more diversity of your liquidity, which is important. And that when I put a 10% premium on price communicates information, so the price of any good is a communication of information. If you say, hey, it costs 10% more. The book costs $30, but if you want to pay me in dollars, it costs $33.

Starting point is 00:47:20 I don't actually have to have a conversation with the person. I can communicate information about the cost of thing. And it doesn't make sense to me to say, if you want to give me the better form of money, you can actually pay less. It's that if you want to give me the worst form of money, you're going to have to pay me more because there's a cost associated with it.

Starting point is 00:47:39 And then in both the way that it's a debt-based currency that has a ton of counterparty risk that introduces all this cost, that someone's got to pay for it. And if you want it to be me, I'm actually going to say, nope, it needs to be you. And then, in addition to that, it's the volatility. So if a lot of merchant processing takes 10, 15, 20 days to send you, there's the risk of

Starting point is 00:48:01 chargebacks. If Bitcoin's appreciating on average over the last 10 years by 1% a day or whatever it is, then if I'm having to wait into perpetuity 20 days to convert my dollars to Bitcoin that I'm earning through my business, that's another cost in addition to just the processing fees. but on a broader standpoint, the way that we think about it is Bitcoin is a new form of money. People are adopting it for the first time. It's not like buying a different car or buying a different building or buying something else that's marginally different than something else you've bought several times in your life. People have to first the tools to secure Bitcoin had to be built in order to allow people to adequately know that they could hold it without losing it. That's what improved the store of value property, improved methods of custody of Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:48:46 And that's what we worked at it on chain. But the point is that in order for people to accept Bitcoin's payment, you have to build the tools. They've never existed before. And you can plug the euro into the dollar system and the yen into the dollar system because they're functioning the same as a trust-based system. Bitcoin is a new form of money.

Starting point is 00:49:04 And in order for businesses to be able to receive Bitcoin's payment, like there's many different types of transactions that require different products. And so we're not just building a quote Bitcoin payment. We're building something specific. for a certain type of customer based on certain types of payments. And the product has to be the right product and it has to be dead simple. And the product being the right product is being able to build features like what Ben

Starting point is 00:49:28 mentioned to you of things that people actually value that actually incentivize the payer to pay in Bitcoin. But in addition to that, a big part of our philosophy of making it dead simple and reducing the burden on the business is that it does need to be, you can receive Bitcoin side by side with Fiat because both exist today and businesses need actually to survive on both for some foreseeable future. So that's another thing that's core to zap rise. We make it really easy to receive Bitcoin and Lightning, on chain and lightning side by side with Fiat, such that the business, when they're thinking about that decision point, it's marginal. Do I want to give Bitcoin as an option?

Starting point is 00:50:09 Because if you're going to make me go through an entirely different process, I'm not going to do it. I'll just take the Bitcoin and convert it to, or the Fiat and convert it to Bitcoin. And so we think about all those things. How do we lower the bar such that the number of businesses that actually accepted his payment is 10x, 100x,000x. And I'm pretty sure selling software internationally is going to be a great application to get more Bitcoin pound for pound than if you took an Argentine peso and then converted it to a dollar and then converted it to Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:50:40 I mean, I would add in there that it's not just the merchant preference that we're focused on, although we do focus on that side of the equation for the most part. But we're also making a deal with the merchant. Like, we're going to deliver your customers an easier way to pay, not just with Bitcoin, just an easier way to pay in general. And that if it's not easier buy something online with Bitcoin than it is with dollars, I anticipate those customers are going to gravitate towards paying with dollars because it's simpler. So not only we're trying to like highlight the fact that the merchant can pay with a better form of money, and recognize their preference for that, we have to treat their customers to a better experience.

Starting point is 00:51:19 And honestly, we have all the tools we need. I would say we're about even right now, if not slightly better than taking Fiat payments, but we're going to be way better. It's going to be so much simpler. Regardless of whether you're using custodial, non-custodial methods of payment, it's going to be way simpler. Already is about as simple to pay with Bitcoin rather than Fiat. I'll just say I've used the ZapRite service whenever I ordered Parker's book. It was phenomenal. It couldn't have been any easier. It was super clean.

Starting point is 00:51:50 But when I'm looking at, I guess this has been my talking point for the last year and a half, two years is you don't have this natural demand signal that's really kind of incentivizing payments quite yet. And what I was saying that I think is going to really help boost that incentive, that natural incentive is once Bitcoin makes a new all-time high. Because when you look all around the world, everybody's saying, oh, the dollar's done so much better. When Bitcoin was at 16,000 a coin after going to call it 69,000, they're looking at that and they're saying, yeah, yeah, I'm not going to, I'm kind of forgetting about Bitcoin at that point

Starting point is 00:52:24 because in dollar terms, it's way off of where it was. Now we're at a very, very interesting point in time because we just made a new all-time high. I think everybody around the world is starting to look at this thing in their own local currency or even the dollar terms and they're saying, this is the fourth time that it supposedly died three or four times at this point and now it's back, it's rebirthed itself again. And I think you're going to start getting vendors that are saying, you got a turnkey API that's going to allow me to accept payments. Yeah, I might only have one out of 100 people that come through the door willing to pay at a discount to the fiat price. But if it's really simple and really easy to do and

Starting point is 00:53:02 they are wanting to receive this superior form of money, I think things really start to change in the coming two years from a demand, a natural demand signal for Bitcoin payments. I'm assuming you guys agree with that, but what kind of thoughts do you guys have around the demand, the natural market demand for payments picking up? I agree with your statement. I would say that's also a really rational way to think about it, right? is like every four years we keep on hitting new all-time highs. That just builds up credibility over time.

Starting point is 00:53:31 Bitcoin, every day it doesn't die, builds up a little bit more credibility over time. I agree that these types of signals, there's moments in Bitcoin's history that lend it credibility. You know, when the Silk Road coins are seized and then they're auctioned off and not destroyed. That's a moment of credibility. When the first public company adds it to its balance sheet, that's a moment of credibility. when it survives internal strife and struggle in 2017, that's a moment of credibility. And every time you see it surpassing all-time highs in conversion to U.S. dollars, that's a moment of credibility. So, yeah, I think this one is going to get a lot of attention.

Starting point is 00:54:08 I think it's one of those things that makes people think, I have to get more of this, or I'm not exposing my business to something weird or scary or something like that. And yeah, in terms of like the driver, the all time high helps, but it's really just about people, same way individuals make the decision I want to hold Bitcoin, businesses are going to make those same decisions as well. And they're just run by the same people that are getting it individually. I do see that, you know, in our client base would bear this out, that it's easier for companies that are independently owned, you know, sole proprietors to make that unilateral decision to accept Bitcoin. We're going to say, we're going to say, you know, see a lot of lawyers, a lot of Dennis, things like that, that own their own businesses. But more and more, it's going to become untenable for people sitting on the boards of bigger businesses to say, well, I do this for myself, but I don't do this for my business, right? Whether that's, you know, holding Bitcoin on a balance sheet for treasury purposes or having the superior payment structure, you know, set up for your customers.

Starting point is 00:55:13 So, yeah, you know, the all-time high helps there. through all these other credibility lending, you know, the ETF moments. And then it's just a series of those independent decisions that are being made that ultimately leads us to a big marketplace of people accepting Bitcoin. It's also very organic. So one of the things I think, Preston, you and I might have talked about this a few days when we were together at the summit. But if Bitcoin, whatever it is today, it's over a trillion dollars.

Starting point is 00:55:40 I don't know if it's like 1.2 trillion or 1.3. Yeah, two or three. that that's a lot of purchasing power. And so if we're just thinking one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin terms, we're building a Bitcoin payments company, and we're specifically building it because we recognize that orders of magnitude more people are going to demand Bitcoin to hold it as a property or money, however you want to define it,

Starting point is 00:56:03 and that that is going to result in orders of magnitude more people demanding Bitcoin payments. We're delivering a service that the people that are holding the 21 million and splier currently, it's like 19.6 million, say, okay, we need to find a way that the, something that the holders of the value, or the holders of the currency value, so that they can then pay us. And that as that number gets larger in real purchasing power, it becomes more relevant to more business owners, saying like, hey, if you start to look and see that Bitcoin is on what some metric or the other, the sixth largest currency in the world or the 11th largest

Starting point is 00:56:40 currency in the world, you want to sell to those people. You want to sell your goods and services. It's also, so that's the macro. That as Bitcoin becomes more of value by more people, it is a more significant opportunity for people selling goods and services. And it's harder for them to ignore. If you think about Apple as an example, like Will makes a good point that I agree with is like Apple, the company market cap is still bigger than Bitcoin. It's hard to store value in something that you're bigger than. Now, that will flip too. Apple would be probably the last company that gets flipped by Bitcoin. But if you think about it relative to currencies, they're selling phones to people in more than just seven currencies in the world that Bitcoin as a purchasing power aggregate

Starting point is 00:57:27 entity is larger than practically any other economy that they can possibly sell to. That is a hard economic fact that is difficult to ignore, and particularly as Bitcoin gets larger. At the same time, it is an individual decision. And that's why we're really focused on, it's the merchant. It's like there is a derivative rationale to paying a business in Bitcoin that you want to be around. And the example of that is, I want my rancher to be around. He wants to be paid in Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:57:53 I pay him in Bitcoin. But at the same time, it really is an individual decision. So while that's the macro that's driving, the driving force, the individual is the one who is in most control of, particularly an individual who's a business owner, to say, what do they want in terms of a currency to be paid in? And that's really where we focus. There is also the rationale from the payer side. I think it's more derivative. The example is I want my rancher to be around and he wants to be paid in Bitcoin, so I pay him in Bitcoin. I value my doctor. If she wants to be paid in Bitcoin, and I know that she's more likely to be around if she has Bitcoin. So if she wants

Starting point is 00:58:29 to be paid in Bitcoin, I'll pay her in Bitcoin. The driving force is a merchant saying, I understand why Bitcoin stores value and therefore it's rational for me to accept Bitcoin as payment because it's the most efficient way to get. And so we really view it as it is something that is dynamic between buyer and seller. The seller is the one in control and as more sellers understand why Bitcoin is of value to the world, it just becomes the rational thing for them to do to drive the shift to say, I'm going to give you the option to pay me in Bitcoin. I'm not going to cut off my nose despite my face and say I'm not going to accept fiat,

Starting point is 00:59:06 even though for businesses that do that more power to them, you know, a few businesses will be able to dictate those type of terms. But starting with an option is the most rational thing to do for a business owner that understand why it stores value. And if you just multiply the number of people that understand Bitcoin by 10 or 100, then there's more people who are also going to figure out why it's most efficient to just open it up as an option to be paid that way.

Starting point is 00:59:31 a little inside baseball for your listeners, Preston here, if they've ever worked in software development or built a company, a software company, a lot of times entrepreneurs, they'll avoid two-sided markets. They're very difficult to build. I built one before at Stack Overflow. We had a recruiting site where you have employers and then you have employees or

Starting point is 00:59:51 prospective employees, applicants. And you build that and you're like, what are we focus on? Do we focus on, you know, the employer side of it or do we focus on, you know, the developers over here? here in the Stack Overflow world that are trying to get jobs. And I always go back to the original two-sided marketplace on the internet, which is online dating.

Starting point is 01:00:09 And for the heterosexual marketplace out there, you know, it's very obvious. You have a two-sided market and only one side matters. If you have hot girls, then you have a dating app. And if you don't have hot girls, then you don't have a dating app. And so whenever you're building a two-sided marketplace, it's a good idea to ask yourself, who are the hot girls in this two-sided marketplace? right? That's an easy sort of heuristic to go through. In this case, it's obviously the merchants, right? If the only way or if the discounted way to get their services or the products is to pay in

Starting point is 01:00:40 Bitcoin, then people are going to pay you in Bitcoin. They're the hot girls. That's what we're optimizing Zappright for. Yeah, I like to think about it. I use the example a lot, not the dating app one, but I'll pay the gas station in dollars so long as they're willing to take my dollar. But if they open up the opportunity and then they create an incentive for me to pay in Bitcoin, I'm going to pay in Bitcoin. But that's why it's a seller or merchant driven shift. The other thing, though, is as Bitcoin increases in purchasing power, this is just something for people that are new that's going to happen to you

Starting point is 01:01:12 and you just kind of have to accept it, is you're going to put like 1% of your money in Bitcoin, and then Bitcoin's going to go up 10 times and 100 times, and it's going to go from 10% to 90% of your savings. And once you get into a position where Bitcoin represents pretty much all of your savings, like someone like myself or someone like Will or increasingly a lot of people that have held Bitcoin for a long time, you actually want those outlets. Like someone would say, well, it's not rational to spend their Bitcoin because it's going up X percent a year.

Starting point is 01:01:46 But if you have 100 percent of your money or close to it in the better form of money that has appreciated over time, you actually want your liquidity to be more diverse than just somebody that allows you to convert it back into dollars. You're actively looking for those businesses. And that's what a lot of our merchants have found is they actually say, and we have, we use this example because it's kind of random, but it seems to be happening more and more frequently. We have dentists on the platform. Dentists say, I want to accept Bitcoin as money and I'm going to make this part of my strategy. And they put a bat signal out to the people in their area that they accept Bitcoin.

Starting point is 01:02:23 There's Bitcoiners everywhere, and then they start getting new customers. If you build it into the strategy, it makes sense. But there is also this reality that there's a lot of people that are having the vast majority of all their savings of Bitcoin. And those people need to spend it every day to survive and to better their lives. And so that is not as intuitive to somebody that only has 1% of their money in Bitcoin, but that's not them for a few more years. Fascinating.

Starting point is 01:02:49 I want to change just one final question before we wrap things. up and it's off topic from the payment stuff we were just talking about. It seems to me like from a policy standpoint, things are really heating up from like a global competition standpoint. I'm curious if you guys see it the same and just, I guess, any thoughts that you have on that particular talking point? Yeah, I mean, I worry about this, you know, frequently being a United States citizen and, you know, wanting I consider myself a patriot. I like the United States. I would like the United States to take a pro-Bitcoin stance because I think it's vital for the future of our country. Yeah. I think we have a huge outsized advantage compared to other countries and that we have a strong history of federalism in the 10th Amendment and that we have 50 sovereign states that are going to try to outcompete themselves on being a good jurisdiction for Bitcoin to operate in, whether it's for businesses or for payments or whatever it is, that they're going to be competing.

Starting point is 01:03:52 over that, but there are smaller countries out there that can be a little bit more nimble and have been to date, like El Salvador. However, you know, that global competition that you talk about, like, I ultimately think the United States is well poised for two reasons. One is we already have a lot of money, right? And we're talking about money and we produce a lot. And so that to the extent that the citizens of the United States and therefore the government, you know, obtains Bitcoin, we have a head start.

Starting point is 01:04:19 And two is every Bitcoin maximalist should be a 10,000. Amendment Maximus because the states themselves, I think recently in the last couple years, are getting more comfortable flexing their sovereign muscles and proving that they can make independent sovereign decisions and whether it's Bitcoin or otherwise. And they're doing it and a lot of it is to the benefit of Bitcoin. Yeah. And then what I'd add is I think one of the things that Saylor said that I think is right, when he pointed out that there's something controversial about Bitcoin as a medium exchange.

Starting point is 01:04:52 and there's something that's not controversial about Madison Avenue of real estate. If it's controversial that Bitcoin is money and that it's going to be used as to facilitate payments, it's like that is a reality. It's not that I don't think we're not naive in that respect, but I also think that it's even more controversial that it's a store of value. I think that the heat that comes is the only way through the fire, essentially, and that governments need money too, and they're going to figure that out. many are already, and that whether it's global competition on hash rate or it's the world seems to be a little bit volatile beyond the price of any financial asset just in terms of what's

Starting point is 01:05:38 happening, you know, in terms of global conflict, right? But that it's actually Bitcoin, or it's a good form of money that everyone can trade that creates and aligns economic incentives. And that economic incentive is maximal to the most amount of people. And so everyone has an incentive to mine Bitcoin across the world. And even though there's some governments that will be more restrictive to it in the short term, as Bitcoin rises and as Bitcoin presents a more competitive, I think this is the direction you were talking about, providing more competitive pressure to the dollar, doesn't mean that any country in the world, regardless of who they are, is necessarily going to want to give up the power that they extract through their currency.

Starting point is 01:06:22 And globally, that can be the dollar or the euro the end, but then also internal to the country, something like Russia. They don't want to give control of the ruble to Bitcoin. And Bitcoin's like water moving downhill. It's going to find the most efficient path, but it's moving downhill. And ultimately, as people figure it out,

Starting point is 01:06:41 whether it's a nation state, a corporation, an individual, state, local community, they're all going to figure out that it's in their best interest to participate rather than not. And then once they're participating, they're part of this global trading network. And there's an incentive to cooperate rather than being adversarial. It's not necessarily going to immediately result in the world peace. But it's going to be the thing that aligns economic incentives to steer the world back in that direction. And I think that that is at the most macro level.

Starting point is 01:07:16 the very positive thing. And then it does the same thing for every micro individual and every economic decision to allow each individual separate from that kind of the global backdrop and Bitcoin's position in its very competitive dynamic for world money. It gives everybody a tool individually to just get up in the morning, produce value for other human beings around them and store that value for the benefit of their family and for the people in their direct vicinity. And I think that the more people, that are building toward that future, the least amount of pain that's going to be felt between here and there.

Starting point is 01:07:52 All right, guys, give the audience handoff to the things you guys are working on. Yeah, come check us out at zapright.com. You can get a 30-day free trial, and you can find me on Twitter at Will Cole or Noster. I can't recite my M-P-P-B-B-B-B-B-E, but you can find me there. Yeah, and it's ZapR-I-T-E. if you're a business or individual that's either issuing invoices, payment links on a website, a more complicated web store, we're really focused on those specific types of payments today rather than something like a point of sale, but we can't help support point of sale.

Starting point is 01:08:28 But if you run a business, you're a Bitcoiner, you understand why Bitcoin stores value and you're thinking that, hey, it might make a lot of sense to accept Bitcoin and reach out to us. We'll help deal with you directly and get you onboarded to the vanguard of Bitcoin payments. And then for me, you can find my book gradually than suddenly. If you're still trying to figure out why Bitcoin is obsoleting all other money, you can find that at the safehouse.com slash gradually. And then safe is spelled S-A-I-F, thesafehouse.com slash gradually. All right.

Starting point is 01:08:58 Preston appreciate you having us on. Thanks, Preston. Yeah, we'll have links to all that in the show notes. And we'll catch you guys next week. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application, you use, just search for We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin-specific shows come out every Wednesday, and I'd love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that.

Starting point is 01:09:25 And it's something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm. So anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate. And with that, thanks for listening, and I'll catch you again next week. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Bitcoin Fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only, before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

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