What Bitcoin Did - 16 YEARS OF BITCOIN w/ Pete Rizzo

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

Pete Rizzo is a Bitcoin historian and Editor at Bitcoin Magazine. In this episode, we discuss Bitcoin 16 years on, the 100k milestone, Saylor's 100k party, and the broader implications of Bitcoin's systemic importance and adoption trends. We also get into the rise of institutional Bitcoin adoption, the challenges to the Bitcoin orthodoxy, and the strategic potential of nation-states accumulating Bitcoin reserves. MASSIVE THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN: https://www.iren.com/ RIVER: https://river.com/wbd CASA: https://casa.io/

If it's not 100K, I mean, that just makes me even more bullish because it's like Bitcoin then has to go higher to keep proving people wrong. You know, and I think that to me, like a million dollars seems like that much more of a easy milestone to pass now because all these people still hold this perception. And Bitcoin has to break away these perceptions. So I think, yeah, I would have expected it to be more accepted. and the fact that it is not still accepted, you know, is, I think, bizarre. Like, I'm not quite sure. And bizarre and very bullish. We never got you on the air.

I think I did go on air. Oh, you did? Well, I didn't go on stage, but I was eating steak, and I think there was, like, something going on. So I was with Pete and Preston eating steak, and someone came over and asked some questions. but I'm not going to lie, I'd been drinking a lot tequila at that point, so I think it was probably nonsense, whatever I said. Yeah, that's conversation degraded at a certain point. It was like 1130, and I couldn't really hear what the guy was saying,

and he asked me what the price of Bitcoin would be by the end of the new year, and I said 300K, so I think I was the most bullish person there. You're on record, yeah. Well, there's some interesting, yeah, we can get a, into Thaler stuff. I mean, I obviously showed up early to, like, help set up everything else, which was interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, we, I know you said you don't like the talking intro, but we are actually now live. So in my Miami studio, I'm in my hotel room still. But so Saylor's party was, it was pretty incredible. How did the live stream go?

Yeah, amazing numbers in terms of the viewership. I mean, especially for something that was just like launched last minute, right? I think Saylor. Yeah, I didn't even know you were doing it. I just turned up and saw the lights. Saylor reached out a couple weeks ago, wanted to do with Picklin Magazine wanted to find a way to invite the plebs kind of into the 100K party, right? Because I think it, you know, I got the sense that Sailor, I don't think, knew, you know, that the 100K party would be such a memetic thing, right? I think you wanted to have a canon with people. And then it just became like, oh, who's invited or who's not invited.

And so, yeah, the live stream came together at the last minute as like a way to, I think, invite people who were home kind of like in to the setting, right? Because I think there was a lot of griping about that stuff. But, yeah, I mean, there was no production schedule. You know, I basically was given a blank slate from Bitcoin Magazine to just host and keep the conversation rolling. So, yeah, we talked predictions. We had a number of guests. Everybody from T.J. Miller stopped on for a bit to...

I didn't know T.J. was there. He was, yeah, to Samson Mao and David Bailey and all the regulars. You know, so it was a good conversation. People, you know, obviously very bullish on next year, right? A lot of positive sentiment. And so it should be an interesting time capsule. If you haven't checked it out, Bitcoin magazine, YouTube's got the full 100K party. You can see me in my fake Bitcoin Gucci jacket.

The party was so much bigger than I expected. I thought it was going to be like 50 to 100 people and it was huge. Yeah, I think it was 500 was the final count. Yeah, the sense of scale there was wild, right? I mean, you know, just Sailor does a $40 billion house, I think, or something. like there, 40 million dollar house or something. I don't know the math. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy house. Yeah. It's something like, you know, it's worth like 4,800 Bitcoin, I think. Somebody was doing the math there. And there was the yacht and everything. Well, you know that I took,

I took my brother there. It was his first Bitcoin event. So it was very... Yeah, I didn't know that was your brother. I saw a guy running around in a Rail Bedford T-shirt. I was like, who's that guy? And I found out was your brother. Yeah, my actual brother. So, yeah, it was his first Bitcoin event. And, you know, he knows the people in the industry, like, through Twitter, right? Because he's gotten involved. And so, yeah, he was just, he went through various stages of the sailor party. I honestly think, like, I honestly think, like, documenting his experience would have been the most interesting thing. Because he got there and it was like, you know, at first it was like shock.

He's like, oh, this is like Michael Saylor sounds. And he's like seen Saylor on TV. And, you know, we're setting up the studio, you know, because there's like chairs. We're trying to figure out how to arrange it. And then Saylor, like, comes to the balcony and he just starts talking about stuff about where to put stuff. And my brother was like a little bit shell shocked. But then, and then he went from like the next stage, which was like, you know, a couple hours in. And then there's unlimited tomahawk steak and like unlimited lobsters.

And he's just like double fisting. And he's like, this is the part of the universe. He's like, I met McCormick. Like we took a picture. And then by the end of the night, he was like, you know, we're tearing down in the studio. We had to stay at like 3 a.m. or something like that. You know, we had to take the shuttle back to the hotel. And he's just like so bearish.

He was like, you know, like it wasn't, it wasn't bullish enough enough. You know, and he went through like the depression of like, you know, the idols, you know, kind of, because, you know, he's just like a regular pleb dude, like, here, so, you know, but like, what did you expect, right? Like, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a kind of an upper echelon about how good a party can be, like, even if, like, a billionaire has a party, like, you know, it's still a regular party. Yeah. I had to take that shuttle back. I decided it was time for me to leave. I'd had two, they didn't have beer, so I was drinking tequila all night, and I was gone. And so it got to, like, one-thirty

or two or something, and I left. And when I got off the shuttle, which was like, I don't know, somewhere between North and South Beach. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, I tried to get an Uber, but it was obviously New Year's Eve, couldn't get anything. So I ended up doing the 50-minute walk back to the hotel. So I'd sobered up by the time I got home. Right. That's like the depression ending, right? Yeah, exactly.

You go back to your regular pub life. Exactly. Just walking the streets of Miami. How many people did you actually have on the live stream watching? Couldn't, oh, like total numbers. I'd probably close over a hundred, over half a million, I think. It's like was the live. Wow.

Yeah, because X has just been so huge, right? X is just incentivizing live streaming at such a crazy rate. You know, YouTube, I don't know the final numbers, but, you know, YouTube, it was on par with what we saw with the Trump election last year that we did as well. That's pretty incredible. I mean, it wasn't the Bitcoin 2024 Trump speech. Those numbers were crazy. So, you know, we had probably 6 million people watching live when Trump was talking.

So that was like, you know, if you look at 6 million, that's like a college football. Yeah, that's crazy. Like American football. Yeah. Hand egg. What's the plan now with doing the live streams? Because you're obviously doing loads more of those. I'm the host, right?

So I'm not really like the executive planner of the live streams for Bitcoin magazine, right? So, you know, they invite me to host things. I try to keep the conversation going. In terms of like larger plan, I mean, as a host, you know, I'd love to do those all the time. I think there was conferences going on all over the world. You know, I'm bullish on the world tour idea of, you know, spending a year kind of going out and covering all the events. But yeah, I love doing that, man. I love doing that stuff.

It's fun. I think it's, you know, in a bull market, there's plenty of demand for it. So, yeah, I'd love to be on the road doing that all the time. But, you know. And with the, like, so it's been quite cool to see you guys branch out from doing just like the U.S. conference doing them all over the world. Have you been to them all so far? So I did not go to Hong Kong this year. I missed that one and I missed Amsterdam, but I've been in past years.

But yeah, I went to Bitcoin Mina out of the Middle East in December. Yeah, obviously the conference expanding to like four major geographic regions and like every part of the world has been a huge endeavor for the company. Like, you know, it just requires a lot to set up. You know, I'd like to see us do some more events. I think there's talk about expanding that even further. Still TBD. right now there's a lot of focus on Las Vegas because I think that's going to be at a scale that's probably even bigger than Nashville was.

Like I mean, there's already, you know, so just for perspective for people at home, it's like, you know, in past years, we haven't been getting emails like over Christmas break from like major figures to like speak at the event. You know, they're still moving like hundreds of tickets like a day right now. So like every by every metric like, you know, if the market stays hot, I think Vegas could be like a 40,000. 50,000 person event, you know, Nashville was wild and it was 24,000, I think, was the, was the number that was going with. So it could be even on a larger scale than that. Obviously, you know, open the market stays hot. I don't, I don't see that the market's going to slow down this year, you know, entering Bitcoin 16th year. It seems like it's, yeah, this is going to be a bullish year for sure. Do you think you'll get Trump again? For the conference?

Yeah. I know there's active talks about it. I think you'll see a heavy representation from the administration 100%. I think that's given. Hopefully, you know, there'll be some other participants, newer big names. There's just a few people they're talking to that they can't talk about just yet. But yeah, you know, the more people that come to an event, the more people get on stage, that's how it goes, right? I think the big one will be Ross Ulberg, if he's freed. and a that would be amazing um i think you you know you could see a ross appearance which i think it would be wild especially for the old timers yeah yeah that would be incredible yeah my favorite part of the similar party was seeing the old timers yeah there were some there's some

people there who were you know you don't get to see that much i don't know if you saw them in the crowd but yeah i mean like trace was there i didn't i didn't know he was still around he has a very large like derivative of business that he runs like in the space yeah he's been quiet. He never really left. And then the big one would have been Wences Casaris. I don't know if you saw it, spotted him. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't know he was there. I don't know if I really knew what he looked like because he's changed a little bit. But I saw after the fact that he was there. Yeah, his look, he's not the entire Silicon Valley entrepreneur anymore. Yeah, exactly. It looks like a man who owns, you know, six figures worth of Bitcoin and is enjoying it. For sure. It was, it was very cool. But so it's

Bitcoin's 16th birthday. I'm going to put this out tomorrow, so Jan 3rd, 16th birthday. We should talk about this. You're the Bitcoin historian now. But tell me your kind of take on, did you think we'd get so far so quickly? Like 16 years in, it seems like everything's now falling into place. Yeah, it's a tough question to answer. You know, 16 years is almost like if you were a kid, you'd be an adult, right? So you should be figuring out your life at this point. I had this conversation with Pierre and Morgan, Richard, went on the live stream and I think that I don't, you know, in some ways, yes, in some ways no.

Like, I think it's weird to me that like it's 100K and then Bitcoin just feels the same, right? Like I had a weird experience when Bitcoin had 100K because it seems like, you know, people are happy for me and like, you know, they're like, oh, like, good for you. Good for you. That Bitcoin's 100K. But like, it hasn't really translated to them being like, oh, okay, this is something I need to take seriously yet.

And I just think it's really odd because if you had, you know, I started covering Bitcoin as a journalists in 2013 when it was $50. I mean, if you had asked me about $100K, I would have thought when we got 100K that it would be very mainstream, like very accepted. I'm sorry, maybe the keyword here is accepted. I think it would have been, I think I thought that it would have been more ingrained into the like financial behaviors of people at like a much higher rate. So is it ingrained in people's financial behaviors? Like, absolutely. I think there's a small percentage of people around the world. Well, meaningful percentage, but less than 10% of people who are saving in Bitcoin and using it as a savings technology, right? Like, that's happens. I don't think people

are using it for, like, their day-to-day financial payments. I think, like, from the 2013-14 perspective, I think people thought that Bitcoin was going to mainstream in that way, right? Like, the Bitcoin was going to be a part of, like, traditional commerce. I think Bitcoin is financializing, right, and it's part of the financial infrastructure. But yeah, it has been a bit slower, right? Like, it's, it's obviously the price has done really well, but the process feels like it's been slower and that, and it's really weird

because, you know, you saw Paul Kroogman resign from the New York Times and now he's a substack, but he's still talking about how Bitcoin is for criminals and this is, you know, 60, I mean, he was one of the first people to write negatively about Bitcoin when it was like a couple dollars, you know, so you would think that

like, um, something would like click that like, okay, this hasn't gone away and it's not a total scam. But that perception still lingers. So like such a larger degree than I could have imagined, right? Especially after 16 years as being so long. The question that I've always pondered is like sort of like at what point was like the press and like the financial vanguard. Like does it really hit home?

And if it's not 100K, I mean, that just makes me even more bullish because it's like Bitcoin then has to go higher to keep people proving people wrong. You know, and I think that to me like a million dollars seems like that much. more of a easy milestone to pass now because all of these people still hold this perception and Bitcoin has to break away these perceptions. So I think, yeah, I just, I would have expected it to be more accepted. And the fact that it is not still accepted, you know, is, I think, bizarre. Like, I'm not quite sure. And bizarre and very bullish.

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So whether you're interested in mining Bitcoin or harnessing AI compute, Iron is setting the standard. Visit iron.com to learn more, which is IR, E-N.com. The 100K thing for me personally was really strange, and I don't want to sound like a dick here, but I expected to be more excited about it. So, like, personally, I was much more excited when we hit, like, 10K and 20K in 2017 than I was at 100K.

I expected to wake up and be, like, buzzing. And I didn't have that feeling. 100K for longer, right? Especially in 2021, there was a lot of hopes the Bitcoin would hit 100K, so it feels more like a milestone that should have been crossed already, right? Yeah. In regards, there's like a, there's a delayed gratification. for that. I still think the big thing is just like it's like, how is it not an accepted part of like

the financial infrastructure? And it is, right? Like we saw the ETFs this year. You know, I put out my top 12 moments. Larry Fink kind of coming out and saying that he was a big believer, I think, was one of the ETS being approved. But even still, it feels like it's just kind of, you know, coming online within the traditional financial world, right? And they're still fighting it to some, it seems like, right? Like they're not at least openly talking about, you know. No, I totally agree. But the critics now seem even more delusional than ever. Do you know a guy called Gary's Economics? He has like a big YouTube channel. He's like finance guy who like a little blue shirt on and he's like, oh no, different guy to that. He's a guy

who has a big YouTube channel. He talks a lot about like UK issues. And he's all about sort of trying to explain economics to normal people so they can get ahead and stop getting fucked. And he still is incredibly bearish on Bitcoin. And this like that, that kind of. kind of thing just no longer makes any sense to me. Yeah, that to me is odd, right? Like, I even, I even met with a financial, like, I sort of will entrust estate planning person. Like, I'm trying to get, like, you know, some stuff squared away from my, for my kid. And now that, like, I have a family. And I just met with, like, this regular estate local, kind of like a state trust kind of person who, like, you know, was a financial person, like, works in finance. And just, like,

the lack of, I mean, I was just how little she understood about Bitcoin is a basic concept. And I left that meeting also being very bullish because it's like, okay, like how Bitcoin is so valuable, but it's still so misunderstood. And that to me is the most shocking thing, like 16 years in. Like if you were to say like Bitcoin would be like still misunderstood and still, you know, not accepted. Those are two things where it's like, okay, what's the price level that Bitcoin is accepted and understood? That's the question kind of looking forward. And if it's not 100K, it's going to have to be higher. Yeah.

What is that? And I think also, you know, as we looked ahead, especially after this year, if you go through the whole list of top moments, it's like, okay, so you have Trump, U.S. President, you know, basically bowing to free Ross Ulbricht, you know, making us part of his administration, the United States getting serious about it, potentially. You know, who are the, what's the other upper echelon to break into? You're talking about like, okay, well, so the IMF, the United Nations, like the international superstructure.

Yeah. global oil trade. Right. But that's like where is the where's one above that? And the answer is there isn't one above that. There isn't that's kind of the top. You know, that's the ceiling of like world's,

you know, administrative superstructure. And so I, you know, that's where I think that, you know, so I am bullish on the Bitcoin price. I do get the sense,

though, that we're getting probably like pretty close to the end of like Bitcoin's like, uh, early development period or, you know, just Bitcoin being, like I don't think there's too many cycles left. I'm starting to get like really convinced that I that I don't think there's that much more

to whatever like this era of Bitcoin is where Bitcoin is new, misunderstood, becoming more mainstream. I would say it's pretty early. You know, it's still pretty mainstream. But then it's like accepted and understood is like that's the next step. Yeah. I think we're getting pretty close to that. Like maybe like I said this last year.

And I think this is true. I think like counting this cycle, like we may. maybe you'll see one more cycle. There's got to be some limit where, like, there's a, you know, you hit a saturation point. And then most people understand and accept it. I think we're getting close to that. And, you know, if you were to essay, I don't think there's going to be five more cycles like this. Or you said Bitcoin run up and have a huge crash and people are dismissing it.

It's that feels like it's starting to end. I don't know how to describe it any more than that. But I think that, you know, we'll probably see a big and boom and bust this year. American Hot will put out his predictions. I agree with that. I think you'll see Bitcoin kind of run up again have a huge crash. But, yeah, I don't know how much longer that's going to happen. Because there's got to be an understanding and acceptance point,

at which point Bitcoin kind of matures and we're sort of out of this, you know, kind of early stage of Bitcoin. That's interesting to hear you say that because I think in the 2020 cycle, when people were really starting talking about kind of super cycle ideas, you were one of the few people who was being very rational and being like, no, the cycles are not over. And obviously, like now with the ETFs, There's a lot of people talking about, like, comparing it to the gold ETF when, once that launched, it was sort of an eight-year bull market.

And Hoddle's one of the people that uses that as sort of a catalyst to be like maybe we don't have the cycles in the same way. I 100% think there's going to be a boom and bust this year because expectations are going to run so hot. Yeah. Because I think the administration is going to come in. If you see the U.S. government start buying, obviously that'll force other nations to start buying. And since there's a 60 to 80% probability of something like that happened, if not now, the question then is just when. I think that you're going to see a huge blow off. And I think that Brandon Green said this on the live stream, but I think this is true.

I think this next crash in Bitcoin will be systemically important for the United States markets and like a way we haven't seen. And I think that because of that, that's probably how we know we're getting to like the later like cyclical. kind of boom-bust nature of the economy of the economy because, you know, once Bitcoin becomes, you know, let's just say Bitcoin hypothetically it runs up to like gold's market cap. You see Bitcoin cross 500K. If 5X move from here, you see across 500K and then it drops 50%, you know, just overnight, back to 100K, something like that. Well, let's just say, okay, in order to move up to 500K, companies are buying it. ETFs are super exposed to financial institutions. is maybe financial institutions are buying it outside the ETF,

the nation states are buying it, and there's a crash. Okay, well, now you're at the same level where we saw there's a little bit with the FTX, right? FDX is like a little bit, a little bit. Systemic, but like important. But systemic is, you know, you're looking at the government coming in and subsidizing it

and getting the industry back faster in order to kind of stabilize things. And I think like that's where you really see like mature financial industries. Like they have the support from governments where they like even out. They try to smooth out these current. right. And I think you'll something like that. With the FTX one, like that was, I guess,

a systemic crash within kind of the broader like quote unquote crypto market, but it didn't really impact much outside of that. Do you think this time it may impact kind of real world things? Yeah, it's going to impact people's like 401Ks, like their portfolios. I think you'll see, you know, you'll probably see, because of micro strategies in the QQQQ now, right? The more that the more that Bitcoin companies, the companies with Bitcoin on the balance sheet, get integrated into things like the S&P into the NASDAQ 100, the more it's integrated in people's financial portfolios.

And what you find is, again, like, this is where I give Saylor, like, a lot of credit for, I think. I think Saylor has been the most interesting person in this last year. For sure. I think he's, he is now setting like a forward course for Bitcoin. I think like if I had a criticism of Saylor in 2021, 2020, it was just that he was the loudest voice kind of saying what

everybody else was saying, but he didn't really have his own forward direction vision for Bitcoin. I think in 2024, we saw Michael Saylor's, I don't think he articulated

always very clearly, but it was very clear that he has a forward direction for Bitcoin now and that he is running as fast as he can in that direction to push the whole ecosystem in that direction.

And how I've come to think about this is I think that he wants to make Bitcoin critically important to the U.S. financial system such that the U.S. financial system no longer can oppose Bitcoin. I don't think he'll say that,

but I think that's like his number one goal. And like putting Bitcoin on balance sheets for major corporations means that then those major corporations because they're so integrated into the U.S. stock market system have to have the same level of support that the U.S. stock market has

and the U.S. real estate market has. So why does the stock market not crash? Why is the stock market always hitting all-time highs was because the political structure within the United States has to support the stock market? That's how we made, you know, our elections actually, Joe Biden lost this election because the economy was bad, right? More than anything else.

And so because the U.S. political system and the U.S. financial system are intertwined, this is what I think Sailor realized is that the U.S. political system and the U.S. financial system are intertwined. So, you know, yeah, what is the Saler strategy? It's the U.S. first, right? It's the U.S. as the spearhead for Bitcoin adoption. It's keep the existing financial status quo, but re-underpin it with Bitcoin. So you're not moving away from a U.S. hegemonic financial system. And you're reinforcing and then maximizing the existing U.S. driven financial system. And obviously, I think you're starting to see people oppose this, right?

Like, I would say the Jack Dorsey wing of the Bitcoin party opposes this, right? Like they want to see a bottoms up grassroots adoption that takes place outside. of governments. They want to see adoption in the global south, and they want to see, you know, people using Bitcoin for, you know, everyday finances outside the U.S. structure. I think El Salvador was also this, right? El Salvador wants to kind of raise itself within the global, you know, in a world Bhutan wants to raise itself, you know, within the kind of, you know, geopolitical landscape through Bitcoin. A world where the U.S. is the driving force behind, you know, adoption, like that asymmetry no longer exists, right? The existing financial system basically

is rebuilt on Bitcoin and the existing structures are maintained. And I think that's the root fissure right now. You know, if you're thinking about, okay, where are the big social touchpoints, right? And I think you're seeing people on the other side of the line. I think Dorsey is opposed to this. Whether he's saying so or not, it's very clear that he's not, you know, publicly endorsing some this stuff. Mark Goodwin, I think, has been like another leading kind of voice and saying, you know, this stuff is bad and we don't want this Whitney Webb. And I, to lesser extent, low elites. And I think that, you know, there is a faction of people who oppose this kind of effort to orange bill America and get America to lead within the Bitcoin industry. And I think that

that's going to be the dominant social schism. And I think the groups will separate and likely find that that will be the fault line for this coming year. I don't know how it plays out, but, you know. No, I agree with that. And I'm definitely sympathetic to Mark Goodwin and the rest of those people, like their perspective. I just don't know if it's going to be either or. I think it can still be both. And I mean, there's obviously, the US just has an incredible amount of power. So they're going to be able to do this faster and more aggressively than anyone else, especially in the global south, but I don't think you have to discount the global south because the U.S. is coming into Bitcoin.

Well, again, it's, it's, remember what I said, it's, it's the, the vision of that part of the Bitcoin ecosystem is that is, is an, a specific end to the U.S.-led global financial system. That, whether they say that directly or, or not, that is, it's very implicit that that is what they want. Yes. They want to end the U.S.-led financial system, and they want to create a more equitable global financial system where, you know, again, like people adopt Bitcoin. That doesn't happen and isn't

forced by governments. And the financialization of Bitcoin isn't controlled by governments because, you know, they see, remember what I said about the stock market, this idea that the government controls or has a, the U.S. government, the U.S. government has a vested interest in the U.S. stock market, right? This is like kind of the root of sailor theory. Sailor theory is the U.S. government has a vested interest in the stock market. Therefore, if Bitcoin is systemically important to the U.S. stock market, the U.S. government has a meaningful, substantial interest in Bitcoin. That's the jump. That's what he wants, whether he says that or not. A world where that happens is a world where the United States, the government, the world of middle military apparatus,

runs the current financial system that created the petrodollar and that, you know, uses the current IMF global financial. system to keep the status quo is sustained. There's no meaningful disruption to that. And so I think this is kind of the quiet part out loud, right? Like this is what a certain faction within the Bitcoin world doesn't want. They don't want that. But the answer is that no one can stop either group. They're both going to, and I agree with you, they're both going to keep moving in that direction.

But the U.S., the one where the U.S. gets involved, like there are specific outcomes that happen because of that, that don't happen if that doesn't happen, right? It's like if the U.S. becomes the primary driver of like Bitcoin adoption,

if they become, uh, the dominant interest holder in Bitcoin, right? And they keep the status quo. Uh, you're not going to see some of the side effects that like people want, which is a reduction in like the U.S.

is sort of just managerial, uh, nature like the whole global financial system. So there, There's an opposition here, right? Like if something, if X happens, then why can't happen? And so that's where you get tension, where you get tension in social groups where like, if something happens, well, then something else gets harder.

And I think the something else that gets harder is, you know, there is no, the new financial system where things are more equitable and it's not kind of the current status quo. Like, that just doesn't happen. Yeah. It can't happen. Like, how could it happen? You know, there isn't a way for an El Salvador or is there something. to rise up

if the U.S. keeps everything in check, right? Like, Saylor talking about even, like, demonetizing gold, like these sort of things. Well, you know, there's a lot of developed countries that own gold, right? This is due to their central banks, right? So a lot of these things have second order effects.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that's been the big, to me, I think the biggest trend of 2024 is you've seen the kind of realignment of like the Bitcoin social sphere. And I think we've talked a lot about this about like, you know, how people feel about Bitcoin adoption. And I feel like the big winners of 2024 were the subgroup, well, I think there was a group within Bitcoin who wanted to advance Bitcoin by any means necessary. And they were willing to cut corners with the ideology,

like the existing kind of Bitcoin ideology in order to achieve that. So I'll give you three examples. This episode is brought to you by River. There are many places. There are many places to buy Bitcoin, but there's no exchange like River. They have innovative products, phone support, and a dedication to security that I haven't seen anywhere else. With River, buying Bitcoin is easy. You can set up zero-fee recurring buys to automatically build your stack, and while you're waiting for the perfect buying opportunity, River even lets you earn daily Bitcoin interest on your cash balance, which outperforms most highly-yield savings accounts. Your Bitcoin is stored safely in multi-sig cold storage, plus you have peace of mind,

knowing that River has monthly proof of reserves and holds all client Bitcoin that wasn't withdrawn to self-custody. Open an account for yourself or your business at river.com forward slash WBD. That's r-I-V-E-R dot com forward slash WBD. Before we do that, because I definitely do want to come back to that, but before we do, I've got a question on the say of the thing

because he obviously talks a lot about Bitcoin demonetizing gold and supporting the US dollar. And I've not ever been sure whether he believes that, Or if he's just kind of playing the game to get Bitcoin in the door? Well, so that entirely depends then on what the current Trump administration's attitude is to the stablecoin apparatus and how effective they are at bootstrapping it. Because he's talked a lot about this Bitcoin for savings and then, you know, US dollar for spending. So the answer to that is that stablecoins are uneniably good for the United States. the crypto market being a vehicle for additional U.S. Treasury's demand and additional dollarization

in countries that don't want dollarization. So you saw this stuff about Nigeria over the last year where Nigeria has really tried to crack down the crypto ecosystem. And why is that? Because they can't launch their own currency and then control the domestic financial system. So if you get into a system, you know, and I believe this is probably one of the more likely cases is that, you know, Bitcoin is Amazon. It's the idea that like, you know, is the biggest from all the e-commerce disruption ideas of the 90s. And then the U.S. dollar becomes Walmart.

Well, because by that, I mean existing physical retailer that then, you know, becomes a dominant online retailer simply because they had so much network effect initially. Well, obviously in that case, you know, a user around the world then has two options for how to use their money. It's the dollar or the or Bitcoin. And so, you know, a world where most people know dollars and the dollar brand is very good and very strong is one where the U.S. dollar is still very competitive and still widely used and the U.S. continues to like exert control in the global financial system and the global system in much the same way as they do currently. So it's very, it's just like if that happens, you know, and there's no other fiat currency that, like, makes this transition

to crypto other than the U.S. dollar. I mean, because we've seen this, right? Like, Tether has had a digital euro for years, about a digital Chinese wand for years, and you can actually look at the raw market demands. No one uses them. For a digital version of each of these fiat currencies. And so there's, and what the crypto markets are saying is that there is like a 95% preferential, differential, we're given a choice between any fiat currency on a blockchain crypto rail, the US dollar has like a 95% market share. Yeah, that means that the crypto dollar kind of system running on becoming a US dollar system is that that's the new US dollar system. Do you think that's because the dollar is so dominant though? Or do you think it's because Bitcoin

is always denominated in dollars pretty much wherever you live in the world? So, and going back to the Walmart analogy, it's entirely a factor of like existing network economics. So Walmart, Amazon is a 10x better digital retailer than Walmart. Because Walmart started as a physical, you know, distribution center. Walmart can copy the things that Amazon does quite effectively, and it can still be number two. And so I think you're going to see a similar relationship emerge where if the U.S. dollar starts doing that stuff, you know, Amazon can put out Amazon Prime. And then Walmart can make Amazon Walmart prime.

That's how this feature adoption works, right? And so whoever is in their existing networks, I think it's simply a function of the U.S. dollar has so much more demand. And there's so many more users. I mean, the U.S. dollar has had 50 years of U.S. culture supporting it. Hollywood movies, rap videos. You know, that's how the world works. People know the dollar they want the dollar.

It's nice Coca-Cola. So, yeah, to Bitcoin has always, I think, in order to become like kind of the currency of the world that needs to go up against that. That's the opponent, right? That's the that's the Jake Paul, Mike Tyson fight of the. These are the two things, right? So yeah, I think they're somewhat necessarily oppositional, right? Because if you go back to the Amazon, Walmart analogy, this is just a way to distribute commerce, right?

So people are still doing the same things. They're still buying things. People are buying stuff from people who make things. So like back it all the way up. like before there was an Amazon or Walmart, people are always buying things from people who make things. Most people who buy things online, you know,

they go through Amazon and Walmart in the United States because those are the popular digital portals where you buy things. They're most widely known. That doesn't mean there aren't other things. It's just that most purchase decisions are kind of defined, you know, by that relationship. So, yeah, I mean, all these things have implications

and I just think that, yeah, yeah, The stable coins are good for the U.S. dollar system. The U.S. dollar system existing within, using the crypto system to further its dominance is one where, you know, if you can erode China and the Eurozone's financial, you know, are they going to come to Bitcoin first? Are they going to use the global crypto-US dollar system? I think they're more likely to use the global crypto-U.S. dollar system, however you want to slice it. You know, so if I agree with Goodwin on some things and the Whitney Webb kind of, you know, worldview, it's that. Yes, like the crypto system being a proxy U.S. dollar system that is funded by Silicon Valley companies who have a relationship with the U.S. government, it all sort of becomes, you know, people talk about a CPDC. This is the CPC. This is the point to be a CPDC. The CPDC thing has a red herring. You know, in the same way that, look at the Fang stocks. You know, these are private companies that are selling Internet services. But, you know, they consolidated into a group of companies that have surveillance packages, deals with the United

Sixth government. Again, Whitney Webb and Markman talk a lot about this. I think they talk pretty eloquently about the dangers here. I disagree with some of their root conclusions as to like, you know, how much of this has already played out. But I do think there is a, that is the danger. Like, you probably don't want that. We probably don't want to create this.

But the US government does. They want to create this. And so this is the interesting thing with the Trump administration. because we hear from like the Palm Manaforts and we hear from the Eric Trumps. And it's very clear that they are crypto focused. They want a buy system. They want decentralized exchanges. They want U.S. dollars trading around the globe on new technologies, displacing all

other fiat currencies. And if Bitcoin helps that, then Bitcoin is an ally. I mean, there's your drop. They're clearly crypto-focused. I mean, David Sachs coming in as the crypto czar. just spells that out. I do want to move on to the, I assume you were talking about the wizards before,

but before we do, I've got a question for you on unit bias, because while 100K Bitcoin is amazing for everyone of us who's been in Bitcoin for a while, of the people, like my friends I've spoken to recently, it's not been like previous cycles where the like is now a good time to buy. The conversations I'm having now is

it's too expensive for me, I can't afford Bitcoin. How much of an issue do you think that will be in terms of driving like the retail market for Bitcoin. I support BIP-21Q. Do you? Of course, yeah. See, I do not. It's not that I think it's a bad idea.

I just think why on earth is that a bit. But what's your kind of take on unit bias? Yeah, well, I mean, that's a whole other conversation, but that's largely procedural. But I mean, the fact that there are 2.1 quadrillion Bitcoin's. That's how the system functions. And I think I'm just acknowledging that to people and having them buy Bitcoin's single units.

I think it's fine. Again, I don't have an issue with that. What's my feeling on unit bias? Yeah, I think that there is a large portion of young people around the world for whom owning a single Bitcoin is unattainable. We'll stop. Within their lifetimes won't be able to actually earn one. You know, I think you're going to start, and I think this is what was interesting

what happened in the crypto markets is that, you know, especially as that starts going down. I said this on the live stream. I was talking about Alcoin Daily guys, Austin and Aaron. And my advice to crypto people is always, you know, okay, like if you want to do whatever you're doing with all this kind of like crazy crypto stuff, like make sure you own Bitcoin. Because you don't want to own a million fart coin in five years when you missed it. You could have bought half a Bitcoin with them. And then you would be fine. Right. So it's like, I think the more that the crypto apparatus like starts to realize, oh, shit. Like no, actually Bitcoin is the valuable asset.

You know, this is where I agree with Alex Berg and some of these other kind of folks who are, you know, pushing to kind of rebuild like crypto financial rails on Bitcoin. It's like you want the asset. The asset is the thing that matters. And Bitcoin is the asset. So, yeah, I mean, what do I think about that? The more Bitcoin goes up, I mean, people will just have to capitulate eventually, right? It's just a long, slow process.

The unit bias, I think it's fun to talk about. I just, you know, it is what it is, right? there are whole bitcoins that are worth a certain amount and then there are Sotorches, bits, bitcoins, whatever you want to call them, that are worth less. All that matters is you own some amount of it, right? Because it just seems like this is going to be the way that things function.

Do you think, like, I actually didn't see that you were talking to the altcoin daily guys. Do you think the shit coin market has now completely changed? Because it seems like meme coins are the only thing people care about. Do you think that these kind of like, utility tokens, whatever you want to call them, are going to have the same kind of prevalence that they have done in the past. No, and I think that's why I support very tacitably. So Marad, the camera was last name,

is like very openly at the meme coin super cycle. And I think Bitcoiners should be more bullish about the meme coin super cycle because it is the complete capitulation of like the all-coin narratives that have persisted. And, you know, my conversation with Austin Aaron from Alcorn Daily was basically just like, I love pumped dot fun. I think pumped up fun is the most fantastic thing. And I wish more Bitcoiners were talking about it because... I don't even know what that is.

Okay, that's wild that you don't know that is. So in systems design, you know, you are able to architect systems. And then because you design those systems a certain way, people, you know, have behaviors. So when we're talking about in Bitcoin that Bitcoin incentivizes saving, it incentivizes people to think and plan it for the future, there's a lot of great Bitcoin evangelists who talk endlessly about this, Jimmy Song, Robert Brie Love, whatever. These are the second order things that happen because of the way Bitcoin's designed, right?

People become more long-term focus, safety, and they lower their time preference. Well, in the crypto system, they don't have that. Their system is designed for highest time preference possible and maximum sort of degeneracy and maximum scamming of other people to get more money for yourself because these are essentially just all mini-ponsie schemes. So pumped out fun is this, is this, this. exact thing run all the way to the end. It is the, in my view, the, like, Darwinian evolutionary perfection, like, of the

crypto system. And what it is is basically a platform where you log in, you, like, make a coin that is, like, attached to a live stream. And, like, you basically just have people, like, pumping coins on live streams, and then basically having, like, mini, multi-hour-long Ponzi's. So, like, the highlights here would be, like, how people optimized it in the system were, I'll just give you five examples of. There was one guy who every time the price hit a certain milestone, he would shoot an actual gun out of window.

So that was number one. The second one was this guy who wouldn't get out of the bathtub, like until Bitcoin hit, like, and the longer, the more people bought, the longer he stayed in the bathtub. There was the guy who was, like, burning an Israeli flag and, like, doing the Hitler salute. And, like, you know, he just kept doing it. And then there was the guy who was threatening to kill himself, like, if Bitcoin didn't hit light or sort of his coin didn't hit certain volume. like this is the actual thing that that system optimizes for. You're doing hour-long Ponzi's based on like novelty live streams and like hoping to ape in and out of them.

And there was the kid who did a camera. He made a coin for his dog. And then once it hit 20K, he dumped it and he was flipping everybody off. And he was like saying F you to all the live stream people. And then so what happened is other people found this out. And they just like pumped to the coin way higher. They sold it off again. use that money to fund more coins to, like, docks as family and then just launch more coins.

So, like, that is the crypto system. And that is the dead end of the crypto system personified and, like, a really beautiful fashion. You can find this all on X. It's very well documented. I don't know if I've ever heard such degeneracy. Yeah, right. But this is the end of that system. And I think that meme coins are, and it'll be interesting to see the Silicon Valley apparatus,

they have to legitimize meme coins. They have to because Bitcoin is pumping and they need some sort of narrative and they really have two options. It's like L2 is based on Ethereum, you know, like the base kind of model that they're pumping out and meme coins. That's it. It's all they got. They got two options. Obviously they do both. But yeah, meme coins are basically, Murad's kind of thesis is just like meme coins are an admission of the failure of like the crypto sector. Like once you are like only pushing meme coins and you concede that like the meme of the brands of the money is the only

differential between these things, then you're basically conceding that everything else that you said was wrong. That these being different levels of like crypto primitives and you being able to do like, you know, because the whole root of the crypto apparatus at a very root was this idea that

cryptocurrencies allowed you to, the freedom to create infinite amount of monies and those monies would create on would compete on novel technical features. This is the root. Ethereum competes against Bitcoin because Ethereum has more features than Bitcoin. That was the root of the whole post-2017 crypto apparatus. And so once you admit, like through the popularization of the meme coin narrative,

that that is not true, that they're all the same, that they're all consensus networks backed by cryptography that can have whatever rule set the users want. that is true. That is the true description. Once you admit that, there's nothing. There's nothing else. That's the, that's full mask off. There isn't anything to that system. And that's why I said, I think, like, you know, however you feel about that system, you know, and however you feel about the collapse, like those participants will be motivated to do, they have to get that money out somehow. So I think they'll, I think they'll be very creative in getting that money out. And I don't think that the big power players, you know, are going to see that money go to zero.

They've got to go somewhere with it. Why not Bitcoin? Seems like a good place to put your money. But yeah, I think I don't think you'll see that just yet. I think you'll see, you know, the bases in layer two's, that'll be like your kind of bigish narrative within all coin land. And I think that, you know, they'll try to hold off as long as they can. But, you know, retail is fully meme coin now.

And they're not buying any of these VC back coins. And there's no reason for them to. And so, yeah, I think you're getting closer to capitulation there. But capitulation, I think, will mean rolling over or something back in a Bitcoin, however they can. But, you know. Well, we're kind of starting to see that happen, too. I interrupted you on your flow with the wizard stuff.

Do you want to take off from there? Because I do want to get into, like, I don't think people are aware of the stuff that is coming to Bitcoin. and we are going to see very soon, like, shit-coining on Bitcoin in a different level. Well, that's happening now. Yeah. It's just that it's been kind of overshadowed by the Solana degeneracy. Well, I mean, my meta point with that was basically just like,

I think 2024 was, you know, why did David Bailey win 2024? It was a great question, right? Like, why was he the person who kind of like emerged as like, you know, the person who had the most kind of, like, influence of the space? And I think it's like there was a group of people who wanted to kind of further Bitcoin by any means necessary and they were willing to kind of take tradeoffs with orthodoxy. So I think, you know, this is this is my unification theory between season two Trump and that micro strategy. They're all the same thing. So you have season two Bitcoin. This is like

kind of the movement to bring crypto stuff to Bitcoin. You have micro strategy and you have Trump. And these are all the same thing because they all are essentially, were essentially many movements within Bitcoin that traded off the orthodoxy. So they did something that the orthodoxy didn't like in order to get some external group into Bitcoin and to promote it. So season two moved some of the Bitcoin, sorry, the crypto technical infrastructure via NFTs and meme coins to Bitcoin and attempt to get the crypto vCs and users to use Bitcoin instead of the crypto system.

And they wanted to advance that and are still trying to advance that. The Trump people wanted to get Donald Trump, the future U.S. president, to advance and promote Bitcoin and stop the domestic attacks on the industry. And so they traded off the orthodoxy. They got rid of the non-political elements of Bitcoin and said, hey, you can be, the U.S. can be at the vanguard and can move the industry forward and should use the industry forward. And they use that to their advantage to get Trump into Bitcoin and promoting Bitcoin. And that worked. Micro Strategy the same way. Micro Strategy does this.

It trades against the orthodoxy. Micro Strategy buys its Bitcoin on loans. They take out collateral that they don't have to buy Bitcoin that they can't currently pay for. The orthodoxy of Bitcoin, safety and et cetera, doesn't want that. They don't want people buy Bitcoin with leverage. They want to end the credit system, the credit banking system through Bitcoin. And so they don't like that aspect of microstrategy. So what micro strategy is doing is it's trading off the orthodoxy so that people within traditional finance,

realize that they can use lending to accumulate Bitcoin and make money off of this and to get them into Bitcoin. And that is working because corporations are adopting Bitcoin. So there's a kind of through line through all this stuff. And I think the thing that's the nice thing about the Trump example is it worked. And there's a huge binary on it working. So like there's a world where Kamala Harris won the presidency is a world where we don't have 100K Bitcoin. right now. I think most people agree with that. And so Trump winning the Bitcoin and crypto alliance within the political system, spending the money necessary for that to happen, doing the education

necessary for that to happen, putting aside their differences for that to happen, had a tangible result. And the tangible result of that was 40K Bitcoin or 100K Bitcoin. And so I think what it did is I think it recalibrated kind of the industry attitude towards the orthodoxy. Because you saw, in the case of Trump, it is one person. Like David Bailey, like I work with, like, and there were many people who told him like not to do this or like try to tell him why you shouldn't. He thought that he could orange pill Donald Trump. That was it. He got that idea in his head.

A guy had an idea in his head. And he went out and did that. It's incredible. Against a company that didn't always support him in that, against a group of people within the Trump administration who didn't always support this. And he forged an alliance with the crypto industry, with people like Ryan Selkis and people like the coin bases and the crackens of the world. And he built a political coalition. He got Jesse Powell's. He got the Trace Mayors.

He got the old-time bitcoinsers to be kind of. a political movement that spent money, spent serious money on an initiative, and that helped carry the election. That is a, that is a admission that the sort of orthodox to Bitcoin approach, which was very much defined by this, like, oh, well, just wait around, just, you know, hold your Bitcoin and Bitcoin will win and will persevere, no matter what you do. That was the, that was the narrative that all these people were built against. This is, I think the, the, this is the narrative of 2024 is that there was a group that rebelled against that. They rebelled against it in different ways. One of those groups was highly successful. And I think that their success is just so binary that it

forced everybody else to realize the strength of their achievement. People didn't like what happened with it. And they still don't like it with what happened with Trump. And we still haven't seen the repercussions of that. But for right now, in this specific historical moment, it's hard to invalidate the enormity of that because it's so immediate. And I think, so this is why I've excused all these things. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a, I'm not a, well, I voted Republican for the first time this election, but I'm historically left-leaning.

You know, I don't like the crypto apparatus. I would like to end the crypto apparatus, right? I don't, you know, with micro strategy, it's like, do I want large corporations owned in Bitcoin? Like, not really. It's like, I don't really want corporations to have more, you know, but outside, say, in the financial system. That's not something I inherently like.

I actually inherently kind of dislike all of these things. But I can't stop movements within Bitcoin from using Bitcoin to their own ends. And I think all these are great examples of this. And so I just treat them very equally. And I like to use this framework so people can really see them what they are for what they are. It's the root cause of all of this is this idea that we have this Bitcoin orthodoxy that we've constructed is that you should, thou shall do, or thou shall not do certain things.

And that lost this year. And it lost in different ways. Some of them more than others, right? I agree that the one sap review bite that's coming, you know, maybe the, you know, season two Bitcoin effort to, you know, get the crypto people into Bitcoin didn't work. Sure.

Okay, great. But they tried and they, you know, they failed. And they might, as you're saying, succeed, right? Like, there's still elements within that group that are going to launch new things. You're probably going to see, you know, various BitVM-based, you know. Or EVM. James launch this year, and they'll launch and they'll get some tokens. Like, how successful will they be?

I don't know. I have a long-term confidence that Bitcoin will replace all these things. So it's just sort of a question of how it happens, right? I think the crypto capital in the crypto system will come back to Bitcoin. Who or what or how that happens? I don't know. How could you possibly have such a strong opinion on that? And the same thing with like the Trump and the micro strategy stuff.

So it's like, sure, all corporations will own Bitcoin. I agree with that. Sure, all political parties will support Bitcoin. I agree with that. So then if you agree with all those three things, it's just like, okay, then you assume that all these things are going to work. And I do. And I just, I don't have a strong preference. I don't know.

It was very confusing. It was confusing year with the Bitcoin orthodoxy. But again, these groups that kind of, I think, had success by working. outside of it have just been so obviously successful. Yeah. You know, that it's hard to, hard to say that that didn't work. This episode is brought to you by CASA. For those of you out there who want to protect your Bitcoin, I want to tell you about CASA, the leading Bitcoin self-custody solution. So if you're serious about protecting your Bitcoin, then you need a rock, a solid security plan, and CASA gives you

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the fact that David Bailey took that idea went out and made it happen is truly incredible. a little earlier in the conversation, you said that you thought the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve was somewhere like 60 to 80%, I think you said. Where's that confidence coming from? Because that's a higher number than I've heard from others. Yeah, it's hard to say. I don't have any inside information on this. You know, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is interesting.

It has like the memetic quality. It's a great meme. So like, first off, like applause to Cynthia Lomas or whoever invented this meme. It's a great, just the three words are phonetically they're great. strategic Bitcoin Reserve. What does that mean? Who knows what that means? But it sounds super bullish, right?

Like, oh, we're owning Bitcoin and a reserve for strategy because we want to be strategic. It's like, okay, great. So, yeah, what does that mean? Well, right now what's happening, I think, is that people are just sort of yelling this word, like, to whoever will listen to it. And, you know, we're trying to create this idea. I think the Bitcoiners, we do this a lot, right? So we take this meme.

it seems pretty good. And then we just tell everybody that somebody's doing it. So we go out to the Middle East and we're like, yeah, everybody's buying a strategic reserve and like the States and they're doing it. And then we go to the, Dennis Porter goes to the U.S. states. And he's like, oh, everybody's buying a strategic reserve. And like, you know, people go out to Hong Kong and they're like, China, you better get, you know, strategic reserve. And I think the hope is that like one of these countries just does it for whatever reason.

Like whether it's a good idea or about, I don't know. It's like it's a good idea. I don't know. But like if one person does it, then they all have to do it, right? Like they have to, if one country has one, then they all should have one, right? So, I don't know. I think that's the hope, right? The hope is just that somebody buys this, right?

Somebody just does the thing, whatever it is, and then more people do it. I think that you're going to get a stockpile, right? So day one, Trump signs an order, and then whatever Bitcoin is the U.S. Marshall has, like, it's set aside. So that one has always seemed like an easy win. Like just taking the Bitcoin they already have. That one seems fair. It's whether they do the executive order where they buy $21 billion or they do the Cynthia

Lummis bill, which is even more. That I think there's, I don't think that that happens for a couple of reasons. So like one, if you're asking my opinion, like, and I tend to be like a bit more bearish analytical on things, right? I'm not David Bailey. I don't, I don't go out and like do these kind of things. So it's like, does that happen? Well, so then there's a couple questions.

Like the Republicans have a finite amount of political capital that they can use now with their mandate to get things done. So do they have a strong enough mandate to do this particular thing for the Bitcoin and Crypto industry? They have to free Ross. So off the table, we were getting one favor. Okay, so now the second favor. Well, I'd say the second one was Gensler. You know, okay, so like Gensler's already gone.

Ross is going to be freed. Okay, now do you get the strategic Bitcoin Reserve? Okay, well, what has to happen? That has to, as far as I understand, that has to happen through some act of Congress. Right. Okay. So then the Republicans then have to go out to the Democrats. Well, not the executive order part of it, though. Right. But to authorize this, so Congress controls financial spending within the United States framework. So a president can authorize something to occur, but then Congress has to authorize the actual spending allocation to it.

Wait, let me just ask a question on that, because that was, that's, I'm not saying I'm right here, but that wasn't my understanding of the executive order that BPI put out. I thought that was something where they were taking from the exchange, stabilization fund, and they could just do that with, like, just Trump can sign that. That's their specific. There are ways that it could happen from pulling from existing pools of money, but then my understanding is that you're going to have to deal with those constituents, like, who manage those pools of money, right? So there's some board or something that, like, manages that fund and has a specific

goal for it. So, like, George Selgan has talked a lot about this where he's, you know, he, he, he, his argument is essentially, like, you know, it doesn't matter if the, if the U.S. owns Bitcoin or if it owns gold or like whatever, it's meaningless from like currency standpoint. So I think you have opposition from like the entrenched economic intelligentsia that's still somewhat influential in the U.S. And so you're going to have to go through them and you're going to have to go through the Democrats. And so the question is like does having that conversation and getting those, is it is that a meaningful use of their political capital? And yeah, my, my,

there's lots of other things that the Republicans are trying to do. They're trying to like tear down most of the government through Doge. You know, they're trying to pass a bunch of laws related to social, sexual, sexual norms, like, you know, about what you can and can't do in classrooms and educational centers, you know. And so the question is like, okay, given all this, is this going to, where is this going to rank on the list?

And is it going to be something that Trump and the Republicans use their political capital on? Because they have to get reelected, you know, in two years, right? And I think, like, let's just imagine. imagine this. This is a game theory this out. Let's just say that the strategic Bitcoin Reserve happens. The U.S. through whatever financial rigmarole, you know, buys Bitcoin. And then in two years, inflation's still high. Unemployment's kind of the same. Trump can't fix the U.S. economy. He can't fix the current situation where inflation's high, really.

Like, what can he really do? And then people still feeling like, okay, we voted in this Republican and we're not getting ahead. And you went out and bought a million Bitcoin? That didn't help me. How did that help me? I'm a gas station attendant in Alabama. How did that help me? Yeah.

Right? So is that a political risk for them? Or is it something they take a gamble on? I don't know. I just think the strategic Bitcoin Reserve is hard. It's just you get it once you get into the messy dynamics. What I'm trying to say is you push this idea, which I think, most people like in the Bitcoin space into this realm of politics.

And the realm of politics is, is it worth the political capital expenditure? What's the risk and reward? And so when I look at the Republicans, I think, like, the Republicans want to do a lot of things that the Democrats don't like. So, and the Democrats clearly don't like the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. And I think then the question is, do average people support it? And I think, like, if you were to ask me into the majority of, like, regular Americans support the United States buying Bitcoin, I would say no.

I assume they just, they don't even care. They probably have no opinion on it. Yeah, that can't be true. Yeah, that's just like, that just couldn't be true. So then it's not a popular thing. It's not popular within the MAGA constituency, right? Like the MAGA constituency, like I has, I think, a pretty lukewarm understanding of Bitcoin. Like, they like that the Bitcoin are supported Trump, but like, I don't think they really

beyond that, like, have much of a feeling towards, towards us as a group. I got that from like, you know, in Bitcoin. Nashville, like, I interacted with, like, people like Scott Pressler who, like, did get out the vote initiatives. And they were like, you know, cool, Bitcoin is non-government money. It's like, seems fine. You know, they like, they had a, like, you know, but they just don't have like a sophisticated,

you know, a view on it. But like, when you spend money on a strategic Bitcoin Reserve, that is a dollar that could have gone to any other constituency in America that is going to the Bitcoin constituency. So that's what I'm saying. Is the political calculus on a strategic Bitcoin Reserve is different

than a Bitcoin stockpile. Bitcoin stockpile, it's like, we own the state. stuff already, we're just agreeing not to sell it. Fucking great. You know, once you move to strategic Bitcoin Reserve, well, buying a million Bitcoin, how much does that cost? Who's paying for and how are they paying for it?

And if that dollar could have been spent on any other thing, well, then you're litigating that decision against every other thing that the dollar could have been spent against. And so that's where that becomes like a political dogfight. So yeah, I think that's going to be a lot harder.

I don't share a lot of optimism in that being like initially improved, the question then is like, does the, you know, does the Republican Party have a vested interest in pushing that forward? And is it politically valuable for them to do so? I don't know. That seems confusing. I'm a bit more bearish on that. Yeah.

I hate to cut this short, but I've got a hard stop in like 10 minutes. I've got to go and get a flight. But we were obviously intending to do a bit of like a Bitcoin history lesson here for Bitcoin's birthday. And we've not really done that, which is fine. I'd actually, I've really enjoyed this though. We should maybe do like a quarterly update and make sure we keep this going. But the one thing I do want to ask you about is Satoshi, because this year has been a strangely big year in that kind of storyline. You obviously wrote the last days of Satoshi a few years ago where you kind of did a sort of deep research on this.

And then this year we've seen Craig Wright proven to be a fraud in UK courts. HBO did that documentary where they tried to out Peter Todd. What's your take on this whole thing been? Yeah, Satoshi is going to become one of the pop culture figures of the world in the way that a Bob Marley is or like the Ramones or somebody like, you know, or A-Blink. Like Satoshi Nagamoto is on the route to becoming like a historical figure probably on the same level like as the Beatles are currently historical figures, right? And so what that means is that Stoshanakamoto is an icon. He's going to be a generational icon. He's going to be a global icon.

In the way that like Albert Einstein, you who doesn't know physics, knows who Albert Einstein is. You watched Oppenheimer and like, you know, he was in there. And you know that people sell posters of Albert Einstein. Yeah. You know him from his silhouette alone. That's Satoshi.

Satoshi is on that trajectory. And yeah, there is going to be a continued interest in any thing that we can possibly know about Satoshi. The Satoshi mystery will probably go down as one of the greatest mysteries of all time. I think that the documentary of HBO was a very flaccid attempt to like, you know, acknowledgement of that, right?

Like, that they, you know, there's still an intent on finding out who Satoshi is. I'm hoping that there's a capitulation. And then that search to, you know, find becomes, you know, okay, how can we understand this? Like, how can we understand the world that Satoshi created in a more meaningful way? And so, you know, I'd like to see that. I don't think we have, right? The question that I've always had is like, when does Bitcoin make that transition into something that, you know, it's stupid. Like HBO, like, you know, there's obviously a ton of people who are Bitcoiners.

And HBO is going to spend $5 to $10 million making something about Bitcoin. Why wouldn't you want to make something that they would consume in the future that will be valuable? So I would like to see, you know, arts and entertainment companies or whatever. You know, it's like, okay, well, like, can you make something that would be valuable for Bitcoin? Like, what's the story you could tell? You know, instead of this Satoshi story that would appeal to kind of this group, right? So I don't know. I think like this hopefully is a capitulation on like this like fruitless search

and then hopefully like, you know, the stakeholder stakeholdership in art, right? Like there's been a lot of grassroots Bitcoin art. There's a lot of people writing Bitcoin books. There's a lot of Bitcoin paintings. There's, you know, but there isn't really like a popular support for that. amongst people who pay for like artistic works, even documentaries, right? Very predatory the whole thing. And so I hope that this is like the end of that.

We just stop. Yeah, the problem is it kind of fits perfectly into that sort of murder mystery genre of documentaries that have become so popular. But talking about who Satoshi is with Bitcoin is obviously like a really gauche thing that no one really does. Do you think we'll get to a point where people outside of just Bitcoiners understand that and stop trying to find Satoshi? Yeah, my hope would be now that like you just like what's the, there's no benefit to this, right?

Like so when you invest in like some sort of storytelling, you hope to get a return. And so the HBO get $10 million worth of value from this documentary. I think the answer is no. But that doesn't mean that like you telling stories about Bitcoin, you know, wouldn't be interesting in some way. Right. Like it's, so I don't know. I think my hope is that like, you know, we can kind of have a better conversation and people can just make. I don't know, like better art about, like, Bitcoin.

Like, you know, like, I would love for HBO to be interested in, like, telling the story of what is happening in Bitcoin and, like, a less shitty way. Like, I think, I think it's probably, like, you know, the addressable market for people who own and are interested in Bitcoin is only going to continue to grow. And I think that, yeah, it would be great to see the, see if there was some creative attempt to kind of do something here. You know, whether it's, like, creative fiction or, like, safety. and like, you know, basically just did a new fake. His book was fiction. You know, why can't you have adapt that into something? Like, I think those are the kind of things that I would like to see because, you know,

where Satoshi can, you know, you can do things with Satoshi as a character. You know, he doesn't have to be like a, you know, doesn't have to be like, who is he? You know, so we know the Satoshi existed. We know that he did certain things, you know. So, yeah, I don't know. I just think there should be a better approach to that. I know that there are people who are trying, right? So every time I meet with some of the older Bitcoiners, it's always like, oh, when's there

going to be a Bitcoin Netflix show or when's there going to be, you know, some sort of, someone on Rogan or something, right? Like some kind of penetration into the mainstream. And I think that, I think it's just going to happen with time, right? Like the more people know that like Bitcoiners, I mean, we already basically help deliver the election, right? So it's like, why can't you entertain us a little bit, you know? There's lots of good storytellers out there could tell things about.

about the history of money or even like, even the threads that I've been doing on X about like, you know, the crazy, like wild west stories from Bitcoin early days. Like there's so much drama in there. Like, there's a whole season's worth of people losing,

you know, billions of dollars for like very stupid things. And it's like, okay, let's just move on. You know, I think, like,

I think what I'm trying to say is that, like, you know, I'm hoping we can get to an understanding from Satoshi through other things. You know, you can tell all these other interesting stories. Like it's stuff that you guys do,

stuff that McCormick has done, you know, there's great stories out there about how Satoshi's impact of the world that don't require you to, like, know who he is, like whether he's Peter Todd. I completely agree.

Rizzo, that was amazing. Thank you very much for that. I'm going to have to run. Appreciate that. Is there any way you want to send anyone before we close out? Yeah, happy 16th birthday to Bitcoin. Pete Rizzo, Bitcoin, Astorian on X.

You can follow me there. I am dropping threads pretty regularly about historical figures and events in Bitcoin. If you want to contribute to that, I do work with like kind of an open source pool of researchers and storytellers who are helping me kind of put these together. So you want to earn some Bitcoin. Feel free to reach out. Hit me up on Twitter. I want to get better at, you know, future Netflix stories.

We can sell. Get them documented. Love it. Thank you very much for that. I appreciate you.