What Bitcoin Did - Bitcoin’s Parallel Economy Is Starting | Brian De Mint

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

“The alpha is still in Bitcoin. But it’s just by treating Bitcoin as money.” Brian De Mint is the head of marketing for Club Orange, a real-world social network for Bitcoiners. In this epi...sode, we discuss why Bitcoin’s next phase may not just be holding the asset, but building a real economy around it: Bitcoin meetups, IRL community, the case for spending sats, merchant adoption, Lightning payments, Bitcoin mining as a free-market energy solution, and why treating Bitcoin as money can create stronger economic relationships between Bitcoiners. We also get into food and health to medicine, nutrition and the incentives behind the institutions we’re told to trust. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY SWAN CAPE FOLLOW: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Brian De Mint: https://x.com/BrianDeMint

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 The scam can't run forever. There was something about Bitcoin that we felt like we discovered on our own was what kind of flipped the switch for us. We planted the seeds and maybe someday they'll become a Bitcoiner. That's actually how it works. Bitcoin being a free market solution, that's why they're willing to tell you that you were right because they learned that on their own. I think that's maybe what some of the outside world seemed a little bit is like, why
Starting point is 00:00:23 didn't the Fed shut them down? Like there's something different about this movement. Problem is people are trying to find the alpha. Okay, Bitcoin's 75,000. Go, I'm going to buy the XRP. I'm going to buy this. No, the alpha's still in Bitcoin. Do you want to be at the forefront of the Bitcoin economy?
Starting point is 00:00:36 It kind of behooves us to spend some stats now. This is the fulfillment of the prophecies that we've been saying. The cyphre punks have been saying since the early days. We get to live through those. And it's pretty rewarding. We're in Vegas. There's a lot of Bitcoin is around right now. And it's really funny.
Starting point is 00:00:52 Like, Vegas is the most Fiat place in the world. 100%. Like you walk around. And it's like everything that's good and everything that's bad. about America in one place. It's so overwhelming. And then you see this like group of bitcoins who are kind of just living in a parallel world. And you know the criticism of like Bitcoin is a cult? Yeah. Is Bitcoin a cult? Because I kind of think it is. A hundred percent. And I'll agree. I'll agree with that. I think I'm like qualified to to agree with that because actually
Starting point is 00:01:19 the first book you might not know this. The first book I wrote was called Bitcoin evangelism. So it was like literally like we're a cult. So how do we spread? How do we spread this gospel? And it's because there is, I mean, I'm a Christian. Like, so I'm not, I'm not, you know, knocking religion because I'm a religious guy. But, but there is something to be said about movements that shake the world. They have a, well, you call it whatever you want. They have a cult-like following.
Starting point is 00:01:48 They have raving fans behind it. And so we do. We need to foster an ethos that we shine a little bit differently than the rest of the world. So I think, you know, that was the knock on the. conferences like, why would they come to Vegas? Why would they come to Vegas two years in a row? It's like, what better place to shine a light than in the darkness? Totally. And I think that gives a, like, that's the contrast you see of Bitcoin, Twitter, the world where everyone's angry, fighting about stuff. And then you get here and like,
Starting point is 00:02:11 vibes are good. Like, we're in a bear market. There's probably less people here than last year, maybe. But like, vibes are still very high. Brian, we didn't introduce you. This is the first time you've been on the show. You should tell people who you are. My name's my real name. That's not like some altcoin name or anything like that. I get that all the time. It's like, Oh, yeah, what are you shilling? No, like, Demand is my real last name. I'm the head of marketing for Club Orange. We used to be Orange Pill app. So if anybody has heard of Orange Pill app, we are Club Orange now. We're the world's biggest network, social network for Bitcoiners in real life. So if you want to find and meet other Bitcoiners in your neighborhood, when you're at a conference,
Starting point is 00:02:50 whatever, we have the app that helps facilitate that. We have over 20,000 active members. It's a really thriving, robust community of people who want to find local meetups. They want to find, you know, the after party. I think that was like, we thrive at something like this at a conference where there's a huge concentration of Bitcoiners. But most guys, they don't work in Bitcoin. They don't have Bitcoin connections, I guess, for lack of a better term. And so Club Orange kind of satisfies that of, I know what I'm doing from nine to five, because that's when the conference is. But after five o'clock, I don't want to be the guy who's in Vegas. It's just like, like strolling up and down the street, just finding whatever bar to go into.
Starting point is 00:03:30 Like most, most Bitcoiners are like more sane than wanting to try and like find out what the night has in store for them in Vegas. And so they connect with other Bitcoiners and, and actually foster legitimate friendships. We've had, we've had one marriage come from, from Club Orange.
Starting point is 00:03:47 We, we try to stay away from marketing that. So I probably, when Club Tinder? That's like, that was the biggest concern because it's like, most of our, most of our,
Starting point is 00:03:55 you know, our, our members, our Bitcoiners are typically men or women who are already married. And so it's like these people who are in loving relationships already, it's kind of hard to have your spouse find a meetup app on your phone. And so it is like when you tell them, hey, it's just Bitcoin nerds that are on the app, then, you know, it kind of satisfies that with the wife. But no, it is. It's, it is, there's an inherent desire for in real life connection. That's just what Mateo founded. That was his dream of founding this app to help Bitcoiners make friends with other Bitcoiners.
Starting point is 00:04:26 And I think if Bitcoiners think Bitcoin's the future, then Bitcoiners are part of that future. Yeah. It's also. And the group chat while I've been here has been going off. Clearly, there's a lot of people using it. But one of the interesting things when we talk about like Bitcoin being a cult is one of the things you've got to do in a cult is bring more people into the cult. And I think everyone goes to this journey. And I definitely did. Where when I got into Bitcoin, I was super excited about it. And I'm still super excited about it. But I wanted to tell everyone. And like so anytime I went out for drinks with people, it's all I wanted to talk about. And now when I go out with my normal friends, I've kind of given up.
Starting point is 00:04:57 I find it tiring and I wait for people to come to me rather than the other way around. Like, how do you keep the energy up to actually do that? I mean, I think that's probably why people want to go meet other Bitcoiners so they can start out what I would call friendship second base. So it's just like, well, you know that this guy's gone through the filter of he's already read four Bitcoin books or whatever it has. He's already he already watches what Bitcoin did, you know, that kind of thing. Like there really is this filter that happens. For the Normie world, I think it gives. when when bitcoiners have a place to go and be around and like talk shop with it and and half the time
Starting point is 00:05:30 their conversation isn't necessarily about bitcoin it's like bitcoin's the bridge of the friendship but then they talk about their other passions and those types of things it's just like hey i know you're cool because you're in bitcoin like that that's enough for us to like have a hang out or have a meet up but then we talk about the other things that we're into now i think it gives those bitcointers uh more patience with their friends like you get to satisfy your bitcoin cravings that you had as a newbie Bitcoiner because you have this show, you go to these conferences where people are pulling you in all sorts of different directions and asking you questions. So you have no shortage of like avenues for that to go into.
Starting point is 00:06:04 And so I think it probably makes you more effective. The times when your friends do come and finally ask you about Bitcoin is probably going to be during the next all-time high or whatever, you know, that type of thing. That's when our holdout friends, they wait to start asking questions. But I think it gives you probably as an individual like Danny Knowles, like a like a little bit more patience with that person of like, I don't have to win this guy over so that I finally have a Bitcoin friend. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:29 Because that's what the stakes were before. It's like, I've got to make a, I've got to convert a Bitcoin or into the cold or else I have nobody to talk to. And so I think that that's maybe some of like the inertia that, that we're pulled towards in that. But at the end of the day, yeah, we just, I think with my, with my Normie friends, I just try to ask some questions to just meet them where they're at
Starting point is 00:06:48 and just talk about normal things. And then the Bitcoin, when, not everybody has a book or a Bitcoin show or whatever, but if you're, if you're the, if you're into Bitcoin, you're like the Bitcoin guy. Yeah. You're Normie community. And so you're, you're the Michael Saylor to that community. And so those questions will flow naturally. And so, yeah, for me, I think gives me more patience with my, my uncle that just is like the last holdout, you know? Do you know the funny thing, though, about like, because you do become, you're known as like the Bitcoin are amongst your friends. And you say you become like the Michael
Starting point is 00:07:19 say there are those people, but that's not been my experience. It's like, it's that thing where like everyone's an idiot in their own village. And like, all these people know me from when I was like 11 years old and absolutely, I'm not listening to you. That's a good point. But it's funny, at these conferences, I become the normie. Like by the end of it, after like five days of only talk about Bitcoin, I'm like, can we talk about football or something? That's right. That's funny. You know what? And I think I'll grant you that. Amongst my family, you know, the ones that have changed my diapers when I was a little kid or whatever, you know, saw me like the neighbor's palm tree on fire with the bottle rocket. Like those are probably not the ones that are going to listen to me.
Starting point is 00:07:56 I think it's the guys, there is something that comes from going to a conference and then speaking on stage and then they see that on Instagram or whatever. That kind of like reinforces like, oh, wait, other people pay attention to you. Yeah. That maybe does make you in that category a little bit more. But yeah, no, I've definitely got the cold. Like I had a friend one time. I think it was during COVID. He goes, why are you telling me this? He's like, who are you? Like, you're not the financial guru. I'm like, but I, like, I'm trying to be, you know, and so yeah, yeah, I've definitely gotten that way. Yeah, I have seen that swing back the other way a little bit as well. And the most interesting thing this bear market has been, in previous bear markets, I don't know if you've
Starting point is 00:08:29 experienced the same thing. Like, it's almost people sort of sniggering at you thinking, like, you fucked up, this is going to zero. And this time has been totally different. Like, this time I've had people reaching out instead of being like trying to buy at the top, they're like, Bitcoin looks cheap now. And I do wonder if the world more broadly is starting to wake up to Bitcoin. And I think the kind of sales of the world probably do help that. Like, they've clearly brought a different level of sort of reputation to it. And they're bringing a new audience in. But with that, do you think we lose anything in the Bitcoin culture, Bitcoin cult?
Starting point is 00:09:03 I think that, yeah, that's, yeah, cults. And that's where maybe the cult analogy breaks down a little bit. It's like a cult, once it gets to a certain size, like the feds come in and break it up, right? I mean, and like, legitimately, like, the feds. Or you drink the Kool-Aid. That was, yeah, or drink, yeah, you drink the Kool-Aid. you put yourself out of business. And it's because the scam can't run forever.
Starting point is 00:09:22 And I think that's maybe what some of the outside world seen a little bit is like, why didn't they drink the Kool-Aid yet? Or why didn't the Fed shut them down? Like there's something different about this movement. I thought it was a Ponzi scheme. But like, you know, the Bitcoin obituaries thing comes up enough to these people where like your normie friends are like, yeah, I read this website where it talks about all the times the Bitcoin died.
Starting point is 00:09:42 And I remember because now they remember being part of the crew that rubbed it in your face to bear or bear markets ago or three bear markets ago or however many however long you've been in it and so they recognize that they've had some egg on their face a little bit too yeah and so as as much as they could shame you in this moment they're like actually you didn't like you didn't rub it in my face when it was at 126k and i've seen this this kind of cyclical thing happening and you just get enough financial like mainstream television that's this kind of getting your back and that for good or bad or whatever that is it's branding i mean all things all the world is propaganda. And we can use the word propaganda in this like really negative word,
Starting point is 00:10:22 but it's it's using information to shift people's perspective. There's good propaganda. There's bad propaganda. And so at the end of the day, I mean, people are getting messaging through their television, through their, through their phone. And there's enough financial institutions that have vested interest in Bitcoin that are going to legitimize it in their eyes. And so they would, they would rather maybe kind of come back and give you credit because like they know that you, you front ran some of those institutions. It's like, okay, there's certain people you will get that, that stamp of validity with those, those people where others, they're going to run to, yeah, the financial instruments because they don't trust you. But it is, it is rewarding when,
Starting point is 00:11:01 when you see people turn the corner. And yes, like not rubbing in your face in this bear market and saying like, wow, you know, 75K seems like a good buy. Dude, that's, that's a while, for anybody that's been in Bitcoin for a while, the statement that, wow, 75K seems cheap. seems cheap is what we all said would happen, but we like, I hope that happened. We all said it like, I know that's going to happen. But we hoped it would happen. And just in the same way that we say, oh, when somebody, you know, somebody's going to buy it, you know, three quarters of a million dollars, $750,000 and that's going to feel cheap.
Starting point is 00:11:36 We're saying that now. But like, we don't know until it happens, right? So this is the fulfillment of the prophecies that we've been saying. The cypherpunks have been saying since the early days, we get to live through those. And it's pretty, it's pretty rewarding. The thing that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical error with my Bitcoin cold storage, and this is where Anchor Watch comes in. With Anchor Watch, your Bitcoin is insured with your own A-plus rated Lloyds of London insurance policy, and all Bitcoin is held in their time-lots
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Starting point is 00:13:48 comprehensive platform of Bitcoin services, including tax advantage retirement accounts, advance Bitcoin cold storage using collaborative self-custody, inheritance planning with both trust and entity accounts, tax loss harvesting, asset back loans and more. Swan have helped over 100,000 clients since 2020, and if you're serious about acquiring and securing Bitcoin, I recommend Swan. Meet the team at swan.com forward slash WBD, which is sw-a-n.com forward-slash W-W-B-D. Yeah, it's funny. When I first got into Bitcoin like 2016, 2017,
Starting point is 00:14:21 people would talk about 100K, like they talk about a million dollars now. And at the time, I was like, yeah, 100K, but I kind of didn't believe it. And now when I hear people talk about a million dollars, it's like, yeah, it's inevitable. Like, it's going to happen. One of the funny things on the Bitcoin obituary side,
Starting point is 00:14:36 I had a friend who works in renewable energy, and I remember at the time when the narrative was it was going to consume all the world's, Angie by 2021 or whatever it was. I remember having a conversation with him, and he was super skeptical about Bitcoin. And his mind got changed in December last year. So I went out to Africa, did an amazing trip with Eric Hursman. So we flew to Nairobi.
Starting point is 00:15:00 And then we did a 30-hour road trip from Nairobi up to the Ethiopian border over, like, a couple of days, three days, I think it was. And, I mean, the first seven hours were on a road. The rest of it was dirt tracks. We were in the middle of absolutely nowhere. And it's like there's nothing there. It looks like you're on the moon. And we went to this village called Saru, which isn't even on any map that you can find, apart from the very specific one that Eric uses. He found this town. And it's like a transient community there. So they have like four,
Starting point is 00:15:25 five thousand people at time and basically no electricity. The only electricity they have is they've got one solar panel on the roof of a school and one solar panel on the roof of their sort of medicine hut. And so they have no batteries in either of them. And so in the medicine hut, they have a rule where at like 4 p.m. No one opens the fridge. They have, it's like one of those, like, I don't know, yeah, yeah, waste-high fridge freezer things. They have ice blocks.
Starting point is 00:15:47 And at 4 p.m., they take the ice blocks, put it in the fridge to keep it cold overnight, and then the power comes on when the sun comes up. And in the school, it's quite funny. They can, it's quite a large-ish school. They can light eight of the classrooms they've got. I think they had 10. They could light eight,
Starting point is 00:16:02 but they only choose to do six because everyone wants to plug in their mobile phones during the day. And so he's gone out to this village, and he wants to build a huge, solar plant and he's obviously going to monetize that by mining Bitcoin, but like the knock on effect to them is that if they want to buy electricity, it's going to cost them one or two cents a kilowatt hour more than the cost of mining Bitcoin, which is the cheapest energy basically anywhere
Starting point is 00:16:25 in the world. They'll be getting it for like 10 cents a kilowatt hour. And I did a show with Eric after that road trip and we kind of broke down the whole thing we went on and this guy reached out to me like, I was wrong. He was like, this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. And I actually need to put him in touch with Eric. He wanted to speak to him. But awesome. So like what it was it was the, it was the financialization of it. It was like the mechanism of, of power that that won him over. The thing that won him over is that there is no way that that project would ever be sustainable, unless it was an NGO. But, but out in the thing I also didn't understand until I went there is out in Africa, they hate the NGOs. Because what they do, they, the way they get paid is they'll get paid to
Starting point is 00:17:04 like stand up a solar plan. And as soon as it's done, they get. get paid. And so there's no incentive them to go back and maintain the things that they build. So there's actually a town, it's the closest town to Saru, which has a big solar plant that was built by an NGO. And they built it and then like a storm came through, a load got flipped over, and then people started stealing the electricity from the energy lines. And so they were like, we're pulling out. And someone stopped them from pulling out. So instead of completely ripping the whole thing out, they now charge 72 cents kilowatt hour there. So the poorest people in the world. That's crazy.
Starting point is 00:17:39 So the idea of having, so the thing that got him is the idea of these people going in as capitalists, they're there to make money. But the effects on the local people is awesome. Right. And like free market solution. Like, without Bitcoin, he couldn't have imagined a free market solution that would solve their problem. There was no way you could do it.
Starting point is 00:17:54 Wow. No way. That's amazing. Because they can build a solar plant that's big enough for them for decades, but they can monetize it instantly. Yeah. And I think it's funny that because I think that's why people, people get that story. and it's the humanitarian side and capitalism winning.
Starting point is 00:18:10 And so, I mean, you can speak to a few different people groups of, you know, you're winning people over to Bitcoin because whether you're a capitalist or whether you're somebody who cares about people in Nairobi or whatever it is. I was talking to a dude at the conference today that's talking about how he's working with the wealthiest companies in the world and AI and how they're using and they're throttling AI miners to allow for kind of a market dynamic for AI computation. And so it's like whether you're dealing with the wealthiest, the most well-capitalized companies in the world, there's a free market solution involving Bitcoin mining and whether you're dealing with the poorest people
Starting point is 00:18:48 in the world. The spectrum is massive. And the problems that are being solved by this. And that's like, that's not even Fox News or any of the financial channels have never once mentioned that. That's not something that's part of the narrative. And so that's where I think when people hear this, They feel like they've discovered. I think that's the biggest eye-opener for most people. I think that was probably true for me. Maybe it was true for you. There was something about Bitcoin that we felt like we discovered on our own
Starting point is 00:19:16 that was what kind of flipped the switch for us. And so I think when these people hear a story like that, Bitcoin being a free market solution, that's why they're willing to tell you that you were right because they learned that on their own as opposed to like, well, Danny shoved it down my throat. And so I got it. We're just such prideful people that we want to go and we want to get the last piece of the puzzle on our own. And so like planting the seeds for Bitcoin, that's why we say like corny stuff like that is like, we planted the seeds and maybe someday that they'll become a Bitcoiner. That's actually how it works.
Starting point is 00:19:50 And so, yeah, it's pretty cool to see that. And I think it's like super rewarding when you do get that out of wood from the guy. Totally. And it's funny, though, because it feels like the Bitcoin industry. I know people don't like that term, but I don't know what else you call it. But like the Bitcoin industry has got so mature where we have these like cool things doing Frontier Energy in Africa. There's like the stuff that Cash App and Square have done with allowing Bitcoin payments at every merchant in America. Like the Bitcoin back loans, like the financial side has got way, way better.
Starting point is 00:20:19 The stuff that strategy is doing. Everything feels like it's really grown up now. But Bitcoin's still quite small in the grand scheme of things. And like how do you think it goes from here to being what we think Bitcoin will be? That's a good question. I wrote, I mean, this sounds like, I mean, shilling my books. But so the first book was Bitcoin evangelism.
Starting point is 00:20:38 The second book was called, it's called Parallel. So Bitcoin evangelism was about helping people understand Bitcoin. If they didn't know it, there's plenty of books that you can do that with. Parallel is kind of a unique book in the Bitcoin space because it's, it's kind of like the pitch for why we should start to use Bitcoin as money, as a unit or as a medium of exchange. And so it's the the growth roadmap for money, like anything that becomes the same. standard in money goes through four distinct stages. I didn't create these stages. These are just the stages of money. It, you know, it starts as a novelty. So if you take something like gold,
Starting point is 00:21:13 gold was originally like when the first Egyptian, or wasn't Egyptians, but we'll just say Egyptians because that sounds right. When the first Egyptian found a shiny gold rock, he just gave it to his wife because it looked pretty and you'd set it on the table. And that's why she wanted it. But then enough Egyptians did that and they saw it on other people's entry tables. They're like, oh, you have that gold rock and you have that gold rock, then that's when it goes from novelty and then it moves into store of value because everybody says, oh, other people want this too. And so I'm actually going to try and collect some more of those gold rocks because I realize that other people want them.
Starting point is 00:21:46 And now there's this market demand for it. So you go from novelty, the new thing, it's a collectible or whatever it is, to it's a store of value because other people want it. And then the stage after that is medium of exchange. The stage after that is unit of account. So unit of account being like, this is what we do our books in. It's like the world is on a Fiat standard right now. What's your net worth?
Starting point is 00:22:06 Well, it doesn't matter you could have, you know, 100 kilos of gold, but we don't say you're worth 100 kilos of gold. You're worth X amount of dollars. You're worth X amount of pounds, right? And so it's, those are the stages of money. Where we're at right now is pretty undeniable that we're in the store value phase of Bitcoin. It was in the novelty phase when you got the two thousand, or the two pieces for 10,000
Starting point is 00:22:28 Bitcoin when you could go to the Bitcoin Fosset and you can get five Bitcoin a day for solving a Kapshka. Like that was the novelty phase. We were playing around with Bitcoin at the time. Right now, companies are trying to hoard Bitcoin. Countries are trying to hoard Bitcoin. That's clearly the store of value phase. Well, the medium of exchanges, that was the whole pitch of parallel.
Starting point is 00:22:47 It was like, here, here's a case for why you should spend Bitcoin. I'll tell you what, like, the most pushback I've gotten in the Bitcoin space was like asking people to spend their Bitcoin because Bitcoiners inherently are savers. We plan for the future. We talk about low time preference. And so there's something that feels like it's in conflict with spending sats to get a haircut or to have my computer fixed and pay in sats. People feel a conflict in that because we've trained ourselves to think of Bitcoin only as a store of value. So to me, the future of Bitcoin happens if we don't allow Bitcoin to stay in the store of value phase.
Starting point is 00:23:22 It's okay to have a savings account and a checking account. I mean, that's how we do Fiat right now. I think, and Jack Dorsey said the same thing. He goes, somebody asked him in an interview, how does Bitcoin die? And he goes, Bitcoin dies. And maybe this is true, maybe it's not. But he goes, Bitcoin dies if we fail to use it as money, not as a savings technology, but as a form of money.
Starting point is 00:23:44 And he's the one that's, I mean, he's pushing the limits as far as like merchant adoption and things like that. So he's really putting his technology where his mouth is on it. And I think that the people who've been the most enriched by Bitcoin, were the people who saw one of those phases ahead. Like if you were in the novelty phase and everybody's, you know, and Laslo, when he did the two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin, he was actually a genius in doing that. That's a great story.
Starting point is 00:24:08 For anybody that makes fun of them for that, that's dumb. The other thing people don't know about that story, which I think this is true at least, is that Satoshi was trying to encourage him to, because he was basically getting too much Bitcoin. He was GPU mining and he was getting all the Bitcoin. And Satoshi said, hey, you got to find ways to get this out. And so incredible story when you dig into that. And I think that's true as well.
Starting point is 00:24:28 But anybody that was treating Bitcoin as a store of value when it was in the novelty phase, you became excessively wealthy because you took those 10,000 Bitcoin and held on to them. So you were thinking one stage ahead. I think the same thing is true for any Bitcoiners that are trying to find the alpha. And that's part of the problem, I think, is when the knock on conferences is that, oh, there's so many alt-coiners there, there's so much noise or whatever. And maybe that's true. but like it's the problem is people are trying to find the alpha. Okay, Bitcoin's 75,000 or 100,000 or
Starting point is 00:25:01 150,000. So I'm going to buy the XRP. I'm going to buy this. Like, no, the alpha is still in Bitcoin, but it's just by treating Bitcoin as money. It's by treating it as a medium of exchange. And so I think if that message becomes popular enough, that Bitcoin moves a tremendous step forward. And that's probably the biggest step forward that Bitcoin could ever take is if people want to transact in commerce with Bitcoin. And, I think too many Bitcoiners unfortunately think that that would, that would take away from their wealth because it's like, seems obvious. If I spend my sats, that I'm going to lose sats. But this is just not understanding opportunity cost and the idea of spend and replace.
Starting point is 00:25:40 And that's, that's, that's absolutely right. And I think it even goes a step beyond that. Because as soon as I spend my sats with somebody, I've now developed an economic connection with somebody who also transact in sats. So my first experience with this was a few years ago. I found my barber on Club Orange. I went, I traveled further to this barber simply because he accepted sats for a haircut. And so one, that's the, you know, that's the Bitcoin cheat code. That's the, you know, people will come from further away because they want to support a bitcoiner. But I dropped off some of my books with them. And I said, here, man, just like sell some of these and you take the money from it. And he ended up saying, look, I'm going to sell them, but I'm going to send you the Sats for him.
Starting point is 00:26:26 And so I paid whatever. I think by the time I was done with my tip and everything, I think I paid like $40 for the haircut in Sats, the equivalent. And I ended up, he ended up selling like $120 worth of books for me. So I went out with the intention that I'm going to spend some Sats into the parallel Bitcoin economy. And it turned out that that economic connection actually connected me to his other clients who also spend Bitcoin, who also bought a book at the same time. And so my $40 expenditure actually netted me, you know, or brought in $120 worth of sats. So it's not that that happens every single time. But when you develop economic connections within Bitcoin, you brought up opportunity costs.
Starting point is 00:27:05 Yeah, the opportunity of the cost of not spending your stats maybe closes you off to other Bitcoiners who spend Bitcoin. And so if you want to be at the forefront of the Bitcoin economy, it kind of behooves us to spend some stats now. And like you said, spend and replace is like the safe. method to go. Just if you're going to spend $40 on a haircut and pay for it in cash, just buy $40 of Bitcoin, spend it in sats, but you've now unlocked a relationship that's a pretty anti-fragile economic connection for you. That's very cool. So I was, I did a panel yesterday with Jack Malas and Miles Souter. And we were talking a lot about Bitcoin as payments. And one of the things that Jack pushed back on a little was like the idea that holding Bitcoin is still using
Starting point is 00:27:47 Bitcoin. And also, like, the idea of borrowing against Bitcoin and spending in a depreciating currency also can be like the trade. Like, why do you think using Bitcoin specifically as money? Is it for that reason? Is it that it basically expands your monetary network? You're like personal monetary network. That's exactly why I would do it. It is because if I spend, if I, and those are valid methods. And it's like, man, I think we can race a few different ways to get to the same destination. So I do not knock them. And those guys are those guys are pushing the goalposts for Bitcoin. So that might be the chief way to do it. The way that the little guy like me can do it is I think by spending Bitcoins, by spending some sats.
Starting point is 00:28:24 And yes, every one of those community connections I get is it's a signal of this is a real one. Like as soon as I've transacted and I've done a lightning transaction with somebody and they've accepted a lightning transaction is like, that's a real one. I know that guy's legit. And it acts as a filter for my community. And there's all sorts of tangential benefits to that. I'd say probably the easiest way to orange pill somebody is to send them a thousand sats. Like they download a custodial like lightning wallet where like you put in your all your KYC.
Starting point is 00:28:58 It can be like whatever. It doesn't have to be protected at all. But just download whatever the easiest lightning wallet is for you to download so that I can send you a thousand sats because I can try to explain the double spend problem and what Satoshi solved. or I can just show you that, look, I just sent you this money without permission and we transacted without the traditional financial rails
Starting point is 00:29:21 that the rest of the world uses. And so whether it's like orange-pilling somebody in that method or it's stimulating an economic connection, I think both are valid and both allow, again, the regular little guy to kind of push Bitcoin forward, just an inch or two. But if enough of us move it an inch or two, I think we go pretty far.
Starting point is 00:29:39 How do you think the sort of merchant adoption of Bitcoin will go from here? Because we've seen for years now, like Bitcoiners will go into places and try and convince their local stores take Bitcoin, and they're probably the only ones going in there and actually spending in Bitcoin. Does this actually need to be flipped on its head where instead of the person trying to buy something demanding they accept Bitcoin, the merchant demanding they're paid in Bitcoin? I mean, I think if you've got a cool enough business, then you could probably do that. it's just it's going to be it's going to be a risk because yeah the the the the the the the the Bitcoin has a flavor to it and some people don't like it right and so you might have you might have some of your
Starting point is 00:30:22 clients that that just don't know Bitcoin and that that that that's off putting to them so I say I actually speak on this from experience I have a chain of wellness studios called salt and light in southern California so if you ever want to come and do cold plunge or salt rooms or any of kind of stuff come on it coming in when you're in Southern California. Did you give me a hat like three years ago? Yeah. I didn't realize that was you. I hadn't put two and two together.
Starting point is 00:30:43 Pacific Bitcoin, I think it was. Yeah, I still wear that hat sometimes. It's a good hat. I appreciate that. Well, thanks for, thanks for reping the brand. But anyway, so yeah, so we've been doing this and we've accepted Bitcoin for eight or nine years now. And I'd say that people that have paid in Bitcoin, I mean, I could probably count them on a couple of hands. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:31:04 And now we've never, we've, we've, we've encouraged, we've gone different methods. We've gone the discount method where like, hey, you can, you know, you can get a discount if you pay in Bitcoin. We've also gone the, and I've heard this, people, you know, encourage this as like, no, you charge a fee to pay in Fiat. Yeah, so premium. This is what Parker loves this. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:31:24 Okay. So, yeah. So like, and I think that there's something to that. That might be the methodology is you still give them the optionality, but you just show the Bitcoin price and then the Fiat price. If we can lever our businesses in that way, then perhaps we're on to something. Yeah. You said Bitcoin has a flavor to it. When you say that, are you kind of saying it's associated with like Trump, the Republicans? Is that what you mean? Yeah. Well, unfortunately, I think it has a different flavor for different people. People project
Starting point is 00:31:57 onto it. They're different biases. The flavor has changed. I think now, you're you're right. I think the majority opinion is that it's tied to Trump or tied to Maga or whatever. And so if people don't like that flavor, then they're just not, they're going to resent Bitcoin for it. Back in the day, it was, that's, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, the, the, the cypher punks. And I don't want to have, you know, I'm a mainstream financial guy. And so I don't want anything to do with that. Actually, there was, I mean, we used to say this all the time, because you've been around, you've been around Bitcoin for, for a long time. And so you, you, you, you remember that the term was reputational risk, right? All the mainstream guys were worried about
Starting point is 00:32:38 reputational risk. I think a lot of them still out. And that's true. That's maybe been dampened a little bit because there's, you know, as soon as Black Rock gets in the game, you can be like, well, Larry Fink did it, right? But within your firm, you might have been the black sheep if you did that. And certainly you could have put your career at risk. And so I think the flavor, yeah, the flavor is very like Trump flavored, I think, at this point. Do you want to pay less in taxes and stack more Bitcoin. Of course you do. Well, by mining Bitcoin with Blockware, you can. Under Section 168K of the US tax code, Bitcoin mining servers qualify for 100% bonus depreciation. This means every dollar you spend on miners can directly offset your income in a single year. And that's true for both business owners
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Starting point is 00:35:42 So I just did a show with him. He's done a really cool thing, which is, I think he calls it grid global accounts. And what he's built is this sort of plumbing infrastructure that will allow wallets to use this. And you can basically have, you'll have a Visa MasterCard that you can spend from. Actually, no, it's just visa. A visa you can spend from. You have a Bitcoin account, dollars in their, other fiat currencies, stable coins, and you can completely decide how you pay, and the merchant can decide exactly what they receive. And Square do a similar thing where if you pay in Bitcoin, the merchant can receive dollars or receive, you know, 90% dollars and 10% Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:36:17 And these are the things that I think are really going to break through these barriers that we're seeing. So in terms of like, do you want to get into the wellness stuff? I love it. That's, yeah. Because this is one of the, you know, because this is one of the of the really interesting things in Bitcoin is that like we start off as these weird bitcoins who come together because we're Bitcoiners. And then there's so many other things that have come out of that. Like obviously the health and wellness thing has been a huge one. And like was that what you were doing before Bitcoin? Yeah. Yeah. So I started my wellness company in 2008. It was just gotten out of college.
Starting point is 00:36:48 Terrible time to start a business. It was a terrible time to start a business. So, so Club Orange launched the week that FTX crashed at that Pacific Big. So the only times I've been associated with like launching companies are just in like the worst condition. So what's the opposite of a midas took? That's right. That's a I've never framed it that way. That's pretty good. So if you have any business ideas like do not do not ask me to launch it with you.
Starting point is 00:37:15 But but anyways, we made it through and so maybe some of the best companies are born in in hard times. But I grew up in a family where my dad died of a drug overdose prescription drug overdose and not to make it. all like, you know, about that. But that, I think it painted my view that something in the system is broken. Because I remember at one point, I think he had 12 doctors. And I thought like, oh, he's going to 12 doctors. So like, that's a lot of medical attention. Well, I found out after he died and we're like going through things. It's like, this was 12 doctors who were giving 12 prescriptions. He was cycling through doctors and nobody was trying to fix them. it was his gravy train of prescriptions and opiates and things like that.
Starting point is 00:37:59 Can I ask when that was when he died? So that was 2006 when he died. Because obviously like in the last decade or so there's been the huge thing about the opioid epidemic in America. Was this before that had really kicked off or was this a part of the same problem? This is when it was happening and I don't think it was getting the press. Because yeah, doctors weren't being scrutinized for, you know, just there was no standards around you could come in and say you have an achy knee and get get opiates i mean i i remember i so i i'm a
Starting point is 00:38:29 black belt in brazilian jihitsu i i trained i fought mma for a long time um just weird fun stories that uh but but i uh fractured rib one time i remember going in this is probably 2012 at the time or 2013 i remember going into the doctor and and uh i just hey i just need to know what's wrong with my rib i don't want anything else he goes oh ribs ribs ribs are really painful he goes what what do you add on the on the pain meter and It was probably like an eight or a nine because it was pretty bad. I told him a three. I said, it's a three. I can deal with it because I knew he would say. And so he goes, you know what, let me just give you some norcos anyways. Like, and I, that was me telling them that I'm not in
Starting point is 00:39:04 much pain and I don't, I have a family history of like abuse of pain meds. And he was still just, just to be safe. Like that was, that was the decorum. That was the standard was, let's just be safe on that side. I mean, it was like the least safe method you could possibly take it. I had a similar thing. So I did my ACL and I went in for a knee reconstruction and there they have like the thing you can press on the bed to just like administer it as much you want. And at first I was like, this might be fun. So I was pressing it a few times. It felt dreadful. And then when I was leaving, again, they were like, because it can be very painful, but it really depends on how the surgery goes. And they're like, how sore is it? I was actually fine. Like I'm not in much pain at all.
Starting point is 00:39:38 And they gave me, they were like, I can't remember exactly which drug it was, but it was an opioid. And they were like, here's some to take home with you. I'd just put them straight in the bed. Yeah, man. When you got a family and you got responsibilities and stuff, It's just like, it's too easy for that. And it's like it was, especially then, it was socially acceptable. I mean, I remember seeing, you know, my dad, I would go to visit him at work and he would mention to his secretary. He's like, oh, can you bring me my meds?
Starting point is 00:40:03 Like, because it was the afternoon or whatever. It was just like, that was just like the office, how the office function. It was dysfunctional to me. So that was probably the first time that I recognized. Like, like, systems, you grow up thinking systems are built a certain way because they work. Like we're sitting in this building. We're sitting in like this, you know, like tens of stories up in the air. And we've just kind of trusted that the people that constructed this building did what they were supposed to do. Like we can't operate in life unless we kind of trust in things.
Starting point is 00:40:32 You have to trust systems. You have to trust systems. At the same time, those systems could have been built terribly. And so some of the systems, I think that's what Bitcoiners, that's why there's this cross-section between Bitcoiners and healthy diet or Bitcoiners and activity or whatever it happens to be because we started to see the cracks. COVID was a big one for a lot of people, but we have these kind of moments in our lives where, man, the system that I, that I grew up, it was like finding out Santa Claus wasn't real. And I think that's, that's kind of what was the eye-opening moment that, that, okay, there's maybe other things that I should question. And so that's where I got into the health and wellness movement was just like, I want to help
Starting point is 00:41:09 people's bodies heal naturally. I firmly believe that we were created in such a way that we have the ability. We're kind of like Wolverine, but like, in slow motion, you know? Like, if I get injured, my body, it's kind of crazy. Like, I can get cut and it can literally heal back together where it sounds like magic, but it's actually the way our body works. I just need to make sure that I'm getting out of the way of, you know, with toxins and with poisons and things like that. And so that was kind of the groundwork for why we got into health and wellness. Can I ask you a bit about this, this like opioid epidemic? Because I'm sure, obviously, you've been personally affected by it. What do you think is driving
Starting point is 00:41:44 this? Because like, obviously you hear people talk about big pharma. What are the broken incentives that have led to this? Good Lord, man. I think it's the most heartbreaking part of it because I think it's really easy just to place blame on pharma. And that's clearly that's the top of the, whether you want to say it's part of the story.
Starting point is 00:42:03 It's part of the story. It's where all the financial incentive comes from. But the most heartbreaking was the complicitnesses of the doctors. The doctors willing to participate. And when you start to get into doctor's incentives, it's like, wait, if you get, there's, you know, if you're pediatrician and for a very long time, if you had a certain uptake of vaccinations in your practice or as an adult doctor, as a regular general practitioner, if you had a certain uptake of pain meds in your practice, you had certain
Starting point is 00:42:32 quotas and you would get things like cruises. And people, if they want to fact check this, go, go look, like go look it up in chat GPT, Google, whatever, doctors incentives. They actually had sales incentives. So they were essentially outpost or, or, you know, you know, you, like sales agents for pharmaceutical companies. So you go to a doctor thinking they're there to help you heal. But that guy's financial incentives, the things that are actually going to put a little extra money on the end of his paycheck are going to be the add-ons that are, it's not the co-pay for the visit.
Starting point is 00:43:03 It's not what insurance is paying for the visit. It's not the cast when you get a broken arm. It's the real incentives and the way that he rises in prominence in that industry is feeding the beast, which is in that case for those. that my dad was going to, their flash sale was always on opiates. And that was the heartbreaking part. So do you think these doctors, because like my, I've got a young daughter. And like during, I really have never really had to go to the doctors very much, touch wood. Like, but this was a time when I did, like, because during pregnancy, you have to go for checkups and all this sort of stuff. And once the
Starting point is 00:43:38 baby's born, there's lots of things you have to go and do. And one thing I found is we, we use multiple GPs through this. And obviously, the, you know, obviously, the some amazing ones out there, but we encountered some that were really giving terrible advice. And I don't think that was out of sort of negligent. I don't think they were meaning to. Like, what do you think drove the doctors? Do you think they knew they were doing wrong and wanted to hit the sales quotas? Or do you think they thought they were trying to solve the problem? No, I think that their medical school is not about, here's how the immune system works. Their medical school is that this drug is the immune system. Like this is how this works. And that's
Starting point is 00:44:15 just for the for the for the vertical of immunity right this is how this is a well baby check this is you know you're you're supposed to take your baby to a six week well baby check and a two month and a whatever you know these different these different uh time frames well if you look at it those are all based around the administration of drugs like you come in for your well baby check not to see like like we could take its pulse and we can check its blood pressure and all that kind of stuff but it's to administer a series of drugs. And so I don't think that they think there's anything wrong. I think they've been thoroughly convinced through many, many years of schooling that this
Starting point is 00:44:51 is how Western medicine works. And this is just, this is the best and latest we have from the scientific data because all of that is backed by some form of scientific data. Now, scientific data is, there's problems with it. But nonetheless, everything has a journal associated with it, a doctor associated with it, a a textbook that says that this is the truth. And so when think about it, like we're promoting Bitcoin and in so doing of the promotion of Bitcoin, we kind of enrich ourselves, right? Because as Bitcoin grows, the cult grows and we actually, Bitcoin grows and we become wealthy.
Starting point is 00:45:30 And we think we're doing something good and it's simultaneously enriching us. And I actually think we're doing something good. There's nothing wrong with being enriched while you do something good. Doctors are just convinced that they're being enriched while they're doing something good. I tweeted this out recently. It was something to the effect of the most, the scariest thing that we could encounter would be to follow the world's most evil man around for 24 hours only to realize he's kind of likable. And we totally get where he's coming from. Yeah. That's a bang of tweet. Thank you. I'm surprised I remembered it right now. So how did you change this then? Does this need full reform of like the education system or is it really a little like Bitcoin, people just opting out of that.
Starting point is 00:46:13 Yeah. I think a lot of that's actually changing now under RFK is that one of the things that he, and this is by kind of like executive and regulatory compliance. So hopefully when a new administration comes in, they don't overhaul this because it's it's kind of finicky with each administration, which is shocking. But in medical school, diet and nutrition is not a rigorous part of medical school. that should be the foundation because you might be getting these medications once a year, every six months, every five years or whatever, but you're putting food in your mouth three times a day. And so if the doctors aren't studying the thing that's being put in your mouth or in your body constantly, then they really have no foundational understanding of what the biomechanics
Starting point is 00:46:57 that are going on in your body. And so I think that that's probably the biggest change that's happening. So I'm very bullish on the way that the medical community is going. I'd be the first one to champion, go to your doctor, go see your doctor because he actually has an understanding of the ins and outs of your body. I think it would be better, a world where doctors would give you the best medical advice you could possibly get. I would gladly pay and take the time out of my day to take my kids to the doctor so that I don't have to try and figure out what's right and wrong by my research online. And I've actually read a lot of medical journals, but even then, there's still a lot, I mean, it's just a lot of time and energy. I would rather pay somebody that legitimately
Starting point is 00:47:36 is weighing the pros and cons. And when there's a time to take a medicine that I know that they've done the due diligence on it. When I was still taking my kids to pediatricians, I would ask them questions. But I'd say, okay, this drug that you're trying to give my kid right now, I just read the three studies that are associated with it. Can you tell me some of the contrary like, I would quiz the doctor and the doctor's like, I'm going to be real with you. Like, I have not read those. I just know that this is part of our protocol. We're part of this doctor's network. And so that's why we do this. And they, like, Unashamedly, they were honest.
Starting point is 00:48:08 They would lay it out and I'd say, okay, thank you for your honesty. So we're going to decline that one today. And so I would love a system where I could go in and I think doctors have, you know, they swear a Hippocratic oath. They should have a fiduciary responsibility to be the most knowledgeable person that you're going to talk to about the entirety of your health. And I think that actually is changing. I've talked to a few doctors that have come.
Starting point is 00:48:32 I had a spine surgeon the other day talking about he wants to open up one of our wellness the studios inside of his clinic because he says, our continuing education, we're learning about infrared saunas and red light therapy. He's a spine surgeon. He goes, we're learning about, he goes, what you guys are doing is the future of Western medicine. And he said that, quote, verbatim. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of crazy to think that holistic hippie medicine is the future of Western medicine. Is that kind of saying the future of Western medicine is like the history of Eastern medicine? I think it's exactly what he's saying. And it like to me, that was like so, so refreshing to hear. Yeah, that's cool. Can we talk about another one of the big scams in in this sort of
Starting point is 00:49:11 space, which is the food pyramid? Oh, yeah. So I'm going to let you explain it because I'm going to do a way worse job than you. So why is this a problem? Well, it goes back to why the food pyramid was built in the first place. And it was the regulatory agency says that you said that you need to have certain things in your diet. Well, the things, the companies that were, that had influence over that criteria were ones that were, this is post-World War II. And so most people don't realize that how much of an influence. We know that Bretton Woods happened at that time, the Jekyll Island and all that the new world order of finance came about at the end of World War II. But we don't know that there's like this, there's like this free market dynamic that
Starting point is 00:49:53 didn't, it didn't need to be like backroom deals and stuff. It's just that all the munitions factories, all the industrialization of the United States economy that we did, to produce war materials needed to find something else to produce. Think it if like if you were doing your American duty and you, oh, and you were a wealthy capitalist and you opened up a factory that was producing gunpowder. And all of a sudden after the war, you're like, yeah, I helped us win the war.
Starting point is 00:50:18 But now like, what do I do with this thing? You'd be looking for something else to do. Well, at the same time, we had the baby boom, right? We know about the post-war baby boom. And so now there's more mouths defeat. So your capitalist duty would be not only to, to make sure your factory has something to do because we don't need to produce war munitions anymore,
Starting point is 00:50:38 but now the country has this huge demand of hungry people. So we need to help farmers, and so a lot of those munitions factories started developing fertilizers. And so fertilizers became this huge industry, and the fertilizers, it was a race to the bottom in terms of trying to find the cheapest fertilizers to feed the most people.
Starting point is 00:50:59 And actually, that was probably a good thing. We had a lot of people that even if it wasn't the most, the healthiest way to produce food, at least we were putting food in people's mouths. And so it kind of came out of these good incentives. But over time, after a couple generations of that, you're left with these people that are exerting this influence over the food pyramid. The guy that was just this industrialist that was trying to find something to do with this factory, now he's part of big ag.
Starting point is 00:51:25 And he's part of this process of he has these chemicals that he needs to do something with. Like you look at fluoride in the water, whether we want to go down that hole or not. But it's like, what's a byproduct of producing fertilizer? It's like you have this product of fluoride that all of a sudden, why in the 1960s this fluoride in the water becomes something that every government needs to do? Well, it turns out those same guys that had influence over the food pyramid were also producing fertilizer for the farmers. Well, they also had this byproduct called fluoride that now instead of it being a waste
Starting point is 00:51:57 product, they can actually make money off of it because they can sell it to local governments because it's good for your teeth, right? And so there's this like intertwining of the diet and our, like, supplements that we need and this idea that the government should be telling us what's in our water, the government should be doing, like, because we have a lot of hungry mouths to feed. And if you have six kids running around your house, we'll make sure that you give them this, this, this, this, basically matrix of food. And the, the foundation of it being, well, one of the things that we produce the best as a country was was wheat and bread. And so let's make bread because we can give that to everybody. Let's make
Starting point is 00:52:36 that the foundation of the pyramid. Again, probably in pretty good motives. Like, yes, farmers can produce a lot of bread. So we want to make sure there's market demand for it. But at the same time, at least we can make sure that the American population doesn't starve. And so it goes from there. And it's like clearly we know by today by a 2026 standard that just because we can produce a lot of bread doesn't mean that it should be the foundation of our diet. It actually should be maybe at the top of the pyramid where we're just sprinkling that in as a tasty treat, you know, and the foundation of the diet needs to be more nutrient dense foods. Before, it was about getting calories in. Now we're recognizing that nutrients are the most vital role in the food pyramid. And so with like
Starting point is 00:53:18 saying in the most complicated way possible, that that was the incentive structure around the food pyramid. So it's easy to say that, oh, big food constructed the food pyramid because they were nefarious. I do think there's a lot of nefarious actors in regulatory agencies and government. I try to ascribe the most basic economic motives to it. I think that that's probably the closest approximation I can make as to why we got the food pyramid that we did. It was based in like necessity, market demand. And then, yeah, some guys wanted to get rich off of it too. So at the same time, you know, if I can feed this growing American population, but I can get filthy rich off of it off of the cheapest parts of my food,
Starting point is 00:53:58 then I'm going to do that. Yeah, it makes sense like in that post-world era, because obviously in the UK there was rationing at that time. I don't think you ever had rationing here, did you? Yeah. So it's really just make whatever, as long as people can eat, and that's kind of good,
Starting point is 00:54:09 but we're not living in that world now. Obviously in Bitcoin, the sort of carnivore diet, this kind of thing has been big. What do you think the right diet is? Because I love eating steak, but I just don't want to eat every meal. Like, I've never done the carnivore thing. I like fruit and vegetables.
Starting point is 00:54:25 But when I'm at home, I eat pretty well. Like, I eat really good. Like, generally just whole foods. We make everything from scratch. When I'm away, that's a different story. Like, I'm drinking an energy drink. I now are on day three of a conference. I'm with you on that.
Starting point is 00:54:36 Don't worry. But, like, what do you think people should be doing? Because I don't want to tell me that I shouldn't be eating bread because my wife makes amazing sourdough. The sour, you sound like you got a good one at home. I do. The sourdough, there's nothing intrinsically bad about sourdough. the way it's uh complex your it's it's it's carbohydrates are are constructed is completely different than
Starting point is 00:54:56 the very synthetic form of bread that we would get then there's new a nutritious value to to sourdough so i don't think there needs to be any guilt associated with with uh with homemade sourdough my daughter my 12 year old she makes she makes a dynamite sourdough as well um but yeah i i i'm a i'm not a scientist i'm not i'm not the leading the leading expert on this other than i'm a guy that's genuinely spent the last like almost two decades trying to understand this and reading and understanding and talking to the genuine experts in the space because this is my livelihood. The best approximation I can come to on that is that diets need to be unique. Like your body type is very different than somebody else's, right?
Starting point is 00:55:39 If somebody's an endomorph and so, you know, like there's these different types of body types that people have, we burn different rates of fuel. And so, like I mentioned earlier, I like to train Brazilian jihitsu. I have a jihitsu school. And so I'm constantly training with these young. Come. Please do. Your ears are going to get jacked up.
Starting point is 00:56:00 I'm a big boxer, but I've never done jihitsu. You're going to love it. Like, if you're willing to take a punch to the face, like, it's so easy to do jihitsu. It's tiring just like boxing, but yeah, less head trauma. I was sparring like twice a week until about a year ago, not long after my daughter's born, my wife's like, you've got to stop this. I was like, fair enough. Probably did. So when I had done kickboxing moitai and stuff and trained some grappling,
Starting point is 00:56:23 but when my daughter was born was basically the same time when I went full-time Jiu-Jitsu, and I love it. And it scratches the competitive itch. It makes me feel pretty confident. They're like somebody jumps up from behind me and tries to strangle me to death. Like I can at least try to fight out of a little bit. Now if somebody stabs me in the back, it doesn't do much for me. But all that to say is like I can tell. that my my nutrient demand when I'm training jiu-jitsu is different, even in my own body type, than when I'm out of training camp. And so to think that different body types wouldn't need types of diets, I know guys that thrive
Starting point is 00:57:03 on carnivore. My wife thrives on carnivore. My mother-in-law just started carnivore last year, and she stuck to it and transformed herself. I mean, at 65, she looks younger than she did when she was 50. I mean, it's crazy. And I think what people are seeing in these transformation diets and especially what we see in our business of older people, they've been programmed to think that life is just a slow degrade until you die.
Starting point is 00:57:30 So after 50, things are not going to get better. And when things get a little bit worse, here's another pill for it. I guess it's the farmer tieback into it. But every time some new symptom arises, cool, we can kind of medicate that. But it's certainly not going to reverse it. Like the whole concept of the medication is just to deal with the symptom. as they go, and you have to kind of mentally accept the suck that is life is only going to get worse from here. So seeing people, we have these vitamin D sunbeds where like in three treatments of people
Starting point is 00:58:00 just, if they can't get vitamin D because there's not good sunshine outside or whatever, people are like, I feel like a different human being. I'm like, stay on this stuff and start to eat well. And, you know, these people were in their late 50s or early 60s. I said, I guarantee you that you are going to, the biggest unlock for you will be. that life doesn't have to be a slow downward spiral until I die. And I think that Bitcoiners have kind of the upper hand on that because we saw that with the money. We started to ask what's in our money. So then we asked what's in our food. And then we start to ask all these other questions. And so there's lots of Bitcoiners in their 20s, 30s and 40s that are kind of like capturing that ethos and
Starting point is 00:58:38 running with it now. And so I mean, it's only going to, you know, that's like a compounding effect by the time that we're 60, hopefully our health and wellness is even is even better than the generation before. But the fact that people that didn't take that good of care of themselves at 65 can start doing it at 65 and have like life altering changes is really, really encouraging. And yeah, that spans different. I've seen people do that through a vegetarian diet. And I think what it comes down to, and this is the most consistent threat I've seen,
Starting point is 00:59:08 is that those people have community, they have purpose, they have a regular activity, and then the food they eat just isn't processed. So whether it's vegetarian, whether it's, meat or whatever it is. It comes from some sort of like you said, whole food natural source and there's just not crap pumped into it. And so those are like the four pillars that I see most consistently. I love it because I feel like Bitcoiners are so focused on taking sovereignty of their money, but you also have to take sovereignty of your health. Yeah. Yeah. It like it sucks if you don't do that. It's kind of like seeing a personal trainer that's like super fat. You know, like when you see a Bitcoiner
Starting point is 00:59:40 that's just like not taking care of him or something like, dude, you got it on the money. Yeah. And so why aren't you getting it here? And so I mean, everybody's got their own path. So what happens when I come into one of these places? Like, what do you do? I'm going to give you a personal massage. No, no, no, no. So, yeah, salt light is a pretty cool, fun experience. We try to make the components of sunlight as easily. I guess it's almost like the components of a day at the beach. And so we have six different wellness services. We have, like I mentioned, the vitamin D sunbeds, which incorporate red light therapy. So you're getting the healthy elements of the sun without the overexposure risk of it because when you're outside, right, you don't, you don't,
Starting point is 01:00:16 you know, make sure you don't avoid getting too much. And so everything's kind of more properly dosed. Infrared light, which is also in the natural sunshine, you can go into the sauna, get a get a sweat, which pulls some of the toxins out. You move from that room to our cold plunge room, which, you know, when you go to the beach and you go in the water, even if you go to Southern California in the summertime, the water, it hits you a little bit. Not in Brisbane. You don't go on the water? Oh, no, I do, but it's not cold. It's not cold. Not in the summer, at least. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So, so, yeah, you get, you get, you get, you get, a brisk, I don't know if you've done cold plunge, but the invigoration of the cold plunge.
Starting point is 01:00:50 And then that's all inside of a salt room. So you're actually just breathing in salty air, which has incredible effects for your respiratory tract. I think that's one of the things that a lot of people don't is, I think that if anybody's trying to look for the alpha in the wellness space, I think the thing that most people in wellness, like red light's kind of a fad right now, which, well, red light's been around for a long time. I don't think it's going anywhere, but it's just like kind of cool right now. The salt therapy, breathing in salt. is it's crazy how good it feels. Like if you have a lung condition, if you're sick, if you've got a cold, how fast it clears it up. Or we have people that have asthma and the fact it, it's anti-inflammatory.
Starting point is 01:01:29 And so people are like, oh my gosh, it's the first time and a long time I could breathe naturally. I think that's, if you're betting on something or if somebody's got a wellness company out there and just like put a salt room in, dude, these things, these things are incredible. See, I surf quite a bit and you get the feeling. Like, I think being in the ocean, again, I never really thought of the salt part, but like being in the ocean, exercise and then coming out, you don't ever feel better. It is the best start of any day. 100%. This has been awesome. I'm going to come and see you. Dude, please do it. I want to go and do Jiu Jiu Jitsu. We're going to do Jiu Jitsu. We're in L.A. Yeah. We're L.A. in the greater L.A. area. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to be in L.A. in July, so I'm going to hit you up. That's just
Starting point is 01:02:15 You pay for the fix. But I'll take care of you. Don't worry. There you go. And can I pay in Bitcoin? Absolutely. Awesome. Let's go.
Starting point is 01:02:21 Thank you for this. It's been cool. Thanks, Danny.

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