What Bitcoin Did - From Wall Street to Bitcoin & The Separation of Money & State | Vijay Selvam

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Vijay Selvam digs into the first principles of Bitcoin, why it matters, how it works, and what makes it the greatest tool against authoritarian states. From his background on Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis to writing Principles of Bitcoin, Vijay explains why digital scarcity is a paradigm-shifting invention and why separating money from the state may be one of the most important moments in human history. We explore why narratives like “digital gold” are both useful and limiting, how Bitcoin embodies Enlightenment values of decentralization, and why its real political and philosophical implications go far beyond finance. Vijay also shares why the greatest threats to Bitcoin come from within, and how Bitcoin serves as both a mirror and a peaceful revolution for humanity. In this episode: - The 2008 financial crisis and discovering Bitcoin - Digital scarcity and the core innovation of Bitcoin - Separation of money and state vs. church and state - Narratives: digital gold, freedom money, and beyond - Bitcoin’s political and philosophical ramifications - Why Bitcoin is a mirror that forces self-reflection THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN RIVER ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY Follow: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Vijay Selvam: https://x.com/VijaySelvamXO

There's only one challenger to monetary policy and central banking and money itself, and that's Bitcoin. It's the greatest tool that has ever existed against authoritarian states. It's not enough to just say, okay, it's 21 million supply cap. You need to understand why. Otherwise, it's meaningless. If you could go back in time and ask why was Fiat introduced, it was because of all these deficiencies. But the moment there was trust introduced in the system, it started being abused. but now all those deficiencies have been resolved.

So you don't need fiat anymore. Vijay Selvin, how you doing, man? Great. Thank you for having me, Danny. Yeah, I followed the show for years now, so I really honored to be on speaking to you. No, I'm really glad to have you on. One of the things that is probably getting harder, but something I really want to concentrate on

is making sure that I have plenty of new guests in the space. This is obviously the first time you've been on. you sent me your book principles of Bitcoin. I was just telling you before, I'm most of the way through it. Yeah, I'm not quite finished it. But it's brilliant. It's really, really good. It's one of my favorite Bitcoin books I've read in a long time.

I get sent and buy a lot of Bitcoin books, and I just don't have the time to read them all. But this is one that, for whatever reason, just hooked me. I've really enjoyed it. So I'm, yeah, glad to have you on. And what I want to try and do here is kind of go back, not not, fully to basis. I think this will be a show that'll be valuable to Bitcoiners, but I also want to make sure it's the kind of show that can be sent to people who might be curious about Bitcoin, want to find out more, and just let people know the real fundamentals of Bitcoin, that it's not

all just treasury companies and penny stocks. So I'm excited to get into this. Yeah, me too. So let's start. I think we should probably start with your background, because you've got a very interesting background. You were at Harvard Law, Goldman Sachs. You were like a Tradfey guy. So tell us about your background. Sure. So yeah, so I'm an attorney in the U.S., also a solicitor in the UK, originally from India, but I've spent most of my life outside India. Yeah, so most of my career at Goldman Sachs, I was in New York and then Hong Kong and also Singapore for many years before, moving back to London now. I was a lawyer on Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis. I worked on a couple of bailout

packages for, you know, some of the big banks. So it was very much in the, in the thick of that, in the early parts of my, part of my career. So that was a huge influence upon my, you know, the way I think about the financial services industry, economics, macroeconomics, generally. And I became a major gold bug on the back of that. And I was for many years until I discovered Bitcoin, obviously. I've also worked sort of on regulatory matters. currently International General Counsel at Gemini. So in terms of Bitcoin, I mean, so going back, I'd say it was, I think it was 2013 when I first came across Bitcoin.

My reaction to it was all the things you would expect from someone with my background. So, you know, Ponzi scheme used by criminals, no intrinsic value, governments will shut it down, all those reactions, right? And it fascinates me that today, 12 years later, people are saying, exactly the same things. It really blows my mind, right? But those were my reactions back in 2013. And then it took several, it was many years of initially, you know, rejecting it and then reluctantly learning about it and then really starting to get it. And I think, yeah, that was kind of my journey. And along the way it was something that I really spent a lot of time thinking about was

Why is it that people with my sort of background find it so hard to understand Bitcoin? And there are many reasons for that. One is just, I mean, people are just lazy and, you know, people are just reluctant to do the work and read about it and understand it. Another reason is just arrogance. A lot of people are just really like, yeah, you tell someone who's made tens of millions of dollars as a hedge fund manager or, you know, private equity fund manager that you've missed. the biggest investment opportunity of your lifetime, they're not going to react very well to it. They're just going to be very defensive, right? I think it's also even more than that because you're definitely right, but it's also,

it's kind of like telling them everything that they've ever done, learned about and then done in business might be a little bit wrong. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're questioning. I mean, so yeah, the natural knee-jerk reaction is to be defensive. And many people will come at it from that, from that perspective. But there's no much you or I can do about that. You've just got to let these people come around to it eventually. You know, like the meme, everyone buys Bitcoin at the price they deserve, right? So I think there's a lot of proofs to that.

So you just got to let them be. But I thought where I could, you know, people like us can add value is, I think in the third bucket where people are missing, you know, the principles, like the core sort of why are we talking about? about this, what was the core invention, and creating a mental model for Bitcoin, it's really hard because it's really hard to come up with an appropriate mental model for Bitcoin,

simply because there's never been anything like Bitcoin before, right? So it doesn't fit neatly into any of your molds. So it is so paradigm shifting. So my endeavor was really to ask those first principled questions, why are we talking about this? What was that core fundamental innovation? As you say, let's put aside the Bitcoin Treasury companies. Let's put aside, you know, treasury, you know,

Bitcoin reserves and all these things and or, you know, crypto and Web 3 and NFTs and all that. Let's ask that basic question, what was the core innovation here? And start from there. So that was really my, my kind of objective. I wanted to write the book that I wish I had access to back in 2013. That was kind of my objective. And yeah, that's how it came about.

So maybe we should start there because, I mean, that is where you open the book. It's like, why are we talking about this? And as someone who's come from a very sort of traditional background who initially just dismissed Bitcoin, like, what was it that changed your mind on it? Yeah, so like I said, you know, I was a gold bug. I actually believe that everyone should be a little bit of a gold bug before they become Bitcoiners, because I think that's the natural path to take. Bitcoin is digital gold. I believe, I continue to believe, I've always believed that that is the best mental model.

That's the best analogy is digital gold, right? It's not a better MasterCard. It's not a better Benmo visa or anything like that. It is digital gold, right? Satoshi was trying to disrupt central banking, he was trying to destroy money. So that's the right kind of path. So I think, understand, and to be a gold bug,

you need to understand monetary history, you need to understand monetary policy, and also a bit of political history and all the things that led to where we are, right? So it's a natural path, I think. It's also an easier pill to swallow for many of the, you know, tried-fied people like myself. So to answer your question, I was already there, having experienced the 2008 financial crisis,

having experienced the moral hazard and all the systemic manipulation that was taking place, it was witnessed firsthand. I've been on call with Hank Poulson, the Federal Reserve and so on, back in 2007, 2008. And I saw it all. So I think I was already there. For me, the leap was really understanding

digital scarcity, just understanding the technology side of things and then everything came together. It was understanding the why, you know, it's not enough to just say, okay, it's 21 million supply cap. You need to understand why. Otherwise, it's meaningless, right? And that takes hundreds, thousands of hours of reading of thought of introspection, right, before you really get it, because it's not just cold. It's this entire incentive structure, economic incentives that come together to to make it possible, to make it happen. So, yeah, that was the moment for me.

Do you wish you could access cash without selling your Bitcoin? Well, Leiden makes that possible. Ledden are the global leader in Bitcoin Back Lending, and since 2018, they've issued over $9 billion in loans with a perfect record of protecting client assets. With Leiden, you get full custody loans with no credit checks, no monthly repayments, just easy access to dollars without selling a single sat.

As of July 1st, leaden is Bitcoin only, meaning they exclusively offer Bitcoin-backed loans with all collateral held by Ledden directly or their funding partners. Your Bitcoin has never lent out to generate interest. I recently took out a loan with Ledden and the whole process couldn't have been easier. It took me less than 15 minutes to go through the application and in just a few hours I had the dollars in my account. It was super smooth. So if you need cash but you don't want to sell Bitcoin, head over to ledden.io forward slash WBD and you'll get 0.25% off your first loan. That's slash WBD. Bitcoin is absolutely ripping and in every ball market there's always a new wave of investors

and with it a flood of new companies, new products and new promises. But if you've been around long enough, you've seen how this story ends for a lot of them. Some cut corners, take risk with your money or just disappear. That's why when it comes to buying Bitcoin, the only exchange I recommend is River. They deeply care about doing things right for their clients and are built to last with security and transparency at their core. With River, you have peace of mind knowing all their Bitcoin is held in multi-sid-cold storage, and it's the only Bitcoin-only exchange in the US with proof of reserves. There really is no better place to buy Bitcoin, so to open an account today, head over to river.com forward slash WBD and earn up to $100 in Bitcoin when you buy. That's river.com

forward slash WBD. What if you could lower your tax bill and stack Bitcoin at the same time? Well, by mining Bitcoin with blockware, you can. New tax guidelines from the Big Beautiful bill allow American miners to write off 100% of the cost of their mining hardware in a single tax year. That's right, 100% write off. If you have 100K in capital gains or income, you can purchase 100K of miners and offset it entirely. Blockware's mining as a service enables you to start mining Bitcoin right now without lifting a finger. Blockware handles everything from securing the miners to sourcing low-cost power to configuring the mining pool, they do at all. You get to stack Bitcoin at a discount every single day while also saving big come tax season.

Get started today by going to mining.blockwheresolutions.com forward slash. WBD, and for every hosted miner purchased, you get one week of free hosting and electricity. Of course, none of this is tax advice. Speak with blockware to learn more at mining.blockwresolutions.com forward slash WBD. So can we go really back to basics for a minute here? Assume that I know nothing about Bitcoin, because this is the kind of show that I want to be able to send to people who are interested in Bitcoin, but have no real understanding of it yet.

And this is probably, from the sounds of it, something you maybe learned in 2002. 2008 during the financial crisis. Like, what is money? Yeah, so... I know that's a hard question, by the way. It's... What's unfortunate is people, but very few people ask the question.

So if you... And that's why it's because the entire concept has been corrupted. If you, I mean, the last... Very few people understand that the money that they use on a day-to-day basis, fiat currency, is a 50-year-old experiment. It's a 54-year-old experiment. People just assume that governments have controlled money

through history, but no, it's actually only since 1971 that that's been the case. So to understand, to answer the question, what is money? You have to really, I think at this point, the best place to start is Austrian economics. So you look at the father of Austrian economics, who's Carl Menga. So Carl Manga said that Money is not necessarily a creation of the state. Money is any commodity. Like, it's the most saleable commodity. By saleable, it means it's the most marketable commodity. And there are two aspects to marketability.

One is spatial marketability, and the other one is temporal marketability. Spatial marketability is something that can be moved and transacted across space. So portability, right, divisibility, verifiability, scarcity, like all these things, well, it's kind of scarcity goes on both sides, but, well, scarcity is actually more temporal marketability, but primarily you think about portability and divisibility and fungibility and so on, right? That's one aspect to, you know, what makes a good money. The other aspect is temporal saleability or marketability, which is ensuring that your money retains its purchasing power over time. So protecting the fruits of your labor over time, temporal saleability.

So the key ingredient for that or key requirement is scarcity. If you have 10 units of a particular money and when your kids get it, there's, oh, let's say there's, you have 10 out of a million units. And when your kids get it, it's 10 out of a trillion units, you know, it's not very good, right? So scarcity is absolutely key. And then durability as well in history and all those types of things. So these are the factors that make a good money.

But the key point for, you know, the newbies is money is not necessarily a creation of the state. And this is the core of the Bitcoin kind of philosophy of movement is, the separation of money and state. And this is the question that you need, like people need to ask themselves, you know, should money and the state be separated? And the best analogy there is the separation of church and state.

Most people, so, so, you know, many of your listeners, if they are newbies, although I suspect, well, I don't know what proportion of your listeners are newbies, but a complete newbie who may be shocked by that, right? just the idea of separation of money and state sometimes is like, oh my God, that's a treasonous notion. How could you even suggest that, right?

But many people probably felt the same way about the separation of church and state during the medieval era in Europe. And for thousands of years, the church and state were, you know, inseparably intertwined, you know, governmental authority, the state's authority and spiritual authority, were intertwined, right, for thousands of years. You go back in time, you know, Hamurabi in Mesopotamia claimed to derive his powers from the gods, right? The pharaohs of ancient Egypt were seen as divine beings with sanctioned from the gods,

and these were instruments to control people. And then I think it was 1534 that Henry VIII, you know, separated from the Roman, Roman church. because he wanted to have a divorce. Yeah, and that was, again, you know, and that was, again, you know, strengthening the union of church and state. I was only in the, I think it was, well, during the French Revolution and the US Constitution, really,

that the church and state were formally separated. I mean, the word separation of church and state is actually, I think it's, I think it might be Jefferson talking about creating a wall of separation between church and state, and that's the First Amendment. So that was a huge pivotal moment in human history. It took strong men with vision to implement and execute that. The separation of money and state is arguably an even bigger,

you know, it would be an even bigger moment in human history because of the importance of money and, you know, for humanity. Humans have never had the ability to do this. that until now, right? So, yeah, so that kind of leads into Bitcoin, I guess. So you've said about eight things that I want to follow up on there. So let's go through it kind of one at a time. In a good way, by the way, this was great. But when you talk about the spatial and temporal elements of money, gold is obviously very good at the temporal side of things, but not so good at the spatial side of things. Can you just, for anyone that's listening, I just want to

make sure that this is a very kind of easily accessible show because I want this to be the kind of thing I can send to anyone. Why does gold fail at the spatial element there? Why does Bitcoin fix that? So I want to, yeah, let me talk about this, the question about what is Bitcoin's core innovation and that will lead into gold because there's a, there's a perfect analogy. You know, it's interesting because when, when you're, I mean, there's thousands of pages, and books that have been written about Bitcoin and, you know, hundreds of thousands of hours of podcasts and materials that have been recorded. But all you have to do really is go back to Satoshi's original emails,

and you will find answers to virtually every question. Incredible, right? And so one of my favorite quote of Stoci's is, is, you know, the one about the boring gray metal. He says as a thought experiment, imagine there's a boring gray metal with nothing unique about it other than the ability. It's not malleable, it's not, you can't, it's not shiny, it's not attractive, you know, nothing unique about it except for the fact that you can transfer it over a communication channel. So that's essentially digital goal is what he was he was talking about there. So here's the thing.

And I love Gigi, by the way. I don't know if you've, yeah, Gigi, I think he has been on the show. A long time ago, yeah. But he's been a huge inspiration for my book. I love some of his analogies. So this was for me a big aha moment and like the moment. And that's why let me talk about it for a second.

So what is Bitcoin's core innovation? It is the creation of a digital bearer asset. Now, what does that mean? So we talk about peer-to-peer transfers. A peer-to-peer transaction is where I give you something, you take it and you walk away. We don't need a third party to monitor that I don't give that same thing to somebody else. So if I took a gold bar and I handed it to you, Danny,

you took it from me, you turned around, and you walked away, you have absolute assurance that that gold bar which you're holding in your hand is with you. And there is no way that I can give that same gold bar to somebody else. Why is that? Because the laws of physics prevent that gold bar from existing in more than one place at the same time, unless you're some kind of magician or I'm some kind of magician. Let's put that aside.

But, you know, it's the laws of physics that prevent that from, happening, right? That's the physical world. And that's why we can have peer, throughout history, peer-to-peer transactions were possible. Now, if I sent you a photograph over email or WhatsApp, I could turn around and send that same photo to a thousand other people, and they would have identical copies of that. Why? Because the photo is just informational. It is just to zeros and ones. And information by nature is infinitely replicable at virtually no cost. And that, and so the only way to ensure that I don't send that same photo that I sent you to a thousand other people is by having a trusted third party monitoring my WhatsApp or my email and confirming to you that yes, Vijay has not sent

that to anybody else, right? And that's how it has been for decades, like whatever, since, you know, we had online, you know, digital information and so on. What Satoshi solved was that he enabled you and I to transact digitally with you in Australia and me in London as if we were physically present. It's as if I gave you a gold bar and you took it and you took it from me and you turned and walked away. You can do the same thing digitally, right? Now that is a paradigm shifting invention. It has implications in the realms of economics, politics, you know, and everything else, right? And that's really what it is.

So I think your original question was around gold, right? So why did gold not work out, right? It's kind of in the end. I mean, it's scarce. It's worked as money for thousands of years. How did it get corrupted? It got corrupted ostensibly because of its deficiencies around portability and divisibility and verifiability, right?

So, you know, if you and I needed to transact in gold, like 500 years ago, I'd have to put, you know, slabs of gold in a ship and send it off and, you know, risk pirates, you know, robbing them along the way. I need to have security. It's not divisible, right? I can't transact in a small unit. It's not very, it's not verifiable. It's fool, pirate everywhere, right? It's not fungible. It's fungible. But it's not any of these other. these other things, right? And that was what justified paper money. So people said, okay, put all your gold in a vault and let's issue some paper on the back of that. Paper is much more, it's better to be easier to transport. It's more verifiable, assuming, you know, there's trust involved, but it's supposedly verifiable, right? And so those were the justifications for papermen. But the moment there was trust

introduced in the system, it started being abused. Whenever there's trust, the only reason to build trust is so you can abuse it at some point, right? So that was, that was the, that was the origins of that. And then so if you take the entire history or monetary history, you can summarize it as, and some people would disagree with it, but I'm just going to, you know, let's just for simplicity, butter to, to like grains and other things, to precious metals, to, to, to, precious metals, to paper backed by precious metals to paper backed by nothing at all. That's the arc of monetary history, right? Now, what is Bitcoin done?

It has solved portability. It's inconceivable to have greater portability. You can just literally remember 12 words and walk across the border with nothing but the shirt on your back. It has solved the visibility of quadrillions of SATs and even more potentially if you need it. Perfectly verifiable, right? So in many ways, Bitcoin has made the original rationale for Fiat redundant. So if you could go back in time and ask why was Fiat introduced? It was because of all these deficiencies.

But now all those deficiencies have been resolved. So you don't need fiat anymore. So, I mean, that was very well, well said. But this is part of the reason why I've never got fully on board with the digital gold narrative. I know before you were saying you think that's one of the most powerful narratives in Bitcoin. But I agree in a sense of trying to explain this thing that from the outside looks very complicated. But then when you compare it to the fiat system, it's actually very simple. But as a way of explaining it, I think it's great.

And I think it's a very accessible way of explaining it. But I also, this is a terrible analogy, but it's almost like to me calling an airplane a flying horse. Like because Bitcoin solves so many of the properties that gold couldn't, I feel like it's underselling it. And I feel like it maybe keeps Bitcoin in the store of value phase instead of foreseeing the future of it being a real medium exchange and a real unit of account. I don't know what you think about that. So it's maybe because people don't fully understand the word digital.

Right. So within that word digital is all these other properties that you just described. If it's digital, it's basically like an email. So built within that word is the assumption that it's as portable as an email. It's as transactable as an email is, right? So maybe it's not fully, you know, it's a single word that doesn't, doesn't, you know, do justice to all those properties that you get via, it being digital. I agree with you. Yeah. Do you think we need to have better narratives in Bitcoin? Yeah, for sure. I mean, in a perfect world, again, I think we would only be talking first and purpose principles. I think we would completely separate Bitcoin from crypto. 100%. Right. You know, sure, I do know, stable coins have come out of crypto. I'm not dissing any,

anything about crypto, but let them do whatever they do. That's, that's, you know, its own world. It's a different world, yeah. It's a different world. So I would separate the two, but 99.9% of the world do not necessarily see that distinction. They see it all, you know, is this all cup out of the same thing, Bitcoin and Dogecoin and so on are all, you know, interchangeable, right? I literally 99.9% of the world, I think, sees it that way.

So I think that is, in terms of narratives, I think, clarification of that separation, and what we are disrupting. This is, there's only one, you know, challenger to monetary policy and central banking and money itself, and that's Bitcoin. You need to understand that. I think that is the better narrative. And that's why I like digital gold because, I mean,

we're in as particularly now in the last few months or the last few years, I think we are seeing this crazy move into, you know, gold being potentially, you know, I mean, we see some of the statistics, right? The dollar is now at third. year lows in terms of its share of global reserves. It's just fall into, what is it, 42%. It was 45, which was a 30 year low a few couple of months ago.

Now it's just falling to 42%. Gold has risen to 25%. There's some tectonic shifts that are happening. You see all the brick nations that are really loading up on gold. So I just, I like that path. It's again, to simplify things, it's just easier. It's an easier pull to swallow than this magic internet money. It's like it's just a nicer,

It's an easier path, really. I understand why gold. And then, hey, then digital goal, right? I mean, gold, but it has all these deficiencies. So why not digital goal? And then you ask this question. So I just like that path better. Yeah, I do think that makes sense.

And I've never been a gold bug, mainly because I never had any money before Bitcoin. And Bitcoin was the first thing that I found that was like a real store of value. And like the thing that I am very bullish on is it moving to these different, like the medium exchange union of account? And I just worry that the digital goal keeps it kind of stuck in that same place. But let's move on to the separation of money and state because I think this is actually really interesting at the moment, especially with everything that's happening in the US. Obviously, the Trump admin are kind of, I struggle to say adopting Bitcoin, but they're at least pretending to kind of be open to Bitcoin. And this isn't necessarily like the separation of money and state.

It's more Bitcoin being integrated into the state. I don't know how you kind of look at all of that. Yeah, I caution against, basically, I mean, it worries me that a lot of people adopt Bitcoin because they hear what the president of the United States or whatever is saying about it, because that can change on a diet. A hundred time. And panic sell because, oh, okay, like, you know, all the Democrats have come to power, they're going to reverse everything Trump did.

And that's, you've not really understood the basic, you know, the fundamental reason why you're doing this. So it always concerns me, I'm very apprehensive of those types of, those types of narratives. There's a whole chapter in my book about, you know, Bitcoin as a reserve asset. And this was before the recent, when I wrote the book, this wasn't really mainstream conversation. Trump hadn't been elected.

But I spent some time thinking about it. So what struck me when I was studying, you know, I guess political history primarily was, was, you know, the age of enlightenment in Europe was a key period in history, the 17th and 18th century. That was a time when individual liberty started to take precedence over absolute monarchy. It was a key period. It was the first time when those kinds of ideologies came to the fore. And all these ideas of self-sovereignty and libertarian philosophies and so on.

I wouldn't say that it was, you know, they were born during that era, but they really came to the forefront during that period. The American forefathers were greatly influenced by those ideologies. And if you think about, I think, you know, Benjamin Franklin says, it is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority. It's crazy to think about, you know, those, that kind of a statement, right? Thomas Jefferson says, it is the natural progression of things for liberty to yield and for governments to gain ground over time or something. I'm maybe butching it a bit, but something like that, right? And if you just think about the Constitution was largely to protect people from the state. Those are incredibly powerful sort of ideologies.

And you think about where we are today, where we've just subjugated ourselves to, you know, the state and unquestioningly, you know, accepted surveillance and, you know, loss of privacy and corruption of our money, right? So when I was thinking about all that, I, and, you know, this, I can go on about it, right? you, the separation of powers within, the UK government, separation of powers in the UK as well as the US. You know, I think again, Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton, I think Alexander Hamilton says you need to have ambition to counteract ambition. So like different arms of the state challenging one another

in order to not allow one arm to become, you know, absolutely powerful. What are all these things? It's decentralization. It's decentralized consensus, decentralized power. I can't help but think. Like, I mean, when I read these things, American history, I can't help, or even English history, political history, these guys would have loved Bitcoin. It is, Bitcoin is, in many ways, that it's like the digital embodiment of these, like American values of, you know, self-sovereignty and so on. So, so it just made a lot of sense, and I really love that. And there's a chapter where I talk about that and I talk about why, I mean,

in the current environment where the dollar is waning in its power, rather than risking another challenging, you know, a hostile nation to Western values, is currency, you know, coming to the fore. Why not adopt Bitcoin, right? I mean, and, and it looks like gold actually, might turn out to be the one that comes to the, you know, for at least first. Yeah, at least first. So, so then again, like, why not digital gold, right? So, so, and especially given it aligns so well with Western values and so.

So, so I think people need to, well, when you talk about Trump, everything, people, you know, the Bitcoin strategic reserve and all these things, people should, it's great, they're having these conversations and the Overton window. It's amazing that, you know, I mean, you and I have been around during a period, where it would be inconceivable. It would have been laughed out of the room for saying these things. Not even that long ago.

Yeah. So I mean, it's great that we're having these conversations, but I think people need to, the important thing is that people need to be pushing this for the right reasons, right? And yeah, and that requires asking those basic questions. This episode is brought to you by the massive legends, Iron, the largest Nasdaq listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy.

Iron are not just powering the Bitcoin network. They're also providing cutting-edge computing resources for AI, all backed by renewable energy. We've been working with their founders Dan and Will for quite some time now and have been really impressed with their values, especially their commitment to local communities and sustainable computing power. So whether you're interested in mining Bitcoin or harnessing AI compute power,

Iran is setting the standard. Visit iran.com to learn more, which is ira-e-r-en.com. If you already self-custody or Bitcoin, you know the deal with hardware wallets. Complex setups, clumsy interfaces, and a seed phrase that can be lost, stolen or forgotten. Well, Bitkey fixes that. BitKee is a multi-sig hardware wallet built by the team behind Square and Cash App.

It packs a cryptographic recovery system and built-in inheritance feature into an intuitive, easy-to-use wallet with no seed phrase to sweat over. It's simple, secure self-custody without the stress, and time name BitKee one of the best inventions of 2024. Get 20% off at bitkey.org when you use code WBD. That's B-I-T-K-E-Y-W-W-W-W. world and use code WBD. One of the things that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical error with my Bitcoin cold storage. 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-locked multi-sig bolts. So you have the peace of mind knowing your Bitcoin is fully insured while not giving up custody. So whether you're worried about inheritance planning, wrench attacks, natural disasters or just your own mistakes, you're fully protected by Anchor Watch. Rates for fully insured custody start as low as 0.55% and are available for individual and commercial customers located in the US. Speak to Anchorwatch today for a quote and for more details about your security options and coverage. Visit anchorwatch.com today. That is anchorwatch.com. Going back a little bit in the conversation, memes and narratives are very, very powerful.

And the narrative that I got into Bitcoin for was Bitcoin has freedom money. And it's a narrative that I'm unwilling to change. Like that is what Bitcoin is to me. It's freedom money. And when you look at what's happening at the moment with, you know, privacy developers going to jail, we have like basically the only way of realistically buying Bitcoin for the vast majority of people is through these sort of K-Y-C exchange choke points. There's also like government started to stack Bitcoin or stolen Bitcoin. Like, are we truly separating money in state? You know, there's so many attributes of, you know, there's permissionlessness, censorship resistance, unconfiscateability. and absolute scarcity, right?

These are the four core properties of Bitcoin, right? And they're all very, very valuable. But I think I'm one of those people that would say that the one property that is a little bit, everyone's created equal, but some are more equal than others. There's one property more, you know, a little bit ahead of everyone else. And that is the absolute scarcity, right?

It's more important, it's a little bit more important than censorship resistance. It's a little more important than, you know, unconfiscatedly permissionless, it's a little bit more important because that is at the core of it. And as long as that cannot be corrupted, it coin cannot be co-opted. Like I don't care, I mean, how Finney was talking about Bitcoin banks, right?

In the first few months of coming across whatever, for a couple of years or whatever coming across Bitcoin. None of this is new. He, like he didn't see that as cyphepunk as it gets, right? And he didn't see a problem with that. The key piece that, that needs to be incongrucible is the 21 million. And I don't think any of this co-opting and so on and so forth is a threat to that.

Because people can always, I mean, look, if you're just going to put all your money in a Bitcoin and Treasury company or something, then, I mean, I'm sorry, that's just, that's on you, okay? Yeah. Like, you know, if you understand Bitcoin, you need to have a significant portion of it in cold storage because you're, you know,

and then maybe, okay, you have a little bit in these other leveraged products, right? You get more Bitcoin, but with a view to ultimately, hopefully selling that and getting more Bitcoin, right? That is the kind of idea. So that's on you. And as things stand, I think is stopping you from, you know, selling your Bitcoin companies or whatever and just buying cold storage of Bitcoin, right? So I don't think there's any, at least I don't see a major risk to co-option or corruption of it. the greatest risk to Bitcoin is from within. I think throughout Bitcoin's history, like the fork wars,

you know, the block size wars was probably the greatest threat that ever existed. I don't think any government banning it or co-opting and all of that was ever at risk to Bitcoin. But if there ever is a risk to Bitcoin, I think it comes from within. So a bit earlier in the conversation, you were talking about the ramifications that Bitcoin has on both politics and philosophy. I know that you have a large part in the book about both of those things. Can we go through them one by one? What are the ramifications this has on politics? I think the biggest implication of politics is, well, it's the greatest tool that has ever existed against authoritarian states. And you take, you like, what is it? I think, I mean, Alex Gladstein, who is very kind to write the foreword for my book, I think,

I mean, he's written a lot about this and he has some great stats, but I think it's something like 75% of the world lives under some form of authoritarian regime, you know, kind of system currently. And these are states where, I mean, it's like, you know, you think about the banking, the financial banking system that works. It's kind of the backbone of our day-to-day existence, right? And when that system is weaponized against you, it's just not only that it doesn't work for you. And what is it? One in three people are unbanked, or one in four people of our fellow humans are unbanked.

They don't even have bank accounts. And a much larger share of those people have those, the banking system weaponized against them, right? Parts of the Middle East or Africa and so on. For such people, Bitcoin is hope. It is the only thing they're have to fight back. I mean, it's like, you know, sort of what's that there was, I think Alex Gladstein talked about this new law that was proposed. I'm not sure if it was passed, but this law that was

proposed in Iran where if any, any woman who's seen not wearing a hijab or just kind of dressed in, you know, appropriate attire, it would be fined by an automatic deduction from their bank. accounts. So there's no room for you. I mean, you know, paying a fine is one thing where you can either ignore it or challenge it or whatever, but waking up one morning and looking at a bank account and half of your money has disappeared because you apparently, you know, was seen without your hijab. What recourse do these people have? And people, you know, in the United States and the UK and so on sit on their high horses in their, you know, privileged worlds and poke fun at Bitcoin. What solution do they have for that woman in Iran.

And now imagine a digital asset that is permissionless, censorship-resistant, unconfiscatable, and absolutely scarce, where she can just store the fruits of her labor beyond the reach of anyone. So that's, I think that is the biggest political implication of Bitcoin, I talk about that. The other one, I think, in the political realm is, and this is what I think needs a lot of, a lot more work,

and it hasn't been explored sufficiently, is Bitcoin's impact on violence. And this is actually, Trace Meyer's, Mayor's written a lot about this, or he talked a lot about this back in the day. But if you think about, throughout human history, The majority of violent acts have been committed in order to acquire or defend physical property. These wars for or to defend against physical property have shaped the maps of nations and the course of human civilization. The vast majority of human strife through history has been driven by the acquisition or defense of physical property, right?

the resource curse is, you know, this thing where countries that are resource rich have been the ones that have faced the most conflict, right? I mean, colonialism, right? You know, Western Europe, the UK went to India and parts of Europe. Why? Because of physical resources that they wanted to take. Yeah. Now, what happens when you move from physical wealth to dematerialized wealth? I think people have just not appreciated the power of that.

Right. You don't need vast armies and, you know, like, you know, fighter jets and tanks and, and naval forces to, you know, defend your physical property. And, you know, sort of, you just need cryptography. So the cost of defense of your property is just plummeted, right? And you could use those resources for other purposes in your, you know, in your respective countries. So that is really huge and really underappreciated. Yeah, so that I think, to me, that is the biggest political implication of dematerialized wealth,

which is Bitcoin. It's funny that you bring up out of Godstein. I've just got into Bali this morning. There's a conference happening out here. And I'm really curious to hear what the conversation that they're having in a place like this will be because you go to a conference in the US and everything is just talking about like the financialization of Bitcoin in general. And Alex will be out here. He's bringing a whole squad from the Human Rights Foundation. And again, kind of back to narratives, I think that is one of the most powerful

narratives. When Alex talks about the things that Human Rights Foundation are doing, and obviously it's not just Alex, he's amazing leader there, but like Arsh and CK and all the people working there, it's impossible to ignore. And when you look at like the background, you've come from going through like Harvard and Goldman Sachs, do you think that is one of the reasons that people from those kind of backgrounds find it so hard to understand Bitcoin because they are coming from a very privileged position? I mean, so this is why I actually asked Alex to write the foreword for my book, because, yeah, I agree that is one of the most underappreciated and just,

most people are shocked. Most people would be shocked. When you say Bitcoin and human rights the same sentence, they probably this is like, what are you talking about? That, you know, how? This is, you know, because it's internet Ponzi-ski, like, what are you talking about? How is that, have anything to do, you know, with human rights? And that's why I wanted him, and I'm very glad that he agreed to do it.

Because it is the most underappreciated aspect. It's the permissionlessness, the lifeline that it offers to unbanked people around the world. You know, what is it? 90% of South Sudan is unbacked. Can you believe that? I mean, that's in a country when it is unbanked. You know, 200 million people plus in India are unbanked. 60 million people in Mexico or something like that are unbanked.

And all these people have cell phones. And so, yeah, you just connect to the internet, open a wallet, and you're banked. That's huge, but people, it's massively underappreciated because, But I can only blame the media for that, right? You just, you have the media constantly talking with misinformation. The only thing they say about is volatility. You know, Aaron, what's his name? Andrew Sock, you know, I was just seeing and just constantly obsessed with

volatility. It's just in complete obsession. Yeah. And I've spoken about this before on the podcast. But again, with the Human Rights Foundation a couple years ago now, I was out in Malawi, which by like many metrics is the poorest country in the the world. And a few days before we got there, their currency was devalued by 40% overnight. And if you want to talk about volatility, that is volatility. Bitcoin is very stable comparatively.

And like this is the place where Bitcoin can truly be a lifeline. And don't get me wrong, I think this is coming to the rest of the world. But right now, they're the places that need it most. The tricky thing is kind of the education and infrastructure to get Bitcoin to those people. But, I mean, that's why it's important to have people like the Humor Acts Foundation doing what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. And the volatility argument, honestly, is something that has, you know, again, the obsession with it, it blows my mind because, um, like, there's such cognitive dissonance over it, right? Because if volatility is about, like, what is Bitcoin is, what is disrupting? Bitcoin is disrupting money, right? Of course it's going to be volatile versus what

it is disrupting. What were you expecting? Right. I mean, you talk about like, okay, so if volatility versus Fiat, volatility versus the dollar is bad, by extension, then no volatility should be really good. That's a stable coin. What are you talking about? So, you sort of, you know, if Bitcoin was successful in disrupting money, of course that the path to achieving that disruption was going. I mean, disruption is always volatile. The path to disruption is always volatile. It is not going to be linear incremental.

It's going to be volatile because, you know, it takes time for Bitcoin to permeate through the, you know, the psyche of humanity. People need to understand it. It takes time for people to understand it. And human understanding is volatile. Human, you know, emotions are volatile. So until a critical mass of humanity understands Bitcoin, of course it's going to be volatile, right? And I don't know how that, why, how, why that surprises people. And on the other hand, Walters D is falling, right?

And this is the other thing. Like if you just need to take the right time horizon, if you take a four year time horizon, look at a four year moving average of Bitcoin, the 200 week moving average with which Adam back really loves to talk about, because that is a smooth up, you know, 45 degree line that has never had a single down day. It is the more non-volatile sort of line.

And if you're a young person, you should be taking at least a four-year investment horizon on your investment. Why are you looking at it on a minute-by-minute basis or an hourly? You should be taking, invest in it and come back five years later or 10 years later for that matter, right? So it's just, it's really frustrating, but yeah.

I mean, I do think that's interesting though, because my time horizon when it comes to Bitcoin isn't four years, it's 20 years, 30 years. Like, this is something I'm putting away for a long time. But on the positive side of that, I do think the time horizon that we're going to have to push again as like a narrative in this is going to reduce. Like, it seems like volatility is reducing. I think that's a good thing for the adoption of Bitcoin. I think give it a few more years and we could be talking about just put money away for two years and then maybe it's one year. And then maybe you just put money away. And I think that's going to be a massive positive. And it's funny,

like this conversation unintentionally has been kind of all about narratives. And what One of the things you talk about in the book, and I know other people have written about this, is Bitcoin being like a mirror. Like whatever you want to see in Bitcoin, you kind of can. And I think that is one of the most interesting parts about it. Like if you're a very progressive person, you know, Jason Meyer wrote books on this. But you can see your progressive ideals reflected back to you in Bitcoin. If you're very conservative, you can.

If you're anarchist, you can. And I think while that is very important in Bitcoin, it's also one of the things that make it difficult to understand. And how do you look at Bitcoin in that sense? Yeah, I mean, you see yourself in it in a way, but it also forces you to ask yourself who you are. It forces you to ask yourself where you fit on the continuum between left and right. Are you, you know, or libertarian versus fascist, where do you fit, right? Because those are ideology.

How important is privacy due, right? how important is self-sovereignty to you. So it forces you to ask those questions. It also says a lot about who you are in the sense that do you have the intellectual humility? Do you have the open-mindedness to admit that maybe you were wrong about it? Maybe you haven't seen something, you know,

sort of, it takes a lot of intellectual humility and intellectual honesty as well. So it forces you to do that. And it reflects back, you know, kind of if you, if you reject it and you're not, it shows you who you are in that respect. And I mean, yeah, I close with that. That's my closing chapter in the book because I think, you know, it comes a full circle. It really kind of, you come back to yourself at the end of the day.

And humans by nature preserve, they, they, they, they, they, they, prefer the status quo, right? And that's because, you know, it's risk aversion. And throughout history, and I have this list of, you know, invention than what people said about it, historically you have, of course, Paul Krugman talking about the internet being a fad in the 1990s. You know, every single major invention was completely trashed by people when it was introduced. Like even the bicycle, you know, sort of it's crazy, but the bicycle was completed. People said that, oh, it's, you know, it leads to all kinds of health disorders. It's going to destroy, because women were riding bicycles around is going to lead to the degradation of morality in women and all these, these types of scam on green, which has eerie parallels sort of with Bitcoin, right?

So, yeah, it shows you all these things about yourself. Like, I mean, yeah, kind of, are you open-minded enough? Are you progressive enough to at least explore it? And then maybe adopt it and be an advocate for it. But at least, you know, be open-minded enough to accept that, yeah, maybe you got it wrong. Maybe there's more to this than what you're hearing on CNBC or reading in the New York Times. It's the freedom virus. So when you talk about the ramifications on philosophy, this is one of the most interesting parts to me.

I think we kind of touched on it a little bit there, but do you want to expand on that? Let me add some context to that. Because Bitcoin has definitely changed me as a person. And I know to people who may not be deep into Bitcoin, that might sound like a wild statement. But things like time preference change your life in a huge way. And if you have money that you can actually put away and trust that it's going to retain value over time and increase in fiat amount, like it does change the way that you view the world and the way that you interact with the world. Yeah.

So, yeah, it comes back to the origins of consumerism in the economic. So the fiat money depends on debt. It needs debt to keep going because you need to be able to spend. you know, future productivity today. And you need inflation, you need, you need that, all those things to work in order for it to be sustainable. So it encourages debt. It encourages overconsumption and which in turn leads to environmental degradation

and the destruction of civilization and culture along the way. So I talk about that and I talk about, I mean, it's visible everywhere like architecture, you know, It's sort of you just look at the modern architecture, which is built to be, you know, made redundant in a few years when it's not fashionable anymore, as opposed to, you know, really a robust, beautiful architecture from a few hundred years ago. I mean, I feel like you being in London, there's probably no clearer city to see that. You see like a beautiful 15th century churches and then just horrible glass buildings everywhere. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So these are all, you know, byproducts of fiat. They're all byproducts. of consumerism, they're all byproducts of debt. And just moral degradation in society that, you know,

that is that's resulted from this system that we live in. So what Bitcoin offers is a way to go back to a bygone era of hard money. And if you think about it, I mean, that's why there would have not, there wouldn't have been a way to do that, you know, It's so powerful Bitcoin because it empowers individuals. It's this non-violent, you don't need a war. You don't need to have any kind of conflict. You don't need to have a revolution.

It's a silent, peaceful revolution. All you need to do is transfer your value into this new, unconfiscatable, permissionless censorship-resistant, you know, asset that just exists in the ether. And that's all you need to do. you don't need to pick up a, you know, like, you know, whatever, like you don't need to revolt against the state and pitchforks and all of that, right? So that's incredibly powerful. I think it was really important to do a very sort of fundamental Bitcoin show. And I know we've only

touched on all of these things kind of quite briefly and very sort of high level. You have an open invite to come back whenever you want and we can maybe get into more depth on them. Maybe the one thing I will maybe, you know, sort of mention is, and this was the basis for the book as well, aside from the first principles aspect of, you know, describing things and asking the basic questions was also the holistic aspect. And that's what the cover is. It's, you know, technology, economics, politics, and philosophy is a Venn diagram and then Bitcoin at the center. And this was, we talked briefly about it, but the, you know, the blind men and the elephant parable. So this is the first page of the book. And I love that. this. Honestly, I opened the book, read that page, I was like, right, this is one I'm going to read. So just for your listeners, so this is, it's an ancient Indian parable, actually. So you've got these blind men and you have an elephant and they're asked to touch different parts of the, you know, the elephant and then try to describe what an elephant is. They don't know what an elephant is. So one guy goes and touches the elephant's tail and he says, oh,

the elephant is like a rope. Another guy touches the elephant's leg and says, oh, the elephant is like a tree trunk. And then another guy touches the elephant's trunk and says, oh, the elephant is like a snake. So I think that's probably thought that's a good analogy for Bitcoin because you've got CNBC that's, for them, Bitcoin is only about volatility.

Or the New York Times, Bitcoin is only about the environment. Right. So you've got to look at things holistically to see the full elephant, right? Yeah. It's like the blind man all of a sudden got their psych back and saw the holistic elephant. And I think that's Bitcoin. And that's the idea that, you know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Humans are wired to see things holistically. So if you look at it in a silo, if you only look at it from its, you know, economic aspects, you're going to miss its implications for, you know, people are living in authoritarian regimes, its political aspects. If you only look at, if you only look at that without understanding its technology,

words like censorship resistance and permissionlessness and scarcity are going to be just words. You need to understand where they derive their meaning from. So that was my idea. And that's why I tried to cover all of them holistically, bring them all together, because that's the only way to really see Bitcoin for what it is. And that's one of the reasons why I think the last chapter, being about Bitcoin as a mirror is such a good callback to that very opening parable because I think when it comes, I've basically stopped trying to orange pill people, like just random

people in my life. I've spoken to everyone I care about. It's been nearly 10 years of this. And some people have got it. Some people have chosen to ignore it. And that's fine. But now if anyone comes to me and asks about Bitcoin, I always try and start with getting them to ask the questions they want to understand from me, rather than trying to explain something to them. Because I think when you try and explain Bitcoin, because it is this huge, like, behemus of the thing that touches so many different elements, like, you can end up just describing the rope, or you can end up just describing the tree trunk. Like, it's very hard to give a full holistic picture, which is, again, why I think this

book is great. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Danny. But like I say, Vij, anytime you want to come on, I'm more than happy to do it. We should do another one and get into a little more depth. We've kept this quite surface level. But it's an important show.

I think for me, like, I've been doing a lot of shows on treasury companies and macro stuff. And it's nice to get back to kind of fundamentals of Bitcoin. This is one that I'll share out with friends who are, like, trying to get interested in Bitcoin. But we should do one where we do more of a deep dive at some point. Yeah, I'd love that. Yeah, perfect. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate the time, Vij.

Any where do you want to send anyone who doesn't know who you are, doesn't know where to find you? So my Twitter handle is Vijay Selvim XO. that's probably the best place to find me. And by Principles of Bitcoin. It's a really good book. But yeah, thank you, Vijay. I appreciate the time, man. And we shall speak again at some point.

Next time I'm in England, we should do one in person. Yeah, yeah, I'd love that. All right. Thank you, mate.