What Bitcoin Did - Has Bitcoin Lost Its Narrative? | Fernando Nikolic

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

“Maybe it’s time to kill your heroes again, and Saylor is now the hero to slay in this cycle.” Fernando Nikolic is the founder of Perception. In this episode, we get into whether Bitcoin has lost its narrative, why Michael Saylor’s messaging has changed, and how narratives can move markets. Fernando breaks down the shift from Saylor’s early Bitcoin maximalist language to the more recent focus on credit, derivatives and Strategy as a financial product. We also get into whether Bitcoin’s rebel era is over, why the ETF approval may have marked the end of Bitcoin as a countercultural movement, and whether Bitcoin adoption is now becoming more fragmented, boring and inevitable. We also get into the death of monoculture, the way the internet has broken shared reality, and how AI, Spotify and algorithmic feeds are creating a more homogenised culture. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY SWAN CAPE FOLLOW: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/\_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Fernando Nikolic: https://x.com/basedlayer

Maybe it's time to kill your heroes again, and Sailor is now the hero to slay in this cycle. Why did the market react in terms of just emotions, but also price action for 32 Bitcoin sold? And why didn't anything happen when he sold 700? It was because, in my opinion, because of the narrative engineering that Sailor was doing. Somebody like Sailor or anybody who chooses to engineer their narrative, in a way can actually control markets. Bitcoin is so many different things that you can literally have a great argument for Bitcoin to somebody who's on the extreme far right and also the extreme far left.

So the customization of Bitcoin is actually pretty cool. And that will lead to a lot of people from different walks of life to understand Bitcoin in a very deep way and be completely convinced about it. So that's great. That's like bullish. Good to see you, man. We're going to talk all about Bitcoin narratives across the board, breaking down, no one knowing which way is up with it anymore. Like, it's funny, just before we started recording, I was scrolling through Twitter, and I've seen three posts that like, is Bitcoin dead?

Is Bitcoin over? Like, I feel like we've lost the narrative. But I think there's nothing more apparent as of right now as to where a narrative has either been broken or lost in everything that's happened with Michael Saitler. And yesterday, you just dropped a big piece on this. And it has been really interesting to see his messaging change over time. So do you want to start? I'll just leave it open for you. You pick where you want to jump in.

Like what you notice when you kind of dug through all of the data around the things that Michael Saylor's been saying? Well, you know, first of all, I think, you know, when strategy sold 32 Bitcoin and, you know, the reaction that everybody had, not only in like the market and the price action, but just like on Twitter and all socials. And everybody has kind of like come to this realization that, okay, maybe it's time to kill your heroes again. And Sailor is now the hero to slay in this cycle. And I was like, it's interesting that people react like that after the facts, you know. Obviously there are people who have been critical of Sailor and strategy. You know, there's like this section or like this cohort of bitcoinsers who are like anti-suitcoin that that has always. been part of this, but then it's like, there's a lot of other people as well that, like,

really had a problem with what was happening and they were kind of like freaking out. And I was like, what's up with that? Like, why do people always react after something has happened? And are there any indicators, some signals before anything happened that might have given us a clue in terms of whether Sailor has changed his mind or if he had started doing, saying something that was an indicator of something else. I was like, okay, I just let my agents run through the perception MCP for people who don't know. Perception is my company. So essentially what we do is like we track thousands of sources when it comes to discourse in the entire digital asset industry. So tweets, LinkedIn post, filings, white papers, transcripts from conferences, podcasts, everything,

you name it. And I was like, okay, let me just like run my agents through the MCP and just track, all of sailors tweets, interviews, conference panels, whatever he was talking about and say, hey, were there any clues before like the 32 Bitcoin cell or anything else, it might have been some kind of a leading indicator of like where things were going to go instead of like reacting on something that's already happened. So I essentially told my agents to just go back to 2020 up until today and just like, give me, just give me a whole, like, analysis on, like, everything that Sailor has said, and whether there's a word or two words or three words that keeps repeating or, like, has he

actually had a narrative that was planned and structured and kind of like on purpose throughout these years? And, you know, it was kind of clear when, when, you know, the analysis came back that, okay, and there's like three faces from 2020 till today that was like, okay, the first four years after strategy first announced that they were buying Bitcoin in 2020 up until 2024. There was just like this, I don't know, there's like Bitcoin maxi, anti-feet maxi type of narrative and kind of like propaganda. And I say propaganda because the way that Sailor was saying things was in a very kind of

like, I don't know what I say calculated mode, but it was like very, it seems very on purpose. repeating the same talking points and also used the same type of words over and over again. So I was like, that is pretty interesting. And then after 2024 entering 2025, things started to change with the kind of like the introduction of the term credit. And credit in the first cycle of 2020 to 2024 was was mentioned, but it was mentioned in a very negative way. It was mentioned as like, okay, this is this is fiat shit. This is like not good. Credit is bad.

You should just hold Bitcoin. So obviously he was trying to appeal or maybe pander to like the Bitcoin, you know, mentality trying to get them on board during this whole four years. And then started to like slowly switch over a little bit like not as hardcore as the first four years. But in, in 2025, there was like this little like transitional period where he started like switching things a little bit. like subtly, but it started. And then obviously you take a look at like what happened in terms of like product development or just like the offerings, that strategy started to offer to the market around that time

in 2024, 2025. And that's obviously, you know, when Stretch, when STRC got introduced and all of a sudden the credit language or the credit discourse started to switch into something more positive. And then 2026 came and he started talking about derivatives and just like completely went to the other side, right? And I know that at this time, there was some people that started to question this. But it wasn't really noticeable. It was some people that was like against this. Like what is this whole credit?

You know, paper Bitcoin, anti-suit coiners. They were speaking up. But the overall market wasn't really paying attention. until Sailor or Strategy sold the 32 Bitcoin. And I was like this whole upheaval happened, which also had this like market correction, this market reaction as well. And I'm saying this because in this whole 2020 to 2026 cycle

where these three faces happen, there was a time in 2022 where a strategy sold 700 plus Bitcoin and the market didn't react. Nobody said anything and the price didn't do anything. This is 700 plus Bitcoin. Bitcoin. I forget exactly how much Bitcoin exactly, but it was definitely way more than 32. Now, why did the market react in terms of just emotions, but also price action for 32 Bitcoin sold? And why didn't anything happen when he sold 700? It was because, in my opinion,

because of the narrative engineering that Saylor was doing. So 2022, the 700 Bitcoin was just like, okay, he's like tax harvesting. There's just some other people had like other, not excuses, but like they had a, they were rationalizing it. Whereas when he, when Sailor or Strategy Sol 32, it was already a problem with the narrative that Saylor had done when he started to change a year before. And that to me is extremely interesting to, to me that's like proof that, you know, narratives is one factor that drives markets.

It all has to do with the emotion. of people, how they react to certain actions unfolding, and somebody like Sailor or anybody who chooses to engineer their narrative in a way can't actually control markets, subconsciously or not, but narratives has a very important part when it comes to how people react and how people feel about something. So I thought that was pretty interesting, and I think that's kind of the biggest takeaway from the report. If you own a Bitcoin ETF, especially if it's GBTC, you need to listen up. Spot Bitcoin ETFs provide price exposure to Bitcoin, not direct ownership. You can't withdraw it, you can't self-custody it, and they charge you a management fee every

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because they've been incredibly powerful, is it started, like the first one I remember is the sort of melting ice cube. The melting ice cube of fiat money he was sat on, so he turned his treasure into Bitcoin. And then there was the sort of Manhattan real estate, there was digital energy. And it felt like all of the initial narratives were kind of, very positive for Bitcoin. And then the reason I've never liked the digital credit one is it's

always been like Bitcoin's not enough on its own without me giving this other product. And so I feel like there's a bit of a disconnect on the narrative there. And then the other interesting thing about this is I remember I had Fongley on the podcast. I think it was about October-ish time last year. And he said on the show, I asked him if they would sell Bitcoin. And he said, yes, they would. and when he said that, I thought that was just like a fiduciary duty thing that he had to say he would because at some point he may have to and he has to say that that is an option. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it was just like it was sowing the seeds of this new narrative. I don't know.

And it's just been interesting to see it go from being, in my opinion, very pro-Bitcoin to being like pro-strategy and sometimes like saying Bitcoin's not enough. Like we need to add these new layers on top of it for it to become money-like. And that's kind of, I think, where I've fallen out with this whole thing. And I think there's a lot of Bitcoin is in the same boat. Yeah. And I think, you know, I mentioned Fung Lee as well in the report because, you know, when the 32 Bitcoin got sold, you know, he bought back a lot of a lot of shares as well. And so there was kind of like, and these things are filed publicly as well.

And that is, you know, even though it's not necessarily a verbal message, it is still a message that is publicly filed that should be kind of like a thing that people pick up on. That kind of like went on notice. It didn't help at all. Like, MSTR still crashed. And it was like nobody cared that this actual CEO bought back a significant amount of shares while the price was crashed. So that means that, you know, when a certain narrative has been solid and has, you know, over time. I mean, in this case, you know, from 2020 to 2024, four-year cycle of like having a very hard narrative kind of like rooting. When that gets uprooted, like nothing helps.

Nothing you say afterwards will help. And that's like how big narratives actually is. And, you know, you can speculate. I mean, obviously there's there's a lot of like, you can reason your way out of this and say, hey, you know, business is business. things change, time has changed, and you want to adapt, you want to try out new things. And also for Sailor, it's kind of like a learning curve as well, right? Like even before 2020, he had tweets where he said, okay, Bitcoin is dead or has no future. And obviously, he changes mind on that as well. So, I mean, all of those things are allowed, obviously, but it's just interesting to have data on that right now,

that is quantitative. And you can actually, you can pinpoint to a place where, like, okay, he's changing his narrative right now. And you can speculate on like, okay, okay, why is this happening right now? What has happened before he spoke up about it? That is changing his mind or is changing his mind in real time. And obviously, we don't know, but I think it's extremely interesting to just have data on it. Like, that's why I created perception in the first place, because I don't feel that we don't, we don't have this service where we can actually catch a narrative changing in real time if you bother to look. The kind of like the consensus here is just to check the narrative after it's already been said and done like everybody has.

with the reaction to the 32 Bitcoin being sold. So that's the cool part. It's language. It's not binary as code. So it's not black and white. You can only speculate and talk about it on the podcast. But I think it's just incredibly interesting. Narratives really move markets sometimes.

100%. And obviously, like, we've focused there on the strategy side. But on the Bitcoin side, the narrative has changed a lot as well. Like when I came into Bitcoin, I don't get me wrong. Like I came for number. but I stayed for freedom money. And Bitcoin was, like, it was freedom money. Like, this was a counterculture thing that was cool.

It was like end of Fed. It was punk rock. Like, it was everything that, like, I wanted to find at the time that I found it. And it's part of the reason that I fell completely in love with it and, like, never focused on anything since then, essentially. But, like, now, I think because Bitcoin's won so hard, and we've got everything that we talked about in 2016, 2017. team, I feel like people aren't sure what the narrative is anymore.

Because like, and to me, like a real turning point is like the ETF approval. It's kind of that was something that Bitcoin has been fighting for since 2014 when the Winkervoss first applied for an ETF. And it was like the thing that kind of knighted them and allowed them to come on with the Wall Street like finance bros and be a real big boy asset. Like they got everything. And then it's like, now what? We've won. Who are we anymore? And I feel like that's something Bitcoin's battling with right now.

100%, man. And there's so much to say about this. Let me try to just synthesize it and not have too long over rent because I really, really geek out about these things. So yes, I agree. Like, I'm class of 2017. And the things that convicted me back then was just not what's being talked about right now, definitely.

And we definitely have a situation right now, like where the people, punk rock band, you know, from, you know, Bushwick, Brooklyn, all of a sudden is now playing at stadiums in, in Wembley, London, you know, like we totally went mainstream and a lot of people don't like that, you know, like, me too. You've made the really shit third album. Exactly. Like, the first album is like everything, your whole life experience, and it's amazing. And then after that, then what, you know? So we have already gone through that, like, first album where everything is fucking beautiful and it's packaged, right? And so many more people come along. And then are we fizzling out right now?

Because right now there's really no solid narratives to cling on. And, you know, bear markets are for building narratives, not only for building products, is for us to kind of like regroup and be like, okay, what do we talk about now that can, you know, live on during the next bull? I don't see any new narratives happening right now. I don't see any memes happening right now. And like the narratives and the meme culture, I mean, talk to any like real quote unquote Bitcoiner. they will tell you, like, memes is so important for us to convince outsiders because it's a memetic culture is visual.

It cuts through a lot of the noise. And you get it instantly. You don't need to read any academic papers or white papers or any of that bullshit. And if we don't have that, then what are we, what do we hold on to when we are ready for the next phase of adoption and more outsiders and normies are going to come into the row? So that's a, I don't know if it's a problem, but it's definitely different this cycle than before. And I see a lot of other like Bitcoiners who have been around for a while during this cycle, kind of like, first of all, killing your heroes. That's always the thing.

And that is also always based on narratives because your hero became a hero because of things that he said. And then since, where am I going with this? The cypherpunk ethos is. also kind of like dwindling out as well. And we see like we are kind of like in a in an environment right now where there is no Bitcoin culture or Bitcoin community neither. There's no and I know we want to talk about monoculture, but like there used to be a monoculture within Bitcoin like a decade ago perhaps. Obviously within fighting still prevalent, it has always been a thing because we are like decentralized. We are kind of like chaotic in the way we organize. So that's kind of part of the DNA. But

there was like always a thing that made this a movement that a lot of people felt part of. And now I think on a broader sense, we're just the internet being fragmented and the way we communicate with each other and taking information and educate ourselves is also fragmented because of just the internet has created thousands of voices, thousands of channels. And the incentives for a thought leader or an influencer or a podcaster is pretty much to just stay within one very niche subject. and just double, triple down on that. So once you get caught in one of these niches,

you kind of like, you get caught because you understand it. Like, let's say there's a podcast that is only about, I don't know, self-sovereignty, freedom, and all of those things. You're going to tune into that podcast if you share some of those beliefs before, and then you're going to continue listening to that podcast and, you know, continue to go deeper into that rabbit hole and be completely convinced about the freedom aspect of Bitcoin, self-sovereignty, self-custody, all that.

But that same phenomenon is also going to happen on a separate, like, pocket of the internet where somebody who just wants a number go up, all of a sudden is starting to discover Adam Livingston's of the world, right? The True North podcast, whatever. And they're going to be convinced because they have some preconceived beliefs about, you know, financial stuff. And they're going to understand Bitcoin from that perspective. And they're going to double and triple down and kind of go down that rabbit hole.

And the way the internet is right now is like these two pockets of the internet are not really talking to each other that much. And extrapolate that with like hundreds of pockets of the internet. So I think this is interesting right now because to me this is affecting Bitcoin adoption. This is kind of like setting the stage for the next wave of adoption where there's no like one movement that's going to bring in a lot of people understanding Bitcoin in one way. There's going to be a lot of people coming in, but it's going to be fragmented groups. understanding Bitcoin in very different ways. And a lot of those ways are going to be extremely contradiction. And they're going to be like opposite of each other.

Is that good? Is that bad? I don't know. It is kind of like decentralized and cool, right? It's kind of like the same chaoticness of Bitcoin, which is part of our culture. But at the same time, it's a little bit weird because we're continuing to kind of go away from those things that convince a lot of people in the very beginning. So I don't know if a lot of people are going to like rage quit because of that.

or if Bitcoin is going to be very different because of how many different people are going to come in and not really get the 360 degree view of all the awesome things that Bitcoin represents? I don't know if this is good or bad. I don't know. What do you think? I don't, like, I find this really hard because when I came into Bitcoin 2016, like I was really only ever on Bitcoin Twitter, a little bit on sort of the Reddit. But I think really most of the people who were on the Reddit were also on Bitcoin Twitter.

And it did feel like a monoculture in a lot of ways. Like it felt like this sort of inside group that knew a secret than no one else knew. And everyone just wanted to meme and talk all day and bullshit. And during this whole time, like, don't get me wrong, I was really new. So I didn't understand the full complexity of like the block size walls, everything that was going on. But there was still infighting. It's just like, but it still happened in one place. It felt like a sort of clubhouse that everyone went to to talk about this thing that we knew existed and no one else did.

And then like you say, that's fragmented so much. I think the sort of orange tie suit coin of Bitcoiners are entirely different. They represent like a different subset of Bitcoiners. They don't really talk to the sort of the freedom maximalist Bitcoiners who don't really talk to like the Bit 110 people who might not talk like talks to the Ordinal guys. Like it has been totally fragmented. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But what I do worry about is like how without a sort of monoculture within Bitcoin,

how you push Bitcoin adoption as wide as we need to push it. That's my big open question. Yeah, man. And it's like, it's kind of like the way that I, I, I've been kind of like saying Bitcoin is not for everyone for a while. And that's, that's pretty much my reasoning behind it. It's just like, it's not, it's not for everyone. I mean, it is for anyone.

Like, anyone is welcome if you kind of like understand it your way. But it's just like a lot of people are not going to get it. And I think another reality in this internet age that we are living in, the last 20 years, I would say not only did everything started to fragment 20 years ago and as fragmented as ever today, but that has also changed our habits a little bit in terms of personalization. So it's like you can now personalize your feed. You can now personalize, like if you buy a car, you can personalize the color, the wheels, the, everything is personalized. So that leads to a change in like consumer behavior where everybody expects things to be customized. We're seeing this now in AI on the business side of things.

We're like, hey, if you are sending a dashboard these days, you're dead. Like everybody's creating their own dashboards. Everybody, because everybody wants like a highly customized solution for whatever they're doing, right? And it's possible. So people are just going to expect that. Now, the cool thing about Bitcoin is that I've always said that Bitcoin is so many different things. that you can literally have a great argument for Bitcoin to somebody who's on the extreme far right and also the extreme far left.

There are arguments for both extremes and everything in between. So the customization of Bitcoin is actually pretty cool. And that will lead to a lot of people from different walks of life to understand Bitcoin in a very deep way and be completely convinced about it. So that's great. That's like bullish. But that's actually really interesting. Because one of the things that I think I've said before on the podcast is that I think Bitcoin covers such a broad array of things that it's very hard to know how to orange pill someone if you don't know it.

Like if you know that someone cares deeply about human rights, you tell them the story of like Roy Mabu giving women education in Afghanistan by like using Bitcoin. Like that's going to always hit. But the same story of like Fiat like money printing and Fiat inflation is not going to necessarily hit that same person who might have more those like left wing biases. But maybe that's

where the complete fragmentation of culture actually works in Bitcoin's favor. Like you have people in each of these camps and everyone's pushing Bitcoin from every different angle. It's exactly right. But that's going to create a reality for a lot of people that will make them think oh, nothing is happening in Bitcoin, man.

Like there's nothing. There's no no narratives. There's no not there's no movement but yeah maybe not to you in your like in your in your view of the world but like something here is happening that's really cool that you have absolutely no clue about like so many times i like go to lunch and i talk about something that i care about like i don't know i read a book and that book i know sold millions and then i talk to somebody like hey have do you know about this book or do you know about this author and they're like nope never heard about this guy what the hell the guy has sold millions of books you have no idea who that is and this goes with like i don't know

films that you see, bands that you hear, people are just like, there's such a disconnect between people. Like, you go to your neighbor and that your neighbor is just going to have wildly different tastes and things that they're interested in compared to you. There's absolutely no, it doesn't matter anymore if you live in the same street. Doesn't matter if you live in the same city. Like, everything is fragmented and people just customize their own, like, worldview. So Bitcoin will win in that way because it's adaptive enough. to create arguments and be convincing for a lot of different people. And the thing with the fragmented media is like, okay, you're going to create these like pockets

of intents that are kind of like insulated. But it's going to be super effective because these people are going to be super niche. They're going to cut down to one very specific thing. And the way that we also like ingest information these days, we don't have the mental capacity to like register everything. So we need things like packaged in a, you know, bite-sized way. So adoption is going to be good, but it's not going to feel like, oh, my God, we're taking over the world because, you know, this one narrative is like totally dominating.

It's going to be like boring, fragmented. You're going to not know what the hell is happening, but it's going to still happen, but you're going to have a view of like Bitcoin is boring. And I think that is also what's happening right now. I think a lot of people are like, like I said, like literally 10 minutes ago, there's no memes. There's no dominating narrative. then on board, Bitcoin has no future, but maybe we shouldn't think like that. Maybe this is just the way adoption is changing and mutating into something else that we're just not used to. The thing that keeps me up at night with Bitcoin cold storage isn't Bitcoin failing, it's my setup failing. And this is where Anchor Watch comes in.

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back. But can we talk more broadly about the death of monoculture in society? Because this is a topic that I find really interesting and I don't always find people that also find it interesting. And there's a time I brought this up on a show maybe six months ago and you reached out to me. And so I've been excited to talk to you about this because I don't know when the death of monoculture happened, but I know that it has happened. And the problem with it is it to me looks like the shittification of everything. Like music has got worse. Film has got worse. TV's got worse. Like culture. is fragmented and so there's no real shared values amongst people that you might be in like a local geography with maybe there is in all different like different parts of the world who you have you're

connected to through the internet but like I feel like it's a societal breakdown that I don't love to see and one of the cool things though about recently is the World Cup has been like a shining light of what monoculture can be like I feel like it's a very small glimpse of the life in the late 90s the early 2000s when I was a kid, when everyone cared about the same thing at the same time. And I think there's something really special about that. But I want to start just a really open question about,

like, when do you think the death of monoculture happened? Oh, man, you're saying so many things. And I'm afraid of going to like crazy around because I have so many thoughts and opinions about this, but let's do it. I think the death of monoculture probably happened around late odds, early 2010, because of social media.

and internet. And I think this is something that everybody intuitively know. But it's easy to look back and say that now. But I think, you know, the World Cup is a great example of why we need monocultures in different like geographical locations because it's really beautiful to see, you know, all the, all the fans and the stands representing each country kind of like dressing up in like the stereotypical garments, you know, like that is totally, yeah, it's totally stereotypical. but it's really beautiful because you're shining, you know, your culture, what you represent, and all the values and the traditions of it, right?

Like, I love to see, you know, I grew up in Norway, my fellow Norwegians, they just post up with like Viking helmets and then they do the row thing. And it's really, it's really wonderful because, you know, when I travel, I want to go to a place and feel like I'm in that country. I don't want to see the same type of coffee shops

or the same type of people. like being present in every single city. And I think we see that on, you know, physically. Like a lot of cities, big cities in Europe, for example, kind of like starting to look the same. They're losing their like flare and originality. And we are also seeing it now on the internet with what I like to call the homogenization of the internet, which AI is really pushing forward because we have

all these tools that are trying to appease everyone because they want to grow fast. So they kind of like homogenize the entire web and giving you results or answers to questions that are like, they sound confident, but it gives you like 40% of the actual truth. So we kind of like get like lobotomized slowly over time thinking that we're really making decisions and we're making opinions based on facts, but we're not. And when the monoculture did exist, there was at least a feeling, even though yes, it was super centralized and your only choice was like, five hosts of five different shows in one channel, it still was something that brought people together. And there was some sense of like, okay,

a consensus of culture that at least if you felt identified or not, it was kind of like the thing. Like mainstream was a thing. And I don't know, there was stuff like grunge bands, like obscure music from Seattle that just managed to kind of like hit the sidegeist to the mainstream.

And if they did that, it was literally a global thing. I remember, like, in the 90s growing up as a kid as well, like basketball was, like, insane. They hit the sightguise, and it became like an all, like, all sucking thing that everybody could relate to and embraced. And that was because of, yeah, there wasn't the customization, again, of content wasn't there. We were kind of, like, reduced to the TV, the radio. And that was like a thing that happened from, I think, 1930s. when, you know, more people at their households began getting radios and TVs and channels started to appear and content started to create. And then that kind of like from the 1930s, it became a growing business, a growing industry.

We saw advertising kind of like get invented and like more money, more money were made. So more channels were made. And then when the internet came, that kind of like metastasized into the internet and continued to fragment and spread. Everybody had their own channels. Everybody had their own opinions. Everybody wanted to make money. So I think around that 2010 is kind of like where things really starting to accelerate. And just like we are now 15 years in and this like very crazy period where I honestly think,

sorry for the rent again, we're kind of like going back to our like human biology of like, dude, societies for hundreds and hundreds of years, millennia even were mostly. reduced to like your local physical place and the culture that grew in those places were just like local high trust same language same way of speaking everybody kind of like understood each other because they had evolved in the same place for hundreds of years then the 1930s came fucked us up and now we're kind of like we're not even like we're not biologically wired to handle all this information that we're getting fed every every single day That's 100% sure.

Right. You're not supposed to know that there's an earthquake in Venezuela. You're not supposed to know that there's a train derailing in Karachi. You're supposed to know what's happening around you with your family, with your friends, and the Dunbar number of like 150 persons max. And then that's it. And we're kind of like we crashed through that. And now we're feeding ourselves with so much information that we have absolutely no clue.

And I can see now people are kind of slowly going back to that like the tribal, the local, only online, right? So people are like rage quitting X and they go to Noster or they go to Blue Sky or, you know, they all now make their little tribe, their local tribes online. That's the only difference that is done online. But we're kind of like reverting back to that by the human, the human kind of like status quo of just like, hey, I know my people. I know what I like. I try to find like-minded people that speak the same language. We agree on some fundamentals. And then, ah, my my worldview is like restored and I feel good about it. But that is crazy because you have so much information accessible. You literally have the library of Alexandria at your disposal and you can learn so many great new things. But I think humans just like default back to that state of like, at least I can, I can feel good about myself and I'm like blissfully ignorant about other stuff that is happening because

I'm not really meant to know absolutely everything if that makes sense. it totally makes sense. And it gets interesting because so when I was growing up, until I was maybe 10 or 11, we had five TV channels. And then we got Sky TV, which is essentially like cable TV.

And there's two sides of this. There's one which is like the information that you're being fed through the news services. And like sure they can be propaganda, they can be driving a narrative, but everyone was getting given the same information. And so people that were close by, like in a literal like geographic

sense would be getting the same information to you. Sure they might be processing it differently, but everyone was like on the same playing field and everyone was kind of dealing with the same hand of cards. Whereas now, like on that side, the information that I'm getting when I'm scrolling X or wherever is so different to my neighbor that like we can be living next door to each other, but essentially living in an entirely different existence. And it's like what I see as truth, they don't see as truth. And it makes it very hard to kind of go to the coffee shop and have a conversation with someone that's not just surface level bullshit like small talk.

And I don't know what that does to society. And then like on a cultural side, even more so, it's even more dispersed in that like the stuff that I'm watching for entertainment is totally different. Like I'm not watching, you know, married at first sight or Love Island or whatever that someone else might be watching. And I just feel like the sort of medium that you communicate to other humans that you don't properly know through has changed and I don't know what it is anymore and I just see that as being a really scary thing for society. Yeah, no, it is. It is. And it's like, um, an analogy that a lot of

I had one more thing in there. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. I totally interrupt you. But because this is something I've been thinking about a lot as well is I think it's bad for everyone, but there's also a huge age divide, which I think is really bad. Like so when I grew up again, like anyone who grew up at the same era as me. Like, you talk to respect your elders. Like, these are,

like, I look up to my, my grandparents, fucking amazing people. They live in a different world entirely, because they still live in the 90s. And so, like,

I don't know what it does to society, both in people like my own age that live in a different world of truth to me, and also like different generations that are just, they may as well be like an alien race at this point. They don't have the same context. I mean, there is a point to be said about, like boomers getting totally sucked into apps and their phones more than young people.

But that's like a different topic. But like they are like literally getting their brain fried through WhatsApp and telegram. It's just that's an entirely different discussion. But yeah, it's crazy. But I think it's just like I don't think people know the difference between facts and truth. Right. That's kind of like the biggest issue right now because we all agree on the facts. Like, okay, if somebody.

records on their phone somebody robbing somebody else, right? That's the fact. Like you see the crime happening. This person killed that person. End of. That's the fact. But the truth around that fact

depends a lot on like your ideas already. So if you're or your ideology, depending on how extreme you are, but you can say somebody on both extremes can say, well, the guy who killed that guy comes from the slums and there's majority of a certain race that live in that slum. So it's a racist thing. And that's why I hate that race.

Then the other extreme can say, but this guy is poor. He lives in poverty. He has to resort to crime because he doesn't have any other opportunity. So that's two truths for just one very simple fact that happened. Now, extrapolate that to literally everything that happens that gets recorded and shared online and you have this like insane chaos of nobody agreeing on simple things that should be simple things to agree around right and and then you have people who mona um who capitalize on these things and you know politicians are always the first ones to do but this is also for influencers thought

leaders people who just want to grow their accounts they just leverage that as well just to get more followers and like the incentives for spreading information and building a followership and and creating content that actually educates and gets through, is highly, highly perversed, and that is definitely breaking a lot of people's brains. But, and this is an analogy that a lot of bitcoins like to compare Bitcoin with, is Gutenberg's printing press, right? What we're seeing right now with all this distribution mechanics

and all distribution channels, like completely getting, you know, disrupted, can be compared to that, right? And the thing is, it's like, well, a lot of people don't know about because when you look back and do like revisionist history, it's very easy to just pinpoint to one point in history and then another like a result and think this happened in a very small vacuum. But if you really take a look at like the printing press, let's say, and I do want to compare the printing press with Bitcoin, with AI and like the internet as a whole because like let me explain. So the printing press now everybody looks back and said, okay. Okay, yeah, it dissolved the Catholic Church monopoly on God. You know, there was these, like, institutions that had this information asymmetry, and they made, you know, they grew in power, they grew in influence,

and they got a lot of money, right? And you would think, like, okay, the printing press disrupted that and it was over. But if you really take a look at history, from the invention of the printing press, what really followed was like 300 years of like complete chaos, starting with the Reformation, but then like the Enlightenment, the 30 years war, then the collapse of feudalism, and the rise of nation states, right? That was like a crazy chaotic transitional period because of this one invention that made essentially information free. Now, nobody who used the early like printing press, they didn't live to see the world that that,

invention eventually created. What they did, they just spent their entire lives in that like transition chaos era. And I think we are in the exact same spot today with both the internet, Bitcoin and AI. So if you expect all of these, we're in the chaos era. We're in the chaos. Yeah, I like to call it the chaos gap. I don't know if I can maybe coin that term and it becomes a thing, but it's the chaos gap. So if we we obviously talk about this right now on this podcast because we have questions. We want to know what the fuck is going on. But if we and other people who share our thoughts expect this to resolve within this decade, I mean, then we don't really understand the scale of the game. You know, so yeah, you might get black pilled because you see,

regulators banning a wallet or, you know, the authorities arrest the samurai devs, or you get black pilled when, you know, Bitcoin crashes to 70 percent. But If you do that, you're kind of like looking at this civilizational transition through a very short lens. And we're kind of like in the middle of a very crazy transitional era in human history that I don't think we're going to live to see through the actual results. You know, and this goes for everything. Yeah, you hope not. Yeah, yeah. I want to see the end of this.

But I do think when you bring all this back to Bitcoin, it does make more. sense why things like the Bip 110 Civil War is happening right now. I think one of the interesting things on the Bip 110 side is that most of the people who are as supportive of it also don't like the sort of financialization treasury company side of it. And I think that's people completely understandably wanting to push back against this becoming like a homogenized, boring version of what we thought Bitcoin was. But my kind of strong take on this is I think Bitcoin might go through this period now where it does fragment a little. It goes into its niches. Like Bitcoin adoption happens at the

edges rather than like straight through the middle. It's not it's not the coolest thing in the world. Like AI's here now and that's what everyone wants to talk about. But I think it comes back when we realized that this was a Trojan horse. Like I think if Bitcoin, is the Trojan horse. And if we've now been sort of let into the gates and Wall Street are accepting us, the changing point will be when it becomes clear that Bitcoin is a threat to the US dollar. And what leads to that, I don't know, whether it's like, you know, financial crisis, huge money printing and Bitcoin then opposes a realistic threat to the US dollar.

But I think there will come a time when Bitcoin does get its monoculture back. Yeah, I think so. I mean, usually when a crisis happened, that's when, like, humans get together super quickly in defense of that crisis. And I don't know what that crisis is going to be. But definitely a lot of people agree. And it's kind of like a meme that Bitcoin, you know, thrives in crises. Yeah. So, but it's kind of like a black pill way of growing adoption, right?

Like, you don't want the world to become a worse place just so that Bitcoin can win. So I think Bitcoin will win in a very boring and slowly way. I do think adoption is going to just be fragmented and very boring and slow, slow grinding. And we will like the same way the price is not really like making crazy moves, but just like slowly grinds upwards. That's kind of like what's going to happen in the future even more because it's just very hard to organize ourselves and get a lot of people behind one movement on one narrative.

But I'm repeating myself. That's boring. On the 1-10, on the BIP 110 guys, I think it's just like, I feel like, you know, Bitcoin, if you really look at it from first principles, this technology, man. And technology adapts, changes. And 99% of things that gets built for one very specific purpose, once adoption happens, that purpose kind of like, it's not really what, what it ends being, right? Like, take my company, for example, I was totally, I'm not comparing

preservation with Bitcoin, but, you know, any startup, any founder, any people working in tech can tell you, hey, you start up with an idea and you think you build a product a certain way, then people come and like, oh, shit, you got to pivot. And the things that you thought was true is actually not true because the market is telling you a very different truth. So you adapt to that and you build around that. And obviously, Bitcoin is not as flexible as, a startup as a regular SaaS, but it's kind of like the same thing. Like, yeah, you have a white paper with like some fundamentals, but that was written in a time and place where maybe these, these things become less relevant over time just because

the type of people who ends up adopting Bitcoin and builders that are building on top of Bitcoin changing Bitcoin in a way because they just build different things like ordinals or whatever that you just don't see as like, hey, this is not the original Bitcoin idea, but how much does that really matter? It doesn't really matter what you thought of something in the beginning. What matters is the outcome. So I think a lot of these people are like screeching as a result of that because, hey, this is not what I thought this was, but it's like, that's a very hard pill to swallow

because, again, it's akin to orange pilling in itself. In order to understand Bitcoin is a highly spiritual individual. journey that part of that process is to unlearn a lot of things that you thought was true about the world. And you've got to come to that realization of like, fuck, like, damn, I need to like humble myself here because it's just not, the world is not what I thought it was. And that, why is Bitcoin very different than that? I think Bitcoin is exactly the same. It's like a lot of people, they understand Bitcoin and they get, you know, convinced about Bitcoin and they love Bitcoin because of two, three, four different arguments. But then more,

arguments is going to come later in the future as this thing grows and more different people comes into the brain and then like you got to be accepting of that and then it seems like these people are not and then yeah the way that they go about it is also extremely cringe i just i just want to say it like the scare tactics this kind of like hey i'm the sole holder of truth and if you don't agree with me you're an idiot it's like that's kind of the same thing we have been criticizing each other about when it comes to like orange feeling norm is like this this this This way, this tactic is just not good. You're not going to get a lot of people.

And it seems to me like the people that they manage to gather around are people who share the same views. And so they're not really, they're not really being successful in getting other type of different people to believe that BIP 110 is relevant and important. So it's like the same, the same type people are just gathering together here. And it's, yeah, I don't know. It's, I don't know. It's been interesting to see, but like I totally agree. I think there's going to be a lot of people realize that Bitcoin doesn't care what you think it should be. But I don't know.

It's a mess. I'm excited for this all to be over. Like, this is such peak bear market things. Like, I just want, I want to get past this. We need to build a new narrative. We need to build more memes. But, Fernando, before we close out, I need you to give me some light on an argument that I had with Pete for years on the podcast. I don't.

So we recorded a podcast with Pete. when he first pivoted, I don't think it came up. But he held this opinion very strongly in that he thought that Amy Winehouse's album was the last great album. And I think he might have been directionally right. So I always said, Kendrick Lamar to Pippa Butterfly was a great album that came out after the Amy Winehouse one. but I think what he actually spotted was the homogenization of music through things like Spotify algorithms. Do you think we've lost art forever?

Oh man, that's a great question. I think, well, Amy Winehouse was not like, was not an artist that really created an original sound for the time that she was living in. She was like all retro, like her music was like old soul. So her music was like the 70s, wrapped in a modern past. package. So if you strip that away and you only look at original music, maybe the last album is like from the 80s or 90s. And a lot of like new bands that really, that I like that I like that are new are like kind of like sounding like old school stuff. Throwbacks.

Throwbacks. And the new sound that I see that kind of is hitting the mainstream culture is like in terms of like, you know, hip hop music and rap music. Fucking sucks, man. And messaging is kind of like crazy and I always I've been I grew up on rap music to be honest I love rap music and I always felt like part of the part of the reason why I love rap music is because it's a reflection of society because there's so much talking so much lyrics so much verbal communication so if you listen you get like a nice reflection of like the reality that is being lived and if you listen to the lyrics today of rap is just like whoa we are living in a nihilistic world that just like nobody has any hopes and it's all about drugs and fucking all kind of like demon like things so if that's a

reflection of the society that we're in yeah we're not going to create good music and maybe we need to look back at like older older stuff but what was your original question sorry i kind of got derailed i i wonder if the the fact that we've kind of become slaves to the algorithm for finding new music new art new film like does that how do you break out of that and will we break out of that because like it leads to everything being beige because it never the algorithm never wants to offend so it always gives you stuff that it thinks you're going to like enough to stay not enough to love and i i just wonder if we can break out of that yeah i don't think the majority of people will break out of that and i can explain why so i started my career in the music business

right and i started i was working at universal music in norway where i grew up between norway and Argentina. I was in the Oslo office in Universal Music. And in the, you know, neighboring country, Sweden, the Pirate Bay guys were doing their thing, right? And torrenting had like a very, you know, I had a moment in the in the early odds, mid-auts. So by the time I started my career back in 2007 and I was working there, I was, I remember to this day and I've been tweeting about this a lot. Like I remember sitting in the in the boardrooms on the phone with the London office and all the executives were like screeching and and like, saying like we need to stop the pirate bay uh we need to like confiscate their servers we need to put

those people in jail we need to shut down the website and i was the youngest guy there and i was like to myself i'm like what the fuck is what is going on right now what are these people talking about like they obviously don't understand the technology they don't understand the decentralization of torrenting and that is literally unstoppable you can put them in jail but you're not gonna you're not gonna make a dent they just didn't didn't understand it and i was like hey why don't we embrace this technology and we try to like create like low bit rate versions of singles and distribute that and get people excited. And then they will buy the real shit later.

And they were like, no, absolutely not. And I'm like, that was a thing that made me rage quit the industry. What happened later though is that the music business, as they got disrupted and they were like trying to scramble to stay relevant and just to stay solvent is that they did mergers and acquisitions. and then they got like those mergers and acquisitions made them to like a one global entity that was powerful enough to say to Spotify like hey if you want to enter the US market if you want to IPO in this market we need a we need a cut pure mafia shit like if you want to like have a shop here in the street and you don't want us to like come and destroy your shop give us a give us a piece so I think if I remember correctly when they IPOed in the US this conglomerate had like 20 25% of the of the initial shares during the IPO. And that was the way that they allowed Spotify to exist. And then they obviously pushed that solution to a lot of other people. But the torrenting has always managed to coexist. Torrenting is not dead and you can still go today and you can torrent, you can download any files and movies and media that you want. But it is definitely an user experience that is less smooth than just like paying

10 bucks to Amazon Prime, 25 bucks to Netflix and just like go there and stream. So can, convenience when they wrapped the MP3s and the MP4 files that torrenting were just giving to you directly, real MP4s. Now you get the wrapped MP4 versions on these platforms that people are just like, yeah, these are great businesses. So things coexist, but the real torrenting is a minority and the normies are just embracing that, right? And they're slated to that algorithm. And you got these self-sovereign people who get their taste buds from other way and they know what to go for and they they download very specific things because they know that they like it. Bitcoin, I kind of feel like it's the same.

Like we have, you have, you have, we have managed to separate money and state. It's definitely the state. The state is not controlling anything. It's not letting you download a wallet and receive Bitcoin. You can do that today. You don't need any permission. Still possible. And self-custody is still possible.

Great products are out there. And there's a plethora of products and companies fighting. for the customers there making these products better over time. But the wrapped Bitcoin, the normies are loving that now. If it's ETF, if it's paper, if it's like custodial even, that they hold Bitcoin, but together with a custodian, I think the majority are going in that direction as well. The same thing is going to happen when it comes to taste, music, design. AI is kind of like giving you a wrapped version of like, hey, this is what good web design is.

And now you see a lot of people creating websites and they all have that like annoying little like border color on the left and just like, man, this is AI. And then with language, it's the same. Like, AI is giving you the homogenized wrapped version of like what cool, what good writing is supposed to be. And people are so dumb and they're so bad at writing and designing that that version is way better than they could produce themselves. So they're just going to go with that. And now we have AI sloppification of the internet through sloppy design and sloppies. lopi language. So are we going to escape it? Yeah, it is still possible. There is a escape hatch, but how many people are actually going to actually be high agency enough to realize what's

happening and actually take action? One, two, three, five percent. That's like, O'Dell said this to me a couple of times when I've had him on the podcast. He's like, the percentage number is going to drop, but the real number is going to grow it. And like maybe that is two, three, four, five percent, but it's going to be a small number of people that actually do have agency. And the scary thing on the AI side is, like, I can't see how they break out of the same incentives that the Netflix and Spotify's have in the world where they want to give you safe, beige information. And I think that just means censorship in a different form.

Like, they're going to give you such bland takes on everything. And people are going to rely on it so heavily. That's their only take they're going to have. And I don't know, man. I just worry about society. I mean, listen, I think there's always been equality in this world. There's always been people that are high agency, people that are low agency. I think the majority of people are low agency.

That's also the reason why Bitcoin adoption is maybe not as big as we wish it to be. But that's because we are all high agency people who know our shit and we are humbled enough to change our worldview and to be adaptable. Majority people aren't like that. They're just passive consumers of content. we are on the other side. And I don't want to sound like elitist or anything like that, but there are just difference in people.

There are people that will take the opportunity that they have, even though they have to do Uber Eats all day. And they will put on this headphone and listen to a podcast about finance and Bitcoin as they deliver Uber Eats. And there's going to be people who are ordering Uber Eats and just sitting on their couch watching Slop all day. And I think we can be as altruistic as we want to be and try to help as many people as possible.

but at the same time, lead a horse to the water and all of that stuff, right? Like, we just got to, like, keep working hard, understand that there's still a lot of things to grow. Bitcoin has still a lot of more adoption, more. This cake is going to get bigger. I don't think, like, the hyperbetic conversation of the world, like us taking over the US dollar is going to happen anytime soon. But that's like, that's the end game. Right now, we just got to be content with where we are right now and just keep focused and keep, keep building. and just chipping

away at it. And I think even though I'm not like a huge circular economy fan, I do respect the people who chose that path and want to, you know,

deliver that message while other people are choosing different paths and they still deliver the Bitcoin message. Everybody wins if Bitcoin just grows and I don't care how.

You know, you can be an ordinary no maxi for all I care if that's the only understanding of Bitcoin that you have. Good for you, man. At least you're doing

something in Bitcoin. I don't care about my personal opinion. I care about freedom and I want people to be free to do whatever stupid shit that they want to do. But I think Bitcoin wins no matter what and we just need more people through the door. So, you know, that's it. I love it, man.

Fernando, this has been awesome. We've got to do it again at some point. This is a very different show than the type I normally make and I really enjoyed it. But tell people where they can find out about the work you're doing before we close out. Yeah, so my company is Perception. The website is Perception.com. TO, what it essentially is, is just I gather all the discourse that happens around the digital asset industry.

So I include Bitcoin, but I don't want to have that. I don't want to study Bitcoin in isolation. It's important to know where Bitcoin stands, where everything else is going on. So it's compute AI, mining, payments, you name it, stable coins, all of that. I gather thousands of sources every single day, thousands of data points about the discourse, about the filings, documentation, everything that happens. and then I give it to you. And a lot of people, this is more for businesses that take that,

and they get a feel of what's happening in the industry, and they can do product strategy, and they do marketing and communication strategy for it. It's delivered through an MCP, and you can go to perception.com for that. And for me, you know, just Google my name. You'll find me everywhere. I love it, man.

I should use this, by the way. I want to try out and see what it gives me on Bitcoin. Yeah, by the way, the MCP is free. for forever for five requests a day. So you just plug it into your agents and you get five requests a day and you can take a peek and see how it feels like. So go ahead and do that.

I'm going to try it out. Fernando, this has been awesome, man. Thank you for coming on the show. I will speak to you soon. We've got to do it again at some point. Yeah, thanks for having me all, man. Good, good combo.