What Bitcoin Did - How Broken Money Distorts Reality | Seb Bunney

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

Seb Bunney joins the show for a conversation about broken money, distorted reality maps, and why Bitcoin might be the only force capable of realigning society. We get into his personal journey from mountain-bike coaching in Whistler and realising hard work no longer pays, to discovering how central banks, misaligned incentives, and financialisation quietly shape everything from housing and family life to politics and culture. Seb explains why so many young people are turning to socialism, why democracies can’t change course, and how separating money and state could be the only viable path forward. Seb also breaks down his new essay The Curated World — exploring linguistic control, scientific gatekeeping, suppressed technologies, the Invention Secrecy Act, and why “the map is not the territory.” We dig into Bitcoin’s role as a truth-seeking mechanism, what happens when incentives flip from intervention to value creation, and how free markets, energy breakthroughs, and longer lifespans could transform civilisation far beyond money. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY SWAN FOLLOW: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/\_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Seb Bunney: https://x.com/sebbunney

is that everything is downstream of money. A lot of these effects, whether it is poverty, wealth inequality, our environmental burden from our consumer habits, whether it is our politics, our business practices. A lot of these stem from misaligned practices from broken monetary systems. Let's just stop printing money so people can actually just save back in the currency again. People change when the pain of staying in the existing system is greater than the pain of transitioning. We just need to separate money in state.

And by separating money in state, you realign the incentives towards value creation. Yes, you've still got all of the politicians. Yes, you've still got all of these legal frameworks. However, what you've got is a system whereby those impositions of power have to be fiscally responsible. It's always tough to find your space in the Bitcoin space. It is, but when you find it, it rewards you, I think. Oh, 100%. I've ninja launched on you, Seb.

How you doing, man? I'm doing good. Good. We've got a lot to talk about today. It's funny. I was doing a show a few months ago with Brandon Quittam. Forth-turning stuff, he's just the goat on that. And I was saying to him in that show,

it feels like Bitcoin's lost something in terms of the way people write about it. Everything is very analytical, very financialized, as like the trend goes in Bitcoin. And I really miss the more abstract sort of, philosophical pieces that we used to get a few years ago. And so when I was talking to you about doing the show and you sent me over a couple of the bits that you've been writing, I was like, ah, this is what I've been waiting for. So we're going to get into some weird territory here today, Seb, and I'm excited for it. You know, I've found the space, being in the space for a few cycles,

you start to see it evolve, as I'm sure you've kind of seen. And you see these changes kind of take form. And one thing I've noticed is that because of Bitcoin, obviously, you've got number got technology, a lot of individuals, if you've been in for two, three cycles, if you've invested a decent chunk of your net worth, you're probably in a position where you now have some sense of freedom. And so what I've noticed is when it comes to who is the front facing kind of front line of Bitcoin, it tends to be people that have only been in the space for a few years, because they're the people that are most vocal, the people that are two, three cycles old, most of the time just drop off and then just disappear into obscurity because now they have the capacity to

lean into family, lean into community, go and buy that plot of land, live off the land. And so to me, I just find it a really interesting environment where the people that talk about Bitcoin tend to be the people with the least knowledge about Bitcoin. And we see this, as you're saying at the very start, we see this taking form where each cycle talent kind of tends to have a seam. And it's almost as if this cycle, I don't want to judge it too much, but it feels like we've almost gone a little too financialized. It feels like we've lost a little bit of the ethos.

of the reason why a lot of people came into Bitcoin and the reason why we had like cryptographers coming in and trying to create privacy and sovereignty in a world that feels like it's infringing upon that. So hopefully we can find our way back to that and hopefully there's enough people in this space that still hold those values true. Totally. I think there is. And people say that like the financialization of Bitcoin just natural form of it maturing, which I think is probably true. But like if, for example, like this year, the big, narrative or the last couple of years, the big narratives were like ETFs and then Trump coming in and sovereign Bitcoin Reserve and all this stuff. And it's like if none of that happens and obviously

ETFs happened, but like if nothing that Trump said he was going to do, he does, then what's our narrative if we don't have the like freedom money core ethos of Bitcoin behind it? And that's kind of what I worry about. And when like a few years ago when it was like Gigi and brand them and and all these people writing very interesting philosophical takes on Bitcoin. It was like it felt like that ethos was the main narrative. And without that, I don't know what we have at the moment. Totally. I think you're absolutely spot on. And I think that as you're saying that what comes to mind is that I think number go up technology

is what has drawn a lot of people in. People are like, you know what, I'm struggling in life. Hey, there's a thing that just keeps going up. Maybe that's going to make the life a little easier. Then they get into it. And all of a sudden it's the famous saying, you come for the gains and you kind of stay for the revolution. And what I'm realizing is it's just like previously, as you kind of went down the rabbit hole and you peeled back this number go up technology, you're like, my God, this thing to me, the way that I kind of see it is, although it is digital money, the irony of it being digital money is that it gets us to stop thinking about money. And it gets us to start thinking about how we're showing up as individuals and have a little more capacity to look inwards and figure out like what are my values, what I want to.

contribute, how do I create value and such? And what I'm finding is that it's almost like people are coming into Bitcoin and all they want to talk about is just the financial aspect. Whereas to me, what I find really when you kind of really dig deep into the financial side of the world, the financialization of everything, I would argue that financialization is only a byproduct of broken money. It's when our money no longer holds value that we have a whole industry crop up trying to create products that preserve purchasing power. Whereas if we actually just have, had money that preserve purchasing power, you wouldn't have this whole financialized sector out there, which is arguably one of the biggest sectors in the world. Totally. And maybe you say like,

come for the money, stay for the revolution. Maybe it's because they've not had the gains. You know, like if you bought Bitcoin in 2015 or 2014 or whatever and you're buying it for a couple hundred dollars and then a few years later it's $20,000, that kind of forces you to reflect on what the fuck have I just bought. But if Bitcoin's a little more sideways, maybe people going to take longer to come to that realization. Yeah. Oh, no, no, I fully agree. And I also think that sometimes people get a little lost in the narratives and such. And like at the moment we're seeing this price action. And I think anyone who's been through a few cycles, I think that you understand what this Bitcoin thing is.

And you understand that there's always going to be people that are willing to spread fud and push certain narratives that are trying to impede price action. But I think that there seems to be a lot of this noise around obviously the quantum side of things and the knots versus core. And you see a lot of tweets about, well, this is why Bitcoin's going down. And in reality, I'm like, okay, if you walk up to someone on the street and you ask him, do you know what Knott versus Core is or the quantum threat to Bitcoin? Not a single person has any idea about what you're talking about. So in my mind, I tend to think that what we're seeing is just a bunch of movement as a result of macro factors and other things. And people just want to attribute some form of narrative to it

because it gives them confidence that they understand what's going on. Yeah. I mean, it's funny, those two things like quantum threat to Bitcoin, that might be a real thing in a number of years to come. Maybe we'll talk about that. But if people truly believe that Core 30 releasing is the reason Bitcoin has gone down, I don't know what to say. You need help.

You need to go and have a long, hard look at yourself, I think. But, Seb, we've not really introduced you. Hidden Cost of Money, this is your book. You came on the old show a couple years ago, but introduce yourself, tell everyone who you are. Totally. First off, I just want to say, Like it has been, I mentioned it very briefly at the start, but it has been such a pleasure seeing this evolution of like Peter McCormack, what Bitcoin did, seeing you on the sidelines increasingly over the years kind of speaking your voice, asking questions, getting a little more involved in the podcast and now seeing you take the torch from Pete and kind of running the show yourself. And I just, I can't thank you enough for just the work you're doing in the space and carrying on these conversations because I think the space is always evolving. And I understand Pete has done hundreds of,

in hundreds of episodes, and there's a certain point where maybe he wants to focus on the UK, but I think there's still a lot to be said in the Bitcoin space, and there's always new voices. So I just want to first off, just really thank you for just like everything you do, Danny. It really is amazing. Thank you, man. Appreciate that. Now, chill you, though. We're here to talk about you, Seb.

Me. Okay, where do I start? I would say, so I wrote a book called The Hidden Cost of Money, and I never in a million years expected to write a book. Never in a million years. And so if I take a step back to like, how did this actually kind of unfold? And I would say that my like first love was mountain biking. Absolutely loved mountain biking. I love coaching. I love kind of supporting people in their journey. I love trying to break down these complex biomechanical movements into their simplest form and then try and teach them.

And so I started teaching mountain biking around my midteens. And by my late teens, I was like, wait, I'm living in, I live in the ski resort of Whistler. and this is British Columbia and Canada and it's a pretty high demand place so property prices are expensive and I'm looking at my paychecks and I'm like I'm getting paid $15.75 an hour how am I ever going to be able to afford one of these houses? How am I ever going to be able to raise a family?

And so that kind of led me down this avenue of okay I've got to figure out how to have some form of passive income stream coming in so I can pursue the thing I want to be able to pursue which is man and biking and coaching while at least having the income coming in to support me. And so as I started going into real estate and then I kind of went down the rabbit hole of the financial markets and equities.

I was looking at the world through the lens that we were in this free market, this capitalist free market, where prices fluctuate based on supply and demand and what the public perceive the value of something is. And what I realized increasingly was I was taking positions and these positions, when I thought they were going to do one thing, they were going to do the opposite. And I was like, I don't understand what's happening here. Why are these things doing the opposite of what I expect them to do. And so as I started digging a little deeper, I started to kind of stumble over, oh man, what is all this monetary policy? There's a central bank behind this stuff. Like there's someone manipulating interest rates. There's someone injecting like money into

the economy, quantitative easing, quantitative tightening. And from this, I realized that we don't live in anything close to a free market. We don't live in this capitalist society that we supposedly live in. And that eventually led me down the rabbit hole of gold. And then you start realizing, well, the central bank's balance sheets, which hold a large portion of the gold in society, have never been audited. We have no idea how much gold is on these balance sheets. And then you start digging into the fact that it's just like, well, gold also has its own supply and demand issues. When there's more miners, all of a sudden, you get more supply onto the market, more supply suppresses price and these kind of negative feedback loops. So ultimately, long story short,

I stumbled into Bitcoin. And I thought Bitcoin was the biggest scam. My brother, my brother used to buy drugs with it. I was just like, I'm not touching that. No way. And in around kind of like the late teens, like 2017, 2018, I really started to watch a lot more documentaries, read more articles on it. And then by 2020, I was just like, this is arguably, I think, one of the most important technologies in our time. And I quit my job and just dedicated full hog into Bitcoin. So I've been working in the space since 2020. But I just feel really honored. I think the space is really incredible. And Bitcoin opened my eyes to realizing that if we can fix our monetary systems, I very much believe that we can fix all of the challenges we face in society. And so one of kind of

the key phrases, as I say in my book, The Hidden Cost of Money, is that everything is downstream of money. A lot of these effects, whether it is poverty, wealth inequality, our environmental burden from our consumer habits, whether it is our politics, our business practices, a lot of these stem from misaligned practices from broken monetary systems. This episode is brought you by Anchor Watch. The thing that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical error with my Bitcoin called storage. And this is where Anchor Watch comes in. With Anchor Watch, your Bitcoin is insured with your own A-plus rated Lloyds of London insurance policy and all Bitcoin is held in their time-locked multi-sig vaults. So you have the peace of mind knowing your

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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 named Bitkey one of the best inventions of 2024. Get 20% off at Bitkey.world when you use the code WBD. That's B-I-T-K-E-Y-D. Could you argue that the first realization that there is a hidden cost of money was when you realized that being a mountain bike instructor, which obviously is a job that, like, people wanted to come, they wanted to pay, they wanted to learn from you. But that still wasn't enough to give you a real step up in society, enough where you could afford a house, you could afford just to live and have a normal life. Is that like the first broken incentive in that system that you saw?

I would say so. I think that it's interesting you point that out, because I do mention this in my book. there was like a few little moments throughout my life when I look in hindsight that I feel like were these pre-bitcoin orange pill moments. They almost set you up for understanding Bitcoin when your time comes and you kind of get kind of introduced into Bitcoin. And so one of them was that point. It was the fact that I don't get it. I'm really passionate about this thing. There is demand for this thing and there's just no way I can survive from the income from doing this thing. And it's not just mountain biking. Like, we're even seeing it, although I know that he's not a Bitcoin and I think he gives Bitcoin as a lot of flack, Professor Plum, Mike Green, just released an article, I think

yesterday or the day before. And I think it says something, it's called, like, Why My Life is a lie. And he dives into the poverty that we're facing in the US and such. And it really is eye-opening. But it makes you just realize that I think a lot of individuals are living subsistence lifestyles where they're really struggling and they're performing amazing tasks in society. They're trades people, they're blue-collar workers and they can just barely, barely like scratch the surface. So that's kind of like the first point when I started to teach mountain biking. I started to question, I'm creating value, but I'm not getting rewarded for that value creation.

The second point was I started to recognize that I was raised by my mom and my parents separated when it was about five years old. I was raised by my mom. So we relied on a single income for most of my child. And as a result of that, my mom had to go and work five, six days a week while we kind of entertained ourselves, went to school, spent the evening sometimes alone, kind of doing our own thing. And when I look back on this, I started to realize that, man, money is really impacting even just how parents show up. Because if parents don't have capacity to the point where they're having to go and work,

they're not being able to spend that time and direct that time to meeting their kids' emotional needs. And so that's kind of like the second point. In hindsight, I was like, huh, money is shaping our parental relationships, like the parent-child bond. And then the third point, and this is kind of slightly bit more of a tangent, is I remember when I was about maybe eight, nine years old, and I think I shared this on the What Bitcoin did podcast previously, it was when I was about eight, nine years old, I really wanted this scooter. And I went into this toy store. I'd save for like maybe three or four months for this scooter. It was incredible. I went up to the front desk to go buy this scooter with my dad. And my dad,

my dad, my two brothers and I went up to this front desk, went to go purchase it. My dad was like, man, I feel bad that you're getting a scooter and your other brothers aren't. So I'm going to buy their scooter and you've got to pay for your own. And I was just like, what? I was like so frustrated. I was so frustrated. It's a scam. It was absolutely. And to be for me, in my mind, I was like, this is the cantiline effect. It's those closest to the monetary spigot benefit disproportionately. Now, what is really interesting is that I look at how my brothers show up in life and I look at maybe some of my values and I very much believe in value for value. I'm going to work hard. I'm going to create value and in return hopefully that value comes back to me. And I see my brothers who lean on

the system, take advantage of the system. Many of them have sat on benefits before and such. And I see that different relationship with my dad, my parents and such. And so I think how we grow up, how we see our parents interact, how we interact with our parents, how we interact with society, shapes who we are immeasurably. And so I think that when we have a monetary system that has handouts when we have a monetary system that enables people either to get by on benefits and live averagely, but get by on benefits, it doesn't incentivize them to go and create value. But then on top of that, when you have a system where by actually trying to create value, it makes it unbelievably hard to get by. So you end up having to lean more and more on intervention and subsidies. You just

create all of these misaligned incentives. And so like one stat that kind of stood out to me in kind of more recent times is that like in the UK 50 I think it's 52% of individuals receive more in benefits than they're paying sub earn taxes and so you're just like how can you have a society that moves forward and thrives when the majority of people in society are taking as opposed to giving like to me I'm just like that's just mind-blowing well you clearly can't I don't think anyone would argue that UK society is moving forward right now but like the the stuff you said there about the sort of parent-child bond is super interesting I was uh it was a Bitcoin Alive, which is a conference here in Australia in Sydney.

And there's a guy called Pete Wynn, another British bitcoins who lives out here. He was on stage and he was talking about what Bitcoin did for him. And the thing he pulled on was it like he picks his kid up from school every day and he's the only dad at school there with his child at 3 o'clock or whenever school kicks out. Like that's what Bitcoin actually did. And even just for me personally, like I've got a young daughter. and I get people are struggling like people are being completely screwed by the current system right now and not everyone is in a position to do this but because of Bitcoin like we are like my wife's not

working she's the full-time care of my daughter and like that gives you something that like again I understand people have to send the kids stay care and stuff but if you just like if you're outsourcing parenting you don't get the same relationship with your kids you don't raise the kid in the same way like things change and it's a very privileged position to be in but I'm only in that position because of Bitcoin. And I feel very, very fortunate. Well, and as you're saying this, and this is something that I find, like, it kind of grinds my gears, is that we almost have to say, oh, I feel really lucky that I've had the opportunity to spend time

with my kids. I feel privileged that I've been able to spend time with my kids. It shouldn't be a privilege. Like, throughout society, as far back as we remember, we've lived in these smaller communities where we've spent unbelievable amounts of time in our community, with our family, with our family with our kids. Hunter-gather tribes, there's a lot of evidence that points towards the fact that most men in a hunter-gather tribe would be able to work for 10 to 14 hours a week to be able to go and hunt down some big game. That alone gives them the nutrition and the food to be able to support

the tribe for the week. And so you're talking about 10 to 14 hours of work. Then you're able to spend time in community repairing the house and doing other things to be able to help improve the quality of life. And of course, it's a different time. But, But I think that we're now in this world where we're meant to feel very grateful for all the things we've got. And yes, we may have the cell phone. And yes, we may have the AC in our house. And yes, we may have, I don't know, the Spotify playing in our car. But the reality is that we've got all of these external things.

And what we don't have is actually the things that are really important, which is connection to our community, connection to our family, and the ability to dive into things because we're passionate about them. And so that's what I find is really interesting. We're in this kind of weird, liminal space where we're meant. to feel happy and privileged for just being able to spend time with something that would have been able to do throughout history. There's actually like a slight little side tangent. I listened to Michael Malice was on the Peter McCormack Pod,

when was it maybe about three weeks ago or so. And he recommended a book on there. And the book was a history of the American people. And one of the things he talks about in this history of the American people, each chapter goes through about a 20-year period. And in and around the 16th, 17th century, It said that an average labourer from the UK would be able to take a boat for essentially a year's worth of work when he gets there to be able to dedicate his time to whoever the owner of this boat is or whatever.

They'd be able to dedicate about a year's worth of work. And then once you're done that, once you've done that, you are free to go direct your energy wherever you see fit. And within every week you would earn enough excess capital to go and buy an acre, an acre and a half of some of the most incredible land in the world. And so you're talking about 80 acres of land an individual would be able to accumulate in any given year. And this is an average laborer. And so I think back then people were able to contribute back to society. They were able to build a legacy. They were able to kind of build a community in a way that today is just unheard of.

And I think we've got more disconnection than ever before right now. Yeah. And the weird thing is, like you almost feel a slight guilt for the fact that the fiat system is so broken. Like if you went back to the 70s and the 80s, it's not unusual for us to have like a single income supporting a family. But now like I almost feel guilt saying that. And it's not because I like I'm very proud of like that.

I work really fucking hard to make sure we can do this. And I spend, you know, 40% of the year away traveling to make sure that my wife can spend all the time with our daughter. Like it's not that I'm not working hard. It's just that like it's like other people who are like still living completely in like a trapped Fiat system. I don't think they can see a way out very easily. And there's a really interesting thing happening at the moment that is,

especially amongst the younger generation, but I think probably more broadly than that, which is this move to socialism. And there's a very strong push from like more conservative thinking people and like Bitcoin is that like that's just dumb. And it is. But like I think you have to appreciate why people are moving in that direction. And I think they're correctly sort of assessing and diagnosing the problem.

but then they're coming up with a totally different solution to buying Bitcoin and opting out. Have you been following this growing trend of socialism? Absolutely. And I would say it's interesting, actually. I went to a friend's 40th the other night. And I was talking to one of her friends. Her friends has a brother who's British. He comes over from the UK.

He's over here for a week. And I was chatting to him. I was like, oh, what do you do? And he was just like, oh, well, I'm a law consultant on planning. So basically consults two lawyers about planning applications for like architectural builds, things like this. And one of the things he said is he lives in an area called Cornwall. And he's just like, where I live, I can't continue to live here because it's just too costly. And so no one can live where they grew up.

And so it's like, well, I'm curious. Like, what do you think the issue is there? And he was just like, what's greedy capitalist? It's wealthy people buying up all the property. And what I think's really challenging is most people will look at the same. surface level issue and then that's as far as they dig. Because that is like that on the surface, that is true. Like my sister lives in Cornwall and the house prices are insane because everyone who,

you know, makes all their money in London buys a holiday home down there or whatever. It's a beautiful place. But that like you say, that's the very surface level example of that. Oh, absolutely. And there's, I would say, well, open my eyes to this kind of, as Jeff Booth or Preston, they always talk about this kind of like first principles thinking or like critical thinking. and what opened my eyes to this years ago was stumbling upon an article by Toyota, the founder of Toyota, and what he talks about is this idea of the five whys. And everyone who works in Toyota is supposedly

taught about the five whys. And it basically the idea is that, okay, if you've got an issue, if you're struggling with something, before you go to manager, before you go to someone and try and use up their time to figure out the answer, first ask yourself, okay, why is this problem happening? Now you're going to get an answer to that. And then once you've figured out the answer to that, you then ask, well, now, why is this happening? You're going to get an answer. And the idea is you keep asking why. And usually by about the fourth or fifth why, you're going to be getting down to the root of the problem.

And so when you think about housing, what I kind of ask this guy is just like, okay, so if that's the issue, if it's individuals that are buying up these houses because they have excess capital, now you've got to ask, well, why are they buying houses? And he was just like, well, just because they have money. and it's just like that's not necessarily true. Like they could just keep their money in the money. And it's just like, huh, and thought about that. Why are they not keeping their savings in the money? What's because their money is losing purchasing power? Well, why is the money losing purchasing power?

Oh, because our money supply is expanding. Well, why is the money supply expanding? Oh, because we've got a central bank with lax monetary policy. And then as you basically just keep asking why you get down to the route, that we have a monetary system that because of its behavior, the currency is losing purchasing power. So no one is incentivized to sell. even the currency anymore, everyone is pushed out into all of these various assets. And so things like

real estate and things like farmland that were once used for their utility purpose, putting a roof over a family's head, being able to grow crops, being able to raise animals, is now being used instead as a store of value, and they're no longer using them even for their utility purpose. And so where I live in Whistler, 61% of houses are empty, yet we're facing a housing crisis. And it's because people don't care about them for their utility purpose, it's simply an investment to them. And that's a byproduct broken money. And so at the face of it, they're like, well, now we've got to regulate this. We've got to stop foreign investors. Okay, no, maybe we've got to stop. People aren't allowed a second home or a third home. Or maybe we've got to increase taxes. And it's like, no, let's just stop printing

money so people can actually just save back in the currency again. And so it's kind of this constant band-aid solution. And so kind of going back to original question, I would say that a lot of these individuals, they see the surface level problem. But the response to that, if you just take the surface level problem at face value, is usually the wrong response and will only exacerbate the issue. It's just like if you go and stimulate the economy with more money to help people that are struggling, you're just going to push up prices that further impedes individuals from kind of getting ahead. And so it's just like these second order and third order effects of kind of not necessarily deeply thought out ideas.

But where do you see this going then? Because that mindset is clearly winning in a lot of places. Like I think the most obvious recent example is Mamdani in New York. Do you think we are going to move more and more to this kind of socialist government system? I like unfortunately I tend to think we are. And the reason why is because when people start having less and less capacity, because unfortunately is their purchasing power is diminishing, the cost of living is rising.

They're going to have to work more. As they've got to work more, what are they doing their spare time? Because they have less capacity to think about the information they're consuming, they take things a lot more at face value. Or instead of reading the book, they just read the headline. And so what I'm noticing is people, their attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. So we're moving from books to long-form blogs, to long-form Twitter posts,

to short-form Twitter posts, to little tiny meme videos. And everyone, it's just like, they think they've got. this understanding of the world from these tiny, tiny little snippets that are just there to grab our attention. And perfectly curated for you for whatever you are desiring at that moment. 100%. And then you've got the algorithms. And then you look at media and on top of that, media, unfortunately, how do media make money? They make money from eyes. They need eyeballs. So instead of telling a grey story, which isn't engaging, they tell a black and white story. There's usually the oppressed or the oppressor.

There's red, there's blue. There's black. There's white. And so I think that we end up in a society that creates this huge polarization, this whole kind of us versus them society. And so I feel as if, unfortunately, and I don't want it to be the case, but I feel as if we're still swinging in that direction. And as people have less capacity, this continues to get more and more exacerbated.

But I think that where I start to see hope is places like El Salvador door and places like these smaller jurisdictions that we have communities that are growing and we have communities where hopefully as they start to get more capacity because they're adopting a different way of life, they're showing up for their family more, they're starting to have more kids, they're starting to buy land, live more off the land, live more self-resourcefully, those, it starts to spread. People are always curious about like, huh, I'm struggling and all my other friends are struggling, but I've got these other couple friends over there that life seems to be very different for them. And I'm curious why it's different.

And so I think that ultimately it's Bitcoin is playing a long game, whereas I think for the average individual, they're playing the short game and they're just looking for handouts, immediate gratification, and in time I think that will change because people change when the pain of staying in the existing system is greater than the pain of transitioning. Or thinking about it differently, the energy of staying in the existing system is greater than the energy of transitioning to a new system. That's 100% right. And the problem that we have is that if you're looking at this as a,

a red versus blue thing. And fixing the conservative, like capital C conservative side of this doesn't really seem like there's any chance of that happening. They're not going to become fiscally responsible. They're not going to get the cronyism out of the capitalism. And so like Bitcoin as like a free market, like true capitalist economy, like if you don't know about that, it's either more cronyism or socialism seems to be the only options that people are faced with at the moment. Totally. And I think it's also been like I, I think that I lean more right because at least the right would say, hey, let's try and be fiscally responsible. But in general, I wouldn't necessarily say that I agree with the system. I think the system itself is very broken. But it's also just

been hard even seeing like Trump get elected. And then Trump say, okay, I'm going to go on, I'm going to kind of like push my party on peace. We're going to figure out how to stop all of these wars. I'm going to push my party on fiscal responsibility. I'm going to push this party on the whole Doge initiative and trying to cut government spending. And what have we seen? We've seen the antithesis of these things where spending just continues. Doge ended up just getting knee-capped, and then war is just extended indefinitely. And so unfortunately, I think the incentives of these systems, and they're so ingrained, is that it actually doesn't matter who's in power. The system is going to continue doing what the system is doing. And I think democracy on the face of it sounds

great because you've got this, the party of people representing the people, but in reality, what that means is it's almost impossible as a tanker ship. You can't necessarily change course or alter course because you've got all of this legislation in place and all of these senators, congressmen and such, basically preventing you from changing course. And so that's where, I don't know, I don't quite know what the answer is outside of, I think we just need to separate money and state. And by separating money in state, you realign the incentives towards value creation. And I think that even if we separated the money and state in the US, if you were to separate money in state, yes, you've still got all of the politicians. Yes, you've still got all of

these legal frameworks. However, what you've got is a system whereby those in positions of power have to be fiscally responsible. Because if you're not fiscally responsible, you're going to quickly wither away and someone else is going to step up. And so I think that the first things first is just like, how do we continue to kind of grow Bitcoin to the point where you're able to separate money in state just to realign those incentives and that's kind of the basis of my foundational beliefs as opposed to we need to do this in this trajectory and build this type of economy. It's just like realign incentives by separating money in state. 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

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At its core, what I think Bitcoin fixes in many ways is, as I just discussed, a lot of these misaligned incentives in society. And I think that it incentivizes, whether it is enterprises, businesses, organizations to create value for society because if the only way for them to receive capital is to create value, well, they've got to create a good product. They've got to create a good service. And so I would say that Bitcoin realigns incentives in that jurisdiction. It realigns a lot of the incentives from the government jurisdiction as well, because suddenly they have to be fiscally responsible, which means, okay, if we've got to think about the future, we've got to, and we've got to think about putting our people first, and we've got to meet the needs of our people and actually create value,

how are we going to do this? And so that kind of realigns those incentives. And then on the individual level, I think that when you have a monetary system, which limits handouts, when you have a monetary system that kind of limits intervention from government, I think what it does is it puts a lot more accountability on the individual to be more conscious about how they're showing up in life and actually maybe to build some savings, build a bit of a buffer. And so I think that it realigns a lot of the incentives for people to show up more authentically and with more accountability. However, I would say the thing that it does not do is as individuals, most of the time we're looking for connection and we're looking for happiness. And connection and happiness do not come from money.

I think money can give us capacity that can ease that. But in the end, we've still got to put ourselves out there and I think involve ourselves in the communities and try and create value. And we've also got to self-reflect and spend time really questioning, like, who am I and how do I actually want to show up? And so I think we're not going to solve the mental health issue, but I think we're going to go a long way towards creating a space where people have more capacity to focus on those things.

I do think there's some degree of it solving happiness and the mental health issue, though. in the sense that like, in your example, you wanted to be a mountain bike instructor. There'd be people in that situation who realize that this isn't going to be the career they want it to be, they're not going to be able to make the money they need. The money that they make is not going to retain its value. And so they end up going and sitting in a box

and working at Deloitte or whatever on a grad scheme. Like if people could do the things that they truly want to do, they add value to the world, like there is a potential that that completely flips on its head. No, and I agree with that. Absolutely, I agree with that. And I think it's more from the perspective. There was an interesting post, I think, someone put up on Twitter the other day

that said something along the lines of, I'm rich and this doesn't happen to me. And essentially, it was someone who's done extremely well in their life. And they're talking about the fact that I think going into wealth, we tend to assume it's going to fix all our problems. And going into wealth doesn't fix all of our problems. If we have our own insecurities about who we are, if we don't think we are worthy, if we don't think we provide value to society, no matter how much value we are providing, that is something that we have to do and work on ourselves. And that is completely separate to money.

But to your point, I think that what Bitcoin does is we as individuals are a product of our environment largely. And so for the average individual who is struggling, who wishes they had a little more capacity to spend time with their kids, who wishes they had a little more capacity to spend time in community. community or direct their energy towards things they're passionate about, I think that Bitcoin does give them that capacity. And I'm even noticing in the Bitcoin community, you come along to these amazing in-person events. And it is a group of individuals that I think are happier, that are more grounded, that are more authentic than I've ever met in my whole entire life. Whereas where I live is a very athletic, outdoorsy community. But you go and interact with a lot of these individuals and you see their social media. Their social media portrays this person who is, I'm an

athlete, I do this, I'm out in the mountains, I'm doing this, and life's amazing. And then you meet them, and they're struggling. And their mental health is usually in the gutter. And so I think the Bitcoin definitely supports that, but it still takes self-reflection on the individual's behalf to actually get to a place where you feel grounded and there is self-love there and confidence. I think the way that Bitcoiners interact on social media is actually a really interesting contrast there, because it's not like showing off this insanely fancy life. Most of the time, people will be nymphs, they call themselves plebs, or they just don't want to be on social media straight up. And it's like, it's a very different, it's a very like vast contrast between that and like

the Instagram lifestyle that you see. Oh, 100%. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting because like, you know, and I don't want to put kind of push shade on the Bitcoin community. But I think the Bitcoin community is this unique mix of people that have spent a lot of time, not only digging into the world around them and trying to look at the world objectively and how do I create value or how do we move towards a world, which there is more hope and there's

more prosperity. I've also found that a lot of Bitcoin is very self-aware. They've spent a lot of time working on the self. But what I also notice is there's this group of Bitcoiners that have come into this space and it's the first time in their life that they've found a community. And what ends up happening is they kind of get almost super hyper-aggressive. And to anyone that puts any shade on Bitcoin, they start attacking that person. And those, individuals what I'm noticing is they're not actually responding because they actually deeply believe in Bitcoin. Many times they may not even understand Bitcoin, but it's the first time they've felt a part of a community, so they're protecting their community. And so it's actually, I think it's a result of trauma and not

feeling a part of community. And that's why so many Bitcoin has actually respond in a very hostile way and don't necessarily respond calmly when there's any threat or attack on Bitcoin. And so I think that ultimately, I think what makes Bitcoin more resilient is the more that we as individuals reflect, and the more that we're actually able to ground a conversation, and rather than respond with hostility and attack the individual, and we just focus on the conversation, I think that's productive in the long term. Yeah, I totally agree with that. So this is probably the longest intro to the piece that I actually wanted to talk about that I've ever done.

We're going to talk about your article that you wrote. I forget what the actual title is. The one I've got in my head is the map, not the territory. What was the actual title? The actual title, oh man, I've complete blanked on what it's called, is called The Curated World, I think it is. Okay, so give the list of some context. What's the sort of synopsis of this before we get into it?

So I would say that if I was to summarize the whole article down to like a question, the question would be, do we see reality as it is? And I think this is a really important question. The reason why I think this is important question is because we move through this world, all of us using maps. And these maps can be maps of relationships that we've probably inherited from our parents and seen how our parents respond with one another. It can be maps of money, how we think money should be. Should it be centralized? Oh, prices always rise. Oh, you need that central bank and deflation is destabilizing. There's maps of food. What do we think is healthy? What is

not healthy? Well, we also have all of the maps of the various sciences, physics, biology, and chemistry. We navigate this world using these various maps, but what is really important to note, and this is kind of in alignment with the quote that you just shared, it's this idea that the map is not the territory. And for those that aren't familiar with that quote, to me, I use this quote a lot in the world of kind of Bitcoin and discussing some of these philosophical ideas. And it's that a map is simply a representation of reality and it is not reality. If I'm standing at the base of Whistler Ski Resort and I'm looking up at the resort and I'm looking up at the resort and In my hands, I have a map of the resort, and I'm standing at the base of a ridge line,

but I'm looking at this map, and it doesn't have the ridge line. All of a sudden, I realize I'm lost. The map does not represent the territory. And what that means is that if I'm trying to now go and navigate the territory, I'm completely lost in the territory because I'm like, this map doesn't track. I'm so confused as to how to navigate this territory, where do I go next? Well, the reason why I kind of wrote this article is that there's a lot of maps that we use in inherently, whether it is our maps of relationships, whether it is the maps of the various sciences,

whether it is the maps of money. And we unknowingly use these maps, even if they're not representing the territory, which impacts how we show up as individuals. I don't know if that's kind like a very, very high level and I can kind of dive into it a little more. Yeah, so I want to get into this properly. But when I read this piece, did you ever play Age of Empires? Oh, absolutely. I freaking loved it. So what it reminded me of is when you used to play that and you would start the game and all you could see was like the tiny little circle of your map and the rest of it was just black until you explored it. It almost reminded me of that where until you go outside your sort of realm of comfortability or whatever it is, like you don't know the full picture of what

surrounds you. But let's start with like why you wrote this piece. And was this from Yommi Park? So she was one of like I start the actual article with the story of Yombe Park and I'll share in a second. But I wrote the piece more because I've really. realize that let's just take money, for instance. Before I got into Bitcoin, I just assumed, well, the money we use, it should be centralized, as I mentioned a second ago. And prices, it's just natural that prices rise. And actually, if we have a deflationary shock to the economy, oh my God, that's unbelievably negative. That's going to destabilize the economy. And so we need to make sure that we have central planners who can step in and intervene. Well, that's just the

map that most people are using to navigate the world we live in. And it's not until you go down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin that you realize that map is extraordinarily wrong. Naturally, as Jeff Booth talks about, prices should be falling because people are constantly trying to innovate. They're constantly trying to improve productivity and efficiency. And so if we're constantly trying to prove productivity and efficiency of technology and we're trying to get more for less, prices should be falling. They shouldn't be rising. And because of obviously intervention, and I know I'm preaching to the choir because most people listen to this Bitcoin is because of intervention, whose values are actually, um,

pushing this interventionistic plan. Like who is benefiting from the stimulus of money? Who is benefiting from the cutting or rising of interest rates and such? And so it's very hard to remove the individual and self-interest. And so how do we actually create a system that is fair? So everyone is playing by the same rules. And so that's where obviously Bitcoin steps in. But because Bitcoin has made me realize,

huh, I've torn up this map of money that most people are using and I've redrawn that map to maybe more accurately represent society. I wanted to kind of look at if our map that is money isn't necessarily accurate, what other maps are we using and we're navigating this world with that aren't necessarily supporting us? And so most Bitcoin has gone down the rabbit hole

of like the educational system and the pharmaceutical system and like the healthcare system and like diet and nutrition and fitness and you realize that actually a lot of these maps we use aren't necessarily accurate. And I'm sure like you've probably found there's many ways that before you got into Bitcoin, Danny,

that you've completely profoundly shifted your perspective and redraw on that map. Oh, totally. In so many very fundamental ways. Like I'm quite honestly not the same person I was before I found Bitcoin. I know that sounds really culty, but it is just true. Totally. And I think that that is a product of when we're curious, we should be constantly redrawing

these maps. And I can guarantee you that if I was to talk to myself in 10 years' time, my maps are still going to look different from the maps that I'm using today. Because I think that a curious individual is constantly, trying to redraw their maps so that they're as close to reality as possible. And we redraw our maps when we've got new information that gives us more detail about the territory at which we're trying to navigate. And so I think that ultimately the, I think that it's really important to just recognize

that our maps are constantly being redrawn. And just because we have a map, it doesn't necessarily represent the territory. And so the example that I give at the very start of this article is Yomi Park. And for those that aren't familiar with who Yomi Park is, she used to live in North Korea. And she escaped North Korea. She's got a phenomenal book called In Order to Live. And she talks about how living underneath the Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, these huge dictators, these dictators believed in something called the Jucci ideology.

And the Jucci ideology at its core is Marxist and it believes in linguistic control. And so language, again, is just a map. It's a map to our experience. It's how we describe our experience. And so when these kind of leaders have linguistic control or control over the language, what they've done in North Korea is they've removed a lot of words. There's no word for love my family or love my daughter. There's only words for I love my leader. There's also no words for stress. There's no words for oppression. There's no words for liberty. And so if you don't have those words to describe your experience, How does that actually shape your experience? And so I think that language, because the map of their language is so distorted, they're unable to explore those territories internally of their experience of this world. They can't even describe what it feels like to be oppressed. But she didn't realize this until she'd left North Korea and was exposed to a map like English that has a lot more words to accurately describe the territory,

which to me I'm just like, that's mind-blowing. It's hard to wrap your head around not being able to describe your experience. It's insane. I can't even imagine how mind-blowing it would be to leave a country like that and just be in the relatively free world. But like the linguistic control thing, am I stepping too far here in saying that the UK government and actually many governments around the world are now trying to do that? I would say that all languages to a certain extent do it. Everything just sits on a spectrum. With some doing it to the extreme case like in North Korea. and some doing it in maybe a more moderate case. But I would say that linguistic control in the UK, you may not necessarily be having the dictionary pruned of certain words, but what you do have is everybody has a perception of what is happening in society.

They've got this map that, okay, this is what's happening in society. Well, if the government is coming out, and they are, which I believe they are, is putting 37 people a day in prison for speech crimes, what ends up happening is you don't hear about people that are opposing what is going on. And so you have a very skewed map of what's happening in society. And so when you go and walk through the UK and you speak to an average individual, most people have no idea that people are being jailed for speech crimes.

Most people have no idea that Kea Stama, I don't know, used to be a part of like a communist group. No people are like, these things just don't exist. And so I think that they've got a very skewed map as to it doesn't track reality in the slightest. So does this kind of lead back to anyone who is in a, a position of control is going to try and control the map because that benefits them by doing so? It's a challenging one because I think that you could say that it's not black and white and maybe the analogy I'll give and I don't want to get into this very deeply because I'm not an expert in this subject but I tend to lean towards the knots in the knots versus core debate.

You could say that in the not side of things I believe that Bitcoin should be focused on money. And so you could say there's censorship. And Bitcoin is just money. I don't want it to be JPEX. I don't want it to be all of these other things. So I believe there should be measures in place to try and impede transactions that are bloating the network. So you could say that's censorship in a certain way. But you could also say, well, it's rules to keep its core ethos clear and clean.

And so I don't necessarily think that the society we live in is black and white. that censorship is always malicious. But I also think at the same time that what is happening on a governmental level, I do believe in, say, free speech. And I do believe that people should be able to voice their opinions. And I do believe that people should be able to share what it is that they believe in. I think that's absolutely foundational. And so the moment you've got the government coming in and silencing people online,

silencing kind of dissent, that creates a whole swath of, I think, distortions in the map that people are using to navigate society. I've promised myself I'm going to stay away from the Nott's course stuff for a little while, so I'm just going to pretend you never said that. Honestly, and I should say that it's not my area of expertise. I don't want to talk about it because I have not a fully formed opinion on it, because I also think that it's grey. I think that it's very grey and I am, I'm torn.

I'm very torn. But anyway, I think we can tiptoe around that one, so. We can tiptoe around that one. And so where I kind of took this discussion in this article is that we have these areas where the map is very clearly distorted in relation to the territory. And that can be things like language in North Korea. But it starts to get a little more skewed when you start thinking about the sciences. So if you start diving into physics, there are certain things that we're told. We're told that there's the laws of thermodynamics.

Now, a law makes it seem like, well, that's written in stone. That's just how it is. But what is really interesting is if you go dig into the recesses of YouTube, and some people, physicists, they're going to listen to this and just being going to be like, say you're an idiot, and I should claim that I'm not a physicist. I can't say for certain that I'm not wrong about what I'm saying here, but I do think I'm curious. And that is that if you go dig into the recesses of YouTube,

you will start to find videos on people that have created something called a perpetual motion machine. Now, a perpetual motion machine is something whereby you've created a machine that is able to generate more energy than the input that comes into it. Well, that completely goes against the laws of thermodynamics because the first law of thermodynamics is the conservation of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So you can't create energy out of nothing. And the second law is entropy. Every time energy changes from one form to another, some of it is lost. And so if you were to create a wheel that spins in motion, you've got heat and you've got friction,

and that's going to dissipate some of that energy. And so what's really interesting is you start digging into these videos of these perpetual motion machines, and those defy the laws of thermodynamics. Not only that, there's videos of people taking a tube and then applying a hydrophobic gel to the inside of the tube, and then putting that tube underwater. Well, because it's got a hydrophobic gel, what ends up happening? It ends up starting to cycle water indefinitely. But there's no energy input going into it. So you're cycling water indefinitely that goes against the laws of thermodynamics. And there's many more. There's another one where a guy has, if you can envision, two bicycle rims kind of glued together. And he's got a marble sitting on the ridge in between these two bicycle rim. And he puts it on the other side of the bicycle rim. They're sitting kind of on a kind of stands. They're able to be able. able to spin freely. He puts a magnet and as it pulls that marble, the rims start to spin indefinitely. And so you start looking into these things and you're like, this is really interesting.

These seem to go against the map that is physics. We're told that there are these laws in place that basically prevent us from generating perpetual energy. We're always going to have to go and destroy our environment to get fossil fuels. We're always going to have to use a whole bunch of energy to be able to convert one form of energy into another form of energy. And that is why that's the world we live in today. And so what's just been really interesting going down these rabbit holes is you start to recognize that, huh, maybe these maps that we've been told, this is how the world works. This is how physics works. Maybe they're not laws and maybe they're really just theories. And in reality, they could be hiding, as you're saying, like with Age of Empires and

there's those areas in fog, it could be hiding these other areas of society or these other technologies that could profoundly, profoundly change the world we live in. And so what comes to mind as I'm saying this is there's a lot of evidence that this is actually taking place. And that's where it kind of really grabs my attention. And if I'm rambling, feel free to just like step in and ask a question. No, you're not rambling at all. This is fascinating. Because like I have no idea with these experiments are scientifically correct. Like if there's a flaw in them, who knows? But one thing I do know is that I listen to a lot of Eric Weinstein, I think he's amazing.

And the thing that he constantly talks about is how physics has basically been just black box since the, I think, the 60s. And he thinks that physicists have been pushed down to, what is it that they're pushed towards? String theory, is it? Yeah. Yep. And like other areas of physics have basically been ignored. And he's essentially saying to put it in your kind of framework that the map is being distorted to keep people away from one side of the map. And so when you hear things like that, I don't know, it makes these things seem possible.

Totally. And Eric Weinstein, I think, is a really fascinating individual. And I would definitely, if anyone's listening to this and hasn't listened to him talk, go look up any of his talks. He's done a phenomenal one with Joe Rogan over the years. I think he's probably been on four or five times. But essentially, he coined this term, which is what you're referring to, called like, disk, this, like distributed ideas suppression complex. And the way that I kind of interpret this is that there's kind of five layers.

I didn't actually go into this in the article. But there's essentially five layers of this suppression that completely decimate our ability to actually see reality as it is. Kind of going back to that first question asked, do we see reality as it is? Is our map in alignment with the territory? And so the first one is kind of government funding that shapes kind of this research map. Well, in most industries, 40 to 50 percent of all research is funded by. government. And so what you start to recognize is, hey, if you're a scientific researcher,

you need money to be able to survive. So guess what? If the government doesn't approve of something and you're trying to go down a certain trajectory, you're just not going to receive money for that thing. And so you're not going to be able to go and study it. And so the first step of kind of kneecapping us looking into the fog of age of empires is, I'm able to get funding and the government funds most of that. So that's the first step. The second step, you've got kind of regulatory oversight. So you've got all of these regulatory bodies, which are basically saying what is allowed in science and what is not allowed. And one of the points that he talked to, which you very briefly mentioned, was in physics. After, what was it, the Manhattan Project and kind of the nuclear bomb, after the Manhattan

project, supposedly, they put some legislation in pace that basically said, it is illegal to think about certain types of physics. Like, if you get caught thinking about it, you can potentially go to prison. And so there's certain areas that we can't even try to kind of extend curiosity into through threat of just you're going to go to prison if you think about those things. So we've got the government, we've got the regulatory agencies. You've then got the scientific journals. And the scientific journals are usually centralized. They're owned by a handful of individuals and they govern what gets seen. For your research papers to actually be seen, they have to be put into the scientific journals. And the scientific journals, again, they're just censoring what

goes in. And many times they're paid for and funded by a lot of the big institutions, a lot of a big corporations, big farmer. And so if you're trying to push an idea that goes against mainstream belief or against the status quo, you're just never going to make it into the scientific journals. And then the fourth one is the peer review system. We know that science advances on the fringe. It doesn't advance in the core. And so if science advances on the fringe and you want to get recognized, well, your paper has

to be peer reviewed. And the problem with being peer reviewed is you've been reviewed by your peers that hold a status quo belief. And so it's almost impossible to be able to change a belief if they're benefiting from that belief structure. And so I think that the challenge we face in the peer review system is if you do want to go down and discuss something that maybe infringes upon someone's bottom line, that's going to be really hard for you to do so. And then that finally brings us to the first one that's just like cultural and career incentives. And it's just like as an individual, again, you may have a family. You don't want to rock the boat. And you don't want to be ostracized from

society. Like, we've even seen it during like the pandemic where certain individuals didn't agree with what was taking place during the pandemic. So they stepped up and said, hey, like some of these mandates pushing some of these experimental like experimental things. I won't necessarily the work. So I want to impact YouTube. But experimental things pushing some of these things. We don't have the data to support this stuff. And what happened? They're the medical licenses stripped from them. And so I think that what's really challenging is we've got government funding, regulatory oversight, scientific journals, peer review system, and cultural and career incentives that completely impede science from advancing where it wants to go. And instead, it is a result of a lot of

these financial incentives. And so that's where I'm just like, man, this is, it's tough. People want to be curious, but they're not necessarily allowed to be curious. This is why I think people like Eric are really important, though, because when Terrence Howard came out with his, I don't even know what you call them. His potential inventions that were going to defy physics. He came out in Rogan, did this show, and then he did a show with Eric Weinstein. And I think Eric probably thought most of the stuff he was proposing was just a bit of quackery. But he gave him his juice. Like he said some of the stuff is interesting. Like you need to learn more. But he was in that interview saying the peer review system is just gatekeeping. Like it doesn't mean what you're doing isn't interesting.

You don't have to have gone through the same five schools as everyone else to do something interesting in physics. And I thought that was very cool. No, I wholeheartedly agree. And I think that it's challenging because if you are a curious individual, like to your point, you can go and self-learn. The amount of information is out there these days, the amount of books that are out there these days, you're able to go and develop a deep understanding of a topic. But just because you haven't been to Harvard, just because you haven't been to Oxford, Cambridge, all of these various elite Ivy League universities,

that doesn't mean that you don't have validity. And that's where it's hard to see these sciences that could potentially, potentially profoundly change the world we live in. It's hard to see no sight going into these other areas of the map because of this various gatekeeping. And so then it kind of brings up the question, okay, but is this gatekeeping actually going on or is this just kind of theory?

And there's a documentary that I kind of stumbled upon a couple years back. And it's called the Lost Century. And it's the first time I'd ever heard of this. But it was, when was it? I think it was in 1951, Congress passed something called the Invention Secrecy Act. And the Invention Secrecy Act basically says, and where is it, it says, it's a law allowing the US government to issue a secrecy order on patent applications for national security reasons, effectively preventing inventors from disclosing, selling, or commercializing their inventions. And so if you try and release any technology that goes against the government's agenda or impedes on their control structures, your technology is going to be silenced immediately. And so you ask, well, how many times is this actually taken place?

As of 2024, there's been 6,741 secrecy orders in effect. This is from government websites. Like, they've silenced thousands of technologies that we don't know what the world could look like because that technology doesn't exist. And one example of this is, and anyone can. go dig into these. There's a guy called Stanley Meyer. And Stanley Meyer, he kind of designed the first water powered car. And he was getting 180 kilometers on four liters of water. Well, he went to go to a deal with some licensees in like a diner. And he stood up and immediately was just like, they've poisoned me. He went and died on the street and there's patent disappeared from the

patent office. And this technology was never released. And so this is just kind of like one story, but there's many stories you go down these rabbit holes, and it's hard to see this technology that could profoundly reshape society just kind of completely go by the wayside or just kind of disappear into kind of oblivion. And so I think that the world we live in, our maps don't necessarily represent the territory

because our maps are being curated to a certain extent. I mean, that's an insane story. Does it feel to you, this could be naive, but that these maps are on the brink of being blown wide open. And I say that for like a number of different angles. Like obviously if we're talking about the map of money, like I think Bitcoin is making a real impact there. And then when it comes to physics, like I don't know if you've seen this Age of Disclosure film that's just come out. It's got a load of top like US government officials coming out and talking about the whole UAP phenomenon and like saying that science has been hidden since the 60s and that they've reverse engineered these ships semi-successfully.

There's also the stuff that's happening in Egypt, like new discoveries in Egypt that's kind of blow. archaeologist theories out of the water? Does it feel like something's coming to a head right now to you? I believe so. And I think that obviously things take a long time to surface. And in the age of information, I think it's just becoming easier for that information to surface. Now, this is also at the same time that we've seen by the Biden administration putting,

I think it was something close to like $300 million into misinformation disinformation campaigns, just suppressing anything that takes place on these various social media platforms. And so I think that we're still facing a lot of suppression for people that are curious and people that are trying to release information that goes against mainstream belief. But I do increasingly think that the pandemic in a way, it opened people's eyes to recognizing that maybe the government doesn't have my best interests at heart. And maybe this veil that is the government that says they care about us and they're doing everything they can in the best interest to put us first isn't necessarily accurate. And if I peel back the veil, what's behind it? And I think that that's what we're really starting to see. And so I think that the biggest question that some people, they struggle with is when you come into this world and you start looking into some of these subjects, even if it is just the map that is money,

one of the hardest things is, well, how could the government, like, I thought the government cared about us. I thought the government really supported us. And so I think that one of the hardest things that people have to get through is actually know these institutions have their own agenda. And many times that agenda is not necessarily in alignment with what you want in the world. And so it kind of brings up this question of just like, why would they want to curate these maps? And I think that that's a really important question to answer. And in a sense, the way that I see it is that maps are curated because control depends on perception. Like I think that throughout history, all of these wars have been fought over resources. And whoever controls the flow of energy, of money, of information effectively

governs the people and kind of governs these nations, governs the world. And so the system isn't broken by accident. It's designed to preserve these control structures that exist and they've existed for a long time. And so if resources are scarce, power stays concentrated. And so the maps we're given when it comes to like energy, when it comes to money, when it comes to even just like reality itself, I don't necessarily think they are unintentionally wrong. I think they're conveniently incomplete. And I think that it's just really cool being able to see this group of individuals that are curious and they're starting to redraw these maps and they're starting to collaborate. And it's almost as if social media in a sense for all of its faults has brought curious minds

together from all over the worlds. And so we can have friends that live in different countries that we've never met before, which just didn't happen even 10, 15 years ago. We live in the most interesting times. Like the stuff that's happening at the moment is insane. Like if you were talking about UAPs and ancient civilizations and like Fiat money being a scam, like these were very, very fringe topics that made you sound like a nut job not very long ago. And they're becoming more and more part of like normal conversation. And it's, I don't know, are we in like a consciousness awakening right now? Like I don't know what's going on or are we just in a simulation. We always play this part.

You know, I had a really good conversation a little while back with a good friend of mine. And we were discussing this idea of, like, are we in a simulation? And this idea that is AI being invented or is it being rediscovered? And so one of the theories is, as humans, we want to create value. And we want to give back. And we want to create businesses. We want to kind of small our community. We want to support our family.

And so what do we do? We start to create technology. So we create technology. We create technology. We prove our quality of life. and then eventually we create AI. And AI starts to take a lot of our jobs from us. It starts to take our capacity to feel like we're valued

and actually producing something. And as we start to do this, what do we need to do as a society because we're facing massive depression, widespread anxiety, substance abuse, all of these things. So what do technologists do? Well, they start to create like augmented reality. They start to create simulations. And then all of a sudden you're able to step into these simulations

back to a simpler time where you feel like you're creating value again. But then naturally, as any human does, we're inside the simulation, and then we start to create technology. And then the cycle repeats itself. And so you could ask yourself this question, are we like in Avatar? And we could just be five layers deep in Avatar. And we're just like, oh, my God, we just created this thing called AI. But in a hundred years' time, we're just going to step back into another simulation and another

layer deep into the simulation. I don't have the answer, but I think that it's an interesting, like, kind of little thought, thought perspective. Or does AI help us break out of the simulation? I mean, we probably sound like nut jobs to a lot of people right now, but I find this stuff fascinating, Sam. If we get back to like the map is not the territory, if the territory is truth and the map in some way conceals truth,

how do we break through? Like, people often describe Bitcoin as truth. Is this a way of getting through this sort of map of what money has been historically? I believe so. And so like I think Bitcoin at its foundation, like ignore a lot of the other things, but let's just focus on scarcity for a second. I think what Bitcoin's scarcity model 21 million does is it ends up creating and kind of almost forcing a bit of like a free market. If you as an individual, you've got this permissionless, trustless monetary system that preserves purchasing power. What ends up happening is no longer can a system rely on intervention.

value flows to where value is being created. And that is unbelievably important. If we can force a free market where capital flows to the individuals that are creating products and services that benefits society, then I think that we start to, as I discussed previously, we start to realign these monetary incentives. And so if we start to realign these monetary incentives, what does that do?

On the government side of things, if a government has to be fiscally responsible, well, it's now going to start thinking long term. So it's starting to think long term. It's going to look at its balance sheet and be like, Where are my current biggest expenses? Well, it's probably in like healthcare. I'm spending so much on this sick society. So maybe we need to actually think about how do we create a healthy society. And then it will look at what other expenditure do I have? Well, we've got a lot of energy expenditure. A lot of money goes into being

able to support and fuel this economy. So how do we actually create a more efficient society? Well, maybe we need to actually direct more capital, which we do have from saving, not necessarily from intervention and debasing the currency, but actually towards realigning the incentives and creating more efficient society. So if they do direct capital towards research, it is towards actual research that aligns with the map, sorry, the territory as opposed to kind of these misaligned structures. And then you can look at it not just from the government perspective, but from the individuals' perspective, which is if we as individuals are living in a society where we have a currency that preserves our purchasing power, then as time goes by, life starts to get easier. As life starts to get

easier, we start to have more capacity. If we have more capacity, we can be more curious about the world. And I think that if we've got more curiosity, people are going to be diving into this stuff. At the moment, so many people are kneecapped or they're limited in their ability to dive into this stuff because they're working 50, 60 hour work weeks. And they just don't have the ability in their spare time to go and read a 500-page book, 400-page book on the science and the laws of thermodynamics and whether or not they're accurate. And so I think that ultimately, Bitcoin realigns a lot of the monetary incentives, not only for government, but I also think for the individual to just be more curious and to just dive into a lot of these subjects. And I think that it is that real, that kind of

reality alignment where everybody is constantly striving to redraw the map as close to the territory as possible, that I think that that's where we move towards abundance. That's where we move towards kind of prosperity. The big question there, though, is if you have a happy, peaceful society with free energy and no wars, then why do you need government? 100%. That's the thing. That's assuming we maintain similar structures today. But I would also say that when it comes to what model is best for us to be able to have

prosperity, I think that, to be 100% honest, I think that many people will say anarchy. Many people will say socialism. Many people will say capitalism. And I think that there are pros and constantly always. of these systems. It's just trying to figure out, like, I don't necessarily have a horse in this race for what I think is best. I think the society is going to do what society is going to do, but I think most importantly, it's a separation of money and state. And I think that that just gives people more capacity or at least realigns our trajectory towards hopefully building a more

kind of grounded society. It's also something that AI is going to accelerate in terms of breakthroughs in physics that allow for cheaper or free energy and healthcare breakthroughs. Like there's a potential world in the not too distant future where people are living to 200 years old or whatever it might be. I remember speak to someone who said, just don't die now. I think it was Roman Yampolsky. He was like, if you just don't die now, you might live forever. So Preston and I have been doing this kind of like book review series. And one of the books that we ended up reviewing, I think this came out maybe maybe a month ago, three weeks ago. It was called longevity. And this kind of book on longevity, a complete blanked on, unfortunately, the

guy's the author's name. This kind of guy talks about like how we're at the age where lifespan is about to extend immensely. And I actually, to be 100% honest, I play the other side of that. I play the other side of it from two perspectives. One is from like a personal kind of more spiritual take and one is from a data driven take. And we'll start with a data driven take, which is there are studies is a really interesting one. from 1994 that looks at the Romans 2,000 years ago because the Romans were the first civilization to really start taking records. And so when they started taking records, we were able to see what was the average age of these individuals. How long did they live? How did they die?

All of these things. What did they die of? And when you actually remove out infant mortality and you removed out war because that would obviously prematurely cut someone's life short and kind of lower the average age, when you removed war infant mortality out, you've removed war, infant mortality out, realized the average Roman man was living between 75 to 80, 2,000 years ago. To me, I'm just like, that is mind-blind. What they realized is that up until kind of when Rome was thriving, a lot of the citizens were getting really sick. And they realized it was because animals were kind of dropping their feces in the water lines, and people were basically getting sick from bacterial infections, E. coli, all of these various things. And they realize, okay, if people are getting sick from these feces,

and I don't know how they're doing it, they don't understand microbele. they ended up basically just removing animals from the center of Rome and Roman life expectancy skyrocketed. Well, today in the US, the average male is living to 75. I think eight years old. And if you take out infant mortality and war, they're living to like 76.5 or something like that. So the average male in the US today is living on the low end range of the average male in Rome 2000 years ago. So you start to recognize that I think part of the stories would have been are misleading. And I think a lot of the technology we've seen in the medical industry isn't necessarily as amazing as we've been told. And if we simply have clean running water

and we have sanitation, those go such a long way. And then the other point to add from the spiritual side of things is when we actually look evolutionarily, most species, like pretty much every single species doesn't really live much longer after, what's the word, after they're able to give birth. And the reason why is because evolutionarily, it doesn't make sense. If you are to consume your resources, which are for your offspring to be fueled by, then you actually risk the longevity of your species. And so if we extend our lifespan immeasurably after we've already given birth, then we are potentially kneecapping humanity. Not only that, but we're preventing our ability to adapt. I think that shorter lifespans allows to adapt to our changing environment.

And then I also just think from a spiritual perspective that death is a part of life. I think that in the like Eastern approach to medicine was that, hey, like if you get sick, if you get a terminal illness, you're probably going to die within a couple months. And so you have these multi-generational families living together and spending time together. And when their grandparents get sick, they spend time and they see death and they're accustomed to it. And so by the time that happens to them, they're just like, I'm not fearful of death. It's just a part of life. And I almost embrace it. And there's a lot of respect for the elders. And then you come over to Western culture and you're just like, we're prolonging elderly people's lives, but we're not prolonging

health. We're just prolonging lifespan. And so people are in this suffering state for five, 10, 15 plus years and they're withering away and we see this painful existence. And then what it does is I think it instills fear of death in us. And so instead, what do we do? We put them in homes. We put them in homes, we push them out of society, and now by the time people start to get sick, they've never seen death in their life, and they're so scared of it. And so what do we want to do? We want to extend life, longevity, all of these things. And I think it's coming from a fear place and not necessarily from like a grounded. Is this actually what I really want? Anyway, there was a bit of a ramble. There's a very sobering note to finish the show on there, Seth. So this has been awesome. I've really,

really enjoyed this. You're going to come across to Bedford in March. Is that right? I'm hoping to come across. Yeah, if there's a place for me to talk, I will 100% be there. I've got something pretty special lined up for you. I'm going to tell you off there. But if you want to see Seb speak in the flesh, Bedford, March 27th, it's going to be good. Thanks a lot, Danny. Honestly, I, again, like, as I briefly mentioned, what you're doing is phenomenal and the community very much needs it and just bringing together disparate minds with different opinions and being able to talk about these things. And sometimes it's fun to just go on a bit more of these, like, philosophical rants. And I apologize if people wouldn't fully flow or think they're kind of going down kind of odd rabbit

holes, but I think that it's good to just bring these discussions to the surface. No, I love this. I think we should do it again relatively soon. And go check out Seb's book, The Hidden Cost of Money. Tell everyone where to go and find you in all your work. Totally. You can find me just at my website, Seb Bunny. Bunny is B-U-N-N-N-E-Y.com. I have a blog, The Cheer of Self-Sovrantly where I discuss some of these ideas. There's a book, The Hidden Cost of money. And more than anything, I never want Price to be a barrier. to people's learning. And so if someone ever wants a copy of the book and they can't afford it, feel free to just reach out and I'll just send you the e-book. I think that this community is really

incredible. And so I always encourage people to continue their learning journey. That's awesome, sir. Thank you, man. This has been great. I will speak to you very soon. Thanks, Danny.