What Bitcoin Did - How the State Captures Bitcoin w/ American HODL

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

American HODL is an OG Bitcoiner. In this episode, we explore how the state may co-opt Bitcoin not by banning it, but by absorbing it into public markets, enabling control through financial instruments like ETFs and convertible bonds. We also get into the rise of Bitcoin treasury companies, why Michael Saylor’s strategy is just the beginning, and the threat of an Executive Order 6102 style attack. We also discuss the moral tradeoffs of financialising Bitcoin and whether self-custody will be punished through regulation. As well as the Trojan horse theory of Bitcoin adoption, whether it's better to fight or subvert the state, and why the next phase of Bitcoin’s revolution might not be rebellion—but infiltration. Follow: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny American HODL: https://x.com/americanhodl8 or https://primal.net/hodl THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN: https://www.iren.com/ RIVER: https://river.com/wbd ANCHORWATCH: https://www.anchorwatch.com/ COINKITE: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/WBD BLOCKWARE: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/wbd

Everyone wants your Bitcoin, right? And if you use that as your frame of reference, nothing anybody does in order to get your Bitcoin will surprise you. The state is bending the need to us. It's us realizing that we can judo our way out of a fight with a behemoth. And like, is it smart to get trampled to death by the elephant or is it smart to step out of the elephant's way? We are coming with a radical new idea,

which is same rules for everybody. One fair rule set to rule them all. For the next 300, 400, a thousand years, I think we have something that can't be corrupted. Mr. Hardle. Let's do it, sir. I'm addicted to shooting now. Yeah? I know.

That was so much fun. Can you see, I've got like this little red dot there? Is that from where the scope hit you? Yeah, I was when you were shooting the sky. You didn't warn me about that. Took one straight to the face. Was that on your first one or like later on? It was when the stock was still short.

So I was like super close to you. You just hit your eye too close. Yeah. Yeah. Ficked me up. Getting scope fucked as part of shooting. That thing was powerful. Yeah.

Was that your favorite gun? Or which was your favorite? Probably that one. I think the one with the suppress was the coolest. Totally. The AK was fun. You were hitting very well from, I have to say you did very well, like for a first time shooter from long range. Because you were hitting like, not like super consistently, but pretty decent from like 400 yards.

Yeah. I found the longer one easy and the short one. Yeah. Because like the way the scope lines. up it was closer on the longer one. Mm-hmm. I found that easier. It's out of like 20 rounds, I'd say you hit like five at like 400, which is like pretty

legit your very first time shooting. I'm a marksman now. Yeah. What can I say? Does it, um, did it give you a feeling of like sort of power and competent? Like did it, did you have the moment where you were kind of like a little bit nervous, a little bit freaked out? I was shit myself.

Yeah. But then once you're like handling the firearm effectively, then you kind of, it flips and it's like a powerful feeling. Yeah. It was, it's like quite cathartic. Yeah. Like it's like almost. meditative in some way.

Yeah, yeah. You're pretty chill after doing it. Yeah. But the, my fit, like the one that looked cool, the one of the suppressor, whatever that was, I was terrible at that. Yeah. I broke your side. I broke your target. That was a, I was like, why is this thing ricochet? That was a Daniel defense PDW.

It's a 300 blackout gun. So it's like an AR-style gun, but meant for suppression or whatever. And, yeah, you did pretty good on that, man. I have to say, like, in general, for an Australia. like pretty solid. I'm English. I don't know if that makes it worse or bad. You're English Australian,

so it's double bad, you know. It was fun though. But it's pretty terrifying. Yeah. Like, the only way I'd done it before is in like an indoor range just with a handgun. Oh yeah, this felt like way more,

way less rules. It was like rogue as fuck. And I'm not giving many instructions either. No, you were good for that. You did give me a lot of instructions. Yeah, yeah. Like the one, I'd done it before with a shotgun in Australia.

Like clay pigeon shoe. Like clay, yeah. And they gave us basically no instructions. And I remember being stood there with my gun. I probably have my finger on the trigger or something. And I so nearly shot the floor. Yeah. And so like that gave me a really bad experience.

I was like terrified of that. But you were good. It was fun. Finger straight. Finger straight. Yeah. Finger straight. Don't flag anybody at the range.

I can't, I don't know if I gave you that much more. I gave you how to hold it. Yeah. Finger straight. Don't flag me. Point the gun down range. What does flag me mean? Point out you.

Flag is, yeah, when you accidentally point the gun at somebody. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. When Junteth came on the show and he brought all his guns, he was flagging you. He got in so much shit because he stood there was finger on the trigger. He should know better. Yeah, he should. But he also knew the guns were unloaded and also Junt said this probably... He was probably just doing it. He's probably trolling. To trigger me, yeah. Yeah. Does it make you wish you had guns in Australia?

No, probably not. Like, I don't, I think the thing that Americans maybe misunderstand when like British people or Australian people say they don't want guns is that like I get it here. it's part of the culture. Like, if I lived here, I probably have guns because they're cool and fun. But if you try to introduce guns to a culture that doesn't understand guns, I think it would be a shit show. Well, it's a shit show here if you haven't noticed.

But that's like the messy price of freedom, right? Because there's no country or culture on earth without firearms. None. Yeah, but imagine like... So Australia doesn't have firearms, but what that means is civilians don't have firearms. The state has firearms.

Yeah. And so, the civilian population is at a tremendous disadvantage to the state. Yeah. Right. And, you know, people say, well, it's a representative democracy. And it's like, is it? Did people vote for all of those, like, draconian measures during COVID?

I don't think so. Yeah. Who was making those decisions? The same people that have the guns. But the thing I find hard about that, like, I don't disagree with the sort of statement. But it's like, U.S. had fucking terrible COVID laws as well. And, like, the guns did nothing. Well, that's interesting because, yeah, I mean, listen,

the guns are a bullwork against tyranny. So sometimes people who live outside of America don't understand this and they think, well, you guys got guns, but they still did all this shit to you. And it's like, we're not really that keen to kill all our neighbors, you know? I mean, it's really an extreme thing

to bring the guns out in America other than for the purposes of self-defense and hunting and normal uses of guns, right? To bring the guns out in a two-way anti-government stance is like, that's a bad world for for me, for you, for our children, for the entire society. So it really is a break in case of glass emergency measure. And we don't, that's like a stereotype about Americans. Like, we don't use guns to solve our problems, right? We have guns as a bulwark against tyranny. And the threat of violence

is often more powerful and important than violence. Because if you look at when the COVID restrictions got lifted, very few people talk about this, actually. And it's, it was interesting to me because the Canadian trucker protest was huge for freedom worldwide. And the farmers in France had figured out the same thing, which is that like we are important. We're the backbone of society. And if our trucks don't move, society doesn't work. And oh, also we can park our trucks along the border and shut down commerce. And they did it peacefully, right? Which was the right way to do it. But there was a lot of talk because of the Canadian convoy about an American convoy. And DHS and FBI were rightfully panicked about that because an American convoy would not have been as peaceful

as the Canadian convoy. I think everybody knows that. And the minute there was this talk about an American convoy, suddenly all the restrictions started to lift. Oh, I didn't know that. That's actually how it played out. Basically, nobody caught that in real time, but I was watching it in real time. And like, why, what was the threat from like in the US? Well, the idea was just that there would have been a Canadian-style convoy, but it would have been violent because everyone has firearms, you know. And so you can't stop an American convoy the same way you can stop a Canadian convoy. And there's a lot of collateral damage. And who knows how violent it could possibly get.

And so I think at that point, too, it was like lockdowns never did anything. Masking never did anything. These were all perfunctory, you know, imaginative measure. Yeah. It was safetyism or it was like hygiene theater. And so like, you know, stand six feet apart. Somebody just made that up. Yeah.

It means nothing. Oh, the crazy. In Australia, you could sit in a bar without a mask on, but you couldn't stand in a bar without a mascot. Like, it's the most stupid rules. So I would do this just to make, you know, as an example, like, ghoulish overkill, I would, with the same rule in America, and I would run through the bar and sit down and rip my mask off and be like, it didn't get me. I'm safe. Like that, you know. And everybody could tell that I was making fun of it, obviously.

But like, yeah, it was fucking ridiculous. And it was tyrannical. It was tyrannical in almost every country on earth. you know but when like when it comes to exporting guns to these other countries like i i have no right to say what america should or shouldn't do but i don't think the u.s should get rid of guns like it's part of your culture and i totally understand why you want to wear on guns but imagine if australia had guns or if england had guns like and everyone in england or australia was me at the range yesterday yeah that's the problem it's like no one knows what to do with guns you did pretty good

right away by the way but i mean in terms of like the safety protocols and things like that and Like none of that stuff is like inbuilt knowledge in Australian and English people because it's never had to be. We have much more of a gun culture here in the U.S. And a lot of the guys that are like range safety officers are former military, you know, guys that were part of the global war on terror, et cetera. And so yeah. And they grew up hunting with their fathers and, you know, people go to the range. Going to the range as like a small boy is like the best, the most fun thing you could do. Right.

And so or hunting deer or kids go to the range. Yeah, totally. So how old do you have to be to shoot guns? can any any age there's there's really no age i mean if you were doing it under like let's say six years old i think that's pretty dangerous and irresponsible but uh i think with proper guidance and supervision you could bring like i plan to bring my kids when they're a bit older probably around 10 you know and and work them up very slowly especially i think if you have um if you have daughters if you have daughters if you have daughters you can teach your daughters Brazilian jiu jutsu all you

want but like there's no way 120 pound females beating like a 250 pound man but with a gun guns are a great equalizer, right? Yeah. So, yeah, I think, listen, here's the thing, though, is, like, there's this new idea from J.D. Vance and other people on the American side, which is, like, let's stop bullshitting. Like, we are NATO. We're NATO.

We're NATO. Right. And we're annoyed that you all don't have freedom. And we would like you to have free speech and we would like you to have gun rights. Like, the rest of it, you can work out amongst yourselves. But, like, we believe these are important to the defense of freedom worldwide. and we don't like how we don't like how captured the European and Australian populaces are and how captured about half of the American populace is as well.

I mean, it's funny though, like when you talk about guns to an English person, like if there was a referendum on whether we should bring back guns to England, like whether you think it's a good thing or not irrelevant, like I promise you that would be like 90 plus percent would say no. Oh, for sure, for sure. No, no, we're going to force it on you guys. How are you going to force it on this? No, I mean, we're not actually.

But like, the American perspective is we can't understand why the rest of you are not normal like us. That's the American perspective, right? Yeah. It's not like this feeling of superiority, which it often gets, you know, bandied about us. But it's more this like, why aren't you normal? Why don't you like to say whatever the fuck you want and shoot guns? I mean, I think we should talk about the free speech thing. But like, the funny thing on the one A and two A are connected because two A backs one.

Yeah, I get that. But like when you, like my view on guns is probably extreme in Australia and England, even though I'm saying Australia and England shouldn't necessarily have guns. And what is your view? Just a very centrist. Like, that is an extreme view. That's extremist. I would, I don't actually know if that's true, but I think that would be true. Wow. I think most people would say, like, look at the school shootings, America shouldn't have guns. It's basically that simple, I think. Yeah. That's a, it's a really good thing we don't have to listen to you. But like it's understanding the tradeoffs, I think. Like, because school shootings are obviously dreadful. They happen relatively and frequently, probably, but they are huge news when they do happen. The tradeoff is tyranny, right? Like, that's the big tradeoff.

So do you think that England and Australia are tyrannical? Completely 1,000%. There's not even a question in my mind. Why? I mean, you can be arrested for the most banal Facebook posts in either country. if you question the ruling authority or regime at all, you can be gulogged for years of your life. So yeah, you guys live under communism, tyranny.

You live under socialist tyranny. And like you're all kind of like, you know, you don't want to believe it. You know what I mean? Like that's the thing is like you don't want to really let it in. But like I looking from the outside, yes, it's completely tyrannical. And when I talk to the average Brit, for instance, they don't know most of these stories about, you know, mothers being arrested for silent. preying outside of an abortion clinic. But these are things that are happening in the UK.

I did that happen. Yeah. You cannot pray within, I think it's 100 feet or 200 feet of an abortion clinic in the UK. You cannot silently pray. And if your home is within the 200 yard or whatever it is radius around this abortion clinic, you cannot pray in your own home.

He's not true. Yes, 100%. So if you are a Catholic, okay, who does not believe in abortion, you're anti-abortion and you live within 200 yards of an abortion center or whatever the mandate is, I don't know the specific number. You are not theoretically allowed to pray in your own home.

That is true. So I have no, I'm not going to fact check you right now. I've not heard that. But if it is true, that's fucked up. It's true. And the things that happen. When you do fact check me, you will find people who have been arrested

for praying in front of abortion centers silently. Yeah, that's why. Which means, in effect, they are just standing there. I mean, that's thought police. Yeah, it's also satanic. You know what I mean? It's like, I can't think, you know, George Orwell was proven,

I can't think of anybody who's been proven more. right than George Orwell. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And that's fucking scary. Yeah. On the, like, Facebook posting, like, that's definitely happening.

I've seen it as well. And that's bad. It's really bad. And you're definitely right in saying that I think most Brits aren't necessarily aware of that. Although the ones that are, like, livid about it, understandably. The thing that I think has been interesting about Trump is, again, whether you like him or not irrelevant to this argument, is that he's changing conversation, I think.

even in Australia in the UK. So like in Australia, you guys need a Trump. I mean, a crocodile Dundee, you know, style Trump. I think,

I mean, I think populism is spreading and I think it will continue to spread. Because like, it's changed the discourse. So in the sense that people would always be reluctant to have conversations that,

I mean, as Bitcoin as we have all the time. By the way, you know what's another word for populism? Democracy. Fair? I mean, literally. What's the difference?

I think the, the key differentiator, I think, is like what's led to a populist getting voted. And so like in the UK, obviously reform like the semi-Trump aligned party. Yeah. And they've just done incredibly well in local elections. And probably I would guess their favorite or close second for the next general election.

And so like I think Trump has changed the dialogue in these countries. Yeah. Which is good. It is good. But there needs to be a strong, you know, figure who emerges in these countries in order to fix some of these, the rot that has set in. Yeah. You know, like, if you're in the UK, for instance, you know, you are effectively being run by people in Brussels. Like, you're not really being run. Well, we're not part of the EU anymore. That's true. That's true. You're right.

But the one thing that is more true of Ireland is what I was thinking. Yeah. And the one thing that's like very clear is that Westman... By the way, that wasn't a clean, Brexit wasn't a clean break either. Oh, no, not at all right. I mean, so there's still a lot of globalist bureaucrats trying to get their teeth into the UK. A million percent, yes. But what is clear is that Westminster runs the UK. And the people in the north, like, there's always been talk of like a north-south divide in the UK. And like if you, these are by no means direct comparisons, but if you try to compare it to the US, it would be like the north would be more like the south here, I think. And like, what has become clear is that

north-south divide is getting worse and worse. And I think people in the north just know that. You can just feel that. And so I think that's going to be another thing where they're, I think reform are going to get elected next election. And I think that's because they're the only people actually talking to the people. And that, again, I feel like Trump was a massive catalyst in this. I mean, I hope that the rest of the Western world can come to their senses. I mean, I think I've heard it from Europeans broadly that, you know, they are jealous of what we have going on here

because it's a move back to sanity. It's a move back to common sense. Because if you've gotten to the place in your society where you're talking about how it's okay to chop off children's penises, you've gone very, very, very far down a deep, dark road or where you can't pray in front of an abortion clinic, right? Or you can't have unapproved thoughts on Facebook or a moment of human weakness. Like in a lot of these cases in the UK, there's one woman in particular said something to the effect of, you know, there had been a migrant who had stabbed a young girl or something. And she had said, you know, I don't care, burn them all. I don't care if that makes me racist, whatever. And then she went for a walk and deleted the post.

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WBD and earn it to $100 in Bitcoin when you buy. That's river.com forward slash WBD. play devil's advocate on that. The reason that she was arrested was because it was seen as like inciting violence. Right. I don't know where like free speech line get drawn. In America, we are very, it's, that's a very high bar to prove incitement to violence. I mean, very high. It has to be very specific, very targeted. So for instance, you can't just say kill them all, like kill them all in America. It's like you could say that all day long. There's context to though, because like there were people surrounding the hotel, like throwing things at the hotel. Like, it was all. already boiling up.

Yeah. Again, I don't have like a strong opinion on that case in particular. But the interesting thing you said, you mentioned like trans stuff. In the UK, that's actually been, they're far. There's been a move back to sanity on that. 100%. Like, for my opinion, like, I guess it's a libertarian style opinion is that like, if you're 18, do what the fuck you want.

I don't really care. Like you live your life, however you want to live it. But when it comes to kids, like, 100%. I'm in agree with you. And the UK have put in some really sensible laws around what you can actually do. with children who identify as trans or whatever. Yeah. So that's one area where I think we're way ahead of the US.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. J.K. Rowling is out. That's like her big thing. I mean, she's got good opinions. And people fucking hate her for it. They hate her so much. But it's funny. You say that we need a Trump-like figure.

And probably the closest thing to a Trump-like figure we have in the UK is Nigel Farge. Yeah, and he's pretty far from a Trump-like figure, you know. Closer than the rest of the politicians in the UK. And he's, again, widely hated and some people love him. Like it's super, super divided, like all populists probably are. He was obviously the man that was like the spearhead of Brexit. And he's going to be here at the conference, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah.

In Vegas. And that's one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about rather than free speech, although that was interesting, is like Bitcoin's changing completely. Yeah. And I feel like the... I know. We have like the vice president's going to be here. And this is our second year in a row with secret service security checks.

Yeah. It was last year. I remember leaving the conference, and I think I tweeted, Bitcoin's changing. And like, I think that was a really pivotal moment. And so now, who are the big speakers this year? Like, if you look back to 2021, it was like Nick Zarbo. And now it's JD Vance. Right.

And what I can't decide upon is, I think that's probably inevitable at some point that the politicians come to Bitcoin. But like, if that's a good thing. And I don't know where you just kind of fall on that. It's tough to, you know, it's tough, like, good, bad. I don't want to make like a moral judgment on like what is inevitable. You know, central bankers are going to own Bitcoin. Yep.

Is that good, bad? I don't know. It's inevitable. It's like in that same category. Is it good bad that the price is, you know, $100,000 a coin, $110,000 a coin, whatever it is right now? I don't know. That means a lot of people can't get access to a Bitcoin, right? Yeah.

Because they've been priced out of it. Is that bad? I don't know. So to me, I think about it less in a moral framing and more as like a what, what, just realistically and practically what is occurring right and realistically and practically what is occurring is it looks like the state is beginning to uh i don't want to use the word subsume bitcoin but it's attempting it's it's beginning an attempted co-option of bitcoin it's in its infancy right now most of the actors in the state who are doing things like a bitcoin strategic reserve

don't even aren't even really that aware of what they're doing yeah and often these things are are being pushed by Bitcoiners, right? David, whose conferences is, right? And many other people on Twitter, including myself, I actually think it's a good idea to have a Bitcoin strategic reserve. And I think that we have a friction of that inside of Bitcoin because there are a lot of Bitcoiners who are gearing up for a fight with the state that isn't going to happen, or at least it's not going to happen in the way that they thought it was going to happen.

This is not the state banning Bitcoin. It might be them more sly co-opting Bitcoin. Yeah, which is, I mean, that's how the state actually operates. Yeah. state attempts to co-op things. Yeah. It doesn't, you know, it'll ban things that are obviously horrible and everybody supports. But if something, you know, lives large in the world and the people want it, then what you do

is you try and ghettoize it. So, you know, gold as a store of value, for instance, got ghettoized, right? Explain what you mean by ghettoized. Gettoized is a specific term that basically means to put something over there and consequently diminish its value by doing so, right? And so, like, if you look at gold as a store of value, like most of the gold, you know, is owned and controlled in Fort Knox if you believe it's there.

There's a whole conversation about whether it's really there or not. I don't think it's... But like, let's say like if you believe, at one point, the U.S. government had a lot of gold in Fort Knox, right? Something like 80% of all the gold in the world. If you look at the tech companies,

which was supposed to come out of the dot-com boom and become our, you know, neoliberal saviors in the information age, completely got owned and controlled and became a paramount. military arm of the state. Right. And so during COVID, they were like the number one apparatus that was doing, you know,

crushing of dissent, right? And so if you look at like the rhetoric on the tech companies before like the state got their hands on it and controlled them, it was completely different than what it ultimately became. And in some sense, this is true of every revolution or evolution in American life or even broadly in global life, which is you start off as the renegades, you start off as the revolutionary And then over time, you're bought in and you get institutional power and you begin to talk like the people that you replace. Right. Like the hippies from Woodstock became the bankers and the academic elite. I think it's inevitable. And I think like you can look at Bitcoin in my view as an elite revolution where you have a group of old elites and a group of new elites who are fighting with each other over power. And what is.

power in the sense, like, what is the fight about? I think the fight in elite circles is always about rulemaking. So I think that's what the fight is about. Who has the ability to make rules and what the rules are, right? So I think that there's a, there's an east coast, west coast thing here between because some of the big, like some of the call it the orange, you know, like Balagia has this like the blue, the red, the gray and the orange. And the grays are tech elites and there's a little orange gray going on on the side. And then over the Over here, it's a little, it's mainly blue. The reds are kind of like, I don't think they know what's going on.

Yeah. Like, Republicans, for all the agency that liberals give Republicans, they're evil. They know what they're doing. Most of them are very dumb, especially when you talk to them in person, right? So I think, yeah, there's this big elite fight going on between all these different factions. And we are in the very, very, very early stages of that fight. So if the state is trying to quot Bitcoin. Yeah, which they are.

How do you think they're going to go about doing that? So nationalizing all the MSTR Bitcoin, baby. Do you think that's like that? Well, listen, I don't want to be like, you know, the big conspiracy guy. But like, you know, that's what I would do if I was them. So I just think what would I do if I was the state and I had control and I had power? I would allow as many Bitcoin as possible to enter the public markets. And then later at a point when it was convenient to me, I would now.

nationalize the Bitcoin, and I would pay the holders of those shares back in fake money, printed dollars. Because that's the easiest way for me to get my hands on a large swath. The Bitcoin without doing things that are despotic and totalitarian. Yeah. We're going to talk about it. Otherwise, I've got to go door to door and harass and torture civilians. Whereas if I give you this offer, which is like kind treatment on Bitcoin, right? So like kind treatment is going to make it so that you can put your Bitcoin into an ETF without a taxable event. And then you can margin your Bitcoin so you can run a buy, borrow, die Michael

Saylor strategy on your personal life. And it's like, Danny, don't you want to have a mansion and a Lambo and your Bitcoin? And you're like, fuck yeah, I do. Right. And then so that's the that's the carrot, right? And then income redemption as well. In Australia, we already have an ETF that can do that. Yeah, but your market is like eight guys in a clown car.

I mean, I think I've not, I've not checked in a while, but I think that ETF has less than 200 Bitcoin. Right. So on the other, that's the carrot. And then the stick is if you want to hold self-custody of your Bitcoin, we are going to continue to make the doxing requirements, the reporting requirements, just completely onerous. And if you slip up, we will throw you in a fucking prison cell. Right. And I think that any normal or rational person with when faced with those two choices is going to look at the in-kind redemption choice and be like, this is the path of a lot less resistant. and I'm able to live actually a better life going this direction. Yeah.

So it is a true carrot and it is a true stick. And I think that once you have the Bitcoin in the public markets, then you know, you basically have control of the Bitcoin. You don't have control of the network, but you have control of the money for when you need it. Yeah. It's funny because like Bitcoiners and Americans love to talk about property rights. Yeah. And that's obviously a huge violation of property rights.

If they do that with micro strategy or whatever that company ends up being. But that's essentially just a way more efficient. 6102. Yes. Because instead of going door to door, you just go to the big boy and say, give me all your Bitcoin. It's a smart 6102. And then the people that were, uh, jumped through the hoops or were able to hide their holdings, um, and have their Bitcoin, they'll, they'll go largely under the radar. There'll be like a shadow prohibition at some era, a Bitcoin that you'll have to make it through from one side to the other if you have self-custody Bitcoin. I, I mean, I think this. And if you're small enough player, you'd be able to make it through that whole thing. But if you're

like a, you know, you're an OG whale, you got 10,000 coins. You ain't making it through unscathed, you know, because they know who you are. So do you think, though, the likelihood is they'll ban self-custody? No. So they won't ban it outright. But there's going to be a fight over the details. And the details matter a lot, right? So if you're just a whale who has 10,000 Bitcoin self-custody, like how, why do you think they're in trouble? Well, I think they're going to, I think they're going to ask the government to docks. The government is going to ask the whales, all Bitcoin holders, but the whales especially, to docks their holdings to the government, right? And then they're going to ask them to, you know, have some pretty significant reporting requirements

and comply with some pretty significant guidelines. And if you're a rich enough person, you'll be able to do that without much stress, assuming there isn't something shady in your background, right? Like, you know, were some of these coins from some deals you did some long time ago, have you been paying your taxes? Did you not pay your taxes for a period of time? whatever, those are all hooks they can use to get to sync into you in order to get you to do what they want. And what they want is basically to have your Bitcoin.

Everyone wants your Bitcoin, right? And if you use that as your frame of reference, nothing anybody does in order to get your Bitcoin will surprise you. And you should assume the worst possible scenario. The interesting thing there is what happens at like a state level, because we're seeing a lot of changes at the state level now. And back to like the Balaji analogy, I can't remember which one of those groups he talks about. But the fact that if you're under threat like that, Bitcoin is just going to make. They'll just go to El Salvador or somewhere like that. So like, I wonder how the US will balance that in terms of losing, it's essentially a wealth tax.

That's why what happens with wealth taxes is everyone leaves. That's why you can't pressure people too hard. You just have to offer the carrot and say, this is a really juicy carrot. Yeah. Don't you want this? And then most people will say, yes, I do. We're talking about this on stage on Thursday. Right.

There's going to be a lot of people from the government there. I just don't want you to say this. Don't give them ideas. The good thing is I don't think they take any of us seriously at the moment. But there's a gravity to this game that's being played that is larger than any of us. Right. Now, okay, so we're talking about the co-option of Bitcoin. And it sounds black-pilled. And I want to make it so that it's completely orange-pilled and not black-pilled, which is,

I believe that this co-option of Bitcoin by the state. And by the way, why will the state co-opt Bitcoin? Why will they want Bitcoin, right? the easy answer here is because they want to maintain their power. Why did the Roman state co-opt Christianity? Why did they become the Holy Roman Empire? Because they wanted to maintain their power. And the populace was Christian and they couldn't control it any longer.

And so they transition, right? And this is something that the state does over and over and over again. The people want wholeness. The state is like, well, maybe wokeness was pushed from on high. But like anything that they need to do in order to maintain control, It's a lot like Wizard of Oz man behind the curtain shit. The state is not that real, but it looks real. And we all kind of think it's real.

So we all kind of believe as if it's real. But if everybody in America stop paying their taxes tomorrow, there's not a goddamn thing anybody can do about it. Right. But if 10 people stop paying their taxes, they're all going to prison. Yeah. So if me and you decide to do it, we're going straight to the Gulag. So I think that the state is going to want to do it in order to maintain power,

which makes total sense from their perspective, right? And I think we as Bitcoiners have a, we have this sort of responsibility in order to walk this long path. So like sometimes Bitcoiners think I'm so passionate about Bitcoin that I'm going to literally martyr myself for Bitcoin. I would die for Bitcoin, right? And I have felt that myself. It's probably a crazy, stupid, retarded thing to think or feel about a digital coin. But I have felt that. right and i understand that other people feel it as well but i think that you don't martyr yourself

for bitcoin by going out in a sort of stupid you know blaze of glory you martyr yourself for bitcoin by giving your whole life not just you know not just one day of your life where you die for bitcoin which is stupid you give your whole life in service of this larger goal because you believe that the future is more prosperous more bountiful on the other side. And so you have to trek along through the dark and dangerous path. You have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death in order to get where you're going, right, and not be corrupted in the process. And that is the work of actually like orange pilling the world is going through the state, not battling the state, not trying to live in the mountains with your cold card, but going through

the state. And I think that's the process that is happening right now in Bitcoin. And, you know, people, the name of the panel is like, are we becoming sick of fans to the state or whatever? And it's like, the state is bending the need to us. They're genuflecting to us in sort of response to this, you know, proliferation of young people who are politically activated who have significant capital, right? So it makes sense from their perspective. But it's not us genuflecting to them. It's us realizing that we can judo our way out of a fight with a behemoth.

And like, is it smart to get trampled to death? by the elephant or is it smart to step out of the elephant's way and let the elephant trample the next guy, you know? I think I know that people will hear that and be like, that's not like badass, bro. You know what I mean? Like, come on, man, like you sell out, whatever. You're so cucked by the state, dude. Fucking bitch, you little bitch. Fuck you, American. And I get that. But it's like the reality of the situation is that when you think about how the mass of men will move in unison this is likely how they will move they will move through the state and so the two the two theses here are you either have a david goliath battle with the state in which you find a way for

david to win which is not guaranteed right or you trojan horse the state and what the co-option of bitcoin really is is a bunch of dudes inside a horse waiting outside the gates of troy and the problem is Bitcoiners can't shut the fuck up when they're inside the horse. And it's like, just shut up, dude. We're in the horse, dude. Shut the fuck up. The Trojans are going to hear you, bro. You know?

It's funny, though, because, like, you say, I don't think just Bitcoin's changing. I think Bitcoiners are changing as well. Yeah. And so I got into Bitcoin in 2016. You're obviously way before that. Not that much. Only 2015. One year before you.

Okay, but I wasn't like a proper Bitcoin until 2018, because I did all the shit-coining stuff. But when I got into Bitcoin, it was all about censorship-resistant money, freedom money. And I think the people are getting into Bitcoin now are like, I want to buy MSD-Y, bro. And there's a real, like, culture change that's happened. And so I don't know if the new Bitcoiners feel the same way you do about that. Well, there's a lot of dollar maximalism going on. People want number go up. People want to, Francis Pulleyet said this a long time ago, which is that people think,

leverage is a time machine to being an OG. And so, you know, hey, if MSTR is a little bit of leverage on Bitcoin, MSTU is a lot of leverage on Bitcoin, call options on MSTU are a lot, a lot, a lot of leverage on Bitcoin. And I can use that to catch up and get my stack, you know, and I can be a rich person sooner, right? And it works for like 2% of people. Yeah.

I mean, somebody's going to hit that and do a great job. But like, that person is a rare specimen. And I salute them for being able to do that. But like most people are not going to be able to do that. that. And so, yeah, you understand the culture because if I was coming in, if I was coming in as like a 22-year-old broccoli head, you know, they all have the perm, I would do the same thing that they're all doing. Yeah. You know, I would have my perm. I would fucking yolo obstinstrades on Robin. But, but like, do you think they actually understand what Bitcoin is about? Like, Bitcoin, to me,

was freedom money. I don't know if people think Bitcoin's freedom money now who are coming in at this moment. I don't think they, no, I don't think they fully understand it. And I don't think they understand that Bitcoin's not about going fast. It's about going far. And so you want to be really defensible with your Bitcoin position. And so that does look like conservatism in Bitcoin is holding spot Bitcoin in self-custody. That is the most conservative position that a Bitcoiner can take. And you start adding on these other products.

You know, you're doing Bitcoin treasury companies. You're doing call options on MSTR. you know, you're in Bitcoin DFI products or you're in, you know, ordinals or so. I don't think anybody does ordinals anymore. No, they're done. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you're doing all these things in order to make more Bitcoin,

but at the end of the day, like, those are dangerous things and you could end up with far less Bitcoin than you otherwise would have if you were just a humble hodler tending to his sats or her sats. And it's interesting because I don't know how many of those people are doing it to make more Bitcoin rather than just making more fear. They want to make more dollars. They don't really know, like some of the MSCR guys I talked to them and they don't really, they're not really aware that it's even up in Bitcoin terms,

you know, or it's down in Bitcoin terms, depending on the time frame. And they're just thinking, well, what do you mean, bro? Bitcoin goes up. MCR goes up a lot. And it's like, no, no, the relationship between the two matters a lot. Yeah. Because you want to, at the end of the day, you want to end up with more Bitcoin. That's the game that you're playing.

Denominated, no matter what type of shit-coining you're doing. And make no mistake, like Bitcoin Treasury companies are shit-coining. But it's like, it's like, moral shit-corning. It's like, yeah, Satoshi doesn't mind this kind of shit-corning. But you're still shi-k-koying. You're kind of just passing the priority test. And you could still get totally fucked participating in that. And so, like, no matter what kind of shick-quining you're doing,

the number one cardinal rule of shik-coining is you have to take your profits in Bitcoin. If you don't take your profits in Bitcoin, you're going to get fucked. Yeah. Right. It happened to me in 2017. Yeah. People look at the dollars and they're like, bro, I'm up so many dollars. And it's like, dude, you're down like five-x in Bitcoin terms.

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And he's an interesting guy. But from my perspective, I was like doing the podcast. Normally in like the last couple of bull runs, you see massive influx of retail participants and numbers go crazy. I don't think we've had the same thing this year because I think these treasury companies are taking that mind share. And Jeff is a perfect example because I did a show with him, the numbers crushed. Yeah.

And then like if you do a Bitcoin show, it's just not the same. Yeah. When you say they're a shit coin, do you think we're going to have like a dot-com style boom with this? 100%. And by the way, just to clarify, I think everything that's not Bitcoin is a shit coin. I think the dollar is a shit coin. The biggest shit coin. Yeah, I think Ethereum is a shit coin.

I think real estate's a shit coin. I think it's all shit coins. Nice Rolex. Thank you. I think it's all shit coins, right? And like, that is my Bitcoin framework of how I see the world is I separate things into stablecoin, shit coin and Bitcoin and really. stable coin is just a form of shirk coin. I think the Bitcoin treasury thing is in its infancy.

So it's just now beginning. It's just getting going. MSTR proved the model and then they democratize the playbook and all of the other models are accretive to MSTR, all of the other companies that are doing this. Do you think that's true? Yeah, of course, because they buy Bitcoin which pumps MSTR's Bitcoin price. Interesting. I see that dynamic. But on the other side of that, so I spoke to Jack Mallors recently. And we were talking about this because I I see them, I understand your argument, but I see them as also direct competitors. Because while the Bitcoin going up is good for micro strategy, they're also basically in the market, trying to out-compete each other on the bonds are issuing.

Where the competition comes in is the MNAV, so the multiple that they're all getting. But also the money they're getting coming in. Like if they're both offering, I don't know, $500 million dollar convertible notes, like there's only a certain amount of demand for those. My personal opinion is that it's going to be a winner-take-most market. And I think that at some point there will be a wave of acquisitions between these companies. is in that, you know, there will probably be one dominant winner, which in my belief, as we sit here right now is MSTR, and that will have 80% market share. And then there will be 20% market share spread out amongst, you know, maybe Jack Muller's company, maybe David Bailey's company, maybe maybe Metaplanet, maybe a few other things or whatever they end up being. I don't know what they're going to end up being. And there could be a competitor to MSTR that de Thrones MSTR. I think if there is going to be one, it's probably going to be 21.

It's getting harder and harder to de-thron MSTR, though, because of the amount of the amount of it. Epic when they have. 100%. But just with the team they're putting together and with Tether and Cantor and SoftBank backing it, like, I think they are probably the most likely competitor. There's definitely a credibility to their offering. And I'm a fan of what Jack is doing. And I probably will be a shareholder.

I missed the SPAC pump. So I'm not a shareholder at the moment. But like, I probably will be a shareholder in the future. Well, no one is yet technically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you bought CEP, you're up like 5X or whatever. So like people crushed on that trade. So good for them and good for Jack and everything.

And it's going to be interesting to see it. You know, they're big differentiators that they're like a pure play, whereas MSTR is not a pure play technically. But like, let's be honest, like their software company has been completely dwarfed. It's like it's like, absolutely. It's like a pimple on an elephant's ass. Like nobody knows, nobody even knows what it does. Nobody cares.

It just, you know, they have some government enterprise software and then it spits off some fucking cash flow to service the debt on the Vickland. Yeah. Right. Like, I mean, that part of the company is completely meaningless. So I don't know if being a pure play is enough of a differentiator, but I will say this is like, I've been friends with Jack Muller's for a long time,

and if anybody can do it, Jack can do it. Jack is a special person who can do special things. And they've got tether backing it, which is the most profitable company, maybe ever, I don't know. Tether, it's insane how profitable Tether is. Make more than BlackRock, like 100 employees. It's wild. So do you think the convertible note market,

like the people who are like the fixed income on the other side of that, How big do you think that market is? Do you think it's basically, it's got years to run? Or do you think it's like... I don't have data on it. Like, I couldn't give you a number, but I do see it getting a lot larger, you know?

Because I think this trade is super profitable. And it's only people with the Bitcoin lens that understand it. I don't know if you watch the Financial Times piece on Micro Strategy. The one where the one was talking about are... I've seen clips. I've not seen the whole thing. I've obviously seen the teeth. I watched the whole thing.

And the reporting in it is just so... so stupid. It's just, you know, it is now 2025. There's all these Bitcoin treasury companies that are proliferating and people are still completely out to lunch because they don't think in Bitcoin terms. And in fact, they don't think at all. Like, they don't even know that there is a difference between the dollar and Bitcoin. How does Bitcoin work? I don't know. It's magic or something. That's what the average financial times reporter thinks. This isn't the average person. These are people reporting at the largest financial publication on Earth, you know, and they don't understand it. So I think the edge in the market is big for people that get it.

But it's wild because like really the way that she tripped up, I've not seen the whole piece, but it seems like the place she tripped up is just not understanding Bitcoin and then trying to understand microchrotriety. And you're never going to be able to make that leap. But I do think that the amount, it was shocking that they put that piece out by the way. But the amount of people that are understanding Bitcoin now is certainly growing. I think probably more so in the US than anywhere else. Yeah. So like that, I'm just curious how.

long we have in that arc. Because to me, like, I assume this is like the next euphoria bubble in Bitcoin is on the back of this. And like, what does it look like after? That's what I don't know. Oh, I mean, $11 trillion of value was wiped out during the dot-com collapse. Damn. So it's a way to go.

It's a big hangover if it happens. And I do think it's going to happen and it's in its infancy because the story spread. You know, like I put in some money to ASST, which was Vivek's thing. A strive. Strive. Yeah. And it 5xed in like two days. And then people are like, you got a 5x in two days, right?

It's shit coining. Yeah. And I sold it and I pocketed it in Bitcoin because I'm a Bitcoiner. I'm a Bitcoin maximalist. That is my lens by which I view the world. But a lot of other people are going to come in with that dangling, that glittering lure of the dollar gains and they're going to try and make as much money as they possibly can. And the more people that come in, the more the bubble grows.

And how many, is there a limit to how many companies? in major, you know, global markets can have Bitcoin on their balance sheet? Not really, right? So like, theoretically, this is a global bubble that can happen, you know, at a scale that's largely unprecedented. And the Bitcoin juices the returns, right? So it's like, we all knew this would happen eventually, but like now we're here and we're living it and the devil is in the details with this where it's like, it's going to get big and then

it's going to implode. Yeah. You know. When you say we all knew this was going to happen, I didn't. Like, I thought companies would hold Bitcoin. I didn't see the, like, debt issuance to buy Bitcoin. No, no, because we're not, because we're all kind of retarded. Yeah.

Yeah. We can admit that. Like, we're, you know, we know how to work a cold card, but we don't know a lot about debt financing or like financialization of different assets, you know. Yeah. But what would be cool that might be like maturation in this market or it might be a step back. I don't really know, is if we, because we talked, I don't know, 18 months ago in Vegas and we were both saying that we thought Zuckerberg was going to be like one of the next big people to buy Bitcoin.

Like, if you're a company. of his size, maybe it doesn't make sense to do the debt issuance and buy Bitcoin. Maybe you just buy Bitcoin. And that would seem like a much more healthy market if something like that happened. For sure. Do you think that's likely? I think if anyone's going to compete with Sailor, it has to be somebody larger than Sailor. Some meta is a prime target to compete with Sailor. I do think. They haven't, though. And it's hard to turn a company that's that large. It's like turning a battleship, you know? So like, is Meta going to be able to You know, when Saylor did the first micro strategy offering, he had to tender to his other shareholders and say, hey, I have a plan to do this Bitcoin shit. And you're either with me or you know, you're against me and you can dump your shares now. And you offered them at a premium to get out. And you offered them at a premium. And a lot of people took it. And, you know, those people, that's one of the worst financial decisions of their career, right? But they took it. And I think Zach would have to do a similar thing. And you'd have to jettison some of your old investors in order to get these new investors. And what is your differentiation against microcontractors? And what is your differentiation against microcontractors? And you'd have to do.

Because it's like if we're looking at Zuck versus Michael Saylor, do I believe that Mark Zuckerberg is a better bitcoiner than Michael Saylor? No, I don't. No, but the interesting thing is he wouldn't have to take on leverage, take on debt to buy Bitcoin. He could just put some of the treasury into Bitcoin. Because they're so rich. They're such a rich company. And if he did that, would he still have to go out to the shareholders. I don't know if he did that. He's just a treasury decision at that point. He has majority of that company. So I don't think he has to go to the shareholders, which is why he's one of the candidates who could do it. Yeah. But still, you know, there's a reality of like he can do things versus like what. are the ramifications of doing those things in the real world, you know? Yeah, yeah. So there'd be ramifications if he was, investors would leave. They'd leave and they'd go do something else with their money. It's interesting, though, because you say investors would leave, but I think a hell of a lot more investors would come because of that. I think so too, which is why I think they should do it if they're going to compete with

MSTR, you know, if anybody's going to compete with MSTR. Right now, though, it's like MSTR is kind of an unstoppable, like runaway freight train. Yeah, like, nothing stops that train. Nothing's going to stop them from getting to a million Bitcoin, or at least it doesn't seem so at this point, you know. Do you think as Bitcoiners, we're adding to the potential co-option of Bitcoin by buying things like this? Yeah. Yes. Do you think we have a moral obligation to not? No. Why? I think because it's, the reason I had a moral objection to shick-coining is because it was a, it was a lie. It was all premised on a lie, right? So like, people were going to, and I was

watching people get suckered in and lose their life savings because, others were lying to them, right? And that felt morally wrong to participate in. With something like a Bitcoin treasury company, it's like, yeah, this is stock speculating, pure and simple. And maybe you're going to do well and maybe you're not going to do well. Us participating in it, is it immoral? I don't think so. I think it's benign, you know. Even if it ends up with that Bitcoin being captured by the state. Yeah, because, you know, there's different. failure paths for how the Bitcoin could be captured by the state. And like the other path is

you being tortured in your home in front of your children. Never forget that the state can kill you in front of your children at any time in your living room. So like that path is a lot worse. I think, man, it's it's really, I think it would be overly presumptuous to assume that any of us can affect the outcome that greatly. These things are inevitable whether we participate or not because there's an ocean of cheap, easy capital out there. Even if something's inevitable, though, it can still be morally the wrong choice. Yeah.

I don't know that it is. Do you think it is? I don't know either. Yeah. That's why I was asking you the question. Would you put it in like, would you put it in immoral, benign or moral?

Which camp would you put in? Gut reaction without properly thinking about it, it's probably somewhere between benign and immoral. I would say it's firmly benign. Yeah, in my opinion. Right. You know? Because I think it, you know,

There is an argument to be made that it... Don't get me wrong. It's not a moral to go and buy a micro strategy. I don't think that. It's a tricky one. Because if it does lead to the capture and co-option of Bitcoin at a nation-state level, we should do everything we can to prevent that. But I don't think people are acting immorally to buy it now.

So I don't know what I think about that. Maybe this needs to be further down the path for it to be an immoral thing. Should we do everything we can to prevent the capture of Bitcoin? Or should we accelerate the capture of Bitcoin? Yeah, it's a fucking hard, hard question. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that, right? Like, because the, it might be a necessary precondition that you have to go through the state in order to subsume and supersede the state.

Yeah. It's this game of like the state thinks it's subsuming us and we think we're subsuming the state. Yeah. And only one of them can be right. I don't know who's right. Yeah. But it's exciting. That's why I'm here all the time.

Yeah. You know, which one is? Oh, I don't know. it's going to be a the rest it's going to take the rest of our lives to find out yeah you know that's a really fucking hard question because anyone here who's listening who owns micro strategy i don't think you're a moral but i do also think i own micro strategy by the way yeah well i don't think you're a model but like it's a i don't know the answer that question do you know i'd love i might ask eric case in that question on stage because i'd like his opinion on that that would be interesting

yeah and when we talk about co-option of bitcoin like we've talked about this from a state capture of actual bitcoin do you think there's a risk of consensus, or is two consensus. Yeah. And how would that play out? Well, I mean, well, I think there's probably already government agents inside Corps already, right? You would have to be kind of dumb to think there's not. No, I don't have a list of names to give you, but yeah, go ahead. The only reason I was hesitant when you said that is because I don't want to talk about

this, but all the op return drama and like all the shit that's being slung at core, I think is massively unfair. I think core are an amazing team. But at the same I think you may be right. Well, everything in Bitcoin that has been fought over since the block size war has been completely inconsequential, all of it. Ordinals is inconsequential. Opportunity is inconsequential. Should we do Bitcoin? Should we call SATs Bitcoins?

No, but it's also the most inconsequential. But also no. Yeah, but also no. But the most inconsequential. And, you know, if you think about some of the CIA handbook stuff on how they disrupt you know, revolutionary organizations, it is to get them bogged down in minutia.

And we do seem to be bogged down in minutia. So now, does Bitcoin need to change imminently? No. At least not right now. There's no clear answer on that and what the change might be. So I don't know. But a lot of these arguments around Bitcoin

over the last like four or five years seem to be complete assonine bullshit to me. Yeah. You know? I agree with that 100%. Yeah. It's funny, though, like, when you say they're inconsequential and you're kind of alluding to CIA involvement or whoever.

Yeah. They're involved, by the way. They're in this hotel right now. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. They're probably listening to this conversation. Yeah, of course. Hey, guys. But it's, I don't know if you put it down to, like, malice in that sense.

Or if this is just another case of, like, a standing army fighting themselves. Like, we don't have anything to fight about. Well, that's, yeah, that's bureaucracy and minutia. I mean, standing armies will fight themselves. And it's the easiest way to divide people is through the tyranny of petty differences, you know? Like there's this line I was thinking about when the professor comes in when everyone's fighting in Futurama.

And he goes, you people in your slight differences, disgust me. That's what it is inside of Bitcoin. It's like, how dare you think we can have the op return, be full of this much arbitrary data, you piece of shit. It's like, what? Who talks like this? But, like, funnily,

court is actually rife for something like this. Because, like, these are amazing developers do amazing work who get paid through grant systems and get paid shit. Like, they could all go to a Google and earn, like, five times the amount they're only through grants to work on Bitcoin Core. Let me give you an even more, like, less clandestine, less espionage,

like, you know, version of reality, which is that the state is going to have a significant amount of Bitcoin if they go through with their, you know, the Bitcoin Act, the Cynthia Lumas Bitcoin Act, they're going to buy a million Bitcoin or whatever it ends up being. And the state is going to have a significant financial incentive to keep Bitcoin stagnant because they don't want to fuck up their investment.

Yeah, it becomes a national security issue. It becomes a national security risk. And once it's a national security risk, well, then the spooks come out to play. You know, so like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. This op return drama, like I agree with you. Also, though, Bitcoin might need to ossify.

I think it might already. So I don't know about that either. Like, it's like very, it's hard to navigate your way through these things. Well, the Opper Return drama has made me think maybe Bitcoin's already ossified. Like, if we're arguing this much about a change that doesn't really do anything, may not even be, like, filters, in my opinion, just don't work. I understand the argument of just because, like, they don't always work. Doesn't mean you should get rid of them.

I get it. But I think the fact that there's been this much drama about this might, we might have just ossified already. Yeah, I just, people keep asking me about stuff like this. during the Ordinals thing, everybody was like, what do you think about Ordinals? I was like, I don't care. And then during the operative thing,

everybody was like, what do you think about Operator? I don't care. Do you think that should be called Bitcoins? I don't care, but also no. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's very, Bitcoin takes its roots from civil engineering culture, right? I've talked about this before. And so you do have to be, like, very hesitant

about what you add or bolt onto Bitcoin. But right now, like, I don't know. I mean, these things just seem like petty squabbling. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Like, we're going to get to the point where we actually need to make changes to Bitcoin. Yeah.

Like there's a bug in there. And we're going to have an entire culture of inertia around doing so. Yeah. Which we already do. Because there's a bug in there that we all know exists, the like time code bug or whatever it is, that needs a hard fork, I believe, at least in the way that we're looking at it right now. Like, what happens then? Do we just all agree and, like, move on? Because otherwise Bitcoin's dead essentially, or is there still going to be a fine?

I think there's a baked-in assumption from some OGs that we would agree on simple things. and I think that assumption is naive at this point in time. I agree. It was true eight years ago. Yeah. It's not true any longer. And also, there's a very real consequence. This, by the way, you don't need the CIA for this,

but there was a very real consequence to the block size wars in that everybody has PTSD from the Segwit upgrade. 100%. Yeah. And then taproot was kind of like, didn't go that great either. I'm not saying it made Bitcoin worse. It made the PTSD worse. There were some unintended consequences that people hadn't thought through.

with Taproot and then that caused people to double down on their PTSD. Yeah. And most of the talk, by the way, that was the reason they were running in, in my opinion, as a layman, but I think the reason there were unintended consequences with Taproot is because we spent so much time talking about activation and hardly any time talking about taproot itself. A hundred percent. Right?

Yeah. Which led to a mistake. Which led to a mistake. And those mistakes can be things that are exploits in the future. And so then you get onto the argument of like CTV and stuff like this. Yeah. I just can't see how anyone ever agrees. Like, personally, I think CTV would be a cool thing to having Bitcoin.

But I don't think it's going to happen at this point. Well, we need some type of, what's the fucking covenant? Covenants. We need some type of covenants. You know, and I like Jeremy and I like CTV, but I'm not, you know, I'm just one of the Bitcoin think boy cheerleader guys. So like, can I really tell you which is the best covenant? No, no.

Me neither. When I said CTV, I guess I broadly meant covenant. Yeah, that exact one. But I just don't think it's going to happen now. I think it's over. There's a lot of these ideas that are waiting in the wings for a moment in time when they're necessary or needed. And that moment could still be there. As of right now, it's not there yet.

So why jump the gun? You know what I mean? Do we need? Like one thing, for instance, is like with CTV, from a, you know, broader, like, enhanced security standpoint, we have minisccript and hardly anybody's built on it. And that is expressability on the main chain that just was sitting around doing nothing. It was created by some of our most,

our biggest geniuses like Andrew Polstra. And it just, yeah, nobody was touching it. Nobody was building on it. And then people started to. And now there's more minisccript stuff going on. But like, you know, we haven't even maxed out the design space we have in Bitcoin currently. And people are constantly fighting about their minute change

they want or their big change they want. Yeah. I only know a handful of people that would probably truly understand miniscript. Rob, obviously, being one of them. That's the only product I can think that's been built with miniscript. Yeah. I mean, there may be others, but there's a lot.

There's a lot you can do with manuscript. But if, I mean, broadly, it's like about, it creates more advanced time locking. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, like, when we get to co-option, is there any other issue that you foresee? I think the biggest risk is that we just become the fucking thing

we fought against, you know? Like, we just... It's complacency to me. Yeah, apathy is the biggest risk of it going always. I've said this quote about 10 times on the podcast, but I think it's brilliant. Thomas from Popekey said to me, we're all going to be rich and depressed

because the project failed. That could very well happen. I think if you like try to sort of give a probability to the outcomes, I think that one's quite high. By the way, I, so let me build on Thomas's thought here, which is I think that that is a necessary step to where we're going. I think there will be a moment.

where it looks as if Bitcoin was completely co-opted and captured. And what we need to remember in that moment is that Bitcoin is a wild beast that just simply needs to be uncaged. And that's it. Right now the problem we have is that there's a global cabal that has all the guns and makes all the rules, and they say what money is and is not. So people say things like about medium of exchange,

and they're like, you know, why isn't Bitcoin being used as medium exchange? All these Bitcoiners, they're paying with credit cards. They should be paying with lightning. or oh you love bitcoin somebody how can you know but well it the tax treatment doesn't allow you to pay with bitcoin right and nobody wants to do all that mental math for you know like to open themselves up to a potential audit or something just so they can like be a good ideologue bitcoin or and be like i paid in bitcoin right i mean let's be honest so they're doing a thing at the conference this year which is i think they're trying to do the most payments in a certain time frame yeah i forget how many they're going for

but it's obviously everyone's going to be paying with lightning realistically, let's say there's 5,000 people pay, like, buy something with lightning. How many do you think are actually doing tax on that? It's probably close to zero. Oh, zero. Yeah. Zero. So, like, but I understand, like, as a business, no one can do that.

Yeah. And so, like, well, if you're paying, listen, you're paying for a hot dog or a beer or whatever. Yeah. I mean, the government is not going to, they're not going to come for you and throw you in a prison cell over that. But if you're doing significant payments, like, you owe somebody $100,000 and you pay them and you do it in Lightning or whatever and you don't report it. Yeah, that's going to be a big problem. 100%. You know.

So do you think really Bitcoin then has to transition from being almost like freedom money to capture to be freedom money again? Yes. Absolutely. And how does it? That is the process I think is happening. So do you, all the like issues I have about Bitcoin being forgotten about as freedom money, you think I just need to park them?

No, I'm not saying that because it's important that we fight the whole way through, you know? So the risk there is that what if no one remembers? What if no remembers Bitcoin wants freedom money? That's, that's bad. Then we fail. Yeah. Yeah. We have to fight every battle as they come up, especially legally, every legal battle.

We have to continue advocating for our cause the entire time. But we also may have to make peace with a prohibition era, you know, if one occurs. A prohibition area where we'll be very rich. Very rich, but the freedom has gone down. We're all kind of captured, you know. And then eventually, like, like always happens. you know people die that's inevitable well yeah of course i'm not saying we kill people i'm saying people naturally die and their ideas die with them death is as steve job said nature's change agent

and so you know there's this old old saying that like you know change only happens one funeral at the time and i think you know as we go through this process the people that are above us who are the sort of fiat cantillionaire class who run this system, they die off. And we get about half the seats at the table of power. And we use those half the seats to make meaningful change. And the big idea that we're bringing to the table is same rules for everybody. Same rules for everybody sounds simple. It sounds like the way that all the Western democracies work, except we all know it's not. There aren't the same rules for everybody. And every sort of modern political movement is a Fiat Power Game in order to get favor for this group ahead of another group, whether you're,

you know, I don't want to name all the groups because then people have a bunch of a bunch of feelings about it. But like, every group wants to be closer to the money printer, right? And those groups want to advantage themselves over others. We are coming with a radical new idea, which is same rules for everybody. One fair rule says. to rule them all. Not same outcome for everybody, not same amount of Bitcoin for everybody. Same rules. Bitcoin network will process your transactions no matter who you are. North Korean dissident, Amish Mennonite, fucking Australian no-gun cuck, American pro-gun nut, whatever. And that's a powerful idea. And the fact that we can actually enforce it in code is the new thing because it was the same

idea. By the way, it's the same egalitarian idea that humanity always comes up with time and time again. And there's always a new city upon the hill. And America was our last city upon the hill. And it was an experiment. Well, guess what? The fucking experiment failed. Benjamin Franklin left the constitutional Congress. And they asked him what he left us with. And he said, a republic if you can keep it. Well, we didn't. We fucked it up. There's no republic anymore. Like, we are ruled by a fucking oligarchy, right? And a shadow government. And I think that the Constitution in large part is one of the most beautiful documents that has ever been produced, but it's a shit coin because it can't be enforced. And you can attack it on the basis of language.

Now, is Bitcoin a shit coin in the long term as well? Probably. There will probably be some new technology that supersedes Bitcoin and you will use it to attack Bitcoin and destroy Bitcoin. But for the next 300, 400,000 years, I think we have something that can't be corrupted. And the reestablishment of the sacred is really the heart of what's happening here with Bitcoin. So are we going to go through a period where we're persecuted? Yeah, fuck yeah. But it's going to be a weird one where we're like super rich and we're like sitting around like drinking fancy wine and being like, we're so persecuted. We already do that.

That is what we do. That is what we do. But I think if we continue to hold the sacred sacred, we will be able to insubes. the sacred at the end of the whole thing, or whenever there's an opportunity to do so. And I'm talking about permanently install it, you know, for everybody. I can't think of a better way to end the show. But before we do end, though, I feel like a duma all the time. Because, like, while people are, in my opinion, being sick of fans of the state,

I always want to ask these questions. I think that's maybe the most rational outlook that I've heard. So what are the things then to be optimistic about? Getting hella rich, bro. No. I think the rational things to be optimistic about are just the beautiful world we're going to be able to create with Bitcoin. And, you know, all of the things that we're going to be able to revivify in society, the new things, the old things. Bitcoin is largely both progressive and restorative.

So it's giving us back things we lost and it's bringing new things into existence. I think Bitcoin accelerates, you know, global. global technology, adoption and invention, I think Bitcoin increases global GDP. If you like, let's say we Bitcoinize the entire world and we increase global GDP by 1.5% a year. Okay, it doesn't sound like a lot. Like that's what your whole fucking revolution was about, 1.5% a year. Over the course of 100 years, that takes humanity from, you know, Cardishchev type zero to possibly Cardishchev type 1 on a massively accelerated timeline.

So it's our destiny to the stars quicker. It creates a defensibility and decentralization of human beings. There's this moment in time we're in where we're all stuck on this planet with each other and we're squabbling over skin color and people have nuclear codes and it's so stupid and we're so close to destruction. But if we can get through this bottleneck in human history, we can make it out the other side where there's trillions of humans living on all these different solar systems, all these different planets, right?

And once we have the tools and technology to do that, then we're going to be in a much better post-scarce timeline where the light that is human consciousness is spread as far and wide across the galaxy as it possibly can be. And while Bitcoin is not that thing, Bitcoin is the thing that gets us to that thing. So that is super exciting. And the reason I've chosen to spend my life on that, you know. Bitcoin's of the stars. 100% fucking love you hoddle thank you for this man and thank you for taking me shooting yesterday oh dude we got to go again i'm uh i'm excited for this panel i'm gonna do this roll the footage now you're gonna show the footage of dany shit hit oh yeah you should do that

all right man thank you for this appreciate it course always