What Bitcoin Did - Jeff Booth | AI, Bitcoin, & The Collapse Of The Fiat Economy

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Jeff Booth explains why free markets are naturally deflationary and why this changes everything. What if the entire economy is built on a lie? Jeff Booth argues our credit-based system fights the natural deflation of free markets through endless money manipulation — and why Bitcoin creates the first truly global free market. We explore how AI accelerates abundance, why most people are stuck in “Fiatland,” and how Bitcoin adoption will transform everything from housing to global power structures. In this episode: Why inflation isn’t natural - and what deflation really means How AI and Bitcoin together rewrite the rules of the economy The cultural divide between “Fiatland” and Bitcoin Why the Global South may leapfrog the West in Bitcoin adoption How to prepare for the transition to a Bitcoin economy THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN RIVER ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN Follow: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Jeff Booth: https://primal.net/jeffbooth

Forget K-shaped economy completely, because it cannot allow that deflation to hit the market. That credit-based system requires exponentially more monetary units, otherwise it collapses completely. Because if it allows deflation, your banks fail in it. Everything fails. Your government fails in it. Everything fails. Every single person would be begging to manipulate money because the entire system would completely collapse to zero. It's a coordinated game. It's a crazy coordinated game, and you should be scared of what AI can do from that system. You don't have a vote with how much of your money is being manipulated. So we have an appearance, a charade of a democracy, which is really a control system.

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That's river.com forward slash WBD. So I really want to go into the AI stuff because I've been spending a bit of time looking into it because it's so, it's unbelievably useful. And I'm not sure I'm into like the doomot-takes. of it's going to kill us, although I did listen to a guy on Peter's podcast recently who was like 90% chance this kills us. But what I am a little bit domerish about is what it does to the economy, and if this is like just a massive accelerant for sort of the K-shaped economy where poor people just get even more left out in the cold. Let's jump in. Because I think even what you just

described, it's what it describes, what it describes, for me is even as much as I think you understand my thesis, you don't quite yet. Honestly, Jeff, this is one of the things that I battle with so much because I want to think like you. I really, really do. And I have glimpses of it. But changing your entire worldview to fit your thesis is very hard. Yeah.

So why don't we then for you? And actually, because I found when this has happened twice lately, Natalie, Natalie, who did, did this on just for her own knowledge because she couldn't understand. And I thought she knew totally. And then it happened on Nico's podcast too where he was just like it, it, you could see him actually get it. Right. You could actually see him get it in it.

And it was, both of those did like well over 200,000 views because, because it was helping so many people, other people get it. So I think just be really honest. Let's keep, let's just stay there in the uncomfortable and keep, uh, it is, for as long as we need to because I just, I cannot tell you how many people, I just got one, another person that just said it yesterday, um, or no, today on, on Jeff, because it, he said after four years, it finally clicks, which is, Jeff Booth has been saying this whole time and it changes just the, um, it's so much more than, than you think.

Yeah, I mean, I remember when we were speaking in Bedford, when we recorded a podcast for the old what Bitcoin did. And then afterwards, I don't know if remember, we did a short bit, maybe like 20 minutes for the Patreon that we used to have. Yeah. And we were digging into it then. And when you were explaining it to me in Bedford, I remember a lot of it clicking. And I still have moments where I do see the world like Jeff, but I'm not always seeing the world like Jeff. So maybe we should just start there and get like, what is the thing? thesis. Just let's start again. I know we've done it a lot. I think even though people have heard this

multiple times, I think you need to hear it a lot. So let's just start there. What is the Jeff Booth thesis? It's not just my thesis. So I always start with the natural state of the free market is deflation. Right. And most people can nod their head to saying, yep, that's right. Without understanding the what they've just agreed to. Because if they agree to that, then it means they've never lived in a free market. And all their actions in the opposite market, in the opposite zero-sum game,

drive every single thing that they're worried about in the world. Right. And they stay there, right? And they try to integrate two thoughts that cannot be integrated together they try to put them together. And you're probably finding that same thing. So natural state of the free market is deflation, right?

And we'll spend us a little bit afterwards, and we'll go down why. A credit-based system can't allow deflation. Okay. Those two statements are both true, and they're both opposite systems. They're completely opposite systems. One has to kill the other. That makes sense? That makes total sense.

So why has natural, like, if deflation is the natural state of the market, why is that not already killed the other truth that in a credit-based system you can't have deflation? So the faster technology moves, the faster monetary easing and the faster manipulation of money. It's just a mirror image, right? It's one system is supposed to be making you richer through the prices falling, through essentially why is the natural state of the free market deflation, is because every entrepreneur that creates any value has to compete with what became before. And if they don't provide more value to society, they fail because what was there before,

we just use what was there before. When they do create more value for society, we use the more value. right so and so we we are part of the system that has to be deflationary because we always choose more value that makes sense so we've kind of ninja launched this show and we didn't do a full context i don't know where we're going to cut that in but so the reason something i've been thinking a lot about recently is like AI is incredible like it has i'm using it a lot it's probably replaced at least half a person in terms of what i do for a business and what i can't figure out is what impact this has on the economy.

Like, AI is probably the most deflationary tech we've maybe ever had. I don't know, maybe alongside Bitcoin, like the two most deflationary technologies we've ever had. And how does that not lead to a crate, like, how does that not exacerbate the K-shaped economy to the point where you have even fewer very rich and then a lot of very poor? Forget K-shaped economy completely. Okay. But case-shaped economy would have to look like that through a credit-based system.

Because it cannot allow that deflation to hit the market. It has to just manipulate money. And the manipulation of money goes to the richest first because of canceling effect. And so it creates bigger and bigger monopolies that coordinate with governments to create more and more regulation to protect the monopolies. and everybody else loses. You are talking about what happens inside a credit-based system when you use words like K-shaped economy.

Mm-hmm. Right. So just keep in mind, and this is why this is so hard to do, they're different. You have to find out what's true, what it's sand, this first principle. So is, and that's why I ask questions so people can see in themselves and then lead them to that. But is it true or I say if a lot? So if the natural

state of the free market is deflation and we can test it all away through and say yes, that's why prices fall to the marginal cost of production in that. What's the marginal cost of production of AI? Zero. So prices of all AI will fall to zero. What is the marginal cost of production short term on robotics? There's a marginal cost of production. If there's a marginal cost of production of physical robotics, but then robots will create their own robots, right? They'll explode with the same AI emerging, and prices will fall and fall and fall on those robots, and they'll take more and more and most of those will fall to near zero in time. All of the energy going into those, all of the raw materials going into those are also experiencing the same fall in price. They're all being,

the base formation of everything we do is create more value. And we use more value. Why you are using more AI instead of hiring more people, because if you don't, your show will lose out to somebody who is. Right? And you won't be able to provide as much value to your users, so your viewers will go somewhere else. So for sure you will use more AI. For sure, AI is going to to move exponentially and get better and better and better and do more things at an alarming rate. And if you're using the AI now and you're looking at it as helpful now, you're looking backwards because where it's coming and at the rate it's coming, looking forward, these things

are people haven't, they're reading halfway through the book looking at the next page when you can already see the entire where the sun all unfolds. Because AI today is the worst it will ever be. Worse it will ever be. And there are very few people using AI today at the front edge of what's possible. Yeah. Very few people. And that's today's front edge, not tomorrow's front edge.

So as more and more people understand the power of this and what they'll be able to do, and they're building their own agents and network of agents that'll do a whole bunch of different complex tasks that that you can't even imagine today. And those complex tasks will get easier and easier and easier. It's just it's almost, it is inconceivable that that doesn't destroy labor. Inconceivable. Because what are you doing? Instead of hiring somebody for 20 hours a week, you're getting more productivity so you don't have to. And it cost me $20 a month or whatever. $20 million. And pretty soon that'll be free.

The part that I struggle with is like if, because I totally agree with what you're saying there, I think it will wipe out the job market in a way that we've never seen before. But if the K-shaped economy is the wrong way of looking at it, what's the right way of looking at it? So now you have to enter in. So, and I'm doing this in kind of levels so you can see. So two things are true. credit-based system that lends money into existence.

So when a bank lends you money, there was no money. And if all the money was repaid from all the banks all over the world, there'd be no money. So when that credit-based system requires exponentially more monetary units, otherwise it collapses completely. Because if it allows deflation, it collapses completely. And it gets faster and faster and faster. and your houses fall in it, your banks fail in it, everything fails, your government fails in it, everything fails.

So what you could say quite simply from that is, Danny Knowles, you wouldn't let it fail. So you call yourself a free market person, yourself, and you would not let that fail. Right? Because if it did, you'd be, every single person would be begging to manipulate money. because the entire system would completely collapse to zero. Every house, every business, everything, because it's built on that credit-based money. Is there a part of that where, like, you're right,

I wouldn't want to click my fingers and have that fail because that's just suffering all over the world. But is there an argument that you want that to fail very slowly as Bitcoin just eats everything else? So that's what it's doing. Yeah. So that's what I'm getting at. So now, so understand the,

those action. So if those two systems are opposite, then you can kind of do some deductive reasoning and what does that mean, right? And say, so what it means is if the natural state of the free market is deflation, then it means we have never lived in a global free market. Yeah. Like it kind of takes your breath away.

But now what does that mean? You don't, you have no, no, understanding of what that means, you're trying to apply what I'm saying into a different past framework. Because all the books you've ever read about what free markets look like, what government structures look like, what capitalism looks like, what every single word you have to describe your previous realities were all created by the winners write the history books. And money was

always co-opted. So it would be normal to try to attach this new thing. in Bitcoin that's never existed before to your previous biases and try to make them work together. It'll be totally normal. But is the kind of a middle step that is missed there in the sense that I agree that the paradigm we live in now is not the paradigm we'll live in in the future, but there's going to be a transition period and what happens in that transition period? But that transition period is happening right now. So this house, I've said it many times.

on your podcast. This host, and every time I say it, right, it's cheaper in Bitcoin terms, right? Now it was 300 Bitcoin five years ago and now it's 11 Bitcoin. And every time we're on the podcast together is cheaper in Bitcoin terms. And so if you measure, what would, what a different question? An open, anybody could use it, decentralized, secure, you cannot break it. Protocol. which would come in layers, adding more and more functionality, protocol bounded by energy look like. Wouldn't if it stayed decentralized and secure, and you couldn't change it,

and it was bounded by energy, wouldn't it describe the first global free market that ever existed? And wouldn't relative to it, all energy prices be falling, all manufacturing prices be falling, all house prices be falling, all house prices be falling, all everything be falling, right? If you measured from that first global free market,

you could say every single person that moved their time to it would compete more for value for all of us, and you would have faster and faster deflation in it forever. Yeah, from that. And the only caveat, the only caveat would be it stays decentralized and secure. there isn't another caveat. So if it stay decentralized and secure, and so all of the work should be,

do you believe it'll stay decentralized and secure and how can you become a node to ensure it does, right? And then you start utilizing your time into this new protocol, and you are part of the thing that's imposing a discipline across the world that is the first global free market that ever existed. And the more you're inside that system,

everything else from the other system makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense why it would try to drive you into fear that AI is going to kill you. Because that's that way you could regulate AI. It would try to make you believe that Biden was a hero or Trump was a hero. Or name insur any single person from that system, Elon Moss, just name a bunch of people from inside that system. it would be trying to convince you that it wasn't a structural problem somebody could save you. And it would be doing it with more and more AI tools. And if the more you listened inside that system, the more you would be convinced that that's normal.

I guess, like, again, there's nothing that you say that I disagree with. So I was walking around the supermarket yesterday. My daughter was asleep and I was just doing the shopping. And I was thinking about this interview. And like if you go, if you asked anyone in there, like the people living in Fiat world, I think they're constantly under this pressure that housing's getting more expensive is further and further out of reach. Their groceries are getting more expensive.

And there's like a wistfulness, I think, for the old days. Like they want things to be like they used to be or like how their parents had it. And then there's me there as a bit coiner who's like, all these things are getting cheaper. That's the world I already live in. But there's probably only one or two other people in the entire. supermarket, they even really know what Bitcoin is, if that. And so what happens to all those people that haven't understood what Bitcoin is in this transition? I think that's what I'm unsure about. Okay. This goes on forever. And we're very, very early. We're crazy early. Because I would say

the majority of Bitcoiners are actually Bitcoins measuring in a US dollar thinking it's going up. Absolutely. In other words, the majority of Bitcoiners are still reinforcing an inflationary monetary system, and the majority of Bitcoiners will sell their Bitcoin back to that system. And in other words, they'll distribute their Bitcoin to other people, right? As this goes on, we are so crazy early, insanely early, in the understanding that this is imposing a new discipline. But most people, just saying,

take three different buckets of people. There's Bitcoins that are like you and I who are pricing in Bitcoin and watching the first global free market advance. And in that world, AI is wonderful. It's productivity tool, makes everybody richer. It's, it just moves faster and faster, broad-based abundance from that world. There's another group of people who are Bitcoiners, who are who are still in Fiat and who are potentially getting co-opted by a system

that it would if you couldn't kill Bitcoin what you'd try to do is co-opt it try to get people not to go into self-custody not run nodes you can trust you can trust the centralized version of a paper instrument

tether or whatever on on Bitcoin that's safer you'd be convinced in that and you'd be convinced because it would appear to you your Bitcoin was going up and it would match your view of the world, right? It's always been. Prices always rise. And then there'd be a third group of people who don't understand Bitcoin at all, think it's a scam or it's so early. And what would be happening in their world, they'd be getting debased at a crazy rate. So it actually says nothing about Bitcoin. It says,

nothing about it says our own version of what we think reality looks like in this new immovable thing that's imposing a discipline and on each side you could see the um and i've said this many times before so apologize people have heard it over and over again but but imagine being in venezuela and knowing this because a lot of people had access to bitcoin in venezuela early and some people took it. Some people took it, not just held it, but some people took it and then also created businesses on top of it. And most people held their currency and got destroyed by their currency. So that's what's going to happen. And everybody looks at Venezuela and says, I can't believe they did that. When they are doing it themselves right now, because everywhere is Venezuela.

It's just relative. of. It's just in the West, it's much more of a like, it's the boiling frog analogy, isn't it? Instead of it jumping into a boiling pan, it's just slowly heating up. I actually just did a show with Mricho from Leden and he told his Venezuela story, which was, like, his family's Venezuela story because it's really about his brother escaping. And one thing he said in the show is, like, without Bitcoin, his brother could have escaped, but he wouldn't have the ability to build a life elsewhere. And so Bitcoin really did allow his, his brother to escape Venezuela. and continue to sort of thrive, whereas, like, so many people just got completely wiped out. And that's going to happen in a town near you, right? It's happening everywhere right now, and people think that they're safe in that. Like, it's the most unsafe thing you could be. Like, every single currency, it's relative devaluation, not is it devaluing?

So, in other words, a relative theft rather than is it theft? And that means no one in the world today actually lives in a true democracy because you don't have a vote with how much of your money is being manipulated. So we have an appearance, a charade of a democracy, which is really a control system where the majority of the money comes from debasing your units, just is it stealing from you. And so, of course, from within that system, and what that system would have to do to make you think it's, okay to do that, they would have to, it would be filled with all the things people are worried about.

And it will also make people more worried if you were just trying to understand Bitcoin, it would be pulling you into that other system. So earlier in the show, you said that I wouldn't choose to just turn off the current system like the click of my fingers. And I wouldn't because of the amount of suffering that would cause other people. But in some ways, does AI actually, enshrine the power of this like control system in the sense that as people lose their jobs they're going to want things like ubi and does that actually make the system stronger in some ways so this is a nuanced question yes to the people that don't know because they're they're they're essentially being um mind melded into this is okay

right and they will vote for more of it um and they'll vote for more they'll take less and less agency and trust other people have their best interests, while that's being extracted, wealth and power is being extracted from them. And they will turn within the system, just like this has always happened before, in every previous history, to elect other people to essentially take more of their individual rights and freedoms.

Yeah. And then in service, in name of protecting them. It will happen. It might happen. It will. And lots of people would be, be stuck there. But while that's happening as well, there's an escape hatch for every single person who wants to take their own agency and build onto the first global free market that's ever

existed. And nothing can stop them. Nothing. And so they can just move. I've said many times, it's like they're in a jail cell yelling at their captor. And the jail cell door is open and they could just walk out and live in freedom. And they're so convinced with their narrative of the way that the world looks. This, by the way, this is true for many Bitcoiners, too, thinking that there's a solve within that through politics while this other system is completely imposing a different reality. Do you think we are likely to see UBI in the next, I don't know, say like five years? Will people vote for more UBI and elect people who,

say that you can have something from nothing without understanding where the money comes from. Like, where does it come from? Where does, where does, where does the money for UBI come from if the natural state of the free market is deflation? Meaning if you didn't have UBI, if you just had, if you just held Bitcoin and you were in the new system, every year prices are falling for you forever. Yep. And it would accelerate. So if you wanted UBI, where does the money come from? it comes from stopping the prices from falling. That's where it comes from. It comes from manipulating the free market to stop prices from falling to convince you

it's somebody else's fault. And you need money because you wouldn't need that money or the job if prices kept falling. Maybe, can you explain that further? So why prices fall? Because we use the more value is also because because, because more value costs less to be able to create. And why does it cost less? Because we use technology that removes jobs to be able to create more value for people.

So the fallen prices is a part of the jobs being removed. But if people lose their job to AI, they're still going to need to buy groceries, which even if the price is full, there is still a price to those groceries. So how does that work? So if you're in Bitcoin, you already see it, right? If you were in Bitcoin four years ago or eight years ago and you just bought $100 a week, you never have to worry about groceries or anything else again right now. Prices are falling forever on those items, and they will continue to fall forever on all of those items.

What you're describing is you're measuring from the system thinking prices always rise. I don't have enough Bitcoin. and from that system prices will keep rising, and then you lose your job, and you wonder how you're going to pay for those groceries because you're not living in a Bitcoin system. You're living in a Fiat system, and it is a risk from the Fiat system.

And there's nothing, by the way, Bitcoin didn't create that problem. That problem exists in itself. It exists. The entire problem is essentially an economy based on theft, Like, if you just ask what money is, it's just the trade between us. It's just an abstract concept for the trade between us. So if you insert manipulation into money to the trade between us, what would happen to our trade? It's just entirely manipulated.

Yeah, everything. And what would happen to all of your beliefs from that system if that's what it would look like? It would have to touch absolutely everything. So it has to touch education. It has to touch, the economy is so crazy to simple. You could explain it to a five-year-old. We trade with each other. We trade with more people all over the world to try to gain more value.

And unobstructed from that, prices continue to fall forever as we gain more value. Everybody wins. It's an infinite game where everyone. wins. That's how that's how that's how that's how that's everything in an economy. There is nothing else. So all of what you've learned, why people are so scared to ask the question I just asked, because they don't think they're smart enough to know something that a five-year-old could understand simply, right? Because they're looking at it through a system that says that you're not smart enough. You need a PhD to understand how an economy works. You need to understand all of these

different three-letter words and all of this manipulation so it's so it's harder and more opaque to understand and as you chase these things and you're told oh no that's stupid right you're inside this other system designed to to make a very very simple complex system seem hard to understand so for anyone that's not owning bitcoin right now i assume this gets so of exponentially worse as it gets exponentially better for Bitcoiners. Yes. Yes. And that's why a lot of the bitcoins because it's exponentially better for Bitcoiners,

they're thinking in terms of Fiat and they'll just sell their Bitcoin and they'll move right back to Fiat. And they'll still be retire wealthy and everything else, but they'll distribute their Bitcoin to everybody else who's just coming today. And this is going to continue to happen forever. How long do you think it takes for us to move out of this old system to the new system? So when you ask that, you're really asking how long does it take everyone? Yeah, almost people.

Yeah, but it honestly doesn't matter. It just matters for you. It matters for your friends. It matters for, but you know, and they say in a plane put on your own oxygen mask first. might want to put on your own oxygen mask first. And it doesn't matter what is. So when people see that you've already moved and you're living in a higher energy form, right?

And everything in your life is getting better. As long as you're not kind of using that and saying, you dummy and use it kind of an ego-driven thing, as long as you're still care about that process, you care about other people, you can talk about it at a very high energy type of thing and just allow them to see it in their own time. And they'll see it in their own time.

Do you know somebody who is in Bitcoin, and the more time they spend in Bitcoin, the better and better all of these things are? And I mean, everyone in Bitcoin. Everyone in Bitcoin. Every single person. And that's, I think, why it becomes so hard for people. Because we are living in a different world.

We're living on something. We see the hope, the abundance, the truth, we see a totally different world. And so when I'm walking down the street and I'm paying in Bitcoin, when I'm doing this, all my relationship, many of my relationships are in it, I just, it's a mirror that's on a foundation of truth. Right? So it's a, and that mirror, that reflection back,

the more time you spend in it, it just gets better and better and better. And you can leave the other system behind, but you did, I did, everything else, as we were moving our time and more and more of it to this new system, we also had the same questions that every single person that is just starting their journey today, it has. I know when I first looked at it, I didn't think this could stay decentralized and secure. I thought in 5,000 years of human history that we've never allowed a global free market. then it must be something in us that chooses short term over long term. And we could always get co-opted again.

And so I had a really high bar on could Bitcoin resolve this paradox? And I believe now it resolves this paradox. I guess one of the reasons that I care about this kind of happening to more than just me and my friends and my family is because with the of fiat comes like a degradation of society and I want my daughter to grow up in a nice place not somewhere that's just a dystopian hellscape yeah it's why i wrote by the way this is why i wrote my book right because you could see what would happen um from and and there's going to be a little bunch of dystopian hellscapes there's dystopian hellscape's today in this world where where you have the privilege because you were raised in one of essentially the taker countries from the

have-not countries that we were essentially putting in that position from a monetary system. We didn't know it, or people in the West didn't know it, but they were part of the haves, and other people had to be part of the have-nots in an economic system that was a zero-sum game. And so, but there's been lots of, in your life, in my life, a whole bunch of regions that are hellscapes. and those regions are hellscapes largely because of the same system that it provides your success. That's a really hard thing to know that's true for sure because it wasn't a global free market. And so we're on the winning side of that worried about the hellscapes that are coming to our countries from the very same thing.

Are you worried about the centralization of control over these AI systems in the sense that really it's kind of like four or five big tech companies in Silicon Valley that are driving everything? Yeah. So I think I don't know if I told you this, but one of the robotics companies, one of the AGI robotics companies that's one of the leaders right now was started by a friend of mine. Okay. And his chief scientific officer said to me, we're going to create the first multi-trillion dollar company because it's not going to have any humans working in it. And I said, well, where does the money come from?

And the money comes from that sitting on top of that system that aggregates it all to the control companies. And so that race, that global race for AI from that system, of course is China, US, Nvidia, all of these are all kind of, how do we win this game? So we control AI. And a lot of winning that game is convincing you

through all of your social media channels and everything else, that that's okay, that that's the way of the system. So you're living inside this in most of your channels, everything else. And it is a coordinated game. a crazy coordinated game and you should be scared of what AI can do from that system. Is that because controlling AI is just controlling everyone's data essentially? Yeah, yeah.

You're training the AI every time you're using these models and you see an error and you correct the error. You're training the AI. Yeah. So now, and so they talk about synthetic data, those would be the worst AI model. on the planet because you just have garbage in, garbage out. We are the AI. Like literally, what we do is humans. We are abundance creating machines out of scarcity.

Nothing that's ever been scarce. So far, have we not found a way to break through with our minds and create abundance from it? If you look back through history, and why would that be normal? is because that centralized or that power or that margin attracts more entrepreneurs to solve those problems in a different way. So anything that's stuck, anything that's stuck has always become unstuck through just our mind. That's our role in this. And then we use the things that give us more value.

So it's a really simple concept, really simple concept, the problem is, is you're trying to marry that concept into something that it cannot connect to because it's never existed. So when you connect that concept to Bitcoin, and then you say, do you have this open, decentralized, secure protocol bounded by energy that can't be cheated, then it will impose the concept I just said. And that means relative to that concept, all governments will get smaller over time. It means relative to the debt in the world will be repriced and it'll be way smaller debt on the new system.

It means your house price is falling and will fall forever. It falls back to its utility value where you raise your family in a house, right? Because it's a beautiful neighborhood with your friends and family and kids riding their bikes instead of a store of value against depreciate currencies that are being devalued. It means a whole bunch of other things. from the new system that's imposing that. But you have to stay, you have to stay in the new system. You say, is the natural state of the free market deflation? Yes or no?

Yes. Should we be seeing exponential deflation or exponential productivity gains, which would drive exponential deflation, yes or no? Yes. If you had a decentralized security, protocol bounded by energy that couldn't be cheated, it would be pricing that exactly what I just described perfectly. Would it also be true at the same time that most people wouldn't get, be able to hold on to that thought that I just said? And they would go back to their old,

they would be, okay, okay, I get it. I get it. Prices are falling. I get it. And then they would look at the Bitcoin price in US dollars or whatever every day and think it's going up. Of course they would, right? Would the, would it hang, would Bitcoin price going up, hang better off their mental models of previous models? Would that then say, how are governments going to deal with us? Right. Would that then say, okay, are they going to drive more EUBI?

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in a bull market, people will ask me like, what's your price you're going to sell at? And my answer is always like, sell for what? Like what am I going to sell it back to Fiat? Absolutely not. Like there are realistic situations where I would sell Bitcoin to make my life better because time is more scarce than anything. So if I was going to buy a house for the family or whatever it is. Like those things, I understand why you sell Bitcoin to get something like a new house, like improve your life. But sell it for Fiat, like it makes no sense to me. Totally. And that's, and that, and just like you probably bought a big flat screen TV 10 years ago, right? And then, and then TV felt more and you didn't stop you from buying that TV, even though you knew that.

And then you bought another TV, right, at a better one and a bigger one, or any computer equipment. By the way, all of those, all of those items are still being deba, like deba, so they're way higher than they would be in a natural free market, but you can see where Moore's law is moving really fast, right? You can see that they're outpacing even the debasement of currency and how much they're falling. But all of those items, just like you'll buy in Bitcoin, I spend Bitcoin every day, knowing full well that the Bitcoin I'm spending today, we'll buy more tomorrow. Yeah, because life is, like,

life is just life. You have to spend something. But I remember the first time my dad bought a flat screen TV, it was like $4,000. And that same TV said it cost you like $100. And in fact, you couldn't get one as bad. One dollar, totally. So when it comes to, like,

the idea of super intelligence, do you have any, because to, like, to kind of conceptualize what you're saying here, it seems like you're almost saying, who cares? You know, like this stuff is happening. Like I live in a system outside of the current system, so just let it happen and I will be better off at the end of it. So I wouldn't, I've probably done 1,500 podcasts, right? I've probably done, and why would I keep saying yes? I care, right? I care to help more people understand this. I really do. Because if, if something

grabs them and they can move their time, they're, energy into a productive system that is for all of us, then everybody wins. Those people won. Those people might then touch tens of millions of people more, right? And essentially, what's happening is you're bending reality into a new world that looks nothing like any previous reality. And all of those people that are starting to understand,

even if it's the first day and they're just starting to understand, and then they spend 1% of their energy and they put a little bit into Bitcoin self-custody, then they'll start to learn more about this and they'll take time. So I do care. I care a lot. But I can't, when somebody says,

how do you get everybody to move tomorrow? What does it look like for all those people that are stuck? And I know full well the chaos. And I'm not like how terrible it is. It already is bad. And it's getting worse. And many of those people, they don't know that, but they're feeding the thing they're most scared of.

And they're fighting with people within that system, thinking that it's the other person, and the other person thinks it's them, and it's neither. Right? They could, both people could escape, and they could see how beautiful both of the people are on the new system. And so that system is designed for coercion control, control, right? It's, it has to look like that. And if you're feeding it, if you're, and so what I'm saying is not that I don't care, I don't let that energy that, which is really low frequency energy, touch me.

And so do you think that one of the things that could actually accelerate the decline of the current system is AI in the sense that if we get these AI agents and superintelligence, they're going to at some point need a money to transact between each other. and they may end up picking Bitcoin. Yeah, so not the way that you just described at all, right? Okay. Tell me what you're saying. So, and I'm not saying that you couldn't create a business on needing Transact Sats on that and you could create a business. So that is likely to happen as individual companies try to create more value on this system.

But remember, I said before, these, those prices are going. going to fall to zero. The AI won't need something to interact with another AI to pay the other AI. Why does the AI need the money? To pay for compute. But it's not the AI paying for compute. It's a company paying for compute. It's somebody paying for compute.

And so they're under the same thing as, and so all these things just centralized, would centralize up. And so these prices continue to fall. fall in this forever. They drive falling prices everywhere else forever. It's easier to say, just Bitcoin imposes a discipline that makes the free market work. And now, now you have no place to hide from the free market. The free market is, it is being imposed for a global free market, and you have your chance to contribute to it and benefit from it by moving to Bitcoin. or you could stay in a centralized market,

that it has to get more and more centralized, and be stuck there. So in that, instead of thinking about Bitcoin, that's where instead of thinking about Bitcoin as the user of a tool that is, then the, sorry, an AI using Bitcoin as a user of a tool that then has this super intelligence, that's a scod-like intelligence, that's over all of us because it's using Bitcoin,

it's just like any tool. It's a powerful, powerful tool, like unlike anything we've ever seen. And it will be incredible at finding drug discovery, a whole bunch of other stuff, things in physics that we haven't, like patterns that we haven't been able to see with our time. You'll be able to understand those patterns. So in other words, it's a massive productivity enhancement.

It's like orders of magnitude from going from a shovel to a steam shovel, right? Massive productivity improvements that allow you to do way more for less, see more things, solve problems faster. But we are super, we're higher than it. We're the supercomputer. It's just a tool of productivity, a staggering tool of productivity. That, and unless you believe what you just, the way that you said, then you would be worried about the AIs that are controlled by Tesla or Google and or, or, or or, or at which would eventually be controlled by the government if they're not already.

That would have to happen, right? because they're only a loud domain to work inside a country that gains its powers from its citizens, from that system. So those would be taken, right, by the government for sure. They would be centralized. And so if you think this system is this superintelligence is over you, and it looks like that to you instead of in service to you, you'll probably be more and more afraid of that and you'll probably make it happen more.

So do you think that all the sort of semi-sudo Bitcoin is out there that are buying things like microstrategy instead of Bitcoin are still just living in Fiatlander, don't understand what's really happening here? I don't want to say that because I still now I'm exiting Canada. How are you? Yeah. And more on that, we can talk more about. about it, but the, I still have RSPs because there are attacks and those, and those RSPs,

and I might not very, for much longer, those RSPs are in, nor TFSA in Canada, there's tax rules that I still have, I bought micro strategy a long time ago. Now, I would never only do micro strategy. I convince everybody to, or it's tell everybody have to get into self-custody, Bitcoin, run a node, anything else. But if they wanted to have something in that, to each their own, I do think if people think that the returns forever will be way higher there,

you'll have a bunch of more companies that'll race in and lower their standards. It'll drive a massive hype cycle. And then probably the next down on the other side, all the broken bodies unwinded, because they levered too much is going to be horrific for a bunch of those companies as they start selling their Bitcoin into the market at the same time they can't sell the Bitcoin, right, and driving prices down.

So it's going to be interesting to watch animal spirits on these things. And I think, and so, again, it just goes back to that self-custody that people, I would recommend them doing. But I can see a lot of people first, an easier way they think to get in is this way. And then they get rug pulled later on. Yeah, that makes, I could 100% see that future coming. So you're voting with your feet, voting with your money and potentially leaving Canada. Yeah, I'm going through the process right now.

Are you going to say where you're going or are you keeping that secret? Yeah, I can't say where I'm going right now. but I'm, and I'm, say, let's say, 90% right now I'm doing the work to make that, to see if that's a viable option or when that's in a viable option. And why is that? Is that because you see this kind of dystopian hellscape that we're talking about earlier coming to Canada? Yeah, I just see, if I look at Canada where it's going, I just see that we're on the wrong path. Some countries are going to do a lot more printing, right, and convince a society

that and freedoms are going to be harder to define those countries will face wealth taxes, those confiscatory taxes, a whole bunch of things that will happen. And unfortunately, you can see citizens in those countries voting for more of that. because they don't know what's actually happening. So there's this sort of like constant degradation in most Western countries at moment. Which areas of the world do you think will benefit most from this transition? I think the global south, which has had been extracted from for hundreds of years, right,

more than that. But I think that many of those countries, maybe not the country, maybe not the country, maybe not the dictator or whoever in the country, but many of the citizens themselves in those countries. And you see this too. You've been to some of these regions with me. And you see these circular economies popping up and these people are on a new system and they're emerging.

They've freed themselves from the same thing. And that's why this is true for every single human being on the planet. If they knew, they can move time and energy into the new system without and they can't be stopped. And they actually have the most to gain in that in the sense that, as you say, they're just constantly extracted from. We're the beneficiaries of that in the West.

But when you're under that rule, like, you have so much to gain by moving out of that system and moving to Bitcoin. Yeah, and I've said this on many podcasts in the past. But if you think about how technology evolves, it's always the new entrant. And in this case, it's even more powerful because this is a, protocol, but let's just assume it was just a technology. So a difference there just for protocols are winner take all. Technologies are winner take most. And so, but new technologies, where did they emerge first, right? What typically happens is a monopoly, the biggest company

pre the technology, never uses a technology. They try to block it. They try to block it. They try to stop it. And why? Because they're closer, they're the monopoly. They have all the power. But the further away from the monopoly you are who has little power, they always go first. And they build and it disrupts

from the outside end, the creative destruction. Joseph Schumperter talked about it. And that's what's happening. And now if you just said the monopoly of money, most of the people that watch your podcast are at the top of the monopoly of money game. So at the bottom of that game, there's people that there's a greater

incentive. They're further away from the monopoly and they go first. And so that's what's, that's what's happening. That's why through that lens, it's really easy to see why El Salvador was the first country that went to Bitcoin standard. Yeah, it makes sense. I'm glad like every six months or so, I need just my fill of Jeff Brute booth to kind of lock back in. Because when you explain this to me, it does make sense, but it's very hard to carry that through to like the rest of your life. Like I'll go out and I'll live in Fiatland again at some point. And I really enjoy getting you just to kind of home me back in. It's a, but I think that that's a really good takeaway.

I think that's a good takeaway for anybody listening to this, because that's the normal thing that people would do, right? You know this is true. And then what happens for, even for people that aren't in Bitcoin at all right now, what they go to is they'll think okay i need to do this but then have fear about how do i start where do i start how do i and then they'll stay in fiatland right if things will get worse and worse and they'll see another podcast two years later and then they might do the same thing again right and they'll and so it just takes um um it takes starting with something if you're spending 100 percent of your time

in Fiatland right now, spend 1% in Bitcoin. Just get curious. If you're spending 1%, then 2%, then 4%, then 8%, and you'll notice, you'll feel it just like you, do you feel it, Danny? Every time you move more time, your time is more valuable. It comes back to you. It's just a mirror.

It just comes straight back to you, and your time is more valuable. And you're giving your energy. Instead of having your energy extracted to feed this other system, you're truly choosing to give your energy to the system that has to give back to you. I mean, and that's, so I've taken your time on a Sunday here, and I really appreciate you doing this. You've been busy taking money from the old system to invest in the new Bitcoin system. You just raised $100 million. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah. That fund was over. First of all, that's insane. Is that the largest Bitcoin fund ever? It is. Bitcoin only fund ever. And so, and what's your plan with that? what do you want to like where are you looking where do you think the interesting things are so what

i would say is you know the last one we did i think it was 26.2 million then we did an spiv for seven and a half so so just over 35 million or about 35 million in the first fund but at that time bitcoin was at least as a protocol lightning liquid um fetament a whole bunch of other stuff it was just so so early that you needed to spend time and help these companies mature. And the thesis was this would start to evolve, and these second layers and third layers would evolve, and you'd have this ecosystem that would spread, and then the velocity would increase from there.

That's exactly what's happened, right? So what's happened is in that fund, we don't, I'm not saying we won't, but we don't have a company that's failed. That's, is like unreal for venture capital, for startup venture capital, seed stage venture capital without a company. What would you normally be looking at? Like one in 10 that would succeed.

One in 10 would succeed. So to not have any companies that fail, one that's already going through an acquisition, two that are already very, very profitable and growing extraordinary fast and a bunch of others that are kind of chasing those. It makes sense that this series A fund, bigger funds, would now start seeing what's happening and this ecosystem would be heating up and there'd be a whole bunch of value being created and they would want and more capital would chase companies that are that are winning

and more of this ecosystem. So that's all that's happened, right? The, but it also describes how painful, how crazy early we are in this because the majority of capital is still going into crypto and other nonsense. But this capital is, actually, this came from one of our company founders and I loved it. And he's in, they were in Venezuela. And he said, what would it be like if you just held dollars, US dollars if you were in Venezuela? You would escape the currency devaluation and you look because then what it would it look like if you built a company creating more U.S. dollars in Venezuela, right? Now you have something real. You have something that's, that your balance sheet is growing in dollars, and you're not just protecting a currency devaluation.

You're building value in the free market. Now, every single person today, except for Bitcoiners, live in Venezuela. They just don't know it. And a lot of those bitcoinsers, that live in Venezuela are just holding. What if they're building companies that are adding more to their balance sheet, but by extending the free market? That's what's happening in venture cattle. That's what's happening in these companies.

And you still have to be right. There's more risk there than just buying Bitcoin. But there's also potentially incredible return because you're building, the only way you can create more Bitcoin on your balance sheet is to create more value in somebody else's eyes and the free market on top of Bitcoin. And by doing so,

you extend both the free market and the things that are building and all the more value that's coming on top of Bitcoin, but you're also building a balance sheet in Bitcoin. Are there enough good early stage Bitcoin companies to actually deploy $100 million? Yes. Simply yes. We've been blown away by how much

how much opportunity there is. It's wild when you're in here. And this is actually why I would, the same thing we were talking before. I wouldn't have known this unless I moved all my time into it. I would have actually thought the same thing that most people are spending looking at this just from the sidelines and saying, oh, it's moving too slow,

or there's nobody using it as payments, or if you're inside the other world and you're spending all your time there, you wouldn't see how fast this is developing. But that's also provides the opportunity for people too, because they could go to meetups, they could go to see other people, they could just spend more time. And by spending more time,

they'll be infected because there's so much other opportunity here. I almost feel embarrassed, Jeff, that I've got the price of Bitcoin in dollars, behind me this entire show. I just need to change that so it just says one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin. But I massively appreciate the time. Thank you for taking an hour out of your Sunday to do this. I'm going to see you in a month in Bali as well. We'll go for a stuff. That's going to be awesome. So where do people find you, Jeff? You're not really on Twitter anymore. Are you Noster only now? Yeah, I'm Noster only. And I'm on Noster only for the very same reason. If you know where AI is going,

If you know where it already is, and you're in a centralized system with AI, and that's where you're getting all your information, you are being farmed. Actually, I've been closing out of the show, but I should ask you about NOSTA. Are you going to invest in any NOSTA companies with EGO death? So we haven't seen anything yet that there's some good companies, but we haven't seen anything that right metrics, right valuation, right company, yet. We've looked at a whole bunch. The new fund is a series A fund, so they'd have to be further along.

I see, okay. And just remember why that's so hard, though, in the free market. Because Nostor is at the protocol. That means any client on top of it can be, another client can be spent up tomorrow. another one the next day, the next day, the next day. So if you created a huge moat and you were extracting a whole bunch of margin, you would have a competitor, day two, day three, day four, because you, so, so, but that's how all of things look on Bitcoin.

So you have to really be thoughtful and how am I going to give enduring value to users and make a little bit over time from that. And so it's just that you have to be very thoughtful in your creation of what that model looks like. And then you're going to have to constantly innovate to deliver more value in that. I think there's lots of exciting things coming through Noster and the integration of Noster and Lightning and Fetamint or Cashew.

There's lots of different things coming, but it's just we haven't seen anything yet that we've, we pulled the trigger on. But obviously this was a fund for Bitcoin companies. You'd still be open to doing like Nostra investments. Oh, of course. Yeah, like I'm very pro Noster. Yeah, that's very cool.

I mean, I've been spending more and more time there and like it's just getting better and better. Like the UI of everything is improved so much in the last couple of years. I think we, I do feel like we're waiting for sort of the killer Noster app though. Yeah, and I think that the killer Noster app isn't, I don't think it, it, it It won't look like most people are thinking it right now. It won't come from a Twitter clone. I agree.

Totally agree. It won't come from a YouTube clone. It'll come from something that's integrated that does this plus this, plus something over here that creates a new space, new design space, that we don't know yet. I actually think white noise is really interesting. You know, they're doing this sort of encrypted signal like chat, but with Nostar connections.

I think that's cool. But I totally agree. I don't think the Twitter clone, I think it's very hard to beat a centralized system in that way if you're just copying it. I think you need to do something new. Yeah, and why is that, right? Because the new company has to, the new company or new protocol or has to deliver 10 times more value.

Because of network effects. Because of the network effect. To overcome that network effect, everybody, people don't change for a little bit of value. And if the new company has to market to all those, people and you're spending money marketing, right? The, you're, you can't pull enough people away on a marketing budget. That's why you have to, it has to provide such compelling value.

That's why you use 10 times more value than anything else to have a massive acceleration. Because then, then it's not a market, the marketing that you're telling people you're better. The product is that much better in somebody's life. Mm-hmm. And unless we get like a crazy amount of censorship, I don't see how that wins. So that's the that's the point unless it's so most people through all of the if you think about all of the bots and everything else and the the even with all of that and the censorship that you know is in in in um X that you know your likes and everything else are being oversubscribed to make

it look like appear that you're seeing being seen by more people you know all of these things exist and it still feels like this other thing for most people is 10x. It might already be 10x. It's just they would do people to realize that it's 10x better or it needs to be. Yeah, I totally agree. Jeff, this has been amazing. Thank you for this. I really appreciate it. And I'm looking forward to hanging out in a few weeks' time. Yeah, me too. Cool. Thank you, Jeff. You bet. See you, buddy.