You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 29: Samson Mow - Accelerating Fair Money & Sovereignty

Starting point is 00:00:00 You think you have rights, but then an emergency act comes along and suddenly you have no rights. You think you have money in the bank and suddenly your bank is frozen for whatever reason. The government can find some reason and that won't stop. The only way to stop is that people have to move to that Bitcoin standard where they have their own value. Every right that you have is given to you with conditions. In the U.S., you have the right to free speech and to bear arms. but if you have no money you can't spend your money how do you buy the arms when you move the money to another party you give up sovereignty completely this is why even as despicable as he

Starting point is 00:00:43 is trudeau did a great service for bitcoin because yeah he taught a lot of canadians that your money in the bank is not your money we live in a world where that's becoming increasingly the norm where you can't access your money. So it's all accelerating. I think this is why hyperpiquantization is inevitable because that whole system, the fiat system, the banking system, it's geared towards control. Hello and welcome to another episode of You Are The Voice. Thanks for being with me. Today have the honor of introducing Samson Mao. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being with me, Samson. I wanted to do this for a long time. So in person is the best. So it is. Thank you for

Starting point is 00:01:35 coming. We're in Madeira. It's the first day of Bitcoin Atlantis. Crazy times in the Bitcoin space. So much happening right now around the industry. So this is a really exciting time to be here and to do this. I just want to start with a quick intro for my audience that may not know you. Samson is the CEO of Gen3, a Bitcoin technology company focused on accelerating hyper-Bitcoinization, and I am going to explain what that is very, very soon. Samson is best known for his work with El Salvador's Bitcoin initiatives and his efforts in nation-state Bitcoin adoption around the world. As one of the top executives in the Bitcoin ecosystem, his expertise spans from running one of the largest exchanges and mining pools, which

Starting point is 00:02:26 he was the COO of BTCC, right? BTCC. A long time ago. A long time ago? How long ago? 2015, 16. Wow. It is a long time ago in Bitcoin terms. Yes. to guiding the development and deployment of Bitcoin infrastructure as the CSO of Blockstream. When was that?

Starting point is 00:02:50 2017 to something like 2021. And what about your earlier background? Where did you start? My professional background is game development, actually. And that's kind of how I fell into Bitcoin. So a friend of mine, Bobby, was running an exchange in China. And my office for my game dev company was just across the street, basically. So I started out as an advisor to BTC China, helping them with their mobile app and mobile team.

Starting point is 00:03:20 And then I just got pulled into. So developing for them, and then you got pulled into that space? Yeah, helping them assemble their mobile team. Got it. I was also a games developer, and my first job was a games developer. I'm still a game developer. Are you? You're still writing code?

Starting point is 00:03:36 Not writing, but still building a game called Infinite Fleet. Nice. What is that about? It's a sci-fi strategy game, an MMO game. So you're playing online with hundreds of players, hopefully in the future thousands and tens of thousands, but you're commanding a fleet of ships and fighting against an NPC faction. Are you developing that on your own? I have a team.

Starting point is 00:03:59 Very cool. We also have a shared friend who is a games developer. We do. so that's a that's like a common thread i used to make games for nintendo sony playstation xbox that was my first job at ubisoft okay very cool and so after games development you went on to the bitcoin space yes okay well in parallel i'm still doing games yeah um and very much into bitcoin how do you have time to do everything you're like lying around all all around the world And you have time left over to write some code or manage people?

Starting point is 00:04:39 It's a balancing act. Wow. That's not easy. And when was your introduction to the world of money? I mean, to actually understand what's happening in that world? I would say when I first started learning about Bitcoin. So reading about it online in 2011, 2012 era. And then I started getting more and more interested in 2013 after I started reading about Bitcoin mining and how mining works. So being in games, I don't know if you did online games, but I was focused on a lot of online worlds and online games have economies.

Starting point is 00:05:18 So I always thought Bitcoin was some virtual currency similar to game currencies. And it wasn't until I read the article about mining and I actually set everything up myself that I realized that there's nobody behind the curtain. It's like you go to visit the wizard and you open the curtain and you look behind and there's nothing there. So that was the aha moment for me. And that was when I started really getting more and more interested in Bitcoin. It was from the technical point of view that got you curious. And then from there, you probably understood a lot more about this technology. I started learning more, but, you know, Bitcoin, there's just so much to learn and the rabbit hole is so deep.

Starting point is 00:06:02 I don't think you can ever learn all of it. But I think my real journey started in 2013 when I started reading more and more about Bitcoin. And then you get that the money system is flawed. Well, there's a lot of parallels between game economies and real world economies. How we manage them, there's a direct correlation to how central banks try to manage their economies. So in the real world, you're trying to make sure the money doesn't hyperinflate. And you need ways to destroy the money supply and imbue that fake money with value. And there's a number of ways you can do that.

Starting point is 00:06:42 The easiest way, of course, is taxation. You collect the taxes in that money, much in the way of in World of Warcraft, you have to pay to fix your armor in World of Warcraft Gold. So they're actually very, very similar. And, of course, there's no backing to video game money, and there is no backing to this money. I'm not going to say real money, this money. And I think that that sort of parallel is lost on a lot of people,

Starting point is 00:07:11 that the fiat system must destroy the money to give it value. They must remove money from supply. and they do that in a number of ways but taxation and all the different taxes are really powerful way to remove it and give value to the currency so I think a lot of people don't look very far out but there's death taxes and when you die or when you die in the game it's the same well actually you know when you die in the game you don't lose but when you die in real life you have a death tax you're paying tax your entire life and at the final stage when you exit this

Starting point is 00:07:47 game you lose a good chunk of it you can't even pass it on to your descendants is there a death tax where many countries and it's sort of hidden so what it is is the wow this is the first there's a disposal of your assets so if you own stocks um you have a deemed disposition of the stock so you have to sell it you can't just give your stock to your children um property is the same there's different rules in different places sometimes primary residences can pass tax-free but everything else it's a deemed disposition so you're you're kind of and if you have a will it doesn't matter it doesn't matter it depends on where but generally there is a death tax if it's not called a death tax it's called other things but sure it's a way to you know

Starting point is 00:08:38 Remove money from people. Yeah. Unbelievable. I wasn't aware of that. With great pleasure, I'd like to introduce my sponsors. They helped me fulfill my mission of spreading truth, freedom, and sovereignty. You're the Voice is brought to you by Trezor, the original Bitcoin hardware wallet company

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Starting point is 00:10:32 to panels, presentations and parties. I'd love to meet you in Prague. Use my code for a 10% discount. So I promised I'm going to say what hyper-Bitcoinization is for those that don't know. So I looked for the definition. The moment when Bitcoin becomes the world's dominant form of money, people will value Bitcoin more than fiat currency or precious metals when this happens. And another definition that I found is the inflection point at which Bitcoin becomes the default value system of the world.

Starting point is 00:11:04 Is hyper-Bitcoinization the goal for you? I believe hyper-Bitcoinization is an inevitability. And we are just speeding it up a little bit by trying to get the nation states on board. So Jan 3, we work with governments, work with politicians, regulators, central banks, too, if they're open to discussions. And we try to help them. Some of them are. Really? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:30 Central banks. Wow. Okay. You're going to tell me about that. If you can. We'll get to that. Okay. We're engaging with them to help them implement a Bitcoin strategy.

Starting point is 00:11:40 because our thesis is that we are going to this hyper-Bitcoin estate. That's the final step. But in between, there has to be a transition from the fiat system into this new system. And I don't believe a lot of countries are well prepared. And I also believe this transition is going to happen very rapidly. It's not a matter of decades out. It's probably within the next five to ten years. Really?

Starting point is 00:12:05 Yes. And that means a lot of places are ill-prepared for this transition. And being unprepared for that transition means that a lot of people will suffer, similar to demonetization events in the past. If you look at India in 2016, they pulled some currencies out of circulation, the INR, the rupee, and a lot of people died. About a dozen people died during this very tumultuous demonetization event. And it's just removing a few bills of circulation. But people were lining up at the bank. Some were dying of exposure.

Starting point is 00:12:41 Some were not able to pay medical bills because they had the old bills. Old bills and the hospital wouldn't take the old ones because they're worried that it's going to be worthless. But if you take that and extrapolate that to the whole world, we have about 8 billion people that need to onboard into Bitcoin still. And we're nowhere prepared to do that. El Salvador is decently prepared. They have their national wallet. They have some education programs. They're teaching people in schools and they have Bitcoin law.

Starting point is 00:13:13 But other places are not prepared. So what we hope to do is facilitate that and get some form of Bitcoin adoption now so that they have a few years time to gracefully move into Bitcoin as a parallel track to the fiat track. and be ready for that point at which fiat dies. When you come with that message to governments or to people that work in the establishment and you tell them, listen, this is inevitable and this is going to happen within 5 to 10 years or maybe even longer, it depends on the country.

Starting point is 00:13:49 Aren't they trying to roll you down the stairs and say, hey, leave this place, we don't need that. What is this Bitcoin shit? Or do they actually listen? Are they open to it? So we don't talk about what we just talked about. We come at Bitcoin adoption in terms of incentives and trying to align incentives for them to Bitcoin. And typically this is in line with mining.

Starting point is 00:14:16 So if they have excess energy and a lot of more developing, poor countries in the world have a lot of untapped energy reserves. They just have no way to access them and no money to build hydro dams and geothermal plants and the such. So we look at and see what they need. If they need infrastructure like airports, roads, whatever, hospitals, they could mine Bitcoin and pay for those things with Bitcoin because they have untapped energy or they're just throwing away excess energy. Like there's a hydro dam in Suriname with five megawatts of untapped and used energy. They're just running off that water effectively. But this is the case in many countries. They have energy and they're not using it to mine.

Starting point is 00:15:07 So what we go and do is say, well. They're not using it for anything, I guess. So why don't you just mine Bitcoin and use it? Help your citizens. Yeah, or sell the Bitcoin. If you don't believe in Bitcoin, that's fine. That's your problem. Make money for the country?

Starting point is 00:15:22 Yeah, you can build a hospital. You could give money to the people in poverty. You can do anything with this. So it's almost a sort of a waste to not mine Bitcoin. It's money on the table? Yeah, it's money on the table, literally. So that's what we go to the governments with. We go and see what they need and what we can do to make the incentives align together. Or it could be that they have ESG goals.

Starting point is 00:15:52 and they want to remove flare gas installations. And you can do that mining Bitcoin. So we just kind of try to figure out all the different pieces of the puzzle that appeal to them and approach it that way. But we don't talk about the hyper-Bitcoinization endgame and things like that because I think it will scare them. Sure. You want to meet them on their own terms. You want to speak their language.

Starting point is 00:16:17 You want to align with their goals and maybe their state needs and find a way in. So energy is a way in. It's the easiest way. Easiest way. I think. It's great to have legal tender like El Salvador. But I think it's also more challenging because most governments, they don't have a president or prime minister that fully understands Bitcoin. Right.

Starting point is 00:16:43 People forget that President Bukele was a Bitcoiner before he was a president. So you have that edge where the guy understands it. So, of course, he can go and do something when given the right tools. A lot of other leaders in the world don't understand Bitcoin, but they do understand they have needs for their country. This is getting into the philosophical part. So when we engage with the government, we try not to get into the philosophy of money because that is a very deep rabbit hole. Sure. And I don't believe people today have a good understanding of money.

Starting point is 00:17:18 It's rare that people understand what money is or even what energy is. And this is what is causing systemic energy shortages in Europe because they forgot that I need energy, I need a baseload, a reliable baseload, and they throw things away like nuclear. Yeah, like in Germany, for example. Perfect example. Yeah. So not only do they not understand money, they don't understand energy, but Bitcoin can bring that together, I believe, if we can show them how it works.

Starting point is 00:17:51 They'll understand the mechanism behind it. So let's focus on saying you have excess energy and you can have money. And then they'll work back and understand, well, money and energy now are interrelated because of Bitcoin and mining and how the system works. Very good. Okay, and how ideally do you see hyper-Bitcoinization happening? Is it through nation-states? Is it a combination of grassroots and nation-state adoption? How do you see that?

Starting point is 00:18:23 What's the most effective way that you think we're going to reach that goal? It's a combination of both. You have to have the grassroots initiatives. Something like Bitcoin Beach, Bitcoin Lake, Bitcoin Jungle. these are communities around the world or even this conference that we're here in Madeira for and we recently announced a strategic partnership with Botev in Bulgaria it's a football club so they are pushing Bitcoin adoption there locally amongst their fans and their their community so So these are all ways that further Bitcoin adoption.

Starting point is 00:19:02 The top level, top down approach that we are working on with governments is a way to advance it further. But you need that grounding first. Otherwise, there can be no real adoption. Because at the end of the day, what money is, is people and people using something as money, whether it be coins, gold, paper, bills or Bitcoin. so without that real adoption on the ground everything the government decrees will fail like the government is really bad at doing things like when they want something to happen they'll try to do something but it's almost like it'll never work because of various reasons like they just can't seem to make things happen everything that is real has to be organic from the ground up

Starting point is 00:19:51 I totally agree. But you do need that top-down approach, too. Otherwise, you don't promote the grassroots. And the regulations at the top can hinder a lot of the grassroots adoption. So take Indonesia as an example. They cannot pay with Bitcoin there because of the rules, the law. But they want to do mining. So we can engage with the government there and see if we can push some Bitcoin mining projects.

Starting point is 00:20:21 And then by natural extension, to encourage more miners to set up, you should probably ease the payments part and let people pay. And it would make perfect sense, too, for economic stimulus. Have people already going to Bali when I let them pay in Bitcoin. And it's better for everyone. Sure. Removing that friction and that barrier. Can you give some other examples of projects you're working on now in Gen 3? You mentioned Suriname.

Starting point is 00:20:50 Yeah, there's a lot. Suriname, there is an interesting way that we could get Bitcoin accepted almost as if it was legal tender through an executive order. So they have their own local money, SRD, but they also use the dollar and the euro. And there's two executive orders that allow the people to use that as money. so they simply need to put forth an executive order for bitcoin and the case that we have is that bitcoin is the money of el salvador so it is a foreign currency which means they can simply pass this executive order but el salvador anchoring bitcoin as legal tender makes possible a lot of different avenues for other countries to adopt bitcoin with more legislative overhang like they don't need to pass any laws they can use pre-existing laws or pre-existing mechanisms to make bitcoin de facto legal tender or deregulate or deregulate yeah that's what i wanted to ask about argentina what do you think about mile's uh policies and where he's taking this the net

Starting point is 00:21:56 effect is the same so you can have bitcoin as legal tender you can be a place like switzerland and there is no capital gains so you can just use bitcoin and i think portugal was the same case before, but then they went more with the German model where you have to hold it for one year and then it's tax-free. But deregulation is just as good as legal tender, and that's in line with Millet's policy. So I think it's probably the best we'll get from his government. I don't think they'll say Bitcoin is legal tender, but the deregulation and a little gentle nudging towards

Starting point is 00:22:31 Bitcoin. I think Diana Mondino had said something like, you can use Bitcoin. it's kind of a nod and i'll take it sure it's better than nothing okay great wonderful do you think governments i know this is a generalization but do you think governments are allies can they be trusted i mean i've experienced bad things from governments in the last few years i'm canadian so oh yeah you've got us a rock star there yeah we've we've got the front row seats to what governments can do but i think at the end of the day governments are still made up of people and you can have bad governments because there are bad people weak people in the government like trudeau and there's plenty of examples of this but you can also have good people in the government

Starting point is 00:23:20 that want good things for their constituents but the bitcoin adoption aspect is critical i believe And this is why a lot of us are galvanized around Jan 3 in our mission, because we can see Bitcoin changing the government, changing the relation between the state and a citizen of the state, whereby you're not just a tax slave anymore, but you're someone that has to be respected and listened to because now they can't just take your stuff, right? You can't print money anymore. Inflation is basically hidden money printing. People don't realize it, but you can print money explicitly or implicitly through inflation. You can tax people explicitly or tax people secretly through inflation. And with Bitcoin, you can't do that anymore. And if you look at a lot of government policy, the bad policy, most people would never agree to things like what they're doing.

Starting point is 00:24:25 Like in Canada, we have the Arrive Can Scandal or Arrive Scam, as they're calling it now. What is that? It was during COVID. They had an app that you had to put your vaccination status and update everything every time you entered and left Canada. Right. And they spent $84 million on this app that just logged data, basically. And a recent revelation was the CEO of ArriveCAN was actually a government employee at the National Defense, Department of Defense. So there's a lot of corruption and Bitcoin can fix all of this, I believe.

Starting point is 00:25:06 But the point is, there are a lot of bad things governments can do to people. And Bitcoin removes the ability for them to do that because now you kind of have to ask people to put up money, whether it's for war or for Arrive Can or something. And people wouldn't agree to spending money in that way. So it restores a balance, I believe, to the force. I mean, they won't ask, they will continue doing, but then you can vote with your feet and just not participate in the system as much as you would before when you relied only on fiat money, I guess, right? It's your implicit way of opting out from the system. But not everyone can vote with their feet. Some people have to stay for whatever reasons.

Starting point is 00:25:55 Sure. And there's also the challenge of can you leave too? Because we've learned through COVID that mobility can be stopped. So I think we have to at some point engage with the governments. We can't just flee. There's only so many places we can go. In theory, we could all flee to El Salvador. But then what happens to El Salvador?

Starting point is 00:26:19 If every country is a fiat country and controlled by the money printers and we're all in El Salvador, well, they can just nuke us or something, right? So we have to fight back and we have to engage to bring more allies to the Bitcoin side. Where we are. Yeah. And I think we will get there simply because of necessities. Governments at the end of the day need money.

Starting point is 00:26:44 How do you maintain a standing army for defense if you cannot pay the soldiers, if your money is worthless? And we've seen examples of this from history where the government can't pay the soldiers and that's it. If the soldiers want Bitcoin, then maybe you need to have Bitcoin. So it becomes a national imperative for them actually to have sound money. And this is why a lot of governments buy gold, because they know that the fiat money is just a game,

Starting point is 00:27:12 a thinly held together by tape game that is going to fall apart at any time. That's why they're buying gold. so yes bitcoin is just new gold do you think that some countries are holding bitcoin and do you know of any oh el salvador yeah sure not the obvious ones not the obvious ones there i mean snowden was just saying something that i think he's speculating but we do know that there are countries mining and thereby they are holding so kingdom of bhutan and uh i believe there are a few other countries too that have Bitcoin mining operations that have yet to reveal them. And this is probably why hash rate has been going parabolic, even though price now is caught

Starting point is 00:27:58 up a bit to hash rate growth. But I would say two months back, you can see hash rate is outstripping the price. When the halving comes, a lot of these mining entities are going to potentially be underwater. Now, of course, we've caught up, but why is it that when they're technically going to be insolvent or needing to shut down, why is the hash rate still going up? And that's because it's nation states mining. For them, energy is free. Their operating cost is technically zero. it's their own energy. Interesting. Okay. So we talked a bit about governments and how they can put in place restrictions. They can weaponize money. And there's another trend that I want to talk to you about, which is freezing bank accounts. We've seen that in Canada,

Starting point is 00:28:55 throughout the Freedom Convoy in the UK with Nigel Farage, for example. In Germany, They're working on a new regulation to freeze bank accounts of the far right. That's a new thing. And in Israel, recently they have seized bank accounts of Israeli settlers because of Biden's sanctions. Biden put a sanction on these specific individuals in Israel and their banks seized their bank accounts, which is unheard of. I mean, a president of a foreign country can control the bank account of another country. So when we're looking at freezing bank accounts or moving money between countries, how do you think that trend of weaponizing money by governments is going to take shape?

Starting point is 00:29:47 To me, it just looks like it's increasing. It's growing all the time. And here you are coming with the message of free the people. let them hold their own money and let's separate money from the state and or maybe it's just western democracies right that have gone completely crazy and decided to put even more control over their citizens money i believe bitcoin can fix this because bitcoin changes people it makes them less scared of the world more hopeful and if we can have politicians that are bitcoiners we should have better governments a lot of this behavior is done out of fear so trudeau was scared shitless

Starting point is 00:30:36 about the freedom convoy and that's why they did what he did and it was unconstitutional and it was wrong and technically he should be in jail but that's not how the system works but the hope is that with getting more politicians into bitcoin they will learn about these things if you look at all of our rights it's all very weakly held together and very brittle you think you have rights but then an emergency act comes along and suddenly you have no rights you think you have money in the bank and suddenly your bank is frozen for whatever reason and the thing you have to understand is there's always a reason the government can find some reason and that won't stop i i think the only way to stop is that people have to move to that bitcoin

Starting point is 00:31:27 standard where they have their own value every right that you have is given to you with conditions like in the u.s you have the right to free speech and to bear arms but if you have no money you can't spend your money how do you buy the arms so money is a critical piece of that yeah and people just have to learn that this is the only way forward because when you move the money to another party you give up sovereignty completely it's difficult to fully comprehend the relation between all that until you're faced with it i think this is why even as despicable as he is trudeau did a great service for bitcoin because yeah he taught a lot of canadians that your money in the bank is not your money right and people are learning like in israel too that uh yep it's

Starting point is 00:32:26 not your money so it's just a learning curve people have to go through it's difficult to comprehend because we grew up in such a controlled and peaceful environment where it's okay to give your money to the bank to hold on to and you can take it at any time until suddenly you can't so it's difficult for people to understand that until they actually face it i believe But we live in a world where that's becoming increasingly the norm, where you can't access your money. So it's all accelerating. I think this is why hyperpigmentation is inevitable, because that whole system, the fiat system, the banking system, it's geared towards control. And it's controlled by whoever can control that system.

Starting point is 00:33:14 And that's becoming increasingly at odds with ordinary people trying to just live their lives. so everything is driving people to bitcoin i'm with you a hundred percent otherwise i wouldn't be speaking being here speaking with you i did the same journey you know although my bank account was never froze it was never frozen by the the state when covet happened and and i realized how the state can invade my private rights on my own body and try to coerce me and try to threaten me and take my rights away and turn me into this weird creature that is outcasted from society and suffer censorship as well, I then asked myself the question, if they can do that with my private body,

Starting point is 00:34:06 can they do that with my private property and with money? And that's how I started learning about money, because I wanted to protect myself. And the answer was, yes, they can. And then Bitcoin, and then like, great, great. right it exists now there is a way that we can protect ourselves but then you know i always say i came for the hedging and i stayed for the freedom because it allows really a a paradigm shift but if you can imagine it think of a government where everyone is a bitcoiner you have uh wow you have a base level of understanding in the government now of

Starting point is 00:34:42 private property and why it's important to have your own assets. So I think you would see less collectivism seeping through the shroud, right? Governments are very collectivist in the end of the day because it's just the incentive structure of how it works, how democracy works. You have to give people something and buy their votes. It sounds bad saying it, but that is really what you're doing right you're sure giving them free stuff sure to kind of pacify them and sure buy their votes but at the same time security universal basic income some and money for the poor whatever yeah and people they want the free stuff but there is no such thing as free stuff there is no free lunch and bitcoin teaches you all of these things that are lost it's almost like the wisdom of the

Starting point is 00:35:36 ages that there's no free stuff is lost because we've grown up in a world of free stuff and easy money where we're stealing from future generations so if the government is made up of bitcoiners they should understand we shouldn't seize people's assets because you know i'm a bitcoin i don't i want to have my own keys and i don't want to steal your stuff and if the general populace also understands bitcoin and has bitcoin then they'll understand too that there is no free stuff and And what we're trying to do at Gen3 with helping the governments mine Bitcoin is a step to getting there because the government is effectively a large machine that is very hungry for money all the time, but is largely incapable of generating money except for harvesting it from people. And this is why the alignment of incentives is completely broken because they treat you as a resource, right? You're the battery in the matrix.

Starting point is 00:36:35 You're the revenue for the internal revenue service, right? You're the revenue generator. Yes. And I've had discussions with people that say governments should not be in the business of generating money. But no, the machine demands money to pay the government, the public service. And the only way they can get the money, if not by mining Bitcoin, is by harvesting from you. So if you can get them mining Bitcoin and using all the natural resources at their disposal, and there's a lot of natural resources that can be used to mine Bitcoin, then they can feed themselves. But at the same time, they can learn about what money is and energy is and Bitcoin is, and that sort of heals them.

Starting point is 00:37:15 So I believe Bitcoin can fix a lot. We often say Bitcoin fixes this, and this is exactly how it fixes this. Love it. I wanted to ask you to give a simple explanation like the differences between stable coins and bitcoin that and then maybe we can touch on aqua and the wallet and sure so stable coins I view as not crypto there's bitcoin stable coins and all the rest crypto okay stable coins are obviously centralized right it's a company issuing it and they have like tether for example like tether for example they have uh treasuries so it's not decentralized they use decentralized rails and

Starting point is 00:37:56 people can access it that way and transact it that way but it is not a decentralized thing at least not yet maybe one day but then you have all the other projects which are basically securities they're companies pretending to be decentralized and running these projects to sell unlicensed securities or unregistered securities to retail investors so that's really what you have so you have bitcoin and largely everything else but i do see value in stable coins because a lot of people in the world their own currency like the argentinian peso is being devalued massively and inflated away and they need something to 230 percent i read something like that i mean it changes every day but they they need something to protect themselves

Starting point is 00:38:45 And for the vast majority of people, the U.S. dollar is a safe haven. If it is or isn't, it's outside of the realm of what they believe because they don't understand Bitcoin yet. But our hope is that if we can provide them that in Aqua, and this is a Bitcoin wallet with stable coins, if we can give them Tether, then they might move into Bitcoin later because Bitcoin is at the top. We show the Bitcoin price and we mark your Bitcoin on-chain account as your savings account. So we hope that we can educate them that way. And I think there's an opportunity for us to tap into this market of people that want the stablecoins because there's billions and billions of dollars of demand for USDT.

Starting point is 00:39:32 And most Bitcoin wallets just disregard that because they only want to be Bitcoin. But to onboard the next billion people, I think we need to bring them into USDT on Liquid, not on other altcoins, and then get them into the Bitcoin ecosystem. So you're saying it's like a gradual onboarding. Let's first bring them through USDT and then introduce them to Bitcoin. Yes. So allow them to convert from USDT to Bitcoin inside the wallet. Okay. And Aqua, your new wallet, where is it deployed today?

Starting point is 00:40:04 Is it deployed yet? It's live and people are already using it at the Bitcoin Atlantis conference. Ah, yeah? Paying for food and water. I need to download it and try it. You do need to download it and try it. Okay, I used my bullet today. Did you have any problems?

Starting point is 00:40:17 No. No, zero? No, zero. Oh, you're lucky. Ah, really? And some people had? Well, lightning wallets have a lot of issues. They're finicky.

Starting point is 00:40:26 Did I even, I don't think I even paid any fee. I thought that that was weird. Okay, lightning was, yeah, four hours ago. I paid 492 US dollars, which is 7,800 Satoshis, zero dollar fee for my coffee and whatever it was. You're saying with Aqua, we can use both USDT and Bitcoin. Yes. So it's USDT on liquid and Aqua's layer two balance is on liquid too. So what we're using is Lightning is on and off ramp.

Starting point is 00:41:00 Yes. So your balance is always in liquid. So you don't have to deal with channel management and liquidity. And we solve one problem, which is onboarding new people to Bitcoin, because you had no problems because you opened a fat channel, right? You have a big channel. But if you're new to Bitcoin and I say, I want to send you some sets and well, first, you could open a channel that doesn't really work. Right. Or I have to send you a fat channel. Otherwise, it's kind of useless for you.

Starting point is 00:41:29 So with Aqua, you can receive a few dollars and that just is converted into liquid Bitcoin without having to open any channels and do any balancing or management. And it's transparent for the end user if it's Lightning or Liquid. So when you receive a Lightning payment, it just swaps into Liquid. And when you send it over Lightning, it swaps back out. So that is seamless for the user. But we decided not to overload them with too much information saying that this is a swap or anything like that. But they can see it in the user interface that there's a service and there's a swap. Okay.

Starting point is 00:42:13 And there are fees for those swaps? Yeah. You have to pay the liquid chain fee and then the bolts, which is a swap service. I think they charge 0.3% or something. Okay. That's not too bad. It's not too bad. but the thing is you have to understand to open your channel you had to pay somebody some people

Starting point is 00:42:32 were upset because in aqua there's like a fee for every single transaction it's not zero but with a lightning wallet like that you're paying it up front and then yes your transactions are free now but you paid first to get it whereas we're a la carte every single time you do it you pay a little tiny bit rather than a big chunk at the beginning got it okay um you had a tweet recently bitcoin has decoupled from the legacy markets can you explain that a bit and maybe give us your price prediction sure so if you look at bitcoin compared to the s&p or any of these indices or nasdaq even you can see that there are points in bitcoin which it decouples from the markets the market was either flat or went down and bitcoin did a big leg up so recently the stock

Starting point is 00:43:28 markets were flat to negative and we jumped up to 60 something so this is uh one of those pivotal moments where we decouple a bit more from the legacy financial system but if you just compare bitcoin to the dollar like the purchasing power of the dollar to bitcoin is trending to zero you see it very clearly for argentinian peso and turkish lira not as clear for the dollar but it is going down to to zero so that is the decoupling when we break free of the traditional markets because there are periods in which we track very closely as a tech stock almost and when the market is up bitcoin is up when the market is down bitcoin is down but we have these clear breaks And this was one of those clear breaks.

Starting point is 00:44:14 And you're very well known for your predictions about the price. I don't care so much about the price of Bitcoin. I do care when I go in and I buy more, but the people care because normally that's their way in. They want to know how much fiat they need to put in order to get Bitcoin, especially the first times. So what do you predict that's going to happen with the fiat price of Bitcoin? I think we're going to see a million this year. Really? A million this year? 2024? 2024.

Starting point is 00:44:46 Oh my God, I'm going to be a millionaire? Multi-millionaire. You just said it. Multi-millionaire. Maybe multi-millionaire. But yeah, I think Bitcoin price has been suppressed for a very long time. We should have hit these levels, maybe 100K a few years ago. But if you look at the amount of fraud that was perpetrated by FTX and other companies, that's really what stole the 100K from Bitcoin in 2021. We should have been there, but they stole that.

Starting point is 00:45:19 Because people were doubting and selling and they were scared because of what happened to FTX. It all unraveled. And we learned that FTX was selling Bitcoin that they didn't have even. So it's just selling fake Bitcoin. Big, big fraud. It did not exist. And it's possible other groups did the same thing and it all untangled. And then Bitcoin crashed because people lost confidence in it.

Starting point is 00:45:45 And we've recovered. But then we still had a little bit of that untangling to do with GBDC, which is all interconnected to the prior fraud. This time it's just Barry Silbert's group, DCG, right, and Genesis. So that's still untangling now. And I think this is why we saw a muted response when the ETFs launched. But it's very clear if you're looking carefully that there's a massive amount of demand that's increasing constantly from the ETFs. And that will outpace any of the untangling of fraudulent activities from Genesis and DCG now. so given all of that and given that we've effectively almost reached the previous all-time

Starting point is 00:46:30 highs pre-halving i don't see it being impossible that we see 1 million this year wow okay so there are some people that are already taking their first steps in bitcoin and they're finding the courage to start something new, but people are still concerned and taking that leap of faith and trying something new. It requires learning. It requires some investment of time and energy in order to find the answers you're looking for. Where would you recommend them to start? I would say the first step is to just get a little bit of Bitcoin in a wallet and just see what it's like to have money of your own yes and this is going back to what we're talking about earlier bitcoin is not new the technology and how we do money now with bitcoin is new relative to

Starting point is 00:47:26 the fiat system which is centralized but peer-to-peer money is the original money right it's how money first came about people interacting and trading with one another if you look at what money is is simply an abstraction of human time and energy i make hats and maybe you make essential oils we can trade and you have that coincidence of wants like i just happen to want a bottle of essential oil and you want a hat and we can do that but with money you know we can use a third mechanism to facilitate that trade and all of this is peer-to-peer money allows us to scale up from a small community doing this trade to global commerce and that's done by making it electronic but the problem is when we made it electronic it was also heavily centralized and centralized

Starting point is 00:48:19 systems are prone to attack and being co-opted by central forces like governments so what bitcoin does is just restores the balance everyone is a node on the network everyone has a bearer asset i have bitcoin you have bitcoin and that's it so it's actually going back to the roots of money yes it's going back to the basics simplifies it yeah and removes all the middlemen from the picture instead of gold coins it's the orange coin that's yes yes yes i always call it the digital gold okay great and samson where is best to follow you uh i'm on twitter uh my handle is Excellion, E-X-C-E-L-L-I-O-N. And then if you're interested in nation state adoption, we're Jan3com.

Starting point is 00:49:05 Okay, so that's a message that I want to put through to my audience. So if there are people listening that are connected to politicians in their countries, the right type of politicians, the ones with an open mind and maybe even an open heart, the ones that really want to do good for their constituents, then feel free to DM Jan 3 and tell them that you can arrange maybe a meeting or a Zoom call or a discussion between Jan 3 and that politician, right? So that they can educate them and teach them about that. I mean, yeah, at least suggest a conversation to learn more about this new form of liberation of money.

Starting point is 00:49:51 We have an email actually. It's coffee at jan3.com. Great, okay. Jan 3, number 3. Okay, great. And that's where we funnel nation-state inquiries to. But all of the connections that we make are just from Bitcoiners and ordinary people. From the community. Yeah, because they want to see something happen.

Starting point is 00:50:10 Sure, exactly. So if you're in that category where you understand what's coming and you can foresee the changes that are coming in the monetary system and you are sick of running away, yelling at the government or trying to move to another country because you can't, then maybe your solution is trying to educate your politicians. And so maybe that's where Jan 3 can come in and help, right? Excellent. Okay. And so I want to, first of all, say a big, big thank you

Starting point is 00:50:39 for all the work you're doing inside the Bitcoin community because you're one of the most, I think, impressive and important voices. Thank you. constantly creating content, answering questions and being there for other people. So that's really impressive. Thank you for that. Thank you very much. And thank you for coming to talk to me. It's a pleasure. We should do it again sometime. Cool. We will and enjoy the conference. Thank you.

You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 29: Samson Mow - Accelerating Fair Money & Sovereignty

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