You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 99: Knut Svanholm - Stop Asking Permission: Bitcoin Or Fiat Prison

Starting point is 00:00:00 If I put a gun at your head and say, Efra, give me all your bitcoins, you can give me whatever amount you want, but I have no way as the attacker of knowing how much you actually had. And that's true for every single person on earth right now. Bitcoin gives you actual better protection against that, especially in the long run. I think we ought to think more about that and promote that aspect of it more. I see Bitcoin as intellectual armor rather than a weapon. It changes the dynamics of violence because it changes the profitability of violent behavior stable coins they are fiat they may be gateway drug to bitcoin but it's crucial to remember that they're still not the solution they may be a transitory slightly better form of shit but they're still shit because it's

Starting point is 00:00:44 still fiat we're allowed by our overlords to live in peace as long as we pay a tribute every once in a while in the form of taxes and inflation if you don't pay your taxes you will end up at the far end of the barrel of a gun. The government is not your friend. Make moral choices based on what's actually ethical and not what some bureaucrat has dictated is ethical. Bitcoin is probably not for everyone, but it is for anyone. Anyone willing to do the work, anyone willing to put in the time and effort to actually be able to do Bitcoin for real. Hello, and welcome to another episode of You're the Voice from Lugano, Switzerland. This is quite unique.

Starting point is 00:01:37 I'm here with Plan B Network. We are recording a few episodes here this week, and we're here as part of the Plan B Network school, summer school. And I'm here with one of my colleague professors, Professor Knud Svanholm. Hey, Knud. Hey, Efrat. How are you? Good to be here. I absolutely love being in Lugano, as always. It's beautiful. We're getting the VIP treatment here. It's fantastic.

Starting point is 00:02:10 Isn't it a great experience? So we're spontaneously jumping on to take the great advantage that we're here together in this great setup and record another episode, because why not, right? Why not? We always have a lot to say, and I always love to pick your brain. In fact, the first time we did this was a few months ago, and this is episode 51 of my podcast for people to go and listen to with Knut and Luke. It was a fantastic episode where we covered a lot of your recent book, Clown World. So please go and listen to that one first. And let's do just a quick bio reminder for those of my audience that may see you for the first time.

Starting point is 00:02:57 I want them to know that Knut is a speaker, writer, educator, and philosopher focused on Bitcoin. Formerly a toll ship sailor and shipping manager. He's the author of Bitcoin Sovereignty Through Mathematics, Everything Divided by 21 Million. And as we said recently, Clown World, what's the full name of that? The Inverse of Clown, Bitcoin, The Inverse of Clown World. Bitcoin, The Inverse of Clown World, that's right. And several other books exploring the philosophical depths of Bitcoin. He's also credited with popularizing the meme Infinity Divided by 21 Million

Starting point is 00:03:33 and is a popular voice on stages and podcasts worldwide. So thanks for being here. I want to dive straight into some of the current affairs that we actually are seeing around us, kind of unraveling in the different spheres around us, political, corporate, etc. So my first question would be, there's a growing anxiety around stable coins, CBDCs and government control of money. What's your take on the recent push for regulation, especially around stable coins? And how would you respond to people who say stablecoins are just the backdoor to CBDCs?

Starting point is 00:04:15 I think this is an idea I had the other day. Maybe the fear of CBDCs is the psyop because they're already here. I mean, we're already using credit cards and debit cards. We're already KYC'd whenever we try to do anything. uh in using the banking system you're already cbdc'd uh so to speak to a large extent yeah so so maybe this this whole thing plays out with uh like okay we we the people manage to stop cbdcs and then we're still in fiat hell because we're using what is essentially already cbdcs i mean it's i guess it's easier for the chinese government to to stop someone from buying a

Starting point is 00:05:03 train ticket by just uh what's the app called we chat yeah yeah yeah and they just uh block that function in the app it's a bit harder to do with credit and debit cards but i remember even back when 9-11 happened like that's decades ago uh there were two uh um citizen like arabs citizens I don't remember what country they were from, but in Sweden that had some far-fetched ties to Al-Qaeda or whatever, and they just shut their bank accounts down. No questions asked, even though they were in a different country and had nothing to do with this thing. I'm sort of pulling this out of somewhere now, so I don't remember the details. It's not about the political point of it. No, the point is that they already have the power to shut you out if you want to.

Starting point is 00:06:01 So what I advise people to do is just stay out of the banking system as much as possible. And I mean, stable coins, they are fiat and they may be gateway drug to Bitcoin and good for the unbanked and so on and so forth. but it's crucial to remember that they're still not the solution they may be a transitory slightly better form of shit but they're still shit because it's still fiat like stable horses live in stables and fiat is shit so how about horse shit coins instead of stable like that's uh yeah well your view on it is quite clear but to your point of of um we're already being surveilled with fiat i totally agree with you and i think that this is a an excellent wake

Starting point is 00:07:02 up call for people who really do value freedom and they do want financial freedom but what i see happening is them yelling cash is king let's continue using cash yeah because cash will protect our privacy so they may be right on the privacy front but they get it all wrong about liberty in general of fiat because fiat is enslaving them without them knowing right and how are you going to get the cash like if i needed to get some cash like uh two years ago from the bank i'm not going disclose why uh but they uh they asked me and this was quite an amount but not an enormous amount by any stretch of the imagination it's still something i was willing to carry around in my pocket yep but the bank asked me what i was going to do with the money like i should be asking them what they

Starting point is 00:07:53 want to do with the money because it's my money but it isn't like fiat in a bank account is not yours so what what it is what a bank account actually is is a two out of three multi-sig with you the bank and the state and both the bank and the state have master keys so they only need one out of three you need the approval at least one of the others wow that's a great way of putting it i never thought about it it's a multi-sig with you being one out of three and the weakest link the weakest link yeah so the money in the bank can do whatever the fuck they want and it's not money to begin with it's credit like it's fiat it's fiduciary media it's it's fraudulent it's it's bad and like when when when i saw the students in here like these are the top students of this

Starting point is 00:08:38 plan b school uh top 21 students a lot of them are these uh i i got the feeling i don't know if you agree with this but i got the feeling that a lot of them are from uh quite techie and background more more on the tech background than the than the money background so what i want to do here is this is to uh if there's anything i can contribute with is uh to teach them not what they can do but what they ought or ought not to do uh because i think there's a misconception that fiat is okay uh to a certain extent in certain contexts or whatnot and that fractional reserve banking is okay as long as this or that but it really isn't if you boil it down to actual ethics and natural law so long story short here i i am of the opinion that laws are ought to be discovered

Starting point is 00:09:35 rather than uh rather than dictated by men uh so how do we discover a law well we have to start from uh first principles and admit that humans act purposefully because we don't want want to reach a state of less uneasiness and the best way to do that which we can also deduct from first principles thinking is to collaborate with one another rather than to fight one another and the the only reason we have conflict at all is because some resources are scarce uh even if we lived in the garden of eden where everything is abundant and free uh two people can still want to occupy the same spot in space and therefore there's a reason for conflict there because there's uh not not an infinite amount of space so so humans end up in

Starting point is 00:10:36 in conflicts with one another because resources are scarce and both both people want want this resource whatever it may be and we have two ways of resolving that conflict and one is violence and the other is argumentation or communication and if we want to reduce the total number of of conflicts in the world if we want to reduce bads so to speak if we want to if we want to become more civilized and less barbaric we need to find a framework around how to minimize the number of conflicts or the even the reasons to have conflicts and i i would say like i'm skipping a number of steps here but you you will come to the conclusion that all fiat is actually increasing the potential for conflict in the world and not the other way

Starting point is 00:11:37 around so it's not resolving anything it's creating more conflicts creating more scarcity in goods when you have abundance in money you have scarce scarcity in in assets and the other way around when you have scarcity in money everything else becomes abundant because you get into the free market uh sound money world where everything functions properly and you minimize conflict so so if the goal is conflict resolution which which is it should always be because that optimizes for for everyone everywhere all at once like there's there's no good argument against that so i'd say science cannot derive an ought from an is but we can get pretty close to an ought not and the ought not is you ought not aggress against another person it's the non-aggression principle

Starting point is 00:12:29 and so so this is the main point i want to instill in these students so that they if there's anything they take away from my lecture is that this is not uh optional look in the mirror what kind of person do you want to be why do you like bitcoin in the first place it's the don't steal of it all that is ought to be the attractive thing about it which is also why i'm so vehemently against other use cases for bitcoin because i think think they take away from bitcoin's ability to be a medium of change of a space and time which is its main purpose and that is the thing that solves all the other conflicts so yeah you're the voice is brought to you by trezor the original bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets

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Starting point is 00:14:13 open source and built with one focus beyond keys protecting humans only 42 lifetime subscriptions are available at $199 forever. Head over to bitvault.sv to sign up and use code AFLAT for 10% off. I really echo what you're trying to do here with the students because I think taking a minute to focus them on basic principles of natural law

Starting point is 00:14:45 and bring them back to why in the first place We need this and why do they want to participate in it is so valuable. It is so easy to get carried away these days to all the other stuff that Bitcoin can offer. But really, I think the basic need or if it's resolving conflict, and as you said, there is no dispute over the fact that with less conflict in the world, we will probably be living a better life wherever we are. Not probably, absolutely. Yes, absolutely, exactly. So how can we tune in their minds to how they contribute to less aggression and to resolving conflict by using Bitcoin? I think this is a perfect place to put this. Since we're in Giacomo land here, so we love Venn diagrams, right? So the Venn diagram, I think there are some Venn diagrams that overlap pretty well.

Starting point is 00:15:49 And one is like technical knowledge about Bitcoin, like network technologies, computer science, whatever. And the other, practical knowledge about money. And those two, we want Bitcoiners to be in the overlap between the two. and these two like they are the same as what you can and what you ought the technical is what you can do the praxeological what you ought to so so and there is so much else there it's it's like the mathematics the the the praxeology it's the objective reality and subjective uh human valuations we need these we need bitcoin to be in the middle beautiful beautifully said all right My next question. So as governments double down on surveillance and control, we're also seeing massive cultural and institutional trust erosion. In that context, do you see Bitcoin as a protest, a tool or something more foundational?

Starting point is 00:16:51 All three. First and foremost, I see Bitcoin as intellectual armor rather than a weapon. So what it does, it changes the dynamics of violence because it changes the profitability of violent behavior or aggression. This simple example I do in every single talk and every single interview if i put a gun at your head and say get efra give me all your bitcoins you can give me whatever amount you want but i have no way as the attacker of knowing how much you actually had and that's true for every single person on earth right now which means that it's probably better for me the attacker to provide something of value back and have a good relationship with you rather than just aggress against you and i think this is such an under appreciated aspect

Starting point is 00:17:48 of it, because we see all this FUD news about people getting kidnapped and extorted. That exists in fiat land too. Bitcoin gives you actual better protection against that, especially in the long run. And I think we ought to think more about that and promote that aspect of it more, because I don't think people really get that when money is nothing but information, when the satoshis are in our heads because the ability to move them is all about keeping a secret from someone else then it becomes so much more expensive to attack other people rather than to just provide something of value back and that's the the beauty of the the thing you know

Starting point is 00:18:37 we we often may not want to go there but what europe is essentially saying the nature of the attack changes like the whole dynamic dynamics of the attack changes instead of just operating violence to get something off you you need to be more sophisticated about how you're going to get it from you and are you actually going to get what you want when you attack so we don't like to think that way because we don't want to perceive ourselves as attackers in other words is more costly exactly yeah so it takes more time energy resources sophistication intellect to try and really get the loot you are trying to get from someone and the the the thing people forget here we think we live in relative peace but that is only from uh the perspective of someone

Starting point is 00:19:30 accepting the stockholm syndrome that everyone is suffering from that the states are that governments are legit so yes we live in peace uh that is it's we're allowed by our overlords to live in peace as long as we pay a tribute every once in a while uh in form in the form of taxes and inflation so so it's it's just like the mafia like uh there can be wars between mafias and mobs every now and then but in between those wars there's a relative peace but that doesn't mean the crime isn't still ongoing and happening we're still under threat if you don't pay your taxes you will end up at the far end of the barrel of a gun at some point if you do it if you just keep on not paying them people with guns will come and take you and put you take your freedoms away yeah

Starting point is 00:20:26 yes uh sad but true okay my next question uh we're now seeing i think you alluded to it but let's dive deeper into it we're now seeing companies adopt bitcoin as a treasury asset not just micro strategy but many other new players joining in what's your take on this trend is it meaningful or more symbolic at this point um i might not go as far as to call it an attack but i think uh bitcoin treasury companies are this cycle shit coins uh some of them more legit than others but what you're basically doing if you if you're buying equity in one of these companies, not your keys, not your coins still applies. To fully use Bitcoin for what it was intended for, like permissionless money, you need to actually control your keys. And most of these

Starting point is 00:21:32 companies, including the bigger ones, do not hold their own keys. They have their Bitcoins with a custodian a regulated custodian but still a custodian that is like there are so many third parties involved for securing quote-unquote securing is quote-unquote your bitcoin which is like a layer of it's paper bitcoin up on paper bitcoin so you're buying a paper from a company that has bought the paper saying that they own this and that much bitcoin so it's very far from real thing and i think a lot of people buying into these things are going to see uh that there's going to be rug pulls uh there are always rug pulls uh when when you when you um delegate uh security when when you put trust in third parties so sure uh it i enjoy number go up as much as the

Starting point is 00:22:27 the next guy but if its number go up because people are buying paper bitcoin and because governments seize people's bitcoins then i'm not necessarily going to share for that i i know that i can do very little about it but you know and bitcoin is for enemies but that doesn't mean i have to love my enemy uh i'd rather see bitcoin in in the hands of individuals um and that's that will always be true yeah so what i'm saying is bitcoin is probably not for everyone but it is for anyone anyone willing to do the work anyone willing to do to put in the time and effort to actually be able to do bitcoin for real i want to introduce you to abundant minds because they take a very different approach to bitcoin mining most people buy bitcoin but the smart ones mine

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Starting point is 00:24:53 and has helped hundreds of people with second residencies and passports, offshore banking, international investing and many other essential tools. If you're serious about protecting your wealth and your family, it's not enough to hope things will get better. you need a plan b in another country the team at expat money can help you build it legally safely and without wasting years of research visit expatmoney.com slash eflat and leave your details for a follow-up and what is your take on those treasury companies that are popping up what what actual value are they providing to other people except except for the number go up thing yeah like

Starting point is 00:25:34 i mean it's it was always inevitable but it is like in a way the beginning of the end for fiat because what it is doing is like it's it's funneling the resources into the bitcoin space so i guess that's good but i would prefer old school individual adoption people buying kyc free bitcoins and taking custody of their own coins and controlling their own keys running their nodes staying vigilant in fact the system depends on that if we'll ever lose that we're screwed yeah uh so so so uh and i can't emphasize this enough it's like everything that was true about bitcoin 10 years ago it still holds true today in terms of how how to do it properly how to do it ethically and for my audience that are taking their first steps into bitcoin

Starting point is 00:26:35 i want to stress that that is what you need to explore when you just get into it non-kyc self-custody no paper bitcoin no intermediaries that's the whole point of bitcoin peer-to-peer There are so many weird contradictions going on here because Bitcoin works precisely because it cannot be regulated. So screaming for regulation here and regulation there is counterproductive to the very thing, the very discovery made. opposing forces uh so you sort of at some point need to accept that the government is not your friend to to be able to actually understand bitcoin to begin with and i think that's that's too big of a hurdle for so many people they they want it to be legit they want it to be white market it cannot be, it wouldn't work if it was, then the permissionless goes away. And that's super

Starting point is 00:27:51 important. Yes. Perfect. Okay. You've written about Bitcoin as a way to opt out of broken systems, given the speed of centralization and collapse in many areas from finance to media, to politics. Do you think we're reaching a tipping point for mass adoption? i mean mass adopt define mass adoption do do i do i think we'll suddenly see a billion nodes pop up around the world no that do i do do i see uh foresee many more bitcoin on the treasury on the balance sheet companies coming in the forthcoming years yes more custodial bitcoin hodlers or you know pension funds yes yes secondhand bitcoin sure will reach a lot more adoption in the next decade but like not what real mass adoption like define adoption uh it's

Starting point is 00:28:52 like defining hyper bitcoinization where where's the point where we have hyper bitcoinized is it when all the other money is gone well i mean the you you can still denominate more of your stuff in bitcoin like you can still put a price on something you didn't even think of selling like there's the thing is that all of this is personal like what's hyper bitcoinization to you what's mass adoption to you like how do you define it these terms are super ambiguous and fluid so so it's so hard it's it's such a hard a hard question to to to answer without going into I sound like Jordan Peterson What do you mean by meaning

Starting point is 00:29:35 You are our Jordan Peterson No I'm not You know what I mean But no for you It's clear from the previous answer Or previous question That what hyperbitcoinization means For you is self-custody

Starting point is 00:29:55 Non-KYC We hyperbitcoinize When we do Like, if you personally hyper-Bitcoinize, you're living in a hyper-Bitcoinized world. And I'm not there. I still use fiat because I have to. I'm forced to. I wish I didn't have to, but I do have to.

Starting point is 00:30:13 And I think everyone does. Like, even someone as based as, say, Francis has to use fiat at some point, you know. So, we still live in that world. The further away we can move from it. Yeah. yeah but the more we can you know put our weight on the on the hillside ski the better yeah just a lousy metaphor but run back to our sanctuary of bitcoin world yeah i think a tip for everyone like transitioning from the legacy system to the new system is the the less you have

Starting point is 00:30:54 to use banks the better for everyone involved like just they're they're they they're all shitty anyway their services are shit yeah uh so just try to avoid them as much as you can it's i know it's hard but but but that's what you're trying to get away from yeah so and you often hear you shouldn't buy bitcoins from a kyc exchange but i think it's even more important that you shouldn't sell your bitcoins to a kyc they change that's how they end up in these bitcoin on the balance sheet companies or governments or whatnot like don't don't sell your bitcoins to a honeypot don't sell them at all exchange them for goods and services though like and the the more the most crucial things they they remain the same as they were 10 years ago accept bitcoin start

Starting point is 00:31:48 accepting bitcoin for your goods and services uh keep your kyc stack and your non-kyc stack separate if you can don't use banks the government is not your friend make moral choices based on what's actually ethical and not what some bureaucrat has dictated is ethical like all of this is still true amen i am now being probably debanked out of my um stripe account which is connected to my sub stack for my paying subscribers achievement unlocked in the game that's right so they're they're they're in the process of debanking me because i am not complying with their kyc bullshit i mean i am i'm trying to But there is something wrong in the process.

Starting point is 00:32:45 So there's a computer says, no, like stop. You can't bank with us. And it's like, okay, you guys, I've tried everything. We can't work together, obviously. It's kind of pushing me to say to my paying subscribers, sorry, I'm moving to a Bitcoin only kind of payment mechanism. If you want to be my subscriber, you know, if you want to support me and my work and consume my content in that way, please join.

Starting point is 00:33:12 if you can't i understand but i have to make those decisions because i'm sick and tired of that shit and i don't want to be gated like that anymore i'm i'm really tired of it and even when we try to be as good as we can with that fiat system it's still it's there and it's getting more cruel and more more like anal by the day i and i i am sick of playing that game especially when i already have tasted the other side i know what it can be like and it doesn't have to be so frictioned you know it can be frictionless yeah yeah yeah once you see it it's like there's no question about it that bitcoin is superior like it's it's in so many ways no and when you when you spend most of your days in this world as both you and i do it's it's like

Starting point is 00:34:07 it's bleeding obvious oh yeah the the metaphor of of you know the the two bureaucrats carrying flags because there's a car coming and we're still living in horse and carriage world it's it's absolutely true like we have something so much better and we we can just start using it it's just that people are afraid that they think that uh the the men will gun guns will come and take them or that they're doing something wrong like they have to ask for permission and this is um yep i um i don't want to uh dox anyone here but i but i i i have a metaphor i once met a fellow author at a bitcoin conference and i asked him uh uh hey you want to barter books uh one of yours for one of mine signed books oh and and he was like oh barter oh yeah barter we can do that

Starting point is 00:35:06 oh are we allowed to do that and and that sort of encapsulates the whole lefty mindset in like the the urge to to want to ask for permission for something like you you think that you you've been so conditioned to to obey orders that that you think that you need permission to do shit are we allowed to yeah are we allowed to do i think it perfectly encapsulates the whole And the worst part about it is that it comes from something good. Like it comes from a wish to do the right thing, to be a good person. Who do I have to ask for permission, though, is not actually good. It will obviously be exploited.

Starting point is 00:35:58 There lies the manipulation, the psychological manipulation that that specific person is undergoing. Most people in the world are undergoing that manipulation by being deceived to think that they are actually doing something good when really they are unnecessarily conditioning themselves to more rules, more permissions, more allowance from someone. it is not needed that's the psyop that's the manipulation part yeah and they need to free their mind from that we've discussed psyops before and i i i'm willing to admit that i don't know how much of any of this is actually deliberate and some evil mastermind in some lair somewhere i i think the incentive structures of the whole fiat system creates this uh creates these situations and creates people like, it's more like the flock behavior and the asking for permission behavior that sort of creates the psychopath exploiting that. Sure, I'm with you. But if you, just to counter argument for a second, if you look at, it doesn't

Starting point is 00:37:14 have to go back to this, you know, evil bunch of people going, ha ha ha, we're going to manipulate everyone look at the history of edward bernays coming up with how do we propagandize the masses to follow our orders right yeah about a hundred years ago i mean yeah that's where that's where i'm alluding to it's like there is this um accepted normality in which people who are smarter than the laymen are up there making decisions and thinking what's right and wrong for humanity and want to lead humanity in a certain direction. They don't do it out of evil just because they think that they know best and they want to lead the country or a group in a certain direction. We are going to put out there certain ideas or narratives that will be deemed

Starting point is 00:38:06 right or positive and we will then exercise different types of methods or techniques to make people believe and trust that this is the right way and that's the beginning of propaganda and marketing and public public relations absolutely and and propaganda plays a huge role so don't don't don't get me wrong not necessarily no no uh but i'm the the message i want to convey is that regardless of the the source of the problem uh the the only person that can solve the problem is you like the the individual you taking steps to like not fall for it anymore or or not to like live a life where you want to please others without compensation like this is this is how you break the spell yeah regardless of the the the origin of the spell

Starting point is 00:39:00 so so so that's the that's the message i want to convey because i think uh yeah there's uh i recently rewrote my praxeology book that's what i'm basing uh the lectures here on and it now has 21 chapters instead of 17 so i wrote three more chapters but four 21 instead of 17 is four more chapters in my uh yeah yeah yeah it had 18 chapters okay yeah uh the last is just sort of a summary of the whole thing but anyway i added three chapters and the very last of those added chapters is called what about the roads uh what about the roads yeah okay the most common question you get from from non-libertarians or non-ancaps like who's gonna pave the roads and i'm stressing the point that that is not really a question but it's admitting that you think roads cannot be

Starting point is 00:39:55 built without threats of violence or that you think that they will be much better if there's a gun threat at some point so so it's it is stockholm syndrome and i also talk about the movie the shawshank redemption you know that movie right the famous prison movie yep in which you have a character called brooks a 90 year old prisoner who finally gets released from shawshank and he gets a job at a supermarket and hangs himself after two weeks because he's been so institutionalized in getting these prison provided three meals per day even though they're super shitty and strict times and everything and obeying the rules of the prison and uh at the same time you have morgan freeman's character red who warns the protagonist andy dufresne about optimism and he

Starting point is 00:40:49 says that hope is a dangerous thing because hope will turn you into brooks a broken man when you when you if you finally get out you it's much better to uh no that's not entirely great it's he says like hope hope can destroy you because you you'll be disappointed forever disappointed because you have to live with the thought of being here forever. That's how you survive the prison. And Andy, the protagonist, and this is sort of the message of the movie, that no, hope is the rational choice. Because yeah, there's a high likelihood you're going to die in the prison.

Starting point is 00:41:31 But here's the catch, you're going to die anyway. So you might as well live with hope. And that's what Andy does. And he like a couple of teaspoons full of sand every day to dig a tunnel and finally gets out and he gets a life on outside of prison. He manages to escape and thrive. So that's the message I want to convey, that hope is always the rational choice. You cannot let the powers that be, the metaphorical Shawshank walls, they're only real if you let them be real. So you have to, not have to, you should live as if they weren't there. If you want to be content about your decisions and that you're an actual ethical human being that makes choices that aren't punishing others, a long and convoluted way of saying just Bitcoin is hope, choose optimism, because you're going to die anyway, so you might as well. Absolutely. Love it. Thank you for that. As we wrap up, looking around the world today, politically, economically, culturally, what gives you hope that Bitcoin can scale not only as money, but as a tool for human freedom?

Starting point is 00:42:58 The two are the same, I'd say. Functioning money is human freedom. um so and i i think bitcoin scales in many ways and that we it's just a lack of imagination saying that bitcoin won't scale uh and let me elaborate on that a bit yes first of all i i have this this is a personal theory that i cannot like prove in any way uh shape sense or form but if you have So 10 wealthy friends that are, for 10 days, they're going out to eat something. Usually what happens is that one of them picks up the bill. If they're wealthy enough, one of them picks up the bill every night.

Starting point is 00:43:44 Yeah. And they sort of compete on who's going to pick up the bill because it's a nice thing to do if you have the means to do it. That's 10 transactions that week. if 10 poor people do the same they probably buy a pack of noodles each and go back to their own apartments and sit in their loneliness and eat their noodles nothing wrong with that but 10 people 10 days that's 100 transactions so my my little pet theory here is that wealthy people need fewer transactions and also there are many other such forces at play with bitcoin Because since Bitcoin accurately reflects the deflationary nature of technological improvement, it incentivizes you to prioritize quality over quantity.

Starting point is 00:44:39 Now, what does that mean? Fewer transactions. Micropayments is often being like soulless, like we need micropayments more than anything else. But micropayments, in my mind, is a very fiat-y thing. So, whenever you pay a euro to go to the bathroom in the central station of City X somewhere, that's sort of a microtransaction, right? And what I envision on a Bitcoin standard is instead you get a lifetime subscription to every train service imaginable in that jurisdiction, and you make one payment. So I think these subscription models where you make one payment and the recipient just gets the Bitcoin and therefore hence the number go up, they will be much more common. So I think transactions in general, the number of transactions goes down over time in Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:45:34 I think we're already sort of seeing this in, you know, the blocks not being full and everything and people view it as a problem. i'm i'm what i'm seeing when i see that is like the solution to every problem actually playing out this is people actually prioritizing quality over quantity it doesn't mean no transactions at all don't get me wrong like there's no point in having money if you don't spend it if you don't ever spend it but it a lot but bitcoin allows for generational wealth you could spend it five generations from now and the the technical the on-chain technical limitations make it so that if we would were to split all the 21 million bitcoins between eight billion people we get something like 200 000 sats each but more importantly we get two two on base layer

Starting point is 00:46:25 transactions each so we get two utxos each per lifetime in the lifetime yeah if we live 80 years okay luke did the math on on this not me but but i think it's kind of accurate nice on chain bitcoin makes like seven seven transactions per second transactions in your lifetime yeah would you yeah you would think a lot about what transactions to make so and this is also part of why bitcoin is for anyone and not for everyone so so but i don't see these as bugs at all i think This is a feature. We're conditioned to think of a medium of exchange as only a medium of exchange over space and with one another. But it's also a medium of exchange over time with your future self.

Starting point is 00:47:11 That is, I prefer that term to store value. I think medium of exchange over time is a better way of putting it. That's a very nice way of putting it. So, yeah, I think we're getting into a world with fewer transactions and more people just being friendly to one another in general and just making things happen anyway and like batching transactions into a big thing. Which would then prioritize the quantity over quantity. I don't want to dox too much about how this week here works, but we're not collecting receipts for everything and doing a lot of – it's much more smooth than that. Let's just say that. And I think that's what we're moving towards, like everything being more smoother is the word, right?

Starting point is 00:48:10 Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. Awesome. Anything you'd like to touch on before we wrap up and where should people follow you as well? Anything else you want to add on? No, just a huge thank you to Plan B and the Giacomo and everyone here for making this happen. I think the initiative here is overwhelmingly positive. This is about as real as it gets. i love logano and looking forward to coming to the forum in october a lot uh uh i wish more things were like this like like they are between true bitcoiners um friendly and frictionless and just bringing out the best in everyone it's it's fantastic to see

Starting point is 00:49:02 and it's an honor to be here with you know yourself and everyone else that that that is around i i still to this day pinch myself every day that i'm so lucky that i uh happened to stumble upon this early and and be a part of it and has opened so many other doors so bitcoin is absolutely hope i'm living proof of that uh so uh yeah you can find me i'm i'm still most active on x i'm on nostre as well um i'm knut swan on x and nostre uh there's also the bitcoin infinity show i do the pod and we do the bitcoin infinity academy in collaboration with plan b and that is me and my uh pod co-host luke de wolf we're we're reading a chapter per week of one of my books and discussing the ideas in that specific chapter and there's a lot you can do there you can we have

Starting point is 00:49:57 a geyser fund if you want to join the telegram groups and participate a little more uh actively uh so there's a lot of a lot of things coming up as as usual uh i just love doing all this and talking to people about freedom and bitcoin and praxeology and whatnot yeah wonderful thank you so much for your contribution for this lively discussion i always love talking to you and picking your brain right back at you yes thank you thanks for being with us please take a minute to give this episode a like a comment and subscribe or follow and please share it with your friends so they can also get value and choose to take some positive action in their lives till next time

You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 99: Knut Svanholm - Stop Asking Permission: Bitcoin Or Fiat Prison

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