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Oct. 27, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:51:20

BITCOIN: ECONOMY, PHILOSOPHY AND FUTURE!

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	Let's get to it, ladies and germs.
	We're going to decrypt the crypto.
	Bitcoin will be back in the news.
	And I did say some weeks ago that something big was about to happen, and lo and behold, we are here.
	So I hope that you are going to stay.
	This is really, really important stuff.
	You know, there's an old saying that says military conflict is just God's way of teaching Americans about geography.
	Well, Bitcoin and economic crises are just...
	The universe's way of saying, I know economics is a little boring.
	I know that it doesn't get you the chicks and I know it can make people avoid you like the plague at dinner parties.
	But not knowing about economics is going to get increasingly painful over the next year.
	Because, okay, first and foremost, just to get this stuff out of the way, I'm not an expert.
	I'm not an economist.
	I did get into Bitcoin 2011.
	So, I mean, I was a bit of an early adopter, I suppose.
	But I'm not an expert.
	This is not financial advice.
	Do your own research.
	Buy and sell on your own recognizance.
	I'm not recommending anything at any time to anyone.
	I'm just getting all of that out of the way first.
	So, what has been the best-performing asset over the last 12 months?
	Just out of curiosity, what do you think?
	What has been the best-performing asset...
	Over the last 12 months.
	A major asset, right?
	What do you got? What do you got?
	Well, it's Bitcoin.
	It's Bitcoin. There is no substitute.
	In my humble opinion, there is no substitute.
	It has been the itty-bitty coin.
	That has been going on.
	So, I think that seems quite important.
	Bitcoins and weapons manufacturers.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	I mean, my gosh. How enraged did you have to be as Satoshi Nakamoto to do that?
	Right? To build this whole thing.
	Yeah, there's no second coin. I was interested in Ethereum for a while.
	Then I got into NFTs. And it was like, holy crap.
	Are you kidding me?
	How expensive is this thing?
	How expensive is this coin going to be?
	And keep a straight face.
	The gas coins.
	Like sucking on the exhaust of a Humvee.
	Yeah, Ethereum gas fees are completely...
	Yeah, so Bitcoin outperformed every major asset this year.
	And I'm going to just go straight into like just wall of data.
	We'll get your questions. We'll get your comments going on, right?
	Give me the top thing that angers you.
	About the economy at the moment?
	Let's make it two-way here.
	What is the top thing that angers you about the economy at the moment?
	What is it that pisses you off the most?
	It really gets your goat.
	It really gets you cooking. Central banking.
	Prudence is punished. Yeah, good luck saving!
	Spending and not understanding overspending.
	Oh, no, they understand overspending.
	Unaffordability of housing.
	That's a big thing. That's a big thing.
	Being stolen from through inflation.
	Recreational watercraft. All right.
	Randomly missing essential items from stores for weeks.
	Regulations just to work.
	Candidate about to approve UBI. Well, I mean, Central Bank Digital Currency ain't going to spread itself.
	You've got to bribe. So, I... I don't know.
	Should we swear?
	Can I swear? Hit me with a Y. If swearing is okay for you, I'm fine either way.
	My preference to swear.
	You know there was a punishment in the Middle Ages
	in England and some other place called being drawn and quartered. Being drawn and quartered was
	you were disemboweled but not killed, a horse was tied to each limb and you were literally pulled apart.
	Thank you for the tip, my friend.
	I appreciate that. Yeah, you were torn apart.
	Now, inflation are predatory elves that come in and steal your fucking life.
	Oh, man.
	Inflation is...
	It's the worst kind of theft.
	It's not a fair fight.
	You can't protect yourself against it.
	There's no bars in the window that you can use to save your precious life juice from being sucked up by the central banking vampires.
	Inflation is just about the greatest evil because it's not understood by many.
	And it is blamed on the innocent.
	Like, how often do you hear people say, I can't believe how much the price of gas has gone up.
	Those gas stations are gouging.
	Price gouging.
	Oh, man. It's horrendous.
	It's absolutely horrendous.
	And it is pure preying upon the productive by the greedy.
	It really is one of the worst things in the world, as a whole, in general, no matter what.
	And it just pillages you in ways that are hard to imagine.
	So, hit me with the number.
	What?! What do you think inflation is actually at?
	I don't know if you've seen the guy roam around Costco taking pictures or showing you things that he took pictures of the price like six months or a year ago.
	What do you think inflation is really at?
	I mean, there's always things that bring it down, you know, the cost of data, the cost of cell phones and so on.
	But what do you think inflation is really at?
	What have we got here? 18%, 15%, 50%, 22%, 31%, 300%, 15%, 350, 25, 20 to 25, 200.
	Inflation is a vector, not a single number.
	Yes, we are all aware.
	I tell you guys, you got to up your game when it comes to bringing information to this.
	I know, not everything goes up and down at the same price exactly.
	Oh my gosh.
	It's wild. Shrink inflation as well.
	You pay the same price or more and you get less and less, right?
	So let's do some basic math here, right?
	If inflation is at 8%, let's just say inflation as a whole is at 8%, how long does it take to cut your savings in half?
	At 8%, how long does it take To cut your savings in half.
	Yeah, that's right.
	It's nine years.
	Nine years, they could steal half your life.
	If inflation is 10%, it takes only seven years.
	Now, shadowstats.com is showing roughly 12.5% inflation year over year.
	Which halves your life savings in 5.76 years.
	5.76 years.
	You can work for 40 years.
	They can take half your fucking money in 5.76 years.
	Ah! God! And it's like they said, well, 0% inflation is fine, but you know what?
	People don't get too mad at 2%, so we'll start at 2% and just work from there.
	What percentage of all U.S. dollars have been printed in the last three years?
	years. What percentage of all US dollars have been printed in the last three years?
	Yeah, over 80 percent.
	That sound you make when you circle the drain.
	Do you have fantasies of selling Bitcoin at the high?
	You sold Bitcoin at its highest peak.
	Do you remember how much it was and when it was?
	Do you remember what was your Bitcoin peak?
	What was the Bitcoin peak? When was it and how high did it get?
	How high did it get?
	Did it get high enough to show up in the background of a Hunter Biden video?
	69,000 US dollars on November 10th, 2021.
	So if you had sold your Bitcoin, converted your Bitcoin to US dollars, November 10th, 2021, and held them in dollars since, how much of your value, you, how much of your dollar value would you have lost?
	Because everyone's like, wow, I wish I'd sold at the peak.
	Okay, let's say you sold at the peak and you kept your money in US dollars.
	How much would you have lost?
	We got some slow typers coming Come on. It's not a big number.
	It's not a huge number. It's not a small number.
	Not a huge number. I know some people are typing.
	All right. Well, I can't wait.
	So if you had sold your Bitcoin right at the peak at $69,000 US per Bitcoin November 10th, 2021 and held them in dollars since...
	You would have lost over $16,000 of your original buying power due to inflation.
	That's a loss of 23% in just less than two years.
	Just under two years. You would lose a quarter of your profits in Bitcoin.
	So for those of you who are mad that you didn't sell, now maybe you would have invested it or something.
	Let's just say you held it in cash. Oh, you're mad!
	I didn't sell at the peak. Okay, well, if you'd sold at the peak, you'd be down 23% by now.
	Isn't that wild? Oh my gosh.
	Oh my gosh.
	It's just wild.
	Now, quick question.
	When you're looking at the Bitcoin price, Bitcoin value, we're not unsophisticated people economically speaking here, right?
	We know a little bit about a little bit.
	Is Bitcoin going up in value?
	Is Bitcoin going up in value?
	It is not!
	It is not going up in value.
	Yeah, it's not going up in value.
	The dollar is going down in value.
	I mean, because we compare, and I mean, most people do compare the value of Bitcoin to the value of the US or Canadian dollar, euro, whatever it is, right?
	So be careful with illusory wealth.
	Watch illusory wealth.
	What do you want to compare Bitcoin to?
	Do you want to compare it to an inflating fiat?
	I think not.
	What do you want to compare your Bitcoin to if you have crypto?
	What do you want to compare it to?
	Milk. Yeah, you want to compare it to the fixed goods you can buy.
	Yeah.
	So just be careful.
	Don't imagine you say, oh my gosh, Bitcoin has doubled, doubled!
	I tell you, and it's like, yeah, well, but you've got to look at what you can buy with it.
	Go look at the price of gold in Weimar, Germany.
	Sometimes it went down.
	Well, all right. So, let's get in there.
	It sounds like a horror movie.
	The Harving. The harving.
	It sounds like you're sawing a cow in harving.
	The harving. Oh, no, that's the carving.
	A pregnant cow. There we go.
	The harving is coming up next year.
	Do you know what the harving is?
	The harving. We have the harving.
	Well, we'll get into that. Bitcoin ETF. Oh, talk about the marriage of two opposites.
	Bitcoin ETF. What is an ETF? Exchange traded fund.
	The possible and anticipated approval of a Bitcoin ETF is coming up.
	The halving is coming up next year.
	Hit me with a why if you've noticed a smidge of increased geopolitical instability over the last month or two.
	Just, you know, you've got to squint, you've got to look at it, you've got to have the light just at the right angle.
	Have you noticed just a little squidge, a smidge, a shade?
	So, yes, just a little bit.
	Just a little bit. Some folks are born made to wave the flag.
	Yes. A little dot.
	Yeah, you get that little dot in your eye and, you know, you just notice a little bit, right?
	All right. So, there was a bump a day or two ago to $35,000.
	Bitcoin liquidated $232 million of short positions in 24 hours.
	Now, don't get me wrong.
	I, as much as everybody else, just hate to see people betting against Bitcoin losing anything.
	It breaks my heart.
	It shocks my poodle.
	It ruffles my feathers and jabbles my jimmies.
	But that is something important to remember.
	In the broader crypto market, liquidations of shorts reached $427 million in 24 hours, or what is also known as the price of gas about four and a half minutes from now.
	So, right.
	Already mined supply of Bitcoin is $19.5 million.
	Now, when people say...
	There are 19.5 million bitcoins already around, already circulating.
	Why are they wrong?
	Why are they?
	Anybody who tells you that without any qualifiers has their head so far up their ass, their eyes are brown, right?
	Yeah, because a whole bunch of them are lost.
	Chain analysis estimates that between 2.3 and 3.7 million bitcoin are lost, reducing the coins in the market by between 12 and 19%.
	With a hard supply limit of 21 million Bitcoins and people occasionally losing Bitcoin forever, it is effectively deflationary.
	Now, what percentage of Bitcoin have not moved in over 10 years?
	And you know, if no Bitcoins have moved in 10 years, it could be lost.
	It could be lost.
	It is, no, no, no.
	Bitcoin mined, only about 15% of them have not moved in over 10 years.
	About 30% of all Bitcoin has not moved on chain in over five years.
	And what's happened recently is Bitcoin's long-term investors have over 76% of all Bitcoin for the first time.
	Ooh, that's nice.
	That's nice. Hit me with a why if you've ever – sorry, I have to look on this monitor.
	Hit me with a why if you've ever heard something like this.
	Oh, Bitcoin.
	Well, you see, the problem is that Bitcoin can't manage and process small or rapid transactions in the way that, say, Visa or PayPal can.
	So the idea, you see, that Bitcoin is going to be a replacement of the general financial system is very optimistic and frankly technically impossible.
	The exact same voice, how did you know?
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Yes. I mean, personally, do you want to know what my idea is?
	It's all nonsense, of course, but I'll tell you my idea.
	Hit me with a Y if you love my idea about how to deal with small transactions on Bitcoin.
	No coin or smuggled. Well, I think that there, you know, maybe this is already out there, but...
	The way that you handle small transactions is you put some Bitcoin in escrow or you have a rating of your Bitcoin.
	If you've reliably spent Bitcoin, even if it takes, I don't know, a couple of hours to settle buying a coffee or whatever, right?
	If you've reliably paid your Bitcoin for a while, you're going to have a rating.
	On your account somewhere.
	And if you have a lot of Bitcoin, you can afford the price of a coffee.
	So you're just going to have a credit rating for your Bitcoin, and therefore people will accept that you can buy stuff even if it takes a while to settle.
	That's my particular idea.
	So why is Locals Date wrong?
	The show says AMA 1.
	I guess not answer me anything, AMA 2.
	We need AMA 1 and 2 combined or it's pointless.
	Mmm, that's some spicy elbow-deep nitpicking, my friend.
	That's so much nitpicking, I'm pretty sure you're getting a butt camera.
	All right. So, the idea that you have to spend Bitcoin in order for Bitcoin to have value...
	It's just insane.
	Houses have no value if you can't spend them brick by brick.
	If you're in America, do you own ammo?
	You don't have to answer that, but you do, right?
	Now, does the ammo only have value if you use it?
	No. There are a lot of assets that are not liquid but are still assets.
	You can't spend your house. I know you can live in it.
	You can't spend your house. There are lots of funds that you can get into.
	They're a little bit of a roach motel like it's easy to get in.
	It's tough to get out, right?
	You have to pay a penalty to get out.
	So there's lots of stuff that's illiquid.
	Can you shave off a piece of gold and use it to pay for a coffee?
	No. Well, I guess gold has no value.
	Do you know you can't hand over your earrings to buy a car?
	Therefore, earrings have no value.
	Roach Motel. Yeah, yeah, I hear what you're saying.
	Why would you want to spend something that's accumulating value?
	You spend the stuff that's losing value, don't you?
	Spend fiat, save Bitcoin.
	Spend fiat, save Bitcoin.
	That's my particular perspective and opinion.
	Nothing to do with advice of any kind, just my particular amateur perspective and opinion.
	But I just think that's hilarious.
	Oh, my gosh.
	Shakepay has a prepaid visa.
	You can buy stuff with using Bitcoin.
	Simple. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild.
	You know, when the thieves are coming and you bury your valuables in the backyard, you're taking them out of circulation.
	Oh no! They have no value because you can't spend them while they're in the backyard.
	I'm sorry, don't be the laugh, but oh my gosh!
	A fool in his feet are soon parted, what can I tell you, right?
	The Vikings are coming! Quick, hide our gold in the backyard!
	Well, I can't do that, you see, because that would take the gold out of circulation.
	And the moment you bury it in the backyard, you see, it has no value anymore, and therefore it might as well be pyrite.
	Oh, my gosh.
	Oh, that's crazy.
	That's crazy. The Gestapo are coming.
	We have to hide in the basement.
	Well, we can't hide in the basement.
	Because, you see, while we're hiding in the basement, we're not out there spending, and therefore we have no economic value.
	It's like, but, you know, we do get to, I don't know, fucking survive.
	Don't we? Is that not worth anything?
	Not worth a tiny little bit.
	Well, they're going to steal half my money in five and a half years.
	But Bitcoin has a problem because it's slow to buy a coffee.
	Okay, you go buy your coffee.
	You go buy your coffee.
	I'm sorry. Oh my God.
	I mean, what can you say? You can't even talk to people like that as a whole, right?
	All right. Charles Edwards, the founder of Capriole Investments, a fund specializing in quantitative Bitcoin and digital assets, has highlighted that this accomplishment – long-term investors have over 76% of all Bitcoin for the first time – represents an unprecedented milestone in the history of Bitcoin.
	Pry my Bitcoin from my cold, dead hands is pretty good when the demand is about to go up, right?
	If the supply is static or shrinking and the demand is raising, we all know what happens to the prices, right?
	The availability of exchanges.
	Sorry, the availability on exchanges of Bitcoin is going either A up or B down.
	What you got? A up or B down.
	Availability of Bitcoin on exchanges.
	Is it going up or down?
	A down.
	Yeah, that's right. It's going down. So exchange balances are at levels not seen since 2018.
	Do you know, there's a certain tinnitus that occurs in Bitcoin hodlers' ears.
	Do you know what the tinnitus sound is, roughly?
	It's not exactly a stuka from World War II, but I think that the tinnitus sound in the
	ears of most hodlers is something like this.
	Which is, you know, the value of other things, right?
	All right. So price versus hash rate.
	The hash rate is how much computational energy is being used to secure the Bitcoin network.
	It's an indicator of the health of the network.
	And it's going up and up and up and up.
	While the price was going down, people were investing in Bitcoin infrastructure and the security of the network.
	They invested in machinery and in the energy required to mine the Bitcoin.
	Oh, quick question.
	Have you heard that Bitcoin mining is environmentally insensitive?
	Have you heard that Bitcoin mining is environmentally insensitive and the use of the energy that is used to mine Bitcoin could more productively be used for what?
	What is it that people don't have much problem with when it comes to environmental harm?
	When they talk about Bitcoin, they don't seem to know we need the energy.
	That is used for Bitcoin mining to blow the living shit out of everyone across the planet.
	See, it's tough to blow the living shit out of everyone in the planet when people are using the energy to try and hang on to the value they've accumulated over the course of their lives.
	So it's not stolen to fund the aforementioned blowing the shit out of everyone all over the planet.
	Yeah. Yeah, the people who are complaining about the energy use of Bitcoin who don't talk about the energy use of war or the energy use of fiat currency.
	Do you know how much fiat currency fucks Mother Nature in the armpit?
	Do you have any idea how much fiat?
	Because what is debt? Debt is consuming now rather than later.
	Debt is consumption on cocaine.
	Oh, my God.
	Anyway, it's just a bunch of nonsense, right?
	So, Bonds, right?
	Bonds. The name's Bonds.
	James Bonds. You fruity English bastard.
	All right. I want to know what people's – what are your sort of financial literacy stuff, right?
	Should I mention the Bonds thing?
	I don't want to go over – Too much stuff.
	Anybody want to go over it?
	So a bond is a fixed income instrument.
	So you lend to a corporation, you lend to a government, and they're going to usually pay you some interest and then you cash it out.
	It's not the same as a stock is up and down like the Assyrian Empire.
	And so bonds are units of corporate debt issued by companies securitized as tradable assets.
	I'm just giving you sort of the more formal definition also make sure I don't slip a syllable and get things backwards.
	Bond prices are inversely correlated with interest rates.
	So when interest rates go up, bond prices fall and vice versa.
	Bonds have maturity dates, at which point the principal amount must be paid back in full or risk default.
	So governments at all levels, corporations, they use bonds to borrow money.
	Governments need the money to fund roads, schools, dams or other infrastructure.
	Yes, that's right.
	The Soviet factories were incredibly productive.
	Corporations, yeah, they'll borrow to grow their businesses, to buy property and equipment to undertake profitable projects and so on.
	So... Yeah, I just wanted to sort of point that out, make sure we're talking about the same thing.
	So bonds are viewed as secure and reliable assets, so big companies that aren't going to go bankrupt to governments and so on.
	However, Bitcoin is beginning to overshadow bonds as a preferred investment choice.
	So why do you think Bitcoin is beginning to overshadow bonds?
	Why? Negative real yields of bonds?
	Yeah, of course, if you're getting a bond that's paying 5% but interest is 10%, you just lost yourself 5%.
	And also, you've locked in your money for five years, at which point your money is going to be worth mouse droppings, right?
	Yeah, so bonds pay low and when they cash out, if there's significant inflation, then the money that you get back is worth half or less of what you lend.
	I mean, there's one – was it Nova Scotia here in Canada?
	It was like a 75-year bond.
	Yeah, right. That's excellent.
	Excellent. So Bitcoin is beginning to overshadow bonds as a preferred investment choice.
	Yeah, maturity of some government bonds are decades.
	Yeah, for sure. You can leave them to your kids.
	So BlackRock CEO Larry Fink described investment in Bitcoin as a move towards a flight to quality.
	Previously, of course, the flight to quality was bonds to some degree.
	It was gold to a larger degree or diamonds or some sort of fixed asset, some basket of commodities thing like a bunch of oil and gas and things like that.
	But... People are finally waking up to the fact that Bitcoin is, in my view, a safe harbor in times of uncertainty.
	Somebody says, okay, serious question.
	Am I right? Well, first of all, you listen to the show, you're automatically right.
	But secondly, let's go deeper.
	Governments borrowing money to buy bonds then borrowing more to pay off the bonds is the same principle as me paying off payday loans with other payday loans.
	No, because the payday loans are voluntary, the government stuff is involuntary.
	No, no. Never compare yourself to the government.
	It's really unfair to you at every single time.
	Please don't insult yourself by putting yourself in the same category as the state.
	My God. My God.
	So market trends reveal a stronger investor preference for Bitcoin over bonds recently.
	So TLT, I want to sort of mention what that is.
	I know I have it here somewhere useful.
	TLT. Let's see.
	TLT. I'm TLT. I'm dynamite.
	Have I had how many coffees today?
	Have I had how many?
	Oh yeah. TLT refers to the iShares 20 plus year treasury bond ETF. Exchange-traded funds is a basket of stuff that you can buy and sell with big pension funds and all that kind of stuff.
	The ETF aims to track the investment results of an index composed of U.S. Treasury bonds with remaining maturities greater than 20 years.
	So why is it that people don't want the government bonds these days?
	Again, I don't know for sure.
	I haven't talked to them, but, you know, just in sort of Austrian economics theory.
	Why is it that people don't want – why do people not want a five-year government U.S. Treasury bond at the moment?
	Yeah, so treasury bonds are a bet for low inflation.
	They're expecting inflation to go up.
	Oh, but it's more sinister than that.
	Oh, it's more sinister than that.
	In my view, I think people are getting a sense of that the – I don't know.
	How do we put this as nicely as possible?
	That the overall longevity of the value of the US dollar as a whole may not be measured
	in geological or dinosaur or fruit, fruit, fruit, fruit, fruit, fruit, fruit.
	There we go.
	May not be measured in geological time.
	May not be measured in dinosaur time.
	May not be measured in fruit fly time.
	There, I did it. I did.
	Yeah, bricks on the rise and all of that, right?
	So people are trying to find some.
	Like, you know how it's worked for decades in America, right?
	And other places too. But in America, what they've done, of course, is they've exported their inflation and imported goods from their exported inflation, right?
	They buy a bunch of stuff overseas, exporting their print money, buy a bunch of stuff overseas, export their inflation and import their goods.
	And so, yeah, it's not particularly great, to put it mildly.
	So in 2023, Bitcoin has soared over 100% year-to-date, outperforming TLT, which fell by 17%.
	So there's your gap. Long-term bonds, down 17%, at least by one indicator.
	It's not perfect. Bitcoin up 100%.
	Now, how many times does there have to be this bull run before people say Bitcoin is a value?
	So is Bitcoin overtaking bonds as a preferred secure asset in investment portfolios?
	Too early. Too early?
	And by the time it's too late, it's useless, but it's possible.
	All right. Shall we do the halving?
	The halving.
	The halving.
	I'm just going to do 50% of the halving.
	Oh! So sorry.
	You're not my daughter. You should not be subject to these kinds of things.
	I apologize. I apologize.
	Alright, so every four years or about every 21,000 blocks mined in Minecraft, the Bitcoin block reward for mining new blocks is halved.
	The block reward started at 50 new Bitcoin minted and coming into existence roughly every 10 minutes.
	There have been three halvings already.
	The next halving will occur in about 169 days.
	You can go to buybitcoinworldwide.com slash halving and you can find a real-time countdown to the halving here.
	I say this because if you know this, you get chicks.
	It's just the way of the world.
	It's a fact. It's just a reality.
	Or if somebody says timechainstats.net to see the best estimates for the halving data.
	Yes. After the next halving, the block reward will drop from 6.25 Bitcoin every block to 3.125 Bitcoin every block or roughly every 10 minutes.
	So the first halving was November 28, 2012.
	Before halving, prior to the first halving, Bitcoin's price saw a gradual increase.
	At the time of halving, are you ready to weep with me deep and bitter and soulful tears?
	Are you ready to weep?
	Please lean back from your keyboard and get yourself a bucket.
	What was the price of Bitcoin at the first halving?
	I think at this point I'd only been talking about it for a year.
	What was the price?
	Oh, halving means that the value of mining Bitcoin, the reward you get for mining Bitcoin goes down.
	It was $12.
	It was $12. After halving, Bitcoin's price started increasing several months after the halving.
	It eventually reached over $1,000 about over a year in November 2013.
	So it went from $12 to about $1,000.
	Was that four years in?
	Yeah, more or less. It's tough to know when you should really start.
	Okay, the second halving was July 9th, 2016.
	Before halving, Bitcoin's price was fluctuating but generally trending upwards.
	At the time of halving, the price of Bitcoin was approximately what?
	In the summer of 2016.
	Yeah, that's good. Good, Sammy.
	Good, you get a kibble.
	It was about $650.
	After the halving, a little bit of a run, a smidge of a run that happened after the halving.
	Bitcoin's price saw substantial increases in the following months, reaching close to...
	So it started at $650.
	Where did it get to by December 2017?
	It was a little higher.
	I think it's fair to say.
	Yes, it did.
	Yeah, quite right, Sammy. You are a Bitcoin data miner.
	So yes, it went from $650,000 in the summer of 2016 to $20,000 in December 2017.
	So halving, not bad.
	Third halving, I guess it went to the 69, somewhere around there as well. So, pre-halving speculation.
	Before each halving, there tends to be a speculation on increased buying activity, possibly due to expectations of a price increase post-halving.
	Post-halving bull runs.
	After each halving, Bitcoin has experienced significant bull runs, but they don't occur right after the halving.
	There are delays of several months to a year before substantial price increases were observed, but I don't think it's going to be the case personally now.
	After Chain Capital reports that, quote, the best Bitcoin performance has been 12 to 18 months following halvings.
	But I don't think that's going to be the case right now because people's spider senses are tingling about what's going on with the economy these days.
	Now, wonderful though it is that a government that is north of $30 trillion in debt is telling us how to make our assets secure and safe.
	It's wonderful. Absolutely.
	You want to go to the government and That added, what, a couple of hundred billion dollars in debt over the last 30 days?
	You want to go to them to say, you know, how do I keep my assets safe?
	Can you give me a little stamp of approval to make sure that I can do this financial stuff?
	Because, boy, have you ever shown how great you are with this stuff.
	So we're going to talk about the ETFs.
	So exchange-traded funds are transacted on conventional trading platforms to provide access to assets such as Bitcoin without the necessity of direct ownership.
	I don't want to diss the boomers because I just missed by one year being in that category, but going to the boomers and starting to talk about blockchains and keys and ownership may not be the most productive conversation in the world, but if they can just have it rolled into their general retirement funds and investment funds and so on, that's better, right?
	So you're offloading the ownership challenges and issues, right?
	So spot Bitcoin ETFs...
	Pretty important. So contrary to futures ETFs, which allocate investments in contracts that speculate on the future price of Bitcoin, spot ETFs directly acquire Bitcoin, reflecting its immediate market value.
	So they have to buy Bitcoin for there to be spot ETFs.
	They're not futures. They're not going long.
	They're not going short or anything like that.
	They're literally buying Bitcoin.
	Remember, 76% of people are holding on for the long run.
	And when the smart ETFs get approved, there's going to be, in my humble opinion, the only reason they put this much effort into trying to get a smart ETF for Bitcoin approved by the SEC is because they want to buy a whole bunch, right?
	So Bitcoin currently valued 35K or so substantial interest from institutional investors.
	Of course, a key catalyst that is eagerly anticipated is the approval of a smart Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, Which is expected to ignite a significant buying spree, as per insights shared by a high-ranking executive from Ernst& Young.
	So Paul Brody...
	Wait, was he the chief in Jaws?
	No, that was Adrian Brody.
	Just kidding. Paul Brody, who leads the global blockchain initiatives at Ernst& Young, expressed that there is a considerable accumulation of institutional demand for Bitcoin.
	This accumulation has been building due to the reluctance of US regulators to give the green light to a spot Bitcoin ETF over...
	Several years. In a recent discussion, because it would be a flight from the dollar, right?
	I mean, if everybody starts throwing the money into Bitcoin, it's going to be a flight from the dollar.
	By the way, hit me with the why.
	I know we're getting a little technical here.
	Is this a value? Is this of use to you?
	Does it help you? Will you tip for it?
	Is this a value?
	I want to understand if this is a value or not, because, you know, we're taking things a little bit different from normal You find this helpful?
	Okay, good, good. I'm glad to – you guys are finding it helpful because my first programming job was on a trading floor, so I learned all of this stuff just as a COBOL 74 programmer.
	All right. In a recent discussion on CNBC's crypto decrypted on October 23rd, Brody conveyed his perspective.
	On the future of cryptocurrency adoption, he highlighted that the approval of a Bitcoin ETF could potentially unlock trillions of dollars from institutional investors who are poised to channel their funds into Bitcoin.
	We'll tip well. Thank you, Steph.
	I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
	Thank you, my friend. So, people are...
	Do you have older people in your life who are getting a bit edgy about their retirement?
	Do you have... Parents, grandparents, do you have older people in your life, obviously completely informal survey, do you have older people in your life who are getting kind of edgy about the value of their retirement?
	You're 45 and you're edgy?
	Yeah, I hear you, brother. You do, right?
	Because they're looking at the price of travel.
	They're looking at the price of food.
	They're looking at the price of healthcare and all of these sorts of things.
	And people are like, are you worried about your 73-year-old mom?
	Yeah, those on fixed income.
	Like, you know, the fiat currency is stealing from the poorest and giving to the wealthiest, right?
	This is why any socialist who's not enraged over central banking is not a socialist at all.
	Because when you print a bunch of money, you give it to your friends first.
	Those closest to the bullseye of the money printing get to spend the money at near full value and the value is lowered.
	It's not like – inflation doesn't hit everyone the same way.
	The first people to get a hold of the money – like if you don't, obviously, but if you did – if you do the thought exercise of somehow wet printing a million dollars in your basement, you go out and spend it, you get full value.
	It's everyone else who gets their money diluted.
	I just act like retirement isn't a thing.
	Well, it may not be, right?
	It may not be. But, you know, you dance with the devil and eventually you've got to pay the band.
	So the reason why a Bitcoin ETF would unlock all these trillions of dollars is that there are a lot of people who require, if they manage other people's money, they require that The asset be wrapped in some kind of ETF, some kind of regulatory blessed activity.
	It's got to go through particular hoops and jumps because, you know, people say, you know, are you a kind of – I like frying bacon in the nude kind of risk-taking guy or are you kind of the risk-taking guy who says, well, I'm worried about the bus because of meteors, right?
	So people generally say when they're older, don't gamble my retirement.
	Like I just want a – Some sort of income to deal with inflation, maybe a little bit extra.
	Don't roll the dice on my retirement.
	When you're younger, maybe you have a bit more risk tolerance.
	But when you're older, you want low risk tolerance.
	And so if there's not regulatory approval and it's not wrapped around some sort of SEC thing, then if the institution starts gambling on Bitcoin and it goes down and you said, I don't want too much risk as a lot of retirees have, you can get your ass sued from here to Andromeda, right?
	Yeah, Bitcoin might be the way for retirement.
	I think that's what some people are thinking, right?
	So Brody says, but any of these other institutional funds, they can't touch this stuff unless it's an ETF or some other kind of regulatory blessed activity.
	If you look at people who are buying Bitcoin, they're buying it as an asset.
	They're not buying it as a payment tool.
	Those who are buying Ethereum are buying it as a computing platform for business transactions and DeFi decentralized finance services.
	So Brody's comments were made at a time when investors worldwide are paying keen attention to the cryptocurrency regulatory proceedings of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
	Up until now, the SEC has not given approval to any spot Bitcoin ETFs.
	Numerous firms such as Gracedale Investments, ARK Investment, BlackRock, and Fidelity have submitted applications for various Bitcoin ETF products to the SEC and are currently waiting for feedback from the regulatory agency.
	Now... The BlackRock ETF was listed on the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation or DTCC recently and then later removed, could have been an error.
	As of about a day ago, BlackRock's iShare Smart Bitcoin ETF has been relisted to the DTCC. The ETF is still waiting approval or rejection by the SEC, though the SEC has proven to be hostile to Bitcoin and crypto, which of course is, I mean...
	It's inevitable, right? I mean, that's how it has to be, almost by definition.
	Like, anybody not expecting that, I think, is not living in any particular kind of reality.
	All right. So, the reason why I think the adoption is going to happen is the more data you have about an asset, the more predictable its future behavior becomes.
	And people don't mind unpredictability.
	They don't mind unpredictability as long as it's in the output.
	They don't mind volatility in the output.
	Have you heard? Let me just add a question.
	Hit me with a why if you've heard.
	Well, you see, Bitcoin is very volatile.
	Very volatile. So volatile.
	Up and down inside is so volatile, right?
	Have you heard this? It's just too volatile.
	All right. Quick question. If you have a relatively small boat in an extraordinarily stormy sea, is the boat movement volatile?
	No. The boat is not volatile.
	What is volatile?
	The ocean, the wind, the storm, the lightning, the waves.
	It is not Bitcoin.
	It's not Bitcoin that's volatile.
	It's the political...
	Legal, regulatory, military, money printing, overspending, massive indebting, unfunded liability, monstrosity of a leviathan of state capitalism, crapitalism.
	That's the volatility.
	Anyway, it's just kind of funny.
	So in the span of about three years, Bitcoin went from a low of about $3,000 to $69,000, which is a 23x gain.
	I mean, 2x is massive if you double your money.
	23x is wild, right?
	At the time, there was a supply and demand shock, money printing, low interest rates, and a halving.
	Right now we have high interest rates and they're trying not to print money
	with two proxy wars and a border crisis as inflation is going wild.
	Somebody sent me a dollar and said, sad I was banned.
	Didn't get messages sent, and no one's now.
	New messages are appearing.
	Dear, oh dear. Yeah, if you guys could hold off.
	I don't. I really... The idea of taking your last dollar is just heartbreaking to me.
	Please don't send me your last dollar.
	I just, you know, save it for food.
	Like, save it for food. All right.
	Oh, my gosh.
	So, ShadowStats reports, August 2023 money supply numbers continue to show an inflationary 53-year peak in domestic liquidity.
	Otherwise known as...
	The US is $33 trillion in debt with an almost $2 trillion annual budget deficit.
	Oh, and by the way, did you know that one of the things that's happened is they have...
	Oh, I'll get into that. There's a bunch of financial tricks that have made it look better.
	Made it look better. Um...
	So if you compare Bitcoin to real world assets, I'm going to just see, I'm going to throw some of these drafts in the chat.
	I know that's not particularly great for everyone else, but maybe I'll link this to the show afterwards, right?
	Okay, Bitcoins needed to buy a house, right?
	So you think, oh my gosh, well, the value of Bitcoin has certainly gone up relative to...
	Can I paste this?
	Why can't I paste this? Oh, I have to save it first.
	You've got to be kidding me. All right, fine.
	Fine. I can do that.
	All right. So the Bitcoins needed to buy a house.
	In 2014, at the beginning of 2014, you needed 230 Bitcoin to buy a house, right?
	Now you need 13.7 bitcoins to buy a house.
	Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to...
	I'm sorry.
	If you keep giving me these ridiculous tips, again, it's not good for me.
	It's not good for you. I'm going to just have to politely invite you to leave.
	So just don't do that if you don't mind.
	So I'm going to give you a chart here, which is...
	How many bitcoins would it take to buy a house over the last decade?
	Of course, it ends at 2023, the graph says.
	2024, but that's not a thing.
	It depends where you're going and all that kind of stuff, right?
	But let me just get my path here so I don't, you know, you save, you have to do this, of course you do this, right?
	You do this and you're like, Oh, I just saved something.
	Where did I save it?
	Oh, where did I save it?
	All right, here you go. Somebody says, I made a website where you can see the prices of various individual items and sats over time.
	Scroll to the bottom and pick an item and region.
	So, no recommendations.
	I'm just reporting this website.
	I've never looked at it. SATDA.SH All right, so have a look at this.
	This is... You can click on that to expand it, how many bitcoins it takes to buy a house, right?
	So, I mean, there's certainly some increase in value there for sure.
	Of course, it was down to, in 2021, in July, it was eight bitcoins to buy a house.
	In 2013, you needed almost 9,000 bitcoins to buy a house.
	Right now, you need 16.
	Less now, much less now.
	So as Bitcoin matures, the market recognizes it as more and more value-stable.
	Bitcoin is not volatile.
	The populace, and thus the market, is either ignorant of its value proposition or biased for state-controlled finances, i.e.
	chaos. As time goes on more and more see the value and those biased for the state capitulate.
	Have you heard the thing about science like science advances one funeral at a time?
	Have you ever heard that saying about science?
	What they mean by that is people are wedded to the old ways of doing things and looking at things, and you have to wait for them to die off, and then new people come in.
	It's the same thing with science.
	People who grew up with like fiat and gold, right?
	Fiat gold and silver, the bimetallic standard and the fiat standard.
	Those people, you know, they're just not getting the Bitcoin.
	It takes a while.
	But you see what's happening is, let's say somebody got into Bitcoin at the age of 25.
	Okay. Well, that person is 40 now and they're starting to get some actual authority and power in Bitcoin as a whole.
	So what's happening is people are moving into the space.
	They've matured into the space from sort of young hobbyists.
	They've matured into the space with a deep knowledge of Bitcoin and no loyalty to the fiat and bimetallic worldview.
	Does this make sense?
	Like they understand it. They get it.
	And they don't look and say, well, you know, if it's low inflation, you need your bonds.
	And if it's high inflation, you need your gold.
	And like they're just not into that sort of stuff.
	They're like, all of that is just nonsense.
	It's not how you sail the ship.
	It's how you survive the ship sinking.
	Does that make sense? I think for a lot of people, I can't speak for them, obviously, but I think for a lot of people in the finance world now who are getting some kind of authority, what they're saying is it's not a matter of where the wind's blowing.
	It's a matter of we hit an iceberg and we've got to figure out how to get off.
	So, that is changing.
	And do the, you know, do Charlie Munger understand Bitcoin?
	Maybe he does, but I don't think so.
	What are they going to do? I mean, I saw this with my own mother.
	I've sort of mentioned this on the show before.
	Do you have people in your life who are older who just, their brains stop?
	Stop, right? They just brain stop.
	Like my mom, I bought her a CD player many years ago and she still referred to it as a gramophone.
	Like their brains just stop.
	And it's like, that's it.
	I'm full. I'm done.
	I'm full. It's like when you fill your car up and you just can't put any more.
	I'm done. I'm not learning anything new.
	Maybe I stopped at the dot-com crisis.
	I stopped at the dot-com 90s thing.
	And after that, right?
	So, all right.
	Yeah, the bricks thing you should definitely look at.
	Alright, we won't do the speculative fire tweets, but I do have a couple of other things that I wanted to get into and mention in my tough guy voice.
	Alright, let me just open up my other document.
	I can't open up Peaceful Parenting because everybody ends up crying.
	Boy, the number of people who write to me saying that I'm in tears from this book.
	Alright. Um...
	Have you heard this? Oh, this is from the older people too.
	Have you heard, oh, Bitcoin is just wrapped up with every other tech stock.
	Ah, it's just like every other tech stock.
	They confuse tech and Bitcoin.
	They just sort of throw these all together as if Bitcoin is a totally different thing from tech.
	Does that make sense? Have you heard of this?
	Uh... What's happening is Bitcoin is decoupling from other high-risk assets.
	Bitcoin and tech stocks as a whole are no longer merging as a whole.
	They're just not merging. You've heard that Bitcoin is a protocol similar to HTTP. No.
	I mean, it is a protocol, but I would not put Bitcoin and HTTP together because they're both – I mean, yes, I guess there's the goods going across the train tracks and then there are train tracks, so Bitcoin is more like the train tracks.
	Bitcoin is not like anything.
	It's always the internet of money and it's like, nope, because the internet doesn't store value.
	The internet is the first safe haven from fiat collapse in the history of the planet.
	All right. Bloomberg senior manager, sorry, Bloomberg senior macro strategist said the inevitable approval of US spot Bitcoin ETFs will help continue to migrate it into the mainstream.
	Sorry, I also wanted to mention, so NASDAQ is a proxy for tech stocks as a whole.
	Since September the 1st, Bitcoin's up 34% give or take and NASDAQ is down 8.6%.
	So if NASDAQ and Bitcoin were merged together, one wouldn't be going up massively while the other one was dropping significantly just in 30 days, right?
	All right. Ah, yes.
	Ah, yes. Turns out this year's federal deficit is a lot bigger than they claimed and growing twice as fast.
	Thanks to acute accounting gimmick that counted student loan cancellation as revenue, the deficit is already $2 trillion, up 40% on a year ago.
	So, yeah.
	They counted student loan cancellation as revenue.
	You know, as you do. As you do.
	Apparently bankruptcy is revenue now these days.
	Have you heard, of course, you can see this on Twitter, 4.9% growth in Q3 GDP doesn't indicate stronger growth than expected economically but higher than reported inflation.
	GDP growth was driven by higher consumer and government spending,
	but more of that gain resulted from higher prices than the 3.5 percent
	allotted by the GDP deflator.
	Alright, I want to make sure I get this term correct.
	You know, I'm not going to pretend to be Peter Schiff here, so I think I've got this term correct.
	But let me just double-check here.
	Stock-to-flow ratio.
	Stock-to-flow ratio.
	I like to start rapping, right?
	There we go. Yeah, it's a model of scarcity.
	So stock-to-flow ratio, it's how many things are available Relative to the total stock, right?
	So there's a bunch of Apple shares out there.
	How many of them are currently being traded?
	So there's a total mountain. How much of it is currently trading?
	So it's a ratio of the current stock of a commodity circulating Bitcoin supply and the flow of new production, newly minted Bitcoin.
	Okay, so it's a little bit different. Sorry.
	It's the ratio of the current stock of a commodity circulating Bitcoin supply and the flow of new production.
	Again, do they mean by circulating stuff which could be sold or the stuff that's actually in motion rather than the stuff that's been held for years?
	A decade or whatever, right?
	Let me just make sure. I want to make sure I understand this stock to flow thing because I don't want to lead anybody astray and get things wrong.
	All right. A stock to flow model is commonly used to price commodities.
	The model assesses two attributes, stock and flow.
	Well, that's very handy. Stock is the total existing supply of a commodity or a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.
	Flow is the new supply of the commodity or crypto that is created each year.
	So gold. 187 metric tons of gold have been mined in history.
	This is the stock of gold.
	Virtually impossible to destroy gold, so most of this stock is still around.
	Around 3,000 tons of gold is mined each year.
	This comprises the flow side of the model.
	Okay. All right.
	One of Bitcoin's most notable features is that the precise amount of new supply that comes into circulation each year is already known.
	This means that Bitcoin's stock-to-flow can be modeled with a high degree of accuracy as opposed to other commodities, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	All right. So I think that the measure should be more precise, which is how many people are actually selling it, but okay, that's fine.
	So the stock flow ratio right now is 57.1.
	Right, so it's 57 Bitcoins for every one that's being minted.
	Gold is 61. Gold market cap is 12 trillion versus Bitcoin's 600 billion.
	After the next halving, Bitcoin's stock to flow goes to 114 to 1.
	So Bitcoin will be almost two times more scarce than gold.
	So the Bitcoin market cap should be 20 trillion dollars or a million dollars per Bitcoin.
	I'm just reading this.
	I'm not recommending it.
	I'm just saying it's a way of measuring it.
	I mean, I said many years ago that I had a price in my head of $750,000 per Bitcoin.
	Again, just pulled out of my armpit.
	No data, no nothing.
	Just a kind of gut feeling. Which, of course, means nothing to you.
	Do your own research. But this is one of the ways.
	Yeah, it'll be $21 million to zero.
	Yeah, that's right. It'll be $21 million to zero.
	That's right. The U.S. just added $600 billion in debt in only one month.
	Right. Do you guys track car sales, car markets?
	I find that stuff quite interesting, just out of curiosity.
	I think it's a good proxy. Housing, not so much, but I think car markets are a fairly good proxy for what's going on in the economy.
	I'm just curious if you track that.
	Because it tends to be more sensitive to current economic conditions.
	Housing tends to be a bit more delayed.
	Auto loans are in crisis.
	Yeah, the lease prices can be insane.
	Okay, I'll give you a quick update on the car market.
	Average new car payment is at a record $730 a month.
	So, that's a lot.
	Average new car loan rate is at a record 9.9%.
	Average used car loan rate is at a record 13.9%.
	Average new car price is at a record $49,000.
	I mean, my first car was Volvo S70 in 1998.
	It was mostly paid for by the business I co-founded because I used it for business all the time.
	I think it was like $34,000.
	That felt like all the money in the world.
	Of course, that was just coming out of being a broke-ass student into the high-tech world.
	But... Average new car price is $49,000.
	I have not bought a new car.
	I have not bought a new car in...
	Oh, I don't even know how long.
	All right. So...
	So, higher yields usually make bonds more attractive to buyers.
	But with treasuries, like the government-issued bonds, as yields rise, they become even less attractive.
	Right? Right. So why is it when the government offers you more money in treasury bonds that people shy away from it?
	Do you know why that kind of stuff happens?
	People walking around with four-figure car payments, and here I won't even finance a new phone.
	Yeah, boy, do you remember that?
	Do you remember that? When I said if you had bought Bitcoin instead of a new iPhone, every model from the iPhone 8 onwards, do you know how much money you'd have if you'd taken the money that people spent on buying new iPhones?
	If you bought Bitcoin instead, you'd currently have over $73 million.
	73. Even the pre-owned car market is insane.
	Yeah, the Avis and Hertz and all the people who are selling off the cars that they have used, right?
	So the reason why people shy away from treasuries with high yields is because higher yields will result in larger budget deficits, which raises the risk of default or inflation.
	So if the government is going to pay you higher yields, they're going to have a larger budget deficit.
	They're going to print the money to pay the higher yields, the higher value.
	So it's not going to work out well.
	If you – Dave Ramsey can't tell people to get $3,000 beta cars anymore.
	Yeah, yeah. There was a pretty grim story some while ago on this woman.
	She says, I don't know if this is true or not, but it's a woman who said on Twitter, she said, this is some years ago, yeah, I met a guy at a bar and he says he was a Dogecoin millionaire.
	So I brought him home and I tied him to the bed and I forced him to nut inside me because I got a kid and I can make money.
	Now he's totally broke and I'm a single mom.
	Whoopsie. All right. Hit me if you've heard of this.
	If you're like over 30, you've probably heard of this kind of stuff before.
	U.S. banks could be grappling with at least how much money of unrealized losses in their securities portfolios according to an estimate from Moody's.
	How much unrealized losses in their securities portfolios are U.S. banks grappling with?
	Just give me a number.
	650 billion.
	No, it's not 10 trillion.
	That's the size of the entire economy.
	Well, no, a little bit less than that.
	But yeah, 650 billion of unrealized losses.
	So people are looking at this kind of stuff, right?
	They're looking at this kind of stuff and they're saying, okay, well, if the government is going to bail out the banks, that means that the US dollar value is going to decline even further.
	And yeah, of course, our bank bailouts, I mean, they're going to pay their friends, right?
	You know that old story that if you owe $100,000 to the bank, you're in trouble.
	If you owe $100 million to the bank, the bank is in trouble.
	Oh yeah, zero hedge.
	That is a fine site.
	Let's see what we got here. Are they going to rob me to log in?
	No. Yes, maybe.
	Maybe, maybe, maybe. The percent of subprime auto borrowers at least 60 days past due on their loans rose to 6.11% in September, the highest in data going back to 1994.
	Yes, the percentage of borrowers at least 60 days late on their car loans is the highest
	on record.
	So we are, I think that's all the data.
	Should we just freeball it from this point in?
	You can give me your questions and your comments.
	I'm just going to kind of freeball it a little bit.
	I did this in a show last night coming back from getting my vaccine.
	We are in an either-or economy at the moment.
	I don't know if you know what an either-or economy is.
	Here we are, rolling in the breeze, rolling in the deep.
	So an either-or economy is either I can pay this bill or I can pay that bill.
	Either I can get groceries or I can fill my gas tank.
	Either I can buy this or I can buy that.
	It's juggling, right?
	The either-or economy is...
	Largely fueled by debt.
	So in the US, credit card debts are at record highs and savings are at fairly horrendous lows.
	You know, it's the old thing. The guy in the 20s, like the great Gatsby guy, was a multimillionaire.
	He went bankrupt and people said, my God, you had so much money.
	How could you go bankrupt? And he said...
	Very fast. Sorry.
	He said, how did you go bankrupt?
	Very slowly then, very quickly.
	And that's the funny thing.
	That's what you got to keep your eyes on.
	That's why I'm doing this show.
	Like I wrote a whole novel about a year ago about all of this kind of stuff.
	You really should get it. Thefreedomain.com slash books.
	It's free. It's called The Present because it's about the current day.
	And it's a gift to you as thanks for allowing me to do this great work as a whole.
	But it's the either or economy.
	And there is...
	Ooh, I don't know.
	It's a fairly spicy topic.
	Hit me with a why if you've noticed a pretty deep fucking cynicism about working life coming from the next generation or two.
	Have you seen that?
	People are like, what am I working for?
	Don't even get me started on the draft rebuttals.
	Aren't people saying that? The fuck am I working for?
	I can't afford anything.
	I can't get out on my own. I can't afford a family.
	I can't afford a house. I've got the either-or economy.
	I have to move back in with my parents.
	I got nothing! Nothing!
	They fucking hate it.
	They feel like serfs literally wage slaves.
	They hate the corporations. They hate the grocery stores.
	They hate the real estate agents.
	They hate the media. They just hate stuff because they're robbed!
	Of course I know him. He's me.
	All the developers at your work?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	You have a little bit in yourself?
	Better don't get a copy for you.
	Get several for the normies. Yeah, you can hand that out too.
	I would find it tough to manage.
	I used to love, when I was a hiring manager, of course, I was chief technical officer, and then I was a director of technology, and then I was chief marketing officer, and...
	I used to love – I used to go down to the local universities in Ontario and I would go and interview all of the people who needed summer jobs or who needed work-study placements.
	I loved those guys. They were so excited, happy, enthusiastic.
	They'd come in like bowling balls of fluorescent disco enthusiasm and they were just a blast to work with and so on, right?
	I would not want to be doing that right now, man.
	This hard-eyed, suspicious, well, fine, I'll work for you, but I'm not going to like it.
	The young have a greater sensitivity to the motion of the society, right?
	The young are like the 40-year veteran of the ocean-going vessels who wakes up in the bowels of a giant cruise ship and knows the weather outside.
	The young have way greater sensitivity to the future of their society because they have a lot longer to live in it, right?
	Somebody says, oh, James, I've got a bit of it as well, but the younger you go, the worse it is.
	Oh, get me started on the boomers nagging and complaining.
	Oh, the younger generation, they don't have any enthusiasm.
	It's like, you all stole their lives, right?
	The young are working to pay the debts of the age.
	I know younger people, they can't afford their own apartment, even though they're working full-time.
	They've got to move back in with their parents.
	They can't get their life started.
	And this is right after COVID, where everything went to a screeching halt.
	Somebody says, even my employer, no one either cares to be smart and working to run things right, or incapable of figuring out, or both.
	Yeah, the COVID lockdowns were unbelievably brutal on everyone's life.
	You know, I mean, as a fairly old fart myself, it was like, oh, you can't go to the disco.
	But man, if somebody had banned me from going to discos and parties and out and with friends and dating and all of that stuff, when I was in my late teens, early 20s, I would have gone nuts.
	We had a meltdown. But that stuff is wild.
	I mean, the older people are like, well, what's so bad?
	You got to stay home. It's like, you don't want to stay home when you're young.
	You want to go out. You want to have fun, right?
	Inverted pyramid cannot support all the base on top who want benefits.
	Yeah. A lot of my friends in their 20s all live in rooms, even if they work full-time.
	Yeah. Yeah, it's all Raskolnikov crime and punishment stuff, right?
	I mean, I'm not saying people are trying to crash the economy, but I'm not sure what they'd be doing differently if they were.
	If you're 20, a year of your life is 5% of your entire life.
	That's right. Uh, Bitcoin is my only hope of being able to own a house one day.
	Yeah. Even the liberals are struggling with student loans.
	Well, then most of all, right?
	Then most of all. And listen, okay, like outside of all of the techie economic stuff, how are you guys doing?
	There are various shorts and TikToks going around about 20-something women heading their 9-to-5 grind.
	While it's complex, people drag them as lazy and entitled.
	So it's one thing.
	If you're a young testosterone-fueled man-animal like I was in my 20s, okay, you've got tons of energy.
	You want to do this kind of work.
	You're thrilled. You're excited. And you've got something to work towards, to grow towards, to build towards.
	But how are you guys doing in the economy?
	How are the lockdowns for you?
	How was the COVID experience for you?
	How's inflation for you?
	How's rent? I mean, over 80% of Americans are locked into mortgages, 5% or lower, which means everyone else is eating their shorts.
	You lost all your savings this year?
	Oh, what happened? You know, you give a man a why, give a woman a why, they can bear almost any how.
	But the idea that you're going to work and you can't get ahead because the greedy boomers who wanted more out of the government than they were willing to pay in taxes are slurping on your jugular for the sake of feeding their cruise life.
	A sick dog and an engagement ring?
	Well, I'm sorry about the sick dog.
	An engagement ring?
	My rent doubled but 3x my salary.
	Doing good for now. Good for you.
	Congratulations. 2020, 2021, most of 22, bad.
	2023, great. Somebody says, I got so angry during COVID lockdowns.
	It feels like my early 20s were wasted.
	Yeah, it's like that white guy blinking thing.
	You know, 2020, blink, 2023.
	Yeah, that was horrible.
	Got a pregnant wife and it's tough living on a single income these days.
	Yeah. My budget is getting harder and harder to maintain.
	Somebody says, a minimum wage, no car, one room, suite, and that in a blue-collar apartment in a blue-collar city, cheapest in the country, but slightly better than living on disability, looking up.
	Yeah. We're back to having a move to survive, aren't we?
	Somebody says, I'm doing great.
	Huge improvement after listening to you.
	Quit my job, doubled my income since before COVID. Congratulations, man.
	I really am thrilled to hear that.
	My income increased 50% and rent also doubled.
	Saving money now. Chris says, I'm doing okay.
	I have some savings, but I'm behind for my age.
	I was able to maintain a good income through COVID-19.
	Fortunately, my rent has increased only $100 since 2019.
	My per hour rate is better and I've increased the amount of clients, etc., but I'm still concerned with inflation and feel like I have to catch up to inflation and cut my budget.
	James says, I was definitely pretty isolated for a lot of the pandemic, made lots of life changes because I was going slowly mad.
	Yeah, we all go mad alone.
	We all go mad alone. We're social animals that way.
	Sanity is a community, right?
	Sanity is a sane community.
	Insanity is solitude or an insane community.
	As Gen X parents, we must endeavor to house our children once we own our own home.
	My mother owned three properties and still didn't help.
	Oh, sorry about that. I've heard the US government has billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin.
	Is there a looming concern there?
	I sense that enough people in the government are invested that it won't be banned, but I'm concerned.
	Yeah, I mean, Bitcoin just has to survive long enough that the people in charge of the economy don't want to wreck its value because that's where they're putting their own savings.
	And I think it has lasted.
	I mean, I was saying this years ago.
	I think it has personally, again, just my opinion, but I think it has lasted long enough that people who are in control of the economy have it as a savings mechanism, have it as a survival mechanism.
	What they'll do, and again, humble opinion, right?
	What they'll do is they'll threaten to ban Bitcoin.
	They'll threaten to delist Bitcoin.
	They'll threaten to pull ETF approvals so that they can buy the dip, and then that will all come back.
	So that's my particular.
	If government approves the ETF, I think Bitcoin is locked in, but there is still a chance it gets rejected.
	Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they can hurt the price for the short term.
	It's too late to kill it. Yeah.
	Well, and the other thing, too, is that governments now are pretty aware of the brain trust that they're holding onto.
	And if some government, you know, crushes Bitcoin, most people who have any kind of mobility will move to a place that embraces it, like this sort of El Salvador, the Bitcoin city, whatever is going to be happening.
	And you can look at places like Argentina currently struggling with 130% inflation or whatever.
	At some point, they're going to have to transition or go completely Zimbabwe.
	They're going to have to transition. And that will raise demand, and some country's going to adopt it, like, really seriously, and that is going to be the new gold scotch.
	That's going to be the new Atlantis of the economy.
	We just keep your eyes peeled for where that's going to happen.
	And I think, you know, and I, you know, I'm obviously sorry for the people who lost stuff in like the Bankman Freed
	stuff.
	But, you know, the not your keys, not your coins crowd is beginning to dominate.
	And so the stability is increasing.
	The people who are greedy get taken.
	I mean, greed is catastrophic.
	In my view, greed is catastrophic for investments.
	Well, Bitcoin has gone up five times, but it could be more if I do this, that, and the other, and lend it for this, that, and the other, and get in.
	Oh my God. Crazy, man.
	Crazy. Have you been following the Venezuelan election, and ANCAP got second place, and it's in a runoff right now?
	Yes, I have been I have been following it and I do find it quite fascinating
	Yeah, he's uh, he's wild, you know Crazy hair and florid rhetoric.
	It's something we've seen before, I think.
	Somebody says, people were asking me about hardware wallets on locals.
	Okay, yeah. The tech is open source.
	Yeah, some of those places can be good.
	All right, listen, I got another little bit of time.
	I haven't had an injection in forever, but maybe it's because I'm just a damn muscular butt.
	They go in pretty deep intramuscular.
	It's like I think you went into my bone marrow.
	My arm's hurting like hell.
	My foot's hurting a little bit. So I'll do a little bit more because I love chatting with you guys.
	So, what is your topic?
	What is your thoughts? Thank you for your tips.
	I'm obviously happy if the stuff I provide is of value.
	I really do appreciate it.
	I hesitate to ask because you guys are wonderful supporters for the most part.
	But I will ask.
	It's been a wee bit of a low donation month and all of that.
	A happy late birthday.
	Well, thank you, my friend.
	And a commitment to buy 10 copies of the Peaceful Parenting book.
	Should it be printed like RTR? Yeah, I'd like to do that.
	I'd like to do that. We're going to work on that.
	I have a guy.
	Any tips for side hustles in a bad economy?
	The future of AI and how to use it.
	Well, aren't the Democrats trying to hobble AI? Because I guess AI hits a lot of their voting base, like single women and artists and so on.
	My father was just diagnosed with colon cancer.
	Any advice on how I can best support him?
	He puts on a strong front, but my mom has leaked to me that he's pretty crushed by it.
	Oh, I am so sorry, my friend.
	I'm so sorry. Do you know what his odds are?
	Have they given you any odds?
	If you can just hit me with a number, if you don't mind.
	I just want to understand what is he facing here.
	Oh, waiting for the colonoscopy?
	Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
	I mean, I don't want to make this about me.
	I had cancer eight or nine years ago, whatever it was.
	Maybe ten. I can't remember.
	But... Because anyway, part of my brain, the part of my brain apparently that has inhibition and judgment.
	But I didn't have a particularly bad prognosis.
	I mean, there's no great prognosis, but I didn't have a particularly bad prognosis.
	And I just made that fundamental willpower thing that it wasn't going to take me down.
	And I know that's to some degree nonsense, because I hate this idea that you say, oh, we're going to fight cancer.
	It's like, no, your body's going to fight cancer.
	Maybe you get lucky, maybe you don't.
	I mean, there's attitude that helps, but...
	Fundamentally, it's not up to you, right?
	It's up to, you know, maybe the doctors, maybe the treatments, maybe some optimism helps a little bit, but a lot of it's up to just, you know, blind luck and how your body plays it out.
	How's his health as a whole?
	I mean, does he have a great base of health?
	Because, I mean, it's what the nurses said to me was that, I had a good prognosis because my base level of health was very good.
	I had, of course, my blood pressure has always been great.
	I have a very strong heart.
	I have a muscle tone and I do cardio.
	So I'm not trying to sort of praise myself.
	I'm just saying that, you know, one of the reasons why it's important to exercise is not just to look fabulous, darling, but also because it gives you a strong base of health should some felt illness try to take you down.
	He says, no symptoms at all.
	Drinks heavily. Overall health is okay, even with that in mind.
	He's fairly active. Yeah, but the drinking heavily is not good.
	Why are you all letting him drink heavily for?
	He has agreed to quit drinking.
	Yeah, but...
	Okay, what's his...
	Is he in his 50s?
	60s? He's in his 70s?
	So he's got like half a decade or more of heavy drinking?
	More. Well, damn.
	Mystery might be solved.
	So 60 years, maybe, of heavy drinking?
	Damn. Alcohol is fucking poison.
	Like, is everyone aware of that?
	I say this as a guy, like I'll have a light beer every week or two.
	I like the taste in particular if it's been hot and I've been working outside.
	But damn, it's fucking poison, man.
	It's like slow burn shit that kills rats accumulating in your system.
	I just fucking hate alcohol as a whole.
	I just hate it.
	I hate it as a whole. The amount of lives destroyed, the amount of childhoods destroyed, the amount of marriages destroyed, the amount of healthcare costs incurred.
	Damn! Have you tried any of the 0% beers?
	I mean, I'm an ultralight beer.
	Honestly, it feels nothing.
	I will try it, though.
	I will try it. Have you got any recommendations?
	I'm certainly happy to try it.
	Can you about your speech from Oliver's Dream and tie it in with tonight's discussion?
	I don't want to because I do want people to go and read the book or listen to the book.
	It's a great audiobook reading, in my humble opinion.
	So it's called, I mean, there's two books you should listen to.
	Well, there's all of the books you should listen to, but go for my novels.
	They're all at freedom.com slash books.
	You should read or listen to the present followed by the future.
	They're all free and they're all in a feed.
	You can just get them easy peasy.
	I mean, it's pretty wild.
	I checked the numbers the other day.
	My giant novel, one of my proudest achievements in my life, like 100,000 people have listened to that book.
	Let's just listen, not even counting the people who've read it or read it as Kindle or whatever.
	So like 100,000 people.
	Well, that's two things.
	One, I'm really happy that 100,000 people have listened to something that took me a year and a half of full-time labor to research and write.
	I'm perfectly thrilled at that.
	You know, it's 380,000 words.
	It's a massive, massive book.
	It was an unbelievable amount of effort to put it together.
	If you've read it, You should have tipped.
	I mean, come on, a year and a half of my ferocious labor.
	Plus, I also paid for a pretty expensive writing course to make sure it got polished off just right.
	And it was a staggering amount of work, and I really bared my heart and soul in that book.
	So if you're one of the, I don't know, probably at this point, quarter million people who've read it or listened to it or whatever, Come on, man.
	FreeDomain.com slash donate.
	You know you need to do the right thing.
	It's like a 35. It's an Atlas Shrugged audiobook.
	Come on, man. I'm not saying you guys because I'm sure that you have done the right thing.
	But the idea that you would consume someone's giant, poor-of-the-heart-out, year-and-a-half-long book creation, and that's just to write it, let alone record it, and then not tip at all?
	I mean, come on. Would you consider yourself a polymath?
	I don't think in particular.
	Everything I do that's of quality is kind of language-based, so I think I'm just really good at language.
	I'm decent to good at sports, but when it comes to language, I'm tough to talk as a whole.
	I wouldn't consider myself a polymath.
	A polymath, although I suppose I would say that I'm pretty good at fiction and non-fiction.
	I've done plays, poems, novels, non-fiction books, of course, and all of that.
	I've had some stretches when it comes to language.
	And I'm fairly good at spontaneous generation of analogies, metaphors, and arguments.
	But I'm just...
	I'm just lucky that way.
	Hopefully we all are. Hopefully we all are.
	Alright. Any last questions, comments, issues?
	Do you set deadlines for any of your books to finish them?
	I do not. I do not.
	They dern when they dern.
	I don't have any deadlines.
	So would I? Bought a year of locals when I had the dollars.
	Great investment. Plus tips.
	I encourage chatters to do the same.
	I would consider you a polymath based on your interviews with experts.
	They seem impressed by how much you know about their fields.
	Yeah, I mean, I certainly...
	I think I know a fair amount about a bunch of stuff.
	Is that a polymath? I thought a polymath was more like you're great at math and science and architecture and, you know, all that kind of stuff, right?
	Somebody says, my parents truly believe they want the best for me in everything, yet I cannot be honest with them about anything I value.
	What's going on? So what's going on is, in my view...
	They're saying they want the best for you without actually knowing you, which means that they're gaslighting you.
	Again, my humble opinion.
	Call in at freedomain.com if you would like a call-in show.
	But how do you know they truly believe?
	How do you know what they truly believe?
	I've been struggling my way through a really macabre and dark film called Last Tango in Paris with Marlon Brando and, well, the late Marlon Brando, I guess, and the late Maria Schroeder or something like that.
	And it's really dark.
	And in it, Marlon Brando tells, as the character Paul, tells these stories about his childhood.
	And then she says, oh, I thought you didn't want us to know each other.
	And he's like... You think I'm telling the truth?
	How do you know? Marlon Brando is such an incredible actor.
	There's a scene where he's weeping over his dead wife's body and it's unbelievable.
	I literally can't believe his talent and nihilism in that scene.
	It's just jaw-dropping.
	So he's really convincing.
	You know that we've evolved as much to lie as tell the truth.
	You know, falsehood is the spine of our evolutionary pressures.
	Do you know how little fucking honesty is allowed throughout human history?
	I mean, do you see how little honesty was allowed to me in the public square, in the public space?
	Even with science, even with facts, even with experts, didn't matter.
	How much honesty has been allowed throughout human history?
	Because so little honesty has been allowed throughout human history, most of the people, just about everybody who survived, is a really great liar.
	It's a really great liar.
	I believe. I love the king.
	I worship this.
	I love that.
	I'm a patriot for this.
	I couldn't be happier. It's wonderful.
	It's great. It's excellent, right?
	Even people who want resources from dying grandparents claim love and devotion.
	And you understand? We have evolved to lie at least as much, if not more, than we've evolved to tell the truth.
	I'm excellent at hiding my true feelings, he says, yeah.
	Yeah. Would it be helpful to you if I shared my approach to new people and truth?
	Would it be helpful if I shared my approach to new people and truth?
	Alright. Might be a little dark.
	Do you mind if we go a little...
	A little well done on this steak.
	Do you mind if it's going to be like a hockey puck at this point?
	So with a few exceptions, I believe no one.
	I believe no one.
	It doesn't mean that I think that they're lying.
	It's even worse than that.
	I don't think they even know the truth.
	Of my friends, I trust them.
	Of my family, of course, I trust them.
	But when I meet new people, I don't even think that they're lying.
	I just don't think they have any relationship to the truth whatsoever.
	Lying would be an improvement because then they'd have some relationship to the truth and they would be deviating from it.
	I think that people just say whatever shit they need to say to get through the next 30 seconds.
	Most people. Most people.
	I had a long silver thread of optimism and hope.
	Hey, quick question.
	What happened to my long silver thread of optimism and hope over COVID? Anybody?
	Any thoughts about what happened to my long silver thread of hope over the course of COVID? Anybody?
	Anybody? Ding! That's right.
	It was like trying to catch Ernest Hemingway 1500 pound Merlin with some fucking tooth
	floss.
	Dead with your New Zealand invitations.
	Nah, that was okay.
	That wasn't great.
	But COVID was like, oh really?
	Like more than half of leftists want children taken from parents who won't vaccinate them
	and they want us put into camps and oh my God.
	Oh my God.
	Yeah.
	So I assume when I meet people, they have no relationship to morality and they have
	no relationship to the truth.
	It doesn't mean they hate it.
	It doesn't mean they love it.
	They have no relationship to it.
	No relationship to it.
	You know when you meet a goldfish, as we do, you meet a goldfish, do you sit there and say,
	is that goldfish trying to deceive me?
	No, a goldfish is just trying to mate and eat and get on with that part of its day,
	right?
	So I find this to be empirical and rational.
	Let me ask you this. What percentage of people in your life behaved in a noble fashion over the course of COVID? What percentage of people in your life, and this could be in your circumstance at work, extended family, friends, what percentage of people acted with some integrity and nobility over the course of COVID? 85%.
	Well, that is really good. That is really good.
	Congratulations. 50% out of four people.
	Well, that's a low number, but at least it's a 50 percenter.
	13%, 10%.
	What's 15%?
	What is 10%?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Out of my whole family, I'm the only unvaccinated.
	Probably 85% of my close relationships and about 40% of working acquaintances behaved in a noble fashion over COVID. Wow.
	Wow. I have doubts.
	I just increased my monthly local subscription.
	Thank you for your most recent novels, especially The Present and Just Poor.
	Masterpieces, honestly. Thanks again.
	Yes, I keep meaning to do a roundtable on Just Poor.
	Luckily, my family was against it, but everyday people I talked to just went along with it.
	Now, by noble, I don't mean getting vaccinated or not.
	by noble it just means supporting the right of freedom of choice
	and upholding the fucking Nuremberg principles developed out of the holocaust in world war two
	just upholding the principle of freedom of choice in medical procedures
	called the Nuremberg Code did you honor the 40 million dead out of the second world
	war by upholding freedom of choice with medical matters
	Thank you for joining us.
	For the women who are my body my choice, did they uphold your body your choice?
	Did they respect your bodily autonomy?
	Did they respect your skepticism?
	Or like the most insane cultists did they scream science while secretly wishing guys with jackboots held you down
	and injected your ass?
	Have those who were proven Slightly premature about their conclusions. Let's put it as
	nicely for those who've seen the South African contract
	for those who were slightly premature in their evaluations of the facts and
	Castigated you for skepticism that turned out to be empirically validated
	have they apologized?
	Have they done the right thing?
	Have they circled back? Have they acknowledged?
	Have they owned up? Have they confessed?
	Somebody says, my other gave an ultimatum.
	Shots are no contact. Well, that's very helpful.
	So what's all this nobility?
	Everyone's giving me these 40, 50, 80 percent.
	Tell me, where's all this nobility?
	Don't let me put you in the category of people I don't believe.
	You understand that nobility has something to do with admitting that you're wrong when
	you morally castigate people who turn out to be right.
	Thank you.
	you So, I ask again, how many people in your world acted nobly
	over the course of COVID?
	Just wondering.
	Three out of five, but now it's three out of three, right?
	you You understand that there was no way to avoid inoculations over the course of COVID. Right.
	You understand? You understand what I'm saying, right?
	There was no way to avoid being inoculated over the course of COVID. I was inoculated against irrational hope.
	and it feels good alright
	I'm I'm so sorry Somebody pointed out...
	Let me just get your...
	My girlfriend had her bank frozen a couple of years ago.
	She couldn't use any financial services or deposit checks or pay any bills for weeks.
	If she had Bitcoin, she could have used an exchange to stay current.
	I had Bitcoin, not just for inflation hedging, but also to protect myself from capricious bank administrators.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	I sympathize.
	College had mandatory vaccination or no attendance.
	Didn't some colleges have vaccination even for remote attendance, like you're alone in your room?
	That's wild. But the upside, of course, is that parents actually got to see what their kids were being taught.
	That was something. I don't know anything that drove homeschooling more than that as a whole.
	All right, any last questions, comments, or support and donations, I would add down a massively accretion.
	I got like, it's near the end of the month, and I do, of course, my numbers monthly, so if you could help.
	And of course, if you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate, freedomain.com slash donate.
	I'd really appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, the economy is probably going to end up divided over people who go CBDC and people who go Bitcoin.
	It matters more than ever, I think.
	I mean, what's the uptake rate on the newest boosters?
	What, 3%, 4%, 5%?
	So 95% of people or more, or I guess you could say 80%, or it depends where you are, between 60 and 80% of people are like, nope.
	And are they circling back?
	You understand, but not demanding apologies from people who've wronged us, we are sabotaging them, right?
	Like, you're not a very good person if you don't sit down and ask for apologies from people who've wronged you because you're saying that they're beyond redemption, beyond restitution, beyond salvation.
	they have no conscience, like it's not kind or good or nice or beneficial to not sit down
	with people who've wronged you and say you kind of owe me an apology.
	Do you have people, I mean I'm just curious.
	Of course you're angry about it!
	You should be! Dang, now I can't feel pity.
	Thanks, Steph. I know this is a good discussion post.
	D&D this weekend.
	I'm sorry, that's a little bit of a word salad for me.
	Do you have people in your life who owe you an apology?
	Or you can make a good case for that.
	It could be about anything.
	Do you have people in your life who owe you an apology?
	Do you have people in your life you owe an apology to?
	Also an important question. So why aren't you asking for the apology?
	If they're in your life...
	Oh, after Dungeons& Dragons I'm going to discuss COVID and ask for an apology, maybe.
	I don't know. Why would you have someone in your life who's wronged you and you won't ask for an apology?
	I don't understand. What are you doing?
	Because I've been ostracized.
	Well, then they're not in your life, so it's not part of this category now, is it?
	Sorry, I don't mean to sound short, but you know.
	How much time do you spend to make them understand the definition of an apology?
	Well, you patiently show them, you patiently and calmly show them how they were in the wrong and how it hurts you.
	After that, you can't do anything other than see what comes back.
	You follow? Somebody hurt you.
	Somebody upset you. Somebody did something wrong.
	You make the case. Of course, you listen to their rebuttal.
	And you tell them how their actions hurt you and see what they do.
	But you don't do it for them.
	you don't work them like a set of bellows and you're trying to set fire to the sun.
	You state your case, you tell them your experience, you reveal your feelings, and you see.
	But you know how many people get resentful if they're asked to apologize?
	Like you're trying to control them or bully them or one-up them or put them down or...
	Do you know how many people like view an apology as an act of compliant weakness to a manipulative
	bully?
	It's really sad.
	People who can't apologize can't be loved.
	They can't fall in love. They can't be trusted.
	Because they don't have an observing ego that corrects their actions.
	I was just thinking about this the other day when I went to go and see that Joaquin Phoenix movie, The Joker.
	I was making a note about something and I missed the whole bit where...
	Spoiler! I missed the whole bit where his girlfriend turns out to be illusory, his relationship with his girlfriend.
	And I defended it.
	And then I didn't want to see the movie again, but people were telling me I was wrong.
	So I paid and saw the damn movie again, saw the scene.
	I was like, yep, you guys are totally right.
	I even just said in the last show or two, I apologized to the guy who told me to use a VPN to access a site I couldn't, you know, just a regular site I couldn't access.
	And he was like, yep. Totally right.
	Totally right. Totally right.
	So yeah, people who can't apologize, you can't trust them, in my opinion, because they don't have the observing ego that says, you're doing something wrong, you're doing something right, you need to course correct.
	They're driving in the fog, blindfolded, but no GPS. Bump, keep on driving, bump.
	The sequel is coming out.
	Yeah, that movie was a bit too nihilistic for me, though.
	Boy, nothing like that.
	Walter White's Suicide of the Soul Festival.
	I watched a show or two of that, of the Breaking Bad stuff, and it was like, God, this is repulsive.
	This is like skin-crawlingly, like millipedes up the spine with ice shoes on repulsive.
	I mean, I barely made it through Last Angle in Paris.
	It was like, everybody's horrible.
	I'm sorry about my nitpicky ways during your show.
	I'll be more patient from now on for your show.
	Thank you. I appreciate that. And I certainly don't mind being corrected, but some of the nitpicky stuff can break up the flow in ways that aren't particularly productive.
	All right. I think we may be done.
	I need to go take mine.
	I don't like taking antibiotics.
	I can't even remember the last time I took any.
	But, yeah, they make me kind of dozy.
	They're kind of dozy, but not in that good, just pass out for nine hours kind of way, but just kind of lying there, dozing, little tossing and turning and all of that.
	Breaking Bad made me ill.
	Yeah, Breaking Bad is an assault on anything that is noble, decent and good in the human soul.
	Vitamins are great. Well, that's nice.
	I'm not talking about vitamins, but okay.
	That's nice. Things you put in your mouth are great.
	All right. Well, thanks everyone so much.
	If you want to throw any last tips with the closing, that'd be great.
	Please, please, please check out freedomand.locals.com.
	great community. I know you're here already, but you know, if you're listening to this later, or you're not subscribed
	there, use the promo code, all caps, UPB 2022, to get a month. Try it out. We've just finished cataloging the donor
	shows, and they're just great. So because they all get kind of buried in the waterfall of feed that goes back through
	the beginning of time. So we've got a nice place where they're all listed. You get access to StephBot AI, you get the
	audiobook of Peaceful Parenting, you get to sort of listen to the wildest and spiciest
	call-in shows. We're just putting one out today where a guy threatened to murder his sister. So yeah, it was very, very
	exciting.
	Steph, I have a full-time job, but I always feel uneasy about losing my job in an unstable economy.
	Any tips to handle it? Yes, Joe!
	Absolutely! Read, learn, add to your skill set.
	Add to your skill set, my friend.
	Read sales, read marketing, read business, read finance, read about the industry.
	Be so valuable that they can't live without you.
	Go with salespeople on sales calls.
	Go with the technical people.
	Learn whatever is going on.
	Jared reveals in his open kimono, five more premium shows from 2015 and earlier will be added soon.
	Yeah, just add value, man.
	I mean, Scott Adams and the talent stack thing is somewhat important, right?
	Go to Toastmasters.
	Go do stand-up comedy.
	Learn how to speak in public.
	Learn how to communicate. Learn PowerPoint.
	Learn, I don't know, whatever.
	Whatever it is.
	Learn about... Go read all the great books from your industry.
	Try and get mentored by someone in your organization.
	Get a relationship. Get networking.
	Don't just do your job and cross your fingers.
	The time for that is long gone.
	That's like old economy Steve from the 70s.
	The time for that is long gone.
	You've got to hustle all the time.
	Do you understand? Like...
	I am constantly hustling in this job.
	I'm constantly trying to add value.
	I'm constantly trying to learn new things and do new work.
	And like I branched out into reading my novels.
	I wrote two new novels. I'm writing the Peaceful Parenting book.
	We did just Economics and Bitcoin, which we haven't done in forever.
	I'm constantly trying to find ways to add value.
	To lure you back.
	To draw you back in.
	To the web. So no, I'm constantly trying to add value.
	Constantly trying to put out my skill set.
	Like I tried a new way of doing the Wild West video.
	You should go watch the Wild West video.
	Truth about the Wild West. I tried doing it with video rather than just a PowerPoint.
	So constantly trying to branch out.
	Next year, absolutely dying to do a documentary on the Civil War.
	I think that would be. So I'm going to get back out there on the road.
	If I could do more in-person stuff, I would absolutely do it, but it's kind of hazardous.
	So I'm just telling you, like, I don't want to say, ooh, do what I'm doing, but I'm just saying constantly try to add value.
	I mean, you guys know, right? You don't know where the hell these shows are going to go.
	Half the time, I don't know where the hell these shows are going to go, right?
	I mean, but I'm trying to be spontaneous and interesting and of value in the moment within the bounds of that which won't get me...
	You know, in general, trying to work within the fencing of the lynching.
	Somebody says they learned how to do CAD modeling in like two weeks from YouTube videos.
	Incredibly valuable skill no matter what your day job is.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah, just if you keep adding value, if you keep learning about your business.
	I mean, when I was young and starting out in my career, When I first started working in a trading company, I read everything there was to learn about trading.
	When I was interested in marketing, when I was interested in sales, I read everything I could about sales.
	Just try and really gather value because the more skills you gather, the more enthusiasm you have for what you're doing, the more irreplaceable you will be.
	And eventually you'll gather enough skills that you can start your own business, which
	is fantastic.
	Fantastic.
	So, yeah, just... and it's fun to keep gathering new skills.
	It keeps your brain alive.
	It keeps your electric disco cerebellum constantly cooking like the Northern Lights.
	It's more fun.
	It's more interesting.
	It's more engaging.
	Don't do that dead-eyed shuffle day to day on some treadmill of nonsense that just goes
	from start to end and you fall into a grave.
	Keep your brain alive. Keep your brain electric.
	Keep your brain growing and learning and keep challenging yourself.
	You don't know what you're capable of.
	Hell, I'm 57.
	I still don't know what I'm capable of.
	I still think that I'm trying to do better.
	Every single show, I've been doing this for 18 years.
	I'm still, every single show, trying to push the envelope, deliver more value, do it in a better way.
	Do it in a more funkadelic kind of fashion.
	So that is the goal.
	Constantly keep trying to improve and do it.
	Read the books. Study.
	Get excited. Learn the deep economics of what's going on.
	Take an accountant out for lunch.
	Ask him how the business works from a financial standpoint.
	He'll love to tell you about his job.
	He'll be happy to have a free lunch.
	Learn this shit.
	Become irreplaceable.
	Become irreplaceable. Singular.
	And that's a good training for being irreplaceable in a love relationship and in a marriage as well.
	So, thank you everyone.
	I hope this is helpful. Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful afternoon.
	I guess we'll be talking...
	Yes, tomorrow night. With regards to our Friday Night Live, I may not be able to do Sunday, but I'll keep you posted on that.
	Lots of love and have yourself a great evening.
	I love the fact that you guys are here.
	I always hope to provide value.
	Let us continue this march on together.

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