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Feb. 9, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:06:19
5398 BITCOIN vs PROPAGANDA!
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And hi, hi, hi, it's Stephen Molyneux from Free Domain.
Had a little bit of time this Friday, the 9th of February, 2024, and if you have questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, I am happy to chat.
We're gonna do a little bit of Bitcoin-y stuff today.
First up, we have Tim, my friend.
I am all ears, what's on your mind?
Good, yeah.
Hey, so I've been kind of deep diving on Immanuel Kant lately, and I had some thoughts about him that I wanted to share and then get your feedback on, kind of bounce them off you, kind of see what you thought about him.
Go for it.
To kind of start off, I think it's important to explain the personal nature of it.
I wasn't really into philosophy until I discovered your show.
I was really into theology, and there's some overlap there.
Like, you know, philosophy is kind of different because you're talking about stuff with a kind of more precise language, I think.
And, you know, like, for example, I listened to a thing recently about how music can express a lot of philosophical principles, like with harmony and dissonance are kind of similar to like arguments and contradictions.
And music kind of has
It's able to kind of tell stories and kind of say things, even with just the melody.
I think theology can do something kind of similar, where you can express a lot of theological—or, I'm sorry, a lot of philosophical— Tim, are we going to talk Kant or music and theology?
Focus!
Focus!
Yeah, yeah.
So, okay, so I got into philosophy with your show, and then, so I've just been, you know, riding your wave, you know, and then, so you're an empiricist, you know, like, I mean, so there, I think there's some, there's like a range of what people mean by that, so when you say empiricist, sometimes you need to, like, clarify, and then, so,
And I know you've done shows with other people where you've kind of debated empiricism with people, and then there's been some confusion about what you mean by that.
Like, for example, you had an empiricism debate, and then the person you were— Sorry, is your question, what do I mean by empiricism?
Because, like, I'm right here, you don't need to quote me from other—I can just tell you very briefly what I mean by that.
Yeah, well, because some people say that empiricism is... No, no, no, hang on, hang on, no, some people, like, are you asking me what my argument for empiricism is?
Yeah, well, I think I know what it is, but, like, so, yeah, actually, but, yeah, please, could you, could you... Yeah, so, when I say that I'm an empir... yeah, so when I say I'm an empiricist, what I mean by that
is that philosophy is empirical.
Right?
Empiricism is not a school of philosophy.
It is not a subsection or opinion or perspective, like I like opera versus classical versus hard rock or something like that.
Philosophy is empirical.
And when I say I'm an empiricist and a philosopher, I'm saying that empiricism is the only basis for philosophy.
There is no other basis for philosophy, because philosophy
is about stating that which is true.
And not just that which is true subjectively, which is, you know, I could say I had a dream about Mariah Carey last night, and there would be no way to prove that or not, but about that which is objectively true.
Now, objectively true means that it either is identifiable in the reality that we share, or it at least follows the principles of the reality that we share.
So if I say somewhere in the universe there could be a silicon-based life form, well that's theoretically possible and it does follow the principles of the reality that we share.
So philosophy is about saying things that are true and universal, which means that they have to either be
Identifiable within our shared reality, or it at least follows the principles derived from the properties of things in that shared reality.
I know this sounds a little abstract, but if you and I are trying to agree on what a tree is, we can both look at a tree and say a tree has leaves and bark and rises and is alive, otherwise it's a dead tree, it's a plant, it has roots, you know, it requires sunlight and water, so we can define
What a tree is according to the shared reality, and we can verify it.
We can verify it.
So a tree is immobile, or to put it another way, it moves very slowly and it doesn't have its own motive power.
So if we see a walking tree, we say that's not a tree, I guess that's an end from Lord of the Rings or something.
So philosophy is about saying things that are true, which means that it has to identify things in the shared reality that we both live in.
If I have a dream about Maria Carey last night, that's not a shared reality we both live in.
That's just my own subjective experience, so that's not philosophical.
That's not about philosophy.
It doesn't mean it's unimportant.
It could be about psychology or self-knowledge or whatever, but it's not about philosophy.
So, when I say philosophy is about saying things that are true and universal, then they have to be related to the shared reality that we both exist within.
Now, how do we know about the shared reality that we both exist within?
Well, we know that through the evidence of the senses.
So, the senses allow us to communicate and process what happens in shared reality.
And the reason I say shared reality is, you know, dreams have a kind of reality to them.
Daydreams, ambitions, feelings that aren't objective.
You know, I mean, like if I'm feeling whimsical, I don't know that that would show up in a brain scan.
But that's a reality for me, and it's a real thing.
But our shared reality has to come through the senses.
So given this is sort of axiomatic, right?
Philosophy is about saying things that are true and universal.
That which is true and universal must take place in our shared reality.
The only way we access our shared reality is through the empirical evidence of our senses.
Therefore, all philosophy must be empirical, right?
I'll just run through that real quick again, just because it's really kind of foundational.
So, philosophy is about saying things that are true and universal.
What is true and universal must take place in our shared reality.
The only way we can access our shared reality is through the empirical evidence of our senses.
And therefore, and therefore, all philosophy is
Based on empiricism.
So when I say I'm an empiricist, I'm saying that all philosophy is based on empiricism.
You can't be a philosopher if you're not an empiricist, if you're a subjectivist or a relativist or an anti-empiricist.
And I know this sounds kind of ridiculous in a way, because this would be to say that those thinkers who say that there's a higher reality, those thinkers who say there's a higher reality inaccessible to the senses,
I'm not talking about philosophy.
They're talking about revelation, mysticism, perhaps a kind of theology, but the degree to which Plato talks about the realm of the forms is the degree to which—I will absolutely stand by this, though I know it sounds kind of crazy—the degree to which Plato talks about math and science and reality and so on is the degree to which he's a philosopher.
The degree to which he's talking about
The higher realm of forms inaccessible to the senses.
He's talking about mysticism.
That's not philosophy.
That's not philosophy because it's not part of our shared reality that is processable by logic and evident to the senses.
So that's why I say, when I say I'm an empiricist, I'm saying I am a philosopher.
It's not a school of philosophy.
It is the basis and essence and purpose of philosophy to identify things that are true and universal.
within our shared reality.
So, sorry, that's sort of my brief thing about it, if that helps.
Yeah, so if I could ask a clarifying question, because I'm currently, like, laser-beam focused on the relationship between empiricism and sense data, and then, so, when you're doing the History of Philosophers series, I never really
got um how deep of connection there is between sense data and reason uh until your show on lock like that really just blew my mind um and but and then so that so then a little while later you did a show on fume and you were talking about how uh like i guess maybe they call it the causation problem where um
Maybe I'm stating it wrong, but I'll try to say, it's my understanding, is that the thing that Hume is pointing out is that causation is not something that we experience through the senses.
So what he was kind of saying is that if it's not something that we experience through the senses, then
It must not be an empirically based belief.
The belief in causation isn't an empirical belief, according to Hume, because he was... Right, so, sorry to interrupt.
So, what Hume is saying, to some degree, is that if you think about a video game,
You program things in a video game and that's your causation, right?
So, I remember when Half-Life 2 came out, you had the hand that grabbed things and moved them around.
So, what is the cause of our ability to do that?
Well, it's the programmer who programmed that into the game system.
If he hadn't programmed that into the game system, it wouldn't exist.
So, there's a causation with regards to that.
So, there's causation which is in nature.
And then there is causation as a concept in the mind.
Now, I personally don't know Hume.
Hume's mind can't read his mind.
He wouldn't say there's no such thing as causation anywhere in the universe.
There's no such thing as cause and effect anywhere in the universe.
So, for instance, if you meet a man who is 80, you know that he's eaten for the last 80 years.
He may not have eaten in the last 80 minutes, but he's eaten for 80 years.
Because if he hadn't eaten, he would be dead.
You also know that he has consumed liquid for 80 years.
And so, the causality, there's no way a man could be alive for 80 years if he didn't eat and drink, right?
So, there is causality.
The cause of him being alive, to some degree, is eating and drinking.
And so, we know cause and effect, and animals know cause and effect, because if a tiger is hungry,
Then the tiger will go and hunt, and then the tiger eats and is no longer hungry.
If the tiger is thirsty, it goes and drinks in a pond or whatever, licks rainwater off the leaves or whatever they do.
So there is causality.
You couldn't have evolution, you couldn't have life without causality, right?
If there is a person alive, we know that he is born of woman, right?
Every person who's there
is has been born, inseminated by a male born of woman and has survived, right?
And so there definitely is causality in nature.
Now we take the causality in nature and we abstract that into causality that is conceptual.
And the conceptual causality doesn't exist in nature, but causality certainly does exist in
Nature.
I mean, if we see a river, we know that there's a water source.
Right?
That the course of the river is the source of the water, plus usually a somewhat gentle incline that causes the water to flow.
So there is no such thing as a river without any source of water.
And so there is cause and effect.
If we look at a mountain, we know that there's been some geological pressure
To push the Earth's crust up into a vertical slab.
So, there's causality all over the place.
The abstract conception of causality doesn't exist in nature, but there certainly is cause and effect in nature, otherwise there wouldn't be anything that could live, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, that does.
So, the point that I'm kind of focusing on at the moment is that
Um, it, it seems to me, like, so it seems to me that kind of like Kant's answer to Hume is that, uh, the idea of causation is something that we're sort of pre-wired to, uh, to see, to experience things through.
So like our brains- Well, hang on, sorry, but there's a difference between the experience of causation
And the concept of causation.
Animals experience causation, right?
So animals are hungry and they eat and then they stop eating, right?
So they, I guess the leptin or whatever it is, is released in their system that tells them they're hungry, drives them to eat food, and the cause is hunger, the effect is eating, and the result is satiation or satiety, right?
So there is the experience of causation, which we all have.
Everything that's alive has some experience
of causation.
Darwinian evolution, there certainly is evolution from animal husbandry.
Like, how did we get dogs to be different kinds?
We bred them for that and all that, right?
And of course, if you look at the original banana, it looks really nothing like the banana that we have in the world today.
So, there is the fact of evolution, but then there is the theory of evolution.
Now, the theory of evolution does not exist in the world.
But it describes the processes that do exist in the world, and the processes that do exist in the world, which evolution describes, have a lot to do with cause and effect, right?
So, if you are a giraffe, and you develop a slightly longer neck, then you get more access to the leaves.
And that's better, right?
And so, and if you are a whale, and you develop bigger lungs, and you lose your hind legs, so there's just a bunch of bones stuck in your hips,
That's better for you.
So there's cause and effect, that which is fitter to reproduce or more likely to gain access to resources and or reproductive efficacy.
So there is what happens in the world, which is that there is evolution, but the theory of evolution does not exist in the world.
So I think that when Hume is saying that cause does not exist in the world,
He's not saying that there's no such thing as cause and effect in the universe, because there is.
He wouldn't be alive if the... Like, he's hungry, he goes to eat.
He's thirsty, he goes to drink.
He's tired, he goes to rest.
If he hadn't done any of that cause and effect stuff, he wouldn't be alive to write about it, right?
So he accepts that there's cause and effect in an experiential sense, but when he says concepts don't exist in the world, he's right.
The theory of evolution did not exist until
It was invented.
Although, the process of evolution has been occurring for a long time.
So, that which is in the world versus that which is within the mind, if that makes sense.
Yeah, so like similar to how there's a fact of evolution, I agree with that, that seems like the Occam's razor simplest answer to that problem.
Similar to how there's a fact of evolution and a theory of evolution, and the theory of evolution didn't occur until like a hundred years ago or something.
There's a fact of causation, and then there's also a theory of causation, right?
So, you know, even before anybody was around or any biological life, you know, things were causing other things to happen.
And then the sort of theory of causation didn't begin to occur until there were minds to, to sort of, like, have that, you know, have that
Yeah, nobody says that the solar system is without cause, right?
The solar system is, I don't know, something like a bunch of matter starts colliding together, which then starts to attract more matter, and then there's this big plane of matter, and then a certain critical point exists with the nuclear process in the sun, and it starts to burn, and this maybe pushes away clumps of matter, which then form into planets.
Like, nobody says that there's no cause and effect.
In the creation of the solar system, even though there was no life in the solar system and no minds.
And who knows?
We might be the very first minds in the universe, in terms of evolution.
We could have won the race!
And so it might be that before us, there was no mind capable of processing concepts
In
There can't be suns, there can't be planets, there can't be solar systems.
There has to be cause and effect, and cause and effect is understood by babies, right?
They drop their food, they realize they can't mentally will it to float back up to themselves, so they cry because they can't get a hold of it.
They understand that they can't manipulate physical objects with their minds, and so they cry because they can't get at their food.
And so on.
Even though they want it, their wants don't translate into the movement of matter.
So, babies accept cause and effect, physicists accept cause and effect, and so there's cause and effect in the universe for sure, but conceptualizing it is something that occurs within the mind, but does not exist objectively in the universe.
Yeah, yeah, all action requires a belief in cause and effect, or else there'd be no reason for people to act, or any creature.
Well, yeah, even this conversation, right?
I mean, we both had to log into this platform, we both have to have microphones, we both have to have, like, we recognize that without a whole sequence of cause and effect, we can't even have the conversation.
And of course, cause and effect occurs within every conversation because you organize your thoughts and words to convey your meaning, hopefully as accurately as possible, assuming you're not trying to baffle, gab or gaslight someone.
But yeah, so cause and effect is baked into all human communication.
It's baked into all human life.
Anybody who rejects cause and effect simply wouldn't be alive.
Because cause and effect, cause and effect is breathing.
Like you'll live for about, I don't know, two minutes if you give up on cause and effect.
Then you'll say, well, you know, it's true that I feel really oxygen starved and I really have the urge to take a breath, but I don't believe in cause and effect, so I guess I'll just die.
Maybe you'll go unconscious and then breathe automatically or something, but if you, I don't know, did something crazy like you taped a bag over your head because you don't believe in the cause and effect of breathing and living, well, you won't be around to debate for very long and you wouldn't be part of the philosophical journey of mankind.
I guess, except as a negative example.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah.
Uh, so, uh, sorry about that.
I'm at the playground.
Um, so yeah, thank you.
And also your brain, like your brain, especially when it exists with the whole reason your brain exists at all is because it's trying to manage cause and effect.
Right.
Uh, in, in a decision sort of way.
Right.
Sorry, what do you mean by manage?
Like, uh, uh, uh,
The purpose of our brain is to alter trajectories of things.
Sorry, maybe that didn't make it.
Sorry, my girls are chatting with me.
Listen, it might be a good idea for you to focus on your parenting at the moment.
We could talk about this another time, because I sure would hate to hear a scream and a thud, because that cause and effect would be pretty bad.
Maybe we can talk about this when you're not in a playground with your kids.
Sorry, yeah.
But hey, maybe one last thing is, so I don't think Hume is debating or worried about or concerned about whether or not causation exists like as a fact as part of, you know, just the world and that's how the world works.
The thing he's kind of pointing out is where does the belief come from?
Right?
And then so, I think he's saying it doesn't come from sense data, because sense data is not something that is capable of transmitting that idea.
So... Yes, sense data only transmits information, not conclusions.
So, go ahead, sorry.
Yeah, so we can see correlation through sense data, but we can't see causation.
So the belief in causation has to come from some other source than sense data, right?
So Kant's answer to that is that the belief in causation is something that we're sort of pre-wired to have.
Uh, before, before, like, so it's, he calls it a priori.
Like, so it's, it's prior to sense data.
Um, so to me, it makes sense to say that causation is an a priori belief.
And that's kind of, well, hang on, hang on.
So, so hang on.
Yeah.
So, I mean, Kant of course wrote and thought what more than more than a century or so before.
The dissemination of the theory of evolution.
So when Kant talks about us being pre-wired for things, I assume he would be talking about that in a religious context.
But of course there's no such thing as pre-wired in the world of evolution.
Right?
The evolutionary statement would go something like this.
An acceptance of causality, an acceptance of cause and effect, is an evolutionary advantage.
And therefore, those brains which accurately process cause and effect, will do better.
So, if a human being has the delusion that hunger is cured by exposure to sunlight, as I guess it would be for a plant, if a human being has the belief that human hunger is cured
By exposure to sunlight, then that human being would not survive, because there was an incorrect belief about cause and effect.
If a human being believed that the best way to make babies, really the only way to make babies, is to have sex with a warm watermelon, I mean, come on, we've all been there, right?
So, if a human being believed that the only way to reproduce was to have sex with a warm watermelon,
Then people would have a very bizarre and unpleasant fruit salad, but they wouldn't have any babies.
And so that cause and effect of what is it that brings about human beings, what is it that causes human beings to be born, that cause and effect would be incorrect.
Objectively incorrect.
And so what Kant would call hardwired, an evolutionary biologist or anybody with a sort of reasonable layman's understanding of evolution would say that
An accurate processing of cause and effect is required for survival, and the better you are at processing cause and effect, the better your chance of survival.
And so it's not that we're hardwired, he would have to say that because he didn't have access to the theory of evolution, but we would say that there is objective cause and effect out there, and what is evolution other than an adaptation to the objective facts of the universe?
So, there is objective cause and effect out there.
Human hunger is not cured by sunlight.
You can't have a baby by having sex with a warm watermelon.
So, these are facts of the universe, and so we are evolutionarily selected to accurately deal with the objective cause and effect in the universe.
Of course, agriculture is prime to this, right?
Which is to say that if I
If I spend all of this crazy amount of energy clearing this land, and if you've ever had to clear your way through the bush, which I've had to do both in Africa and in northern Ontario and Saskatchewan and Manitoba and Canada, of course, if you've ever had to clear your way through the bush, you know just what an insane thing to do is.
If you've ever had to dig a well, which I've had to do as well, or if you've ever had to clear a tree and the tree roots,
Which I've not had to do, fortunately, but it's insane what you have to do to take a forest and turn it into agricultural land.
And of course, I assume you want to do this with forests, because forests grow where the sunlight is the best, and the access to water is the best, and the soil is the best.
So, to clear a forest is a monster if you've ever had to carve a path through the wilderness.
Like, it's crazy, right?
So, agriculture is saying that it's worth expending a bazillion calories clearing this land, because then I can plant, and if I plant and I keep the birds and the vermin and the pests away, and I keep it watered and so on, then I get a huge amount of calories in a predictable fashion.
So, agriculture is about cause and effect, and agricultural societies, which generally displaced over time,
Hunter-gatherer societies is because it's a very accurate and more conceptual processing of cause and effect, agriculture, and it ends up being more accurate in creating predictable calories than sometimes hunting and gathering.
Particularly, of course, hunter-gatherers are okay to some degree because they can just follow the herds, but if there's a pestilence among the herd, if there is
A sudden change in temperature because we go through this little, like the medieval warm period, the little ice age just over the last thousand years.
There's been wild vacillations in temperature which farmers can do a little bit more with because they can have winter crops like turnips and so on than hunter-gatherers can if the herd dies off or is driven beyond their reach or for some reason.
So, in terms of cause and effect, those who accurately process cause and effect
I don't know if you've gone through this.
I still go through this and it's disappointing to me that I still go through this, but it is just sort of a fact of my life.
Yeah, no, listen, go play with your kids, man.
We'll talk about this another time.
You're at a playground?
Go have fun.
They would rather be with you than have you with me.
So I would say go do that and we'll talk about this another time.
I'm just going to end up with something here and then take another question.
But yeah, I really appreciate the call in.
I love epistemology in particular as a favorite.
So thanks, man.
Go have fun.
So I'm continually shocked by the effectiveness of propaganda.
I shouldn't be, but I am.
Because it's just such a different mindset from mine.
So, those who plan a whole bunch of propaganda and execute a whole bunch of propaganda, I guess, obviously, and I have no excuse for this.
I've seen propaganda be very effective.
I know all about the Milgram experiments and the Stanford prison experiments, although those are a little dicey.
But I know all about this, yet I am still quite surprised at the effectiveness of propaganda.
Now, what that means is that
I have an evolutionary disadvantage in my processing of cause and effect.
Because I'm rational and skeptical and critical and obviously have studied and learned a lot over the course of my life as an artist, as a business owner, as an intellectual, as doing this show and interviewing all these people, reading all these books.
I've learned quite a bit over the years.
And so I'm really surprised at the effectiveness of propaganda.
How many people just swallow these giant fishhooks whole if you put even a scrap of cheese on them?
And so the people who plan and execute propaganda campaigns are more accurate in their assessment of reality than I am, which is why they do it and why I continue like an idiot, honestly like an idiot, to be surprised
At how well propaganda works on people.
Because for me, you know, if I hear somebody in authority say something, my default position is, uh, that's not true.
Right?
I mean, this is the old, it's George Carlin principle, like whatever the government says, you know, he doesn't believe.
So, but it's anybody in academia, in authority, the moment they say something, I'm very skeptical.
I don't believe it by default.
I believe things in the free market more.
I believe things when people have personal skin in the game.
But I don't believe power structures at all.
Like, I mean, I assume that it's almost the diametrical opposite of the truth is where you want to go when you... but... and that's my default position and it has been for really as long as I can remember.
And yet, of course, there are literally billions in the majority of the population if the government or some figure in authority or some guy in a white coat says, uh, this is true.
Everyone's like, yep.
Uncritically, and not just uncritically, but self-righteously, and pompously, and aggressively, and in a hostile manner towards anyone who has questions.
It's not just that propaganda works, it's that people love it.
And it works really because they love it.
They love the self-righteousness of feeling like they're doing their good deeds trademark, and other people are selfish skeptics and anti this, that, the other trademark.
You know, they love propaganda.
They love the self-righteousness.
And so, the people who design, plan, and execute on propaganda have a better sense of the truth and of reality than I do, certainly in this particular area, because I'm still always a little bit like, how could people believe any of this nonsense?
Like, how is it possible for people to believe any of this nonsense?
But not only do they believe it, they love swallowing it.
It gives them
High.
They're addicted to falsehoods.
I mean, I'm kind of addicted to truth sometimes at my own expense, but people are absolutely addicted to falsehood, again, at their own expense.
So, yeah, I have a... The people who plan and execute on propaganda have a far better understanding of cause and effect and human nature in many ways, certainly in this realm, than I do, and that is why they do well.
And I am not of that level of prominence or effect.
So that's sort of an example of cause and effect that I'm not processing well.
And there's others, of course, as well as that, but that's a fairly important one.
All right.
If you have any other comments or questions, I am eager to hear.
You just need to raise your hand.
Because, you know, I haven't done the Livestream Telegram stuff for a while.
This is not any criticism of you guys.
Happy to have you here.
In general, the reason I stopped doing it was people didn't have much to say, which is fine.
I mean, obviously, don't feel compelled to speak if you don't have much to say.
But it does mean that it's tougher to do a live stream, which, again, it's not your job to make my job easier.
But if these live streams are going on, if you have questions or comments, I'm certainly happy to hear.
If you are a subscriber, and you can subscribe here on The Locals,
So you can subscribe here on the Telegram.
You can also subscribe on Locals at freedomain.locals.com.
You can subscribe at freedomain.com.
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And for those of you who are subscribers, I just released a fairly ferocious hour-long chapter on the Peaceful Parenting book.
We're now up to part 17 of the Peaceful Parenting book, and you get that right away when
You sign up for a subscription, so I hope that you will check that out.
He immodestly says, hey, I think it's some of my best work, and certainly is my most important work.
So let me give you a second.
Here I have a bunch of stuff to talk about with regards to Bitcoin, as you may or may not have noticed.
It's doing a wee bit of a, a wee bit of a pop at the moment.
In fact, more than a wee bit of a pop, actually a giant, a giant pop.
When did I last check it?
Yeah.
I mean, Canadian dollars, in one day it's gone up $3,100 per Bitcoin, and that is really quite something.
It's currently hovering a little bit below $64,000, which is really quite something.
Just, what is it, five days ago it was at $57,000, now it's close to $64,000, so that's $7,000 up in a week.
So that is obviously good.
That is obviously good.
And if I was still in politics, of course, if I was still in politics, I did watch the interview with Vladimir Putin last night.
And if I was still in politics, I could do an hour or two on that because that was quite interesting.
And of course, if you look back on my videos from way back in the day, I did all the videos about Ukraine back in 2014 and so on.
It was really, really
Good stuff.
So you can go back, of course, for fdrpodcast.com.
You can do a search for that kind of stuff and see what it is that I was talking about with all the stuff that Putin is talking about now that I was talking about ten years ago.
But, you know, politics is a wee smidge in the old rearview.
You can, of course, also... You can type in the text, and I can do that as well.
All right.
Somebody writes...
You just finished your book, The God of Atheists.
The God of Atheists.
Very good book.
We'll need to go through it as the audiobook soon.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
I love that book.
I absolutely love that book.
It's one of the books I had the most fun writing because it really is a comedy.
A bit of a black comedy, of course, but a very good comedy.
All right, so let me just check in here with y'all.
I don't think anybody's got anything.
Yeah, I don't think anybody has any hands raised unless there's something way down.
All right, so I will do a wee smidge on what might be going on with regards to the itty bitty diddy coins.
And let me just go here.
Yes, okay, so thanks to James for putting this stuff together.
And let's see.
Oh, that's parenting practices seem to have little no effect on children's personalities.
Whoops!
It's a little further up in my saved.
This is stuff to get to.
A little bit further up in my saved files.
So what on earth might be going on with Bitcoin at the moment?
This is from Crypto News, and this is from yesterday at 5.28pm.
Bitcoin has surged over 4% the past 24 hours, edging closer to the $45,000 threshold for the first time since mid-January.
At the time of reporting, Bitcoin was trading at approximately 44.8, marking a 4.6% increase within the day, and a notable 6.3% surge over the past week.
That, of course, has gone much further up, or even further up from then.
Data from CryptoQuant!
Oh, sorry.
While the influx of funds into new spot Bitcoin ETFs has captured considerable attention, according to CryptoQuant data, it's the selling activity by miners that has been restraining Bitcoin prices in recent times.
Right, so as you know,
The miners solve cryptographic equations, and the miners process Bitcoin transactions, and they are rewarded with Satoshis or Bitcoins.
And what are we now?
Two months, three months away from the halving, where the value of what is received by the miners goes down by 50%.
And listen, if you know more about this industry, the industry technicals than I do, please feel free to correct me either by voice or text.
I'm happy, of course, to get things
More accurately, so if the miners who are getting, they're shaving off satoshis from processing transactions, and they are getting bitcoins from solving these equations, if the miners are selling rather than holding on, then that's going to depress the price, right?
And that means that either they have cash flow issues because of recent expansion, or electricity costs or energy costs are up, or they need to sell.
But people look at the miners, I think, as a whole.
They look at the miners and they say, well, if the miners are selling, the miners are more deeply embedded and have more skin in the game than most people in the industry.
So if the miners are selling, then maybe they know something that I don't know.
I mean, it's not quite the equivalent, but in the business world, if the CEO of a major corporation... Sorry, just thumped my mic there.
If the CEO of a major corporation is selling off his shares,
I mean, either he has a cash flow issue himself, or, you know, there are people who would get quite alarmed by that and say, well, why is the head of XYZ Corporation selling?
So, the Bitcoin miners are the closest to the metal, as we used to say, with regards to machine code, right?
They are the closest, in a sense, and have the highest stakes.
Because most people, if you're a buy-and-holder, right, what does it cost you to hold Bitcoin?
I mean fundamentally nothing, right?
It costs you nothing to hold Bitcoin.
It's not like it's subject to the same kind of inflationary pressures.
It's not like if you have a financial advisor that's taken a couple of hundred basis points off, sorry, a couple of percent off your investments every year.
So it costs you nothing to hold Bitcoin.
But miners have a continual expense.
Obviously the hardware, the electricity, the business, the taxes, and payroll, and all that kind of stuff, right?
And in business, of course, cash flow is king.
You have to be able to pay your bills, even though your income can be uncertain, can be feast or famine in the business world sometimes.
So it's feast or famine with your income, but your bills are like a metronome.
You get two weeks payroll, every month you've got your rent, you've got your internet, you've got your electricity, taxes, and so on.
So if the miners are selling,
Then either they're selling because they're anticipating the price to go higher, because they're selling in order to invest in more infrastructure, to produce more bitcoins for themselves.
So they're either selling because they're anticipating the price going higher, or they're selling
Because they can't cover their costs and they need to sell in order to do something.
Now, whether the miners have been expanding or not, I don't know.
I don't know if that information is publicly available.
I don't know if they're just, I mean, I assume that they would be expanding quietly, right?
Because if I was in the mining, Bitcoin mining business, I would not want to broadcast that I was expanding.
I would want people to think that I'm selling my Bitcoin because I'm anticipating the price going down.
Right.
So I wouldn't, I would keep my, you know, this is evil Machiavellian business stuff, right?
But I would, and it's nothing, you know, you're not forced to tell anyone these things.
It's not contractually obligated.
So I would keep this under wraps, right?
So if I was in the Bitcoin mining business, I would give the impression that I was selling Bitcoin because I was anticipating the price going down.
Because they are the weather vane by which a lot of people guide their Bitcoin choices, I guess.
So, I would give the impression that I was selling because the price was going to go down, and I wanted to get in before the price went down.
But meanwhile, I would be taking the profits from selling, and I would be expanding my mining operations.
Because, of course, if people know I'm expanding my mining operations, then they won't sell, because they'll anticipate the price going up.
Whenever you want to buy something in the future, you want to depress the price.
I mean, obviously, honorably, legally, whatever it is, right?
But if you want to buy something in the future, you want to depress the price as much as possible before you buy it.
And for the miners, if they're expanding, they wouldn't want to give that impression.
Again, I'm not talking about any particular miners.
This may not even be accurate.
I'm just telling you the way that I would approach it in the way that I think would make some kind of economic sense.
So, if the miners believe that the price is going to go up,
Then they would sell and then people would take that selling as a mark that the price was going down and they would also sell depressing the price and then when the miners want to buy the price would be would be lower and they would then obviously make the difference between those two things.
All right.
Data from CryptQuant reveals that minor reserves representing the amount of Bitcoin held in minor treasuries have experienced net outflows since the debut of Bitcoin exchange traded funds
In mid-January, these reserves have now plummeted to their lowest level since June 2021.
Miners have notably scaled back their daily sales of Bitcoin, reducing them from over 800 Bitcoins in late 2023 to below 300 Bitcoins in early 2024.
This strategic shift suggests a change in miners' approach to their holdings, with major publicly traded Bitcoin mining firms in the U.S.
reporting an increase in their Bitcoin reserves despite a dip in profitability.
Okay, so some of them are selling, some of them are holding on.
It sounds like more of them are holding on.
Despite facing a decline in profitability the steepest in over a year, miners have opted to hold onto their assets rather than sell them.
Data from CryptQuant indicates that miners have been significantly underpaid in 2024, yet selling pressure remains subdued.
So that's interesting.
So then why, if they say here, it's a selling activity that has been restraining Bitcoin prices in recent times?
So, if they're holding onto their Bitcoin, I'm not sure why that would keep Bitcoin's price low.
Now, restraining Bitcoin prices, does that mean constraining them in one way or the other, or keeping them low?
Well, let's sort of find out.
The Bitcoin network has also experienced a downturn in transactions, dropping from a daily all-time high of 731,000 in late December 2023, to a three-month low of 278,000.
This decline is attributed to reduced activity in inscriptions,
And BRC-20 token transactions, particularly those using taproot addresses, which have seen a 76% decrease.
Bitcoin transaction fees plummeted by 90% from mid-December to early February.
CryptQuant stated, and I quote, minor selling pressure has remained low so far in 2024, even after minor profitability decreased by the largest amount in at least a year.
Miners have been mostly extremely underpaid so far in 2024.
So minor selling pressure has remained low.
So that means that the miners are holding on.
Right, so that contradicts what I was saying earlier, which is obviously fine, sort of as we dig through this, maybe there'll be support, maybe there won't.
Alright, Bitcoin price surges amidst growing interest from Wales and speculation of Federal Reserve's monetary policy.
Further supporting Bitcoin's upward trajectory is the increasing interest from large-scale investors, or Wales, who are actively accumulating Bitcoin.
Insights from the on-chain analytics platform, LookOnChain, reveal substantial movements such as withdrawals totaling 2741 bitcoins valued at approximately 118 million from Binance just before the price surge.
All right.
The surge in bitcoins, so the whales are, a lot of the whales are holding on.
A whale is what?
A thousand a bitcoin or more, right?
So a lot of the whales are holding on.
The surge in Bitcoin's price comes on the heels of reports suggesting that the Federal Reserve is unlikely to lower interest rates in March, aligning with market expectations.
Comments from Boston Fed President Susan Collins indicating potential rate cuts quote later this year echo sentiments expressed by Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mestrer.
The prospect of future rate cuts appears to have injected volatility into the cryptocurrency space fueling investors' appetite for risk.
Alright.
The heightened selling activity coincides with the upcoming Bitcoin halving schedule for April, a quadrennial event that halves the rewards for miners for securing the Bitcoin blockchain.
Halving is expected to significantly impact miners' profitability, potentially driving smaller, less efficient operations out of business, or compelling them to merge with larger companies to survive.
So I'd like to know if the larger companies are also holding on to their Bitcoin, the larger mining companies,
If the smaller mining companies are selling their Bitcoin, it's because they're anticipating reduced profitability ahead and need to shore up their cash reserves, I would assume.
If the larger mining operations are holding on to their Bitcoin, that's because they're expecting to weather the storm, right?
As you know, if there's a, quote, recession based upon the Bitcoin halving, it's the marginal producers that get shaken out in a recession, the people who are just kind of barely holding on.
Maybe what I was saying earlier applies to the larger miners and not to the smaller miners.
Maybe it's the smaller miners that have been selling because they need cash to survive the halving, right?
So it's possible, right?
I will say that Hassan, Shitu, you have not answered much.
Let's go to Decrypt.co and see what the story is with their explanation.
Bitcoin's 2024 has gotten off to a rocky start.
Despite the approval of several long-awaited exchange-traded funds, it was supposed to bolster the institutional legitimacy.
Things are looking up.
Bitcoin back up over.
Okay, so what's causing the surge?
Analysts tell Decrypt that a number of factors, including hoarding by whales, are leading the asset to edge higher.
Well, it's more than edged higher now, of course.
Bitcoin took a somewhat surprising hit following the approval of 10 Bitcoin ETFs in January.
After briefly touching 49,000, the asset nose dives after one of the funds, Grayscale, started shifting large amounts of its crypto to Coinbase.
This was because prior to Grayscale's Bitcoin ETF fund ETF conversion, it operated like a closed-end fund and investors had to hold their shares for at least six months before cashing out.
When it became an ETF in January, lots of investors were keen to redeem their shares and cash out.
Interesting, okay.
Graystell, as a result, sold huge amounts of Bitcoin, leading to a price decrease.
At one point, it was trading below $39,000.
But that sell-off looks to be over, and Bitcoin is on the up again, in part to big holders snapping up the asset.
So, of course, if you're a whale, I would imagine that you have the financial liquidity to survive downturns, right?
So, downturns only affect those who have to sell.
I mean, have to sell whatever.
I mean, have to sell for practical reasons like, you know, if people have to pay a tax bill and the only asset that they have to liquidate is, say, Bitcoin, then they have to sell their Bitcoin to pay their tax bill, right?
So that's involuntary.
But that means you don't have the cash reserves to cover your expenses, like whatever your expenses are, right?
You don't have the cash reserves, therefore you have to sell your crypto.
So there are those people who sell
Because they don't have enough money to cover their expenses, right?
And it's usually not people who have unexpected bills, it's usually people who... Because unexpected bills, unless it's some reassessment, some tax reassessment, unexpected bills, like your car needs a repair or something, tend to be somewhat small.
It could be medical issues, of course, depending on people's level of insurance.
But there are people who have to sell because they can't cover their expenses, for whatever reason.
And then there are people who feel compelled to sell because they're panicking, right?
Because they have in their head that their life savings could go to zero, right?
That Bitcoin's going to go to zero, or it's going to go down 75%, you know?
And of course, you know, it has gone through some pretty wild fluctuations in the past, to put it mildly.
So there are people who have to sell because they've got to cover their costs.
Like, if you've got to make your mortgage, then you have to sell your Bitcoins.
You can't live on the blockchain.
And then there are people who
I mean, obviously the term is paper hands, it's a bit of a rude and rather contemptuous term, but there are people who sell because they panic.
And they don't have to sell, but they see the downside and the anxiety of watching the price go down is tough, right?
It's tough.
I mean, I don't give investment advice, as you know, but my
A particular approach is, a lot of it has to do with mindset, in my view.
Again, this is just my own personal thing, this is not any kind of advice to anyone about anything, but I'll just tell you.
So, in terms of Canadian, if Bitcoin has been at $55,000 when I went to bed, then when I wake up in the morning, and I don't check the price of Bitcoin every day, but if I do check the price of Bitcoin in the morning, if it was at $55,000
The night before, then I say to myself, it's probably at $53.
Now, if it's at $54, that's good.
Oh good, it did go down to $53.
If it's at $53, I feel accurate.
If it's at $52, I feel $1,000 down, which again is pretty abstract if you're not selling, right?
Whereas if you say, if the price has been going up, and it went from $53 to $55 over the course of the day, and then you go to bed, and you wake up,
And you think, oh, it's got to be at least 57, and then you hit your refresh, and it's 54, you feel, oh, it's down, right?
But it's only down relative to your estimate.
You have to really manage your estimates.
So I literally, I'm like, oh, I bet you it's down.
Oh, good.
It's still the same price, right?
If you think it's supposed to be 57, and it's still 55, you feel like it's not up to, like you feel almost like your mindset gives you the sense that you're down $2,000 a Bitcoin or something like that.
Whereas if you assume it's down, and it hasn't gone down, or it hasn't gone down by as much as you think it has, that's good.
So for me, I wake up, I'm like, ah, I bet you it's down.
Oh good, it's not down that much.
Now if it's gone up, great, right?
And then what happens as well, is that people say, well it went from 57 to 60 yesterday, I bet you it's gone to 63 today.
But then when they open up their browser, you hit your refresh, and it's still at 60, you're like, oh!
So suddenly it being up three grand is a bad thing because it isn't up another three grand.
So a lot of it has to do with just your mindset.
Whereas for me, if I see it go from 57 to 60, I'm going to assume the next day it's probably down
to 58 probably back down to 58 now if it stayed at 60 that's great that that's good whereas if you think it's 63 and it's a 60 you feel that's a bad thing if I think it's 58 but it's actually 60 that's a good thing so be careful what your estimates are because your estimates will a lot of times drive panic and panic is usually not the best way to make investment decisions again just sort of my particular opinion so so big holders are snapping up the asset so the big holders
If you're a whale, and a whale is a thousand bitcoins or more, and in general people who haven't sold at least in that account for quite some time.
So that means that you have enough money to live on, right?
Now if you have enough money to live on, then you don't have to sell to cover your costs, and therefore your selling decisions are based purely on, your buying and selling decisions are not based on necessity, right?
So you want to observe people, I think, you want to observe people who are, who have the least
Variability in their decision-making.
So, if there's some guy who has to sell Bitcoin because he's got to pay his mortgage, then his sale of Bitcoin is not related to the future of Bitcoin, it's related to his current bills.
Right?
So you wouldn't want to read too much into some guy selling Satoshis to cover his mortgage.
You wouldn't want to read some analysis about the future of Bitcoin out of that because he's
Selling the Satoshis to cover his mortgage, so it's not an evaluation of the Bitcoin market space that he's got to pay his bills.
You also don't want to get your market read from people who are emotional and subject to greed buying, panic selling, like the people who are really emotional.
So what's the one thing that's, well the two things that are kind of true about the whales, right?
Number one, they have a lot of Bitcoin, and number two, they've held onto it for a long time.
Now, they've held on to it for a long time means that they're not panic buyers or sellers.
Right?
They're not greed buyers or they may be greed buyers but they're not panic sellers because they held on to it when Bitcoin went down by half or like at one point didn't go like 70 to 80 percent down and they still hold on.
So they're not panic sellers.
So they have enough money somewhere to cover their expenses because they're not selling Bitcoin to cover their expenses.
We know that because they've held on to it for a long time.
And they're also not emotional sellers.
And when I say emotional sellers, that's not a criticism or anything.
It's just a fact of life, right?
And sometimes emotional sellers are right.
Some people who panic and sell are totally right.
So this is not any kind of criticism or anything like that.
It's just sort of a fact of life.
So when you look at the whales, you're looking at people who don't have to sell to cover their expenses.
So it's pure Bitcoin.
Evaluation from that standpoint, because they don't have to sell to cover the expenses, and also they don't panic sell because they haven't sold in forever and ever amen, right?
So they are the purest indicators of the Bitcoin marketplace.
One of them is the miners, the other is the whales, which is why a lot of people go back and forth between the miners and the whales.
So the big holders is napping up the assets.
CryptoQuant's Head of Research Giulio Moreno said that, and I quote, But this isn't the only factor.
Oanda Senior Market Analyst Craig Earlham told Decrypt,
Nasdaq and Crypto.
Boomers to a large degree, or those with a lot of investment funds tend to be boomers.
It's going to take a while for the people who sell to boomers to educate themselves and to educate the boomers on what crypto is.
And in particular, because they might be reversing some of the comments that they've made before, they need to find a good story.
So they need to have a lot of internal training.
They need to go out, convince the boomers, get the paperwork.
It's just, it doesn't, you know, in the crypto world, everyone's so used to, we'll just go buy it.
And it's like, but that's not how it works in the finance world.
I worked at a stock trading company, an investment company for a while.
It was actually my first professional gig.
Now I was a programmer, but I learned a lot about the business because I had to learn about the business in order to write effective code.
Somebody says, what do I care what Bitcoin does tomorrow?
I'll look at it again in a decade.
Yeah.
I think that's, I think that's fine.
I, you know, I, it's always interesting to me when people put these kinds of comments in, I never quite know what to make of it.
I never know... Are you saying that that's a good strategy, or are you saying that's your particular preference?
I'll look at it again in a decade?
I don't think that's wise at all!
Are you crazy?
You can't just not follow an investment or holdings or assets for a decade!
I mean, that's crazy!
In my opinion, I just... I don't even know what to say about that!
That just seems completely bizarre!
And also, James, if there are any more...
Any updates, some of these ones, for last night, and if there are any more updates, if you could let me know.
But yeah, it does sound like the whales are looking at the halvening.
Oh, look at that!
As we're talking, it popped over.
It took $64,000 Canadian, so it looks like it's still on the up and up.
But yeah, we'll see.
We'll see.
I mean, I think the halvening plus the ETFs
And the fact that the whales who are the purest, the whales are the, and the miners are the purest, in my view, the purest indicators of people's belief.
Like there's no future Bitcoin.
There's only people's belief in the future of Bitcoin.
Now, the other thing that I would say as well is that the Fed is not raising the interest rates, right?
The Fed is not raising the interest rates.
Now this is a little sort of Austrian economics 101.
So I'm sorry if you've heard.
This stuff before.
But of course, one of the reasons that you would raise interest rates is to encourage saving.
And the problem, of course, with raising interest rates is that it will increase the amount that you're paying on debt, right?
So why would the US government?
I mean, we can say the Federal Reserve, but it's basically the US government.
Why would the US government
Not want to raise interest rates, because they have no plan to pay off the debt.
And of course they have no plan to pay off the debt.
I mean, for all the people who are conservatives, and I get their perspective, but Donald Trump was a drunken sailor on a John Belushi-style spending cocaine binge.
I mean, the man spent like insane amounts of money, and of course I was criticizing him for this back when I was in politics, but
There's no plan to pay off the debt.
I mean, there's literally, there's zero plan to pay off the debt, there's zero political will to pay off the debt, and of course any politician who came up with any kind of plan to pay off the debt would be jeered, shouted, and chased out of any political space.
I mean, this is back to my documentary on California when I got up in front of the LA City Council and kind of demanded to know how they, what was their plan to pay for all of the things they were promising the population given their deficit.
Were they planning on cutting anything, or was there any talk of any plan?
And, you know, of course, I was not particularly welcome in the discussion, as you can imagine, right?
So, I think another reason is that they say, well, okay, there's no wiggle room to
I don't have any talk.
I mean, of course, even to slow down the rate of increase of spending is, it seems to be impossible.
I think the spending is just, we're in very late stage treasury pillaging, right?
Very late stage treasury pillaging.
There's no restraint, I think.
And so what people are saying is that, okay, well, if there's no restraint in debt accumulation, then Bitcoin, I would assume, I mean, since Bitcoin is really the ultimate hedge against inflation in many ways.
The Fed's not raising the rates.
It means that they have no plan even to restrain spending.
And so, that's going to make Bitcoin all the more valuable.
Relative to US dollars, right?
Maybe not relative to goods and services in the long run, but you know, again, the old question is how much has the value of Bitcoin gone up versus how much has the value of the US dollar gone down?
These are all interesting questions that future economists will probably tie their hair in knots to try and
Resolved, but it certainly is not inconsiderable in my humble opinion.
So yeah, so I think that's very interesting.
I don't have any predictions as to price.
Obviously, I don't have any predictions as to price other than I think in general, in general, my personal opinion, none of this is financial advice.
Don't buy or sell anything based upon what a guy with a history degree is telling you.
But my personal belief is that it will continue to increase in value.
And again, whether that's relative to
Yeah, like gold.
Does gold increase in value relative to goods?
No.
No.
I mean, for almost all of human history, a good steak dinner was the price of an ounce of silver, and over most of human history, a good suit was an ounce of gold, and that sort of just remains.
So, I do think that the price of Bitcoin is
Going to increase relative to the U.S.
dollar, which may be another way of just saying that the U.S.
dollar is going to lose value relative to Bitcoin.
At some point, at some point, things are going to be measured in Bitcoin to things rather than Bitcoin to dollars, and that would probably be more accurate.
When it's going to happen, how it's going to happen, who knows, right?
I mean, this is all macroeconomic stuff which doesn't take into account the vagaries of individual perspectives and opinions, and it also doesn't take into account the vagaries of political
Good decisions.
Alright, those are my comments and thoughts about what's going on today.
If you have any other questions or comments, I'm certainly happy to hear your thoughts.
If there's anything you want to correct me on, I'm obviously happy to hear any of that, and otherwise we can close down for the day.
Alrighty, righty.
Well, thanks everyone!
What a great pleasure to be able to drop by and have these chats.
I've worked a little bit hard over the last couple of days to make sure that I have
A rig that I can just fire up and do.
It's now a dedicated computer just for these kinds of live streams so that I never have to worry about settings and testings and this that and the other.
Because before, you know, oh something had changed, some setting had been updated, some volume had been changed, some other audio thing had been inputted and I had to do a whole bunch of testing.
Now I've just got a little dedicated machine here just for these kinds of live streams.
Keep it hived off.
From everything else.
So that's going to be good.
I think I can drop by and do these things more often.
And I certainly do appreciate you guys dropping by.
Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
I would massively appreciate that.
Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
And I hope that you will drop by the community at freedomain.locals.com.
It is a great, great place to be.
And I thank you guys so much for dropping by today.
Have yourselves a super duper delightful afternoon.
And I'll see you tonight, seven o'clock, for Friday Night Live.
Bye!
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