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Aug. 14, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:18:46
BITCOIN IS PEACE! Twitter/X Space
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Time Text
Good evening.
Welcome to the 13th.
Oh my God.
Friday the 13th.
No, Wednesday.
So close.
I'm self-employed, so I don't know what day of the week it is.
13th of August 2025.
And it is our Wednesday night live show.
We can talk about Bitcoin or whatever's on your mind.
And we will get straight to Millennial Thinker.
You can now speak.
Whisper sweet reason to my ear.
Hey, Stefan, can you hear me?
Yeah, can you cut your background noise, brother?
Do me a solid.
Let me see how I could do that.
You know what?
I'm in a hotel large.
I don't think I'm going to be able to.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I can't do if you get someplace quieter, but I can't do background music and all that kind of stuff because I don't know what's copyrighted and what's not.
And that's kind of the way things roll.
But we will switch to Pedro.
What's on your mind, my friend?
Don't forget to unmute.
Really?
Yeah, just in general, if you're going to do a call-in, maybe don't be at a stadium or a disco or someplace that's really loud.
Usually you can go out into the parking lot or someplace just a little quieter.
It just seems to be a rather polite thing to do.
And Pedro, are you with me?
Yes or no?
All right.
My patience is not much tonight.
Hi, I'm here.
I'm here.
Yeah, yeah.
Go ahead.
I'm just going to thank you so much for being so important in my life first.
Thank you.
I appreciate it in my life since I was a child, by the way.
And I just want to ask you a simple thing.
What's your best argument in favor of Bitcoin?
Someone is going to argue with me.
What's the best argument?
Compared to what?
Okay, so you'd be a Bitcoin skeptic, all right?
So come at me with your, it's a Ponzi scheme, whatever nonsense you've got.
I mean, give me, give me the best skeptical, like, what would somebody say that you'd have to respond to?
Well, you know, let me think about this.
It's just a pebble.
We do not know the price.
It can never compete with gold.
There's no tradition.
I think that's the best.
No, it can be hacked.
There's no tradition.
And it's a bubble.
I think those are the three biggest.
It's hard to go against Bitcoin.
Okay.
So then I would say, what is your definition of a bubble?
A bubble would be something in which its price is defined only by the demand of people, only by the demand of everyone, and not by actually any real use case.
It's just a speculation bubble.
That would be the definition of a bubble.
It's a price that is defined by speculation, not real-world use.
Okay.
So what you're saying is that Bitcoin does not have real world use.
In that case, I would say, you know, criminals have a use for Bitcoin.
Only criminals can use Bitcoin for real.
I mean, no one really uses Bitcoin on their daily lives, right?
We don't buy bread with Bitcoin.
So are you saying that there is no use case for Bitcoin that exists in the world?
For criminals, there are use cases.
Okay, so are you saying, hang on, are you saying that there's no legitimate use case for Bitcoin, legal use case for Bitcoin that exists in this world?
There is a legitimate use case.
You are correct.
There is a legitimate use case.
Hang on.
So why did you just tell me that there wasn't?
Or it's only criminals or you can't buy bread.
I mean, do you see a lot of people buying bread with bars of gold?
No, I do not.
Okay, so help me understand what you're talking about.
It's just that I never see someone in real life using it.
It's just an internet talk.
For the value to be the fifth largest asset in the world, I mean, you'll never see it.
It's only online.
Okay.
Have you ever seen, what social media did you use?
Do you use X?
Mostly X. Okay.
Have you ever seen any of the X servers?
No, I haven't.
Okay, so I thought if you haven't seen it, it doesn't have any value.
Have you ever seen the bottom of a gold mine?
No, I haven't.
Does that mean that gold doesn't exist and has no value just because you haven't seen it?
But I've seen gold somewhere, and I know people are using X. And you can see Bitcoin everywhere.
You can see it.
There are 147 companies that have adopted it.
It's been used in a lot in Bolivia where they have 25% inflation.
You can buy things online with Bitcoin.
You can trade Bitcoin.
Exchange traded funds have Bitcoin.
Lots of investment companies have Bitcoin.
And you can see their holdings.
So I'm not sure what you mean.
You can see Bitcoin everywhere.
We can see it everywhere, but one might say that its price is tremendously inflated by speculation.
I mean, that would be the argument, I guess.
Well, tell me what you mean by speculation.
When you buy something that you're not really going to use and you just want to see the value up, then you're going to sell it.
The argument would be that it's not really money.
People don't use their money as money.
People won't use it as money.
And people are just buying these things so they can sell later.
Okay.
So if that is the case, how old is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin, I think, is 2009.
So it's 14 years old, I guess.
16 years old.
So why has it gained 147% in value for the last 16 years if people are just buying it to sell it?
Well, some people are deluded.
They are being scanned and they don't sell Bitcoin, I guess.
So I guess I'm contradicting myself here.
Yeah.
Okay, most people would buy just to sell.
I think that would be the argument, right?
Well, no, because if most people bought to sell, the price would go down, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
Well, I'm sorry, I'm running out of arguments.
No, no, and listen.
Look, I understand the arguments against, I really do, which is that it's kind of freaky, it's kind of intangible, and it's not available at Starbucks, at least at most places as yet.
And you can't see it in the way that you can hold a bar of gold or a dollar bill.
So I get that.
But I mean, bro, that's the digital economy, right?
I mean, saying things don't have value because they're not physical is like saying, well, you know, Bitcoin, sorry, Netflix, Netflix used to send you DVDs.
Now it's all digital.
Therefore, it's worth less.
I mean, do you watch Netflix?
Yes, I do.
Right.
Do you send a lot of postcards or mail if you don't have to, or do you send emails?
I send emails mostly.
Okay.
And we're having a conversation not being in the same place using digital technology, right?
You have a cell phone and the cell phone exists, but it's only a value because of the intangible things it does.
As in, you don't see the data flying out like little tiny carrier pigeons all over the place, right?
So I get it.
The digital economy is largely abstract.
It's largely bits and burps on servers.
And so I understand that it seems freaky relative to gold.
But gold, of course, has its value and gold has a much bigger market cap than Bitcoin at the moment.
For sure.
Gold has its value.
You can't make Bitcoin into jewelry.
And gold has its value.
But can you think of any negatives about gold?
I'm just curious if you heard the counter arguments.
I mean, the negatives about gold and comparing to Bitcoin, well, one of them is that you can't really self-custod gold.
I mean, you can, but you can't send it to anyone online, you know?
So gold needs a custodian.
I think that would be a very big argument against gold.
Right.
It's hard to transfer.
It's hard to keep secure.
And the government pretty regularly seizes it, right?
If you put it in a gold deposit box or you put it in a safety deposit box, there's sort of a history of governments grabbing and seizing that.
And governments can't directly seize your Bitcoin, right?
Right.
They cannot seize my Bitcoin, but they could change the code, right?
They could gold, you cannot change the atom of gold, but you could change the Bitcoin code.
A governor could make a social attack, right?
Well, so it would require that the majority of Bitcoin holders adopt the new code, which if governments are doing it, trust me, they won't do It.
They won't do it because governments can't force everyone to download a new bunch of code for Bitcoin.
So governments can't do that.
And even if governments somehow did hijack it, then people would just download an update that would reverse that hijack and you'd be fine again.
So it's much more secure.
Now, of course, if you're concerned about governments taking money, I mean, I've noticed you've talked about gold, which is fine.
I mean, that's a comparable asset class.
What do you think of fiat currency?
What do you think of government currency?
Well, fiat currency is very liquid.
I use fiat currency.
There is basically no cost, no spread, right?
When you when you trade fiat currency, but you cannot hold fiat currency.
The value of fiat currency is completely destroyed by inflation, which is the printing of money.
So fiat currency is very useful, completely controlled by the government, completely tracked, except for the actual physical money, right?
Yeah, it's just a medium of exchange, right?
Not a reserve.
And I think that would be the argument for Bitcoin, right?
Well, and do you use a lot of dollar bills or do you tend to use debit credit cards, PayPal, or whatever it is to electronically transfer fiat currency?
Or do you use a lot of coins and paper?
Well, in my case, actually, because I'm so afraid of the government, I actually do use only dollar bills.
I don't actually make any digital.
But most people don't use.
So most people are using bits and burps on computers anyway.
It's just those bits and burps are either going to be Bitcoin, which is secure and decentralized and deflationary, not inflationary.
So either it's going to be bits and burps, like most people, they get their money deposited in their bank account digitally.
They don't get handed stacks of cash and then they buy stuff on the visa.
They pay for it online.
So most people are just shuffling around computer code and bits and burps anyway.
So it's just a matter of sort of choose your poison or choose your health, right?
Because as you say, the fiat currency is going to be inflated and you can't inflate Bitcoin.
You cannot, no government, no individual can print Bitcoin or create Bitcoin out of thin air.
I mean, gold is produced.
Gold has its risks, as you know, transport, seizure, guardianship, and so on.
And of course, the government having control of gold, I mean, who knows how much is in Fort Knox?
Probably not everything that they say is in Fort Knox.
But certainly fiat currency, Bitcoin compared to fiat currency is almost infinitely advantageous.
And listen, I mean, if you want to get into gold, that's fine.
There's nothing wrong with it.
But of course, gold is not usually stored with people.
All that you buy is access to the right to have gold at some point.
And that's pretty similar to you don't actually have bits and burps of Bitcoin in your house.
You simply have a key to the Bitcoin online in the same way that if you have gold, you mostly have it stored somewhere else and you just have an you get access to it and then you can trade that gold for goods and services.
So it's pretty much the same with Bitcoin, except you don't actually have to physically store anything and it can't be stolen.
So whatever you talk about with gold, there aren't people with big bags of gold coins, Dungeons and Dragons style or gold shavings, buying candy bars with gold or buying bread with gold.
They have a digital certificate of gold that they use to buy things and so on.
So, I mean, that's 95% of the way to Bitcoin anyway.
It's just on the back end of Bitcoin.
It's a blockchain, not physical gold, if that makes sense.
Well, it does make sense.
And when you say that, it actually reminds me that even though I interact with gold when it comes to jewelry and stuff like that, really all interactions with gold, basically as money are digital.
Everything, just like you said, it's the information age.
The goal I'm sending to someone is just bits and bytes.
It could be the bits and bytes of Bitcoin.
It could be the bits and bytes of something.
It's just digital economies are less tangible.
I think that's a great argument.
Well, you know, one of the challenges of Bitcoin, of course, because it's decentralized, it's slower, right?
So as you know, Visa can process, I don't Know how many thousands of transactions per second, but that's because it's all centralized, which means it's open to corruption and scanning and research and theft and so on.
And so, yeah, Bitcoin is slower for sure because it's decentralized.
And let's just say that Bitcoin has as its greatest point of value, the business-to-business economy.
As you know, there's business-to-business economy that is, I mean, I've worked in this sector for a long time.
It's laborious, it's slow.
You've got 30, 60, 90-day settlement windows.
It's not like, oh my God, we've got 10 people wanting to buy coffee at Starbucks, chop, chop, chop.
Business-to-business is more ponderous.
It's a big old dinosaur as opposed to little field mice.
And even if Bitcoin has as its start the B2B economy, that's a huge chunk of the economy as a whole that's running much more efficiently.
Of course, as computers get faster, as the internet gets faster, as distributed blockchain processing gets faster, things will get faster as a whole.
And there's a whole lightning layer, which is kind of like running a vitamin, like running a tab at a bar.
Like, you know, you ever go to a bar, I put it on my tab, and then they just put everything on the tab.
You just pay it at the end of the night.
That's kind of how the lightning network works.
So there's lots of different ways to speed up Bitcoin by building a layer on top of it in the same way that you don't want to, ooh, how much is my beer?
Cut off a little slice of gold.
And can you weigh that?
And like, that would be really slow too, right?
So people do that digital stuff with gold anyway.
And that's the way that the economy, the economy has to work digitally.
And Bitcoin is already a digital native.
And there's lots of ways to speed it up at the top layer.
But even if there isn't, for whatever reason, you can still do huge amounts of business and the B2B economy, which is good.
And of course, the great thing about Bitcoin is it gets rid of the middleman, right?
Gets rid of all of those financial Uber turbo nerds who normally should be building bridges, but instead are shaving pennies off a dollar to transfer stuff.
And this is all automated.
And that means we get more bridges and fewer economic crashes, if that makes sense.
No, absolutely.
It does make sense.
And I really appreciate your answer because I think you really did answer my question.
I just, I have one more argument that I just remember.
Okay.
Bitcoin, I mean, payments, right?
Why do we use government money to make payments?
And you just said we use mostly credit, right?
To pay for stuff.
Well, Bitcoin sucks for credit because Bitcoin is too volatile.
So, and as Frederick Hayek, when he wrote his last book, he made sure to present in that book that the coin that's going to be used for credit, the money that is going to be used for credit, it has to be something that doesn't be valued too much because the person borrowing the money,
if I borrow from the bank, the bank wants to use as collateral for their credit, like gold or something that is going to go up in value a lot with time, right?
And I want to use the worst currency possible.
I mean, if I could make a debt that has 50 years from now and is paid on the currency of my countries, Brazil Real, it would be free credit, right?
And Bitcoin goes up in price.
And because of that, and Grecian's law, people don't want to spend things that go up in price.
Neither do you want to use on credit.
Neither do you want that.
So how can Bitcoin be used as a medium of exchange and on credit if its price keeps going up?
No one wants to spend Bitcoin.
If I receive half of my salary in Hair Ice and half of my salary in Bitcoin, I'm going to spend the Hair Ice first.
So are you complaining that human beings might reduce their consumption of nature's scarce resources and contribute less to the pollution of the world?
Well, I am actually.
But isn't that a good thing?
I mean, have you seen the rivers in India?
Have you seen the giant Texas-sized garbage island in the Atlantic or the Pacific?
So, I mean, let's say that Bitcoin keeps going up in value and people don't want to spend it.
That's good.
Now, of course, the only way you know the value of Bitcoin is somebody's willing to sell it.
If nobody was willing to sell it, its value would theoretically be infinite, right?
So people are willing to sell it.
And that's why we know the price of it.
But if it causes people to save more as opposed to spend more, Isn't that a good thing?
I mean, you ever spend time at a mall?
Like, you know, I got a teenage daughter.
So let's just say I spend a little bit of time at a mall.
God, there's a lot of useless crap at malls.
Oh, my God.
I mean, how many shoes do human beings need?
I mean, how many earrings?
How many different purses?
How many nonsense, female fruit fruit, trash planet nonsense do people actually need?
How many different shades of makeup?
I swear to God, I go to the makeup counter.
There's more shades of makeup than there is shades of paint at the hardware store.
People aren't, that's too much variety.
Oh, these painted clowns of nonsense.
So, yeah, let's say, so let's say that it causes people to spend less because they're saving more.
That's great.
That's number one.
Number two, volatility.
Okay, I don't think you have, but tell me if you've ever had cancer.
Nope.
Now, cancer as a tumor, let's say you have a tumor.
And if your doctor says, ooh, your tumor is volatile, what do you think that means?
I mean, just probably that it's going to grow a lot.
Okay, so it's volatile.
It's growing.
You know, one day it grows 5%.
The next day it grows 1%.
The next day, it doesn't grow at all.
The next day, it's 10%.
That's volatile, right?
Yeah, yeah, it grows inconsistently.
Right.
Now, however, volatility doesn't mean growth always.
Volatility also means a downside, right?
So if you go to your oncologist, let's say you have cancer, you go to your oncologist and your oncologist says, oh, man, your cancer is really volatile.
Some days it shrinks 5%.
Some days it shrinks 10%.
Some days it doesn't shrink at all.
It's really volatile.
What would you say?
After you punched him?
I don't know how to answer that.
Well, you'd say, Jesus Christ, guy, why are you telling me this thing's volatile when you're saying it's shrinking?
He's like, technically, that's volatile.
It's like, technically, this is my fist in your face.
Right.
So volatility is good if good things are happening.
So if the price of Bitcoin is going up jaggedly, that's a good thing.
So volatility is not bad at all.
Because if your cancer was shrinking in a volatile manner, or let's say you were trying to build muscle, ooh, you're going to be like Jack Reacher, right?
So you're going to be trying to build muscle and your trainer is like, yeah, your muscles are really volatile.
Sometimes they grow 2%.
Sometimes they grow 4%.
Sometimes they only grow 1%.
You'd be like, yeah, but I'm still jacked, bro, and getting more jacked.
So volatility is not a bad thing at all.
If your marks in school, let's say you've got a 60 and you've got to get to a 90 to get the scholarship and your marks are volatile and you keep, you go from 60 to 68 to 72 to 79 to 81.
That's volatility.
But it's volatility in the right direction.
So we should not be afraid of the word volatility unless it's always negative, right?
And volatility by definition is a seismograph, right?
During an earthquake.
And of course, as you know, in general, the trend for Bitcoin is up.
And the last thing that I would say about Bitcoin, this is really, really important.
There are a lot of really brilliant people in the Bitcoin space.
Now, you can say, well, they're all just Bernie Madoffs and they're all just Sam Bankman Frieds and they're all just these con men and Elizabeth Holmes with her deep voice and all just a bunch of scam artists and so on.
It's like, no, there are a lot of really smart people out there who really believe this is the way for the future and they've got some pretty good arguments.
I myself, I tend to be very hesitant with saying that the fastest growing asset class in human history, backed by some of the most incredible technology that has ever been devised at a time when fiat currency is flaming out in a truly spectacular end of the Roman Empire fashion as a whole, and digital technology has proven its value time and time again.
I have a tough time saying, it's all bullshit.
Just because I don't understand something doesn't mean that it's a bullshit.
And just because you can't see the use case doesn't mean that there isn't a use case.
You know, there are these anthropologists, they find these games from the ancient world, like ancient Greece or Sumeria or whatever it is, right?
And they don't know what the games are.
You know, there's board games, there's like weird dice and so on, they have no idea.
They don't know what the rules of the game are.
They don't know what the purpose of the game is, but they don't sit there and say, This game is they're just like, Well, we don't, you know, before the Rosetta Stone, they didn't know how to translate hieroglyphics, but they didn't think the hieroglyphics were bullshit.
It's just doodles.
It's like, no, we just don't speak that language.
So, in general, as a whole, not in all circumstances, but to a large degree, when a technology has been around for 16 years, has continually gained in value and has gone from a complete niche market to, you know, there was a famous meme from some years back about some StarCraft tournament really early on in Bitcoin.
It's like first prize, $500, second prize, $300, third prize, $100, fourth prize, 25 Bitcoin.
So, this is how much it's grown.
And there have been a lot of people who've tried to crack it.
There have been a lot of people who've tried to hack it.
There have been a lot of people who've tried to shoot it down and say it's pointless and it's worthless.
Now, at some point, at some point, maybe 50 years, 100 years, it's going to be accepted by the masses, probably before then.
But in general, it's not a good idea in life to say, because I don't understand something, it's bullshit.
Because I don't understand quantum physics, but I accept that it's real because that's how the computers work.
So, I, you know, there's this funny meme about, you know, if you went back in time 200 years, you would not advance anything because you go back in time 200 years or 500 years or 2000 years, and they say, and you say, Hey, there's this thing called electricity.
And they say, Wow, what is that?
How do you make it?
And like, I have no idea.
I don't actually know.
So, there's tons of stuff that we don't understand how it works.
I don't understand all the technology that's between us and this conversation that's happening that's facilitating that.
So, try in general, as a whole, to not assume that when you know tens of thousands of really brilliant people are behind a particular innovation, try not to dismiss it as bullshit, at least without a lot more research, because it's a certain kind of arrogance.
And of course, it is the biggest investment opportunity, in my opinion, in human history.
And the more people you scare away from it, the more people you ward away from it.
You know, this could be financial security for their entire bloodline until the end of time.
And that's a lot to cast away just because you're frightened of the unknown.
That's absolutely correct, sir.
And I really thank you for the answer.
And it's really like I said, it's a perfect storm, right?
So, and it had become today the fifth largest asset in human history.
So, if someone looks at it, even if you don't know Bitcoin, if you don't understand Bitcoin, it has become the fifth largest asset.
I mean, it's like when the electricity came out, imagine you see 80% of people using electricity, and you go, This is bullshit.
I mean, it's not bullshit.
There's 80% of people are using electricity, then it's not bullshit, right?
So, I really think for your argument, I want to hear people speak.
Just the answer to my to people here.
I'm a Bitcoin researcher, actually, Lightning Handle researcher.
I was just playing the part of someone that is against Bitcoin, but the answer to my argument, which is that Bitcoin is not going to be used as a medium of exchange because its price keeps going up, it's credit.
You can today do this, and I recommend you research this stuff.
It's discrete log contracts, they are created by the creator of the Lightning Network, which is Staja Drija.
He created discrete log contracts, it's a way to make bets on Bitcoin, and you can use discrete log contracts actually to make loans and to actually create stablecoins.
So, you can create a stablecoin just like Hayek said in his last book.
You can actually do that on Bitcoin, and that is going to happen.
I have a white paper, I don't want to promote anything, but just it is going to happen.
If you're passionate about it, promote it away.
I mean, I keep telling people to donate at freedomain.com/slash donate.
And last thing I'm going to do, so you say, is you can't talk about your passion projects.
There is no talking, nothing, it's just literally a protocol, but it's called niche.
Homage to the philosopher, it's called niche and niche.finance, and it's just a way to use discrete log contracts, which is a way to make a bet on Bitcoin.
There's a way to concatenate them, so you can it's cascading discrete log contracts.
You can put a lot of bets on sequence.
I think right now, the domain is not on the air, by the way.
Uh, on sequence, you can sequence those bets, and by sequencing those bets, I mean, anything in life is a bet.
When you go make an insurance for your car, you're going there in the place and you're basically betting with them.
You're saying, I'm gonna hit this car, I'm gonna destroy this car and they're betting the opposite.
They're saying, no, you're not.
And you drive around trying not to hit your car or anything.
And if you hit the car on something, if you crash the car, if you crash the car or something, they lost because they're going to have to invest money now on you.
So it's a bet.
What I discovered from discrete law courts for Nietzsche is that basically anything financially can be represented by a sequence of bets.
I mean, this is something it's very new on Bitcoin.
It's going to be presented very recently, but you can use Bitcoin as collateral for lumber credit for to generate stablecoins.
So Hayek in his last book had proposed us to generate stablecoins.
He actually talked about stablecoins, synthetic assets that they keep their price according to how hot the economy is, how strong the economy is.
So if the economy grows, the price grows.
If the economy shrinks, the price shrinks.
If you can create a mechanism like that using Bitcoin on self-custody, self-custody, by the way, these contracts is self-custody.
You can actually generate anything, dollars, gold on Bitcoin, on self-custody, and have that problem, the price go up problem, completely solved.
I would love to send you the white paper.
It's a Portuguese right now.
And I would love to say to you, this is a solved issue, my friend.
Bitcoin is going to be used as collateral.
It's the less collateral, it's the perfect collateral.
And for the collateral, you can, I mean, if I give you right now one Bitcoin, you can generate stablecoins, right?
If it has a margin call, we can trade, we can trade your collateral to make sure that the stablecoins work, right?
And so that is going to have a solution.
I will send you the white paper as well as I have it on English.
And thank you so much for speaking to me.
I literally follow you.
I'm 12 years old, by the way.
You're tremendously influential to me.
I mean, I'm really glad you're back on Wets.
Thank you.
I just really appreciate that.
Can I swear for a moment?
Do you mind?
Oh, of course.
All right.
So just everyone get ready.
Don't try and nap to this next part.
So, in general, when people say, ah, but criminals use Bitcoin, it's like, what the fuck do you think funds war?
Are you insane?
Criminals, oh no, somebody bought some weed with Bitcoin.
Oh, no, that's terrible.
What do you think is funding war?
Not Bitcoin.
Fiat.
Fiat is funding war if you're concerned about criminality.
Cursed be the warmongers who rely on fiat.
Blessed be the peacemakers who rely on Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is peace.
You can't just print it and create it and steal it to fund your endless fucking bloodthirsty wars.
Fiat is war.
Fiat is theft.
Fiat is intergenerational predation.
That's all it is.
Fiat is counterfeiting.
It's Bitcoin or bust because the warmongers who paper cut and sever the carotid artery of mankind with the endless money printing quake and fear before Bitcoin because it takes the guns out of their hands.
You can't just print money, buy soldiers, and make a war.
Bitcoin is peace.
Fuck making your 150% a year.
That's fine.
Bitcoin is peace.
Gold is not peace because gold could be stolen.
Bitcoin is the end of aggressive wars.
Now, if you've got a Bitcoin community and someone's about to invade them, they'll all donate to keep their houses and their Bitcoin and all of that.
So it's defensive wars you can fund with Bitcoin.
Fuck you, disassemble human beings by the hundreds of thousands wars you cannot fund with Bitcoin.
So all the people who owe Bitcoin to Ponzi scheme, this, that, and the other, it's like, it stops war.
The 20th century disaster was world wars funded by fiat fucking currency.
It's serious stuff.
It is human disassembly time by the hundreds of millions.
A quarter of a billion people slaughtered by their own governments.
How did those governments afford all of that slaughter?
How did they pay all their soldiers?
Fiat!
World War I was extended for years through fiat.
Fiat caused the Great Depression, which significantly propelled mankind into World War II.
America shipped all the weaponry over to Russia for the communists to have a revolution.
How was it paid for?
Through fiat.
Fiat will kill us if we don't replace it.
Repeat after me, brothers and sisters: fiat will kill us if we don't replace it.
It is a vampire, bloody noose around the neck of mankind.
We better get fucking serious about this.
So if you meet people who are like, oh, Bitcoin, I roam up my fuck that.
You want your kids to grow up in a world where there's a shred and semblance of the potential for human peace, where their entire lives aren't going to be stolen while they sleep by the endless money printers and blood-soaked squid tentacles of the central bankers.
You want them to be sold on the auction block of foreign banksters so the politicians can bribe and buy votes in the here and now.
They can't do that with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is the second coming of the Prince of Peace, people.
It's not a choice.
It's the only life raft we have to get away from the ancient aged predation of the money printers, the money lenders, the money manipulators, the interest rate parasites, all of them, the entire fucking lot of them.
I was doing an interview today with BTC Sessions.
Nathan, and Jesus forgave thieves, murderers.
Jesus forgave those who were nailing with the equivalent of railway spikes, his hands and his feet to a cross, watching him to hang for days while he bled out.
He forgave them.
Jesus used no violence except in one instance.
And the violence that Jesus used in the one instance was who?
The money changers in the temple.
The money manipulators, the money controllers, those who enslave mankind with the manipulated golden noose of centralized bullshit political government currency.
We either survive fiat or fiat ends us.
It ends our freedoms, it ends our lives, it ends our societies.
It's Bitcoin or bust.
And it's very serious stuff, my friends.
Very serious stuff.
So do not have mercy on those who scorn the orange salvation of the planet.
I'm not talking Trump.
The orange pill is the opposite.
The red pill leads to the black pill.
Hopefully that leads to the orange pill, which is the hope at the bottom of the chest of demons that keeps us going.
I honestly, I can't imagine.
I cannot imagine what it would be like facing the future in the absence of Bitcoin.
It would be a slow slide down to eternal tyranny because the free market is delivered under governments the technology to enslave us forever.
That same technology can liberate us forever.
But you better get behind the orange man.
It's funny, I mean, to labor the analogy a little bit too excessively.
Do you know that more British sailors were killed by scurvy than were killed by enemy cannon fire or swords or pirates?
The salvation, the salvation of the British Navy and the founding of the British Empire was orange.
It was oranges.
It was vitamin C, B citrus.
And the salvation of us will also be orange.
Satoshi's beautiful godchild, the new orange prince of peace, Bitcoin, Bitcoin or bust.
Carve it into your chest.
All right.
Thanks, man.
I appreciate the call.
Hell yeah, brother.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm buying some Bitcoin right now in homage to this.
All right.
Thanks, man.
I appreciate that.
All right.
I'm happy to hear if anybody else has any other questions or comments.
I've got some notes here about Bitcoin.
I think we just hit an all-time high.
If I have this.
I'll just fill down.
Nothing important.
All right.
Yeah, I think we just hit an all-time high with itty-bitty diddy coins.
And so that's good.
Canadian 172.96 up 52.88, 3.2% today.
So that is good.
Very good.
Tasty.
Sweet.
Smooth.
All right.
So I'm just going to wait and see if there's anybody else.
We all may be a little bit shocked by that speech, but I feel pretty fucking strongly about Bitcoin.
Just in case you couldn't tell, it's going to be a cuss fest.
What can I tell you?
So what's going on with Bitcoin?
Institutional adoption.
Exchange traded funds inflows.
Expectation of U.S. Federal Reserve rate cuts.
Market cap is at about 2.4 trillion.
So far this year, Bitcoin is comparable year-to-date performance relative to gold, cooking in at 27, 28%, outpricing.
It has outpaced broader equities like the S ⁇ P 500, which is only at 9% to 10%.
So a third, and so on.
Bolivia crypto has replaced fiat for payments in a lot of cases, digital transactions surging five-fold to 300 million US dollars in the first half of 2025.
And that's because, of course, Bolivia is cooking at 25% inflation.
Unlike the bullshit statistics that we're told, oh, inflation in America is 2.7%.
What a nonsense.
Did you know this that Bitcoin miners are shifting back and forth between mining for Bitcoin and becoming AI data centers?
So rising AI compute demand.
And so they're leveraging the energy infrastructure of running their chips, mostly the NVIDIA chips, of course.
But it's really cool that they can switch back and forth, right?
So if you look at Bitcoin since 2011, 141.7, sorry, I think earlier I said 147.
So 141.7 average annual return since 2011.
Gold is cooking at 5.7%.
Now, 5.7% is not the end of the world, but it ain't 141.7%.
So that's important.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs cost much more tradable, massive inflows.
There are 18 options available at the moment, BlackRock's Ibit and Fidelity's FBTC.
Over 145 public and private companies hold Bitcoin, which is up 20% from last year.
Oh, sorry, from 2024.
So I think that's up 20% just in two quarters in the first half of 2025.
Bitcoin's inflation rate is 0.8 to 0.9% annually post-halving, right?
Far below the U.S. official 2.7% CPI consumer price index in mid-2025.
MicroStrategies, Michael Saylor, the pirate man, has emphasized Bitcoin's digital nature, stating it operates in cyberspace where no tariffs apply.
Because of course, the tariffs have thrown a bunch of monkey wrenches into people's economic calculations.
But as he points out, a little bit tough.
A little bit tough to put tariffs on Bitcoin transactions.
So there's that plus as well.
All right.
Let us get to Nate the Great.
What's on your mind, my friend?
Hey, Stefan, how's it going?
Good.
How are you doing?
Good.
Hey, good to talk to you Again, this is an exciting topic for me because I have worked in the Bitcoin space for about six years now doing helping grow the medium of exchange aspect using the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
Can you tell people a little bit more about that if you can?
I'd appreciate that if you don't mind.
Yeah, absolutely.
So the standard Bitcoin network protocol, you can send and receive peer-to-peer.
However, when you broadcast a transaction, there's a waiting period before the transaction actually gets confirmed and is irreversible.
And that poses a little bit of a challenge when it comes to actually buying things, especially when you want it quick, like at a restaurant or something like that.
So the Lightning Network was developed and has been cooking for about six or seven years now.
And the idea with that is you basically, it's basically instead of broadcasting the Bitcoin transaction, it uses timestamps and cryptography to simply save that transaction state.
So the state of it is constantly updated, but can't be reversed either because of these time locks.
And then it basically is just a series of, you can think of it as like liquidity channels between peers, and that's just under the hood.
And back in the day when it came out, you had to run your own software called a node and deploy these channels yourself.
But now it's a lot easy.
Like anyone could have access to the Lightning Network using simple mobile apps or even stuff like Cash App has it enabled like out of the box.
So you don't have to like do all that under the hood stuff.
And so that enables a really powerful global instant settlement, small micro payments, streaming payments, that sort of thing that is all backed by the security of the Bitcoin base layer.
So it's pretty cool.
My company I work at is called Voltage, and we did a report with Fidelity recently about the growth of the Bitcoin, excuse me, at the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
So if you Google like Fidelity Lightning Network Voltage report, it should come right up.
It's only about 10 pages, but it's pretty good in my opinion.
But yeah, so have you had a chance to play with the Lightning Network at all, Stefan?
Yeah, I have had a chance to play with the Lightning Network.
It seems very cool.
I mean, obviously there's hiccups.
There's no question of that.
But the idea that we can't put a layer on top of Bitcoin and speed up transactions is incomprehensible to me.
Of course you can.
Of course you can.
And will that occasionally use that for nefarious purposes?
Yes, they will.
Yes, they will.
But to me, it's always compared to what?
Can Bitcoin be used to fund war and intergenerational theft?
No.
So if somebody gets away with stealing a loaf of bread or a couple of bucks or a hundred bucks or a thousand bucks here or there for whatever reason, I mean, it'll be patched.
It'll be solved.
It'll be sorted.
But it's nothing compared to the crimes that are committed under the bloody pirate banner of fiat currency.
So that is my issue compared to what?
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, whenever you hear like a politician saying Bitcoin or crypto generally is like for like criminals and stuff, you can't really compare that.
It's a drop in the bucket compared to fiat currency.
It's insane.
Some of these people, what they say on the floors of Congress and stuff sometimes.
Well, I mean, politicians want to be able to keep their power to create currency at will.
I mean, I can imagine, can you imagine how addictive it would be to be able to type whatever you want into your own bank account?
I mean, historically sane and psychotic, and then you'd lose your mind and then you'd lose your remaining reason.
You'd lose your integrity.
And yeah, you'd be a shell of yourself and you'd just be a zombie, like brains, money, money, money.
And at the end of the day, there's a phrase in Bitcoin I've heard since, gosh, I don't know when, called Bitcoin's for enemies, which is essentially a short way of saying the rules apply to everybody.
You know, whether it's your friend or enemy or whatever, the rules are fair and not governed by human, human ego or human dictate because it's just math, you know.
Right.
And it's, it's beyond politics.
And to have to have a currency beyond politics is as close to utopia as we're Going to get in this mortal sphere because people cannot handle power.
And the power they can handle least is the power of currency because it is all-encompassing.
And the other thing, too, of course, with fiat currency, you get to steal without risk.
You know, if you're going to go hold someone up in an alley, you know, give me your wallet, your money or your life, whatever, right?
Well, they might fight back.
They might be really good at ninja activities.
They might have a secret stiletto in their shoe.
They might have a bodyguard who's going to rough you up.
There could be, and like you're taking personal risk.
Just printing money and having the media cover for you, it's risk-free theft and it's consequence-free theft.
I mean, obviously, in the long run, the whole society collapses, but you know, because they say, oh, you know, but there's a cycle to civilization.
It's yes.
And the cycle is feared.
It's all it is.
It's feared.
It's feared.
That's the one thing that is common.
And Bitcoin's the one thing that's provably finite.
There's never been anything that's provably finite before, which throws a wrench into that whole idea that I hope will play out over time here for the better.
Let's hope so.
Let's hope so.
So what is your company working on at the moment?
So we're mainly focused lately on simplifying basically businesses being able to connect into the Lightning Network.
And the type of businesses that we're focusing on are basically banking institutions around the world, especially like Neo-Bank institutions.
And because it's a global decentralized thing, we're not a custody platform, but we provide sort of a simplified way to give users of these financial institutions access to the Lightning Network.
So if you have a bank somewhere and they integrate with us, suddenly all of their users now have access to the Lightning Network to make payments to bypass things like Western Union and ACH if they want to, which is a lot faster and cheaper.
Good question.
Can you be debanked on the Bitcoin network?
That's an interesting question.
Yes and no.
I would say yes if you're using a platform that is that requires you to give them your personal information, like a banking app.
So if a banking app has the Lightning Network or Bitcoin as a feature, such as Cash App, they could kick you off their platform.
But if you are using a application or node software where you're holding your own keys, then the answer is no.
Yeah, you can't be deplatformed from the blockchain.
Right.
Right.
But if you're using some intermediary centralized application or LLC or something like that, then they could decide to not platform you, but you can't be deplatformed from the blockchain.
Right.
So that's quite important.
Yeah.
I mean, there's, there's, um, it's interesting because if you have what's called a private key that essentially unlocks the ability to spend these the Bitcoin on the blockchain that could be spendable, but it can't be stolen.
It can't be stolen in the sense where like someone could break into my house and take my gold from my safe, for example.
Because it's just a series of 12 to 24 English words, it's much easier to hide than a gold bar, for example.
So someone could break in or like whatever, but at the end of the day, it's your choice to give them over.
So I think it's a little bit more like secure.
We can talk about security models.
I feel like that's a different topic for a different day, maybe.
Yeah, and so it's secure.
And is it also fair to say that if you want to be anonymous, and of course, I always recommend people pay their taxes and stuff like that.
But if there are reasons why you want to be anonymous, it's not too bad as far as that goes, right?
Yeah, that's also interesting.
I love talking about this topic.
So if I go off the rail, just stop me.
But yeah, so if you send Bitcoin in a regular Bitcoin transaction where you give me a Bitcoin address, I type it into my wallet, it sends, send you some Bitcoin.
There's nothing on the blockchain that ties that to my name or your name.
however, that transaction is public on the blockchain forever.
So anybody can go in and look at it and kind of like see where the Bitcoin came from previously.
And so it's possible that someone could look at that.
And then after you spend it, they could say, I wonder where this came from.
It's funny, it's always struck me as like fingerprinting the penny.
Like everybody who's ever touched it, you can trace that penny back, right?
Yeah.
So they could say, okay, you know, four spends ago, two years ago or something, it came from Coinbase.
You could kind of like see that sort of thing.
And Coinbase, you know, is a KYC.
They know your name and stuff.
So they're probably tracking where it goes to.
But they wouldn't have any particular reason to release that absent some legal requirement.
Correct.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
I would agree with that.
Yep.
Yep.
And that's kind of what makes the Lightning Network pretty cool also is that if I sent you some Bitcoin via the Lightning Network, the only entities that know that transaction happened are you and me.
So that's pretty, that's a pretty, there's no like blockchain footprint on that.
It's just a it's a smart contract.
It's a time lock between us, meaning that, or it's a time-stamped sort of contract where it's like, if you say you have more money than you actually should have, then it, it'll, there's, there's, there's security on it.
I won't get too deep on that.
Right.
But the point is, there's no footprint on that.
And unlike the Bitcoin blockchain, I have a history of my Lightning Network payments on my software node, but I could delete my database whenever I want to.
I can't like delete the Bitcoin blockchain database.
No, that's true.
So tell me, because of course this question comes up a lot, which is, you know, there's sort of the big couple of cryptos.
I mean, obviously the big two are Bitcoin, Ethereum.
Maybe you could throw Litecoin in there.
I don't know.
Dogecoin has never seemed to me particularly serious.
And then, you know, what they call the shitcoins and all that kind of stuff.
So what are your thoughts about the non-Bitcoin cryptos?
Yeah.
So this is just my personal thoughts.
I really appreciate you asking my personal thoughts on that.
So I guess a little bit of context because I'm used to hearing this.
I'm in the Houston, Texas area, and I help run a couple of Bitcoin meetups down here.
So I get a lot of newbie-friendly folks come in and ask that.
And my primary thing on that is one was at the inception of the network, of that coin or that coin's network, was there a pre-mine?
Meaning, did the creator give themselves a chunk of it at the beginning, right?
And in my opinion, that's a red flag.
Red flag?
Yeah.
Well, to me, that's more than a red flag, but I know you're being diplomatic, which I appreciate, but sorry, go on.
And then the other is, is there some sort of foundation or CEO or something like that that could be compromised at some point that could cause some issues?
And those are things that are very vague.
I'm not sure if you've been purposefully vague.
A CEO that could be compromised that could cause, that could, that could cause some issues.
No, you're right.
What are you being?
Diplomatic.
Yeah, you're right.
We're not talking about anyone in particular.
We're just talking about general patterns.
So what is it that you mean?
Yeah, no, that's exactly it.
And in comparison, so you would be in comparison to Bitcoin, which did not have a pre-mine, which doesn't have a leader at all, which is kind of like one of the reasons why, like, I mean, there's like really good thought leaders, obviously, but none of them have any say at the end of the day, which is, in my opinion, the way it should be.
Where in Ethereum, for example, if Vitalik got into a car crash, I don't know how Ethereum will perform.
Does that make sense?
That's kind of my opinion on that.
Yeah, you want something to be, you want something to be detached from the originating party so that it's self-sustaining.
I mean, you want your Bitcoin or you want your crypto to grow up and move out and go and have its own life without needing funding from mommy and daddy, right?
Right.
And then the other part, if I want to go down the technical thing, I mean, this is really just like in comparison to Bitcoin at this point, but it's just kind of, in my opinion, Bitcoin's kind of like the wheel or fire, like discovering fire.
So it's like, if you want to be better than That you have to invent something really good.
It can't just be like a little bit better because we've got, because Bitcoin's got network effect now.
It's got the Lindy effect now.
It has tons of power.
Yeah.
Gosh, yeah.
I'll be honest, I totally have to look it up because I don't want to say it wrong.
What you want to do is just say, yeah, then I'm just trying to think about how to phrase it.
And then you just type frantically and hope that the keyboard.
Well, that's kind of what I'm doing.
No, because I mean, network effect, I obviously get Lindy effect is not a term that I'm particularly familiar with.
And, you know, maybe it's something completely obvious that I've just forgotten about, but I don't really remember what the Lindy effect is.
And I don't want to nod if I don't know what's going on.
Lindy effect.
Oh, yes.
The Lindor effect.
I wanted it up as a reventure.
The longer a period something has survived to exist, the longer it's likely to continue existing.
Got it.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's why you invest in companies that have been around for 20 years rather than something that just started last week.
Right.
And relatively speaking, Bitcoin's still pretty young in the course of human history.
No, no, but as far as crypto goes, it's the granddaddy, right?
Number one.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, since I'm going to embarrass you with another technical question, it's not that technical, but of course, people do ask about proof of stake versus proof of work.
Can you break that out for people a little?
I feel like I'm almost interviewing you or something, but if you could, I'd appreciate it.
Yeah, I'm really laser focused on Bitcoin.
But the idea is essentially proof of work is the value of something is basically correlated to the amount of effort it takes to bring into existence.
That's and yeah, so you have to expend a whole bunch of energy to mine gold and you have to expend a whole bunch of energy to get Bitcoin.
Right.
And the magical thing about Bitcoin compared to gold in that aspect is that if gold's price tripled overnight, there'd be a lot more mining activity going on the next day, which would increase supply and drive price back down in an economical theory on that, which I think makes sense.
In Bitcoin, the more energy that's put towards creating the Bitcoin, which is done through a concept called mining, which is, you know, whatever.
So the idea is there's a difficulty adjustment.
So every Bitcoin block comes in, it's supposed to be coming in every 10 minutes on average.
And every 2016 blocks, based on the average time of the blocks came in over the previous 2016 blocks, that difficulty is adjusted either up or down to go back to try to get that 10-minute average.
So that's why over time, it requires more and more and more power to essentially, I'm really simplifying here, guess a really, really, really big number, which unlocks the next, that gives you the right to put transactions in the next block, basically.
Right.
Okay.
That makes sense.
And so is it completely unfair for us to ask you to break down proof of work?
Because I think that's the Ethereum model, right?
Yes.
I mean, proof of stake, I'm definitely not an expert.
I'll be honest.
I'm sorry.
I got the phrase wrong.
Proof of stake.
Sorry.
No, you're good.
It's essentially the more capital you put towards it, the more sort of voting power that you have.
There's a lot of, so it's like the more that you stake S-T-A-K-E, not my kind of stake, but yeah.
So the more that you like put into the system, the more power you have to say what goes into their blockchain.
I guess is the simple way I think.
It's always striking me as a little bit aristocratic and not quite as democratic in a way as the proof of work is.
Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.
And I've never really done mining myself seriously, but being in a in Texas, I know a lot of Bitcoin miners and a ton of friends that have huge, like huge, in my opinion, huge data.
And they're not that big, but like it's a lot of hash rate, right?
It's a lot of power that they're putting towards it.
Either it's stranded energy, which is kind of a big thing now.
You mean like gas burnoffs and stuff like that?
Yeah.
So if you generate energy in the middle of nowhere and you want to like get it connected to the grid or connected to a town or something, the energy sort of exponentially gets less, I don't know what it is, amps or watts or whatever.
It's over my head.
But like the more you have to like, the more it has to travel to be delivered, the less it is.
So a lot of a lot of natural gas wells and stuff are just capped because they're just not being used.
So a lot of Bitcoin miners started buying those up, hooking up generators to them and mining Bitcoin off of the energy of like natural gas.
A lot of that's happening in the Dakotas also.
After their big like boom, gosh, like 20 years ago, a lot of natural gas wells and stuff got capped that are now basically off-grid Bitcoin mining.
And it's fun, funny to me how people complain about the Bitcoin energy consumption.
When, of course, a lot of it, as you say, is repurposed energy.
And it's like, you know how much energy fiat currency takes?
I mean, not just the obvious creation and distribution of it all, which is largely digital, but also, I mean, the excessive consumption that fiat currency engenders, like when you can just print money, again, think of your spending.
If you could just type whatever you wanted in your own bank account, it would be insane.
You just buy everything, anything.
Oh, I'll try this.
Oh, I'll try that.
And Amazon would just be a constant conveyor belt to your house or whatever.
So when you can create money out of thin air, it stimulates massively pretty useless consumption.
And so that's, and of course, all of that useless consumption is energy-based, petroleum-based and resource-based.
You know, it takes energy.
You order a dress, you know, you got to grow the cotton or oil the strip mine the polyester from whatever base oils it comes from.
And then you have to pay people to sew the dress and then you got to transport it from Malaysia.
You got to drive it.
It's massive energy consumption based on fiat and it's excessive.
And the last thing, of course, is that, well, two things.
One is that war is the worst thing.
And again, I talked about war being fiat based.
And also debt, you know, that fiat is used to, you know, $40, $50 trillion debt.
That's $40, $50 trillion of excessive consumption in the here and now that you're going to have to pay for later with less consumption.
So it massively stimulates hyper-consumption in the here and now.
And that's, again, people don't really talk about that, which is kind of annoying.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I read a book called Fossil Future.
Actually, I'm staring at it right now on my bookshelf.
Have you heard of that by Alex Epstein?
Oh, yeah.
He came on my show some years ago.
Yeah, yeah.
I haven't read that book, but I do remember his arguments for oil.
But sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, no, I was just, I just remember one of the points was essentially there's never been a low energy rich country.
You know, like energy use corresponds to prosperity in a lot of ways.
Yeah.
And the energy that Bitcoin uses, once we transfer from the hellscape of fiat to actual Bitcoin stuff, then that is all just wonderful.
That's exactly what you want because you definitely want something that limits consumption and something that limits debt and something that limits predation and war because those are the worst things for the environment.
If you include, like even if you just bypass the hundreds of millions of human bodies that fiat currency has put in the ground, it's brutal on nature scarce resources to have infinite currency glitches.
I totally agree.
There's something interesting that's happening in Texas also.
I don't know if you've heard of this.
And I think it's growing in popularity a little bit, but Texas, for some reason, just loves to innovate on energy and everything.
But there are Bitcoin mining companies such as Riot.
I don't know if you've heard of Riot, but they have contracts with ERCOT, which is the Texas grid.
Unlike other states in the US.
You have a company named ERCOT.
ERCOT, I forget what it stands for, but it's an acronym.
I was going to say, like, what marketing genius came up with, okay, what's the sound of a Cow farting and belching at the same time.
Let's make that the name of the company.
Anyway, no, it's just the name of the Texas grid.
So, like a lot of the U.S. shares the same electrical grid, but Texas has its own.
And so, that so when it's really, really hot in the summer, or let's say it's a temperate day in the summer, it's 75 degrees.
So, a lot of the power plants and stuff, they are still producing a lot of energy, but it's not necessarily being used.
That's when a Bitcoin mining firm can come in and buy that energy so it's not wasted and they can put it to work.
And by the same token, if it's 110-degree day and everyone's blasting their air conditioners now, now the mining facility can shut down their, you know, they have the contract, so they will shut down their mining a little bit to allow the energy to go to the residential and do all the all the stuff that you expect with the air conditioning and stuff like that.
So, because Bitcoin mining computers called ASICs are really cool because you just turn them off and turn them on, but the ability to like ramp up and pull back energy generation at the power plant level is it's very, very hard to do.
So, this adds a curtailment option, um, which allows energy to be more useful, which is pretty cool.
Excellent.
And what are you doing to celebrate the all-time high?
Uh, I'm sitting here on my computer talking to you.
And really, what better celebration could you possibly possibly achieve?
Well, I appreciate that.
And last, last question is: what first tickled your fancy regarding Bitcoin?
Oh, um, so when I, when I was, I mean, I don't want to give you my life story, but basically, I fell down into the Austrian economics rabbit hole when I was in college in like 2010.
Um, sorry, just interrupt.
I asked you a question that interrupt, but it's just something funny that when I was studying economic Austrian economics as a teen and in my early 20s, they're like, Yeah, well, you're not going to become an economist.
What's the point of that?
I'm like, I'm just waiting.
I'm waiting for the right technology to come along that's going to absolutely use this skill.
But sorry, go ahead.
No, it was just a magical book and it was called Economics of One Lesson.
And I was like, that's a beautiful book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was my first, that was my first one.
I was like, this is great.
And that, and, and then I just, I started just hanging out with people.
I went to Liberty on the Rocks in Denver for a while.
Um, and then basically I learned about Bitcoin.
At the time, I didn't think it was like, oh, this is a new form of money, but nobody's accepting it yet.
So I'm not going to get into it just yet because I don't see the point.
The whole like store of value narrative wasn't really there that early.
And I just, and also I was pretty broke after college.
So I, it's just, it is what it was.
But I kept an eye on it through like the Mt.
Gox crash and stuff.
And then about 10 years ago, I started buying my first Bitcoin and going actually down the rabbit hole.
It's kind of funny how Mt.
Gox was an online trader that went kind of the way of the dodos.
And the fact that Mount is empty, empty, empty, empty.
Yeah, that was always kind of like a wink from the simulation, according to the simulation theorists, right?
I remember watching that through 2014, like with popcorn, and because I had no, nothing involved with them.
Like, I just find this very interesting.
Like, is it going to come back?
What's going to happen?
Not your keys.
Oh, how does that end?
Not your keys.
Not your keys.
Not your thing.
I can't remember.
Laurie, yeah.
Last thing.
I appreciate you talking to me for this long.
I have a pleasure conversation.
The last thing is if it's not on your radar, if you have time, it's another acronym.
It's called Noster.
Have you heard of Noster?
I was just talking about this with the fellow from BTC Sessions today.
He was once more encouraging me, offering me, I think, free foot rubs to look into Nostra.
I like foot rubs, so I probably will do it.
Yeah.
It's yeah, I mean, I'm sure he gave you the spiel, but I'm over on.
No, no, do it.
Do it because we don't know who's going to listen to both shows.
So go for it.
Oh, that's fair enough.
Yeah.
So Noster is a decentralized messaging protocol that uses relays.
So no central server.
So what we're talking about right now is a central server somewhere in some data center.
All of our conversations right now are getting recorded and stored.
And as we know, as I know, from half a decade ago, it could be turned off like that.
yeah.
And so, Noster uses relays in a decentralized serverless manner.
And there's been tons of different attempts to do this in history.
But I feel, and I've tried a lot of them over the years, trust me.
And Noster is the first one that I feel like has a lot of power as far as like it being sort of like a Twitter clone.
It's a protocol that you can essentially take your identity with you to multiple clients.
So imagine you can log into YouTube with your Twitter or Reddit with your Facebook or something like that.
You take everything with you, including your followers, to all the different types of Noster clients.
And what's really cool about it, too, is that it is integrated with the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
So on top of clicking your little heart and liking what you see, you can essentially zap.
It's called zapping.
So I could zap you a dollar in Bitcoin because I liked the meme that you made or something like that.
So there's a lot more.
There's a lot of fun stuff like that that you could do with Noster that is, in my opinion, totally worth checking out.
I will definitely do that.
I remember looking into it some years ago, and I believe it's time for a revisit.
So yeah, maybe if you want, we can do a show together where you show me the ropes and that way we can advertise it to others as well.
I would absolutely love to do that.
I feel very confident that that would be really useful.
Fantastic.
So please remember me and I'll have my DMs open if you ever want to.
Well, thanks.
And yeah, just shoot me an email at host, ho-sthost at freedomain.com and we'll set it up.
All right.
Thanks, man.
I appreciate that.
And a great chat.
And congratulations on being in the most exciting space in the world, except for pure philosophy.
All right.
Any other questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems?
What is on your mind?
I certainly have some more BittyCoin stuff, but I'm happy to hear from you, the fine listenership.
Going once.
Everybody's standing out there buying Bitcoin, which is quite right.
So let's see here.
Bitcoin has positioned itself as a hedge against inflation, outperforming amid rising concerns over official versus alternative metrics.
You can go to shadowstats.com for more on this.
And CPI data shows moderate inflation.
Alternative views suggest under reporting Bitcoin scarcity then becomes even more appealing.
And performance compared to other assets, 2025, Bitcoin's trailed gold slightly dominated long-term returns across major classes, benefiting from low correlations to equities and its digital gold narrative.
So August 9th to 11, 2025, gold led with a plus 29% year-to-date Bitcoin was 25.2%.
But again, 141.7% average annual gain, Dwarf's gold's 5.7%, Nasdaq's 18.6%, and SP's 13.8% average return.
So that's very, very good.
Both assets dominate 2025 returns with Bitcoin's total return 308,709 times higher long term.
That's quite good.
Anything over 300,000 times higher long term, I consider a significant plus.
308,709.
In fact, this one goes up to 11.
This one, you need that little push over the edge, that little push over the cliff.
This one goes up to 11.
Bitcoin goes to 11, ladies and gentlemen.
All right.
July 17th, 2025.
Bitcoin versus gold.
Bitcoin as a risk on high growth asset.
High growth.
Growth.
Oh, my.
Some guitarists for the stones.
High growth asset up 700% from 2022.
Lows versus gold safe haven stability.
Bitcoin outpaced gold ROI despite volatility.
And again, there's that word, volatility.
Gold is more stable in its growth and it grows way less than Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is more unstable in its growth, but grows a lot more.
And just remember, none of this is Financial advice.
Don't buy or sell anything based upon what I'm talking about.
I'm just an idiot amateur rambling away in his studio.
So just remember all of that.
Consult your experts, consult your conscience, consult your Ouija board, consult your magic aid, but don't consult me.
All right.
And let's see here.
In May to August, in general, Bitcoin trailed gold short term, but eclipses stocks and gold long term.
And positive Bitcoin to gold ratio effect on the U.S. stocks during and post-COVID.
COVID, I think, did well, obviously, for, I mean, bad for just about everyone, but it did well for gold and Bitcoin because of the amount of money printing that went on to bribe people to stay home and be slaves was pretty high.
So what else do we have?
July the 30th.
Not that long ago, two weeks.
White House report strengthening American leadership in digital financial technology highlights Bitcoin's role in global finance with Trump ending Operation Chokepoint 2.0 and backing crypto in 401ks.
Oh, yeah, if you're not allowing people to say for their retirement using crypto, you're damning them to hunting rats in the sewer when they're 80.
July 14th, 2025, the U.S. House declares Crypto Week, advancing digital asset legislation, including Bitcoin as a treasury asset.
As I've made the case before, the only chance that governments have to pay off their bloated debt and deficits, maybe even their unfunded liabilities, is through crypto adoption.
July 6th, 2025, Bitcoin adoption as a treasury asset accelerates.
This is prior to the last one, but Michael Saylor pushing corporates, blockchain for faster transaction transparency in banking.
So it has been really, really cool as far as all that goes.
And I hope that you keep track of this space.
And I really hope that you talk to people who are trash talking Bitcoin or putting Bitcoin down.
I did a fairly ferocious podcast today on somebody who was like, oh, Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme.
And it's like, Ponzi schemes require individuals to lie to you and defraud you and require your active participation to lose money.
There's nobody lying on behalf of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is just a technology.
It's like saying the internet server is lying.
It's like, nope, nope, nope, nope.
So it's not at all a Ponzi scheme.
It's not a bubble.
And just because something rises in value precipitously does not mean that it's a bubble.
Well, I don't understand the underlying value.
Well, that doesn't mean that there isn't underlying value.
You know, there are people who buy Pokemon cards for like a million dollars.
I don't understand it at all.
I don't even, not even a little bit.
There are people who will spend hundreds of dollars, bronies, they're called, on my little pony outfits, even though they're neckbeards in their 30s.
I don't understand that value at all.
Value is subjective.
There is no objective value.
Value is subjective, which is why central planning doesn't work.
There are massive amounts of the economy, massive sections of the economy that make no sense.
People go to mime school, for God's sakes.
I mean, obviously quietly, but they go to mime school.
And mime is irritating to most people, but still they go to mime school.
And I don't understand it, but it's a thing and it works.
People take up lawn bowling.
I don't understand it.
Maybe I will when I'm older.
People like golf.
Golf is a massive industry.
It's a dying industry, but it's a massive industry.
And people go golfing.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I love a good mini put.
I mean, if I can get the golf ball through the rotating windmill spikes, fantastic.
But there's huge amounts of the economy that are completely incomprehensible to me.
I don't know why women need all the stuff that they need.
I don't know why.
I don't know why.
I mean, for me, when I was a bachelor, some pillow that somebody was throwing out, a broken futon, and a decent sized TV, man, I was happy as a pig and shit.
Now I live in a truly glorious Greek girly world that my wife has constructed that's absolutely paradise.
I didn't even know what I was missing until I got married.
So that economy makes a little bit more Sense to me now.
Sure as heck didn't make sense to me before.
Do you know?
Do you know?
Found this out recently.
Do you know towels are supposed to bend?
I thought you basically just sandpapered yourself off, and it was a great way to buff off your excess fat.
But anyway, so yeah, just because you don't understand some particular economic hoo-ha doesn't mean that it's not of value to others.
And thinking it's kind of narcissistic, frankly, to think that you have to find value in something in order for it to be valuable to others.
And people, people, I mean, they collect first editions.
I find as well.
There are teenagers, I've met them, they connect, they collect energy drink cans.
It's a thing.
I don't get it.
I don't understand it.
People collect Lego sets that they never even open.
You know, hey, you know, vivo le difference, more power to the people who don't think like me.
And that's fine.
You know, there's a lot of subjective stuff in terms of value.
It's all subjective.
So just because you don't find value in something doesn't mean that there's no value in it.
And please have the humility to remember that.
I have to remind myself of that every day.
So, all right.
Well, thanks everyone so much for a wonderful evening of conversation.
I look forward to digging into the Nostra Nostril Nostra.
The Nostra ecosystem with our new friend from tonight.
And we'll live stream that.
And that way it'll be like a tech demo that I'm, for once, not responsible for because that's what I used to do back in the day.
Have yourself a glorious evening, freedomain.com/slash donate.
You know, if the show has helped you out financially, if the show has helped you out emotionally, freedomain.com slash donate, I would be really humbly and deeply and thankfully grateful to get your support on all of this.
And maybe I can, you know, one day afford a backdrop, a hat.
You can't tell.
Maybe pants, maybe underwear.
That way I wouldn't have to use duct tape and a horse saddle, which is odd when I'm on the bus.
All right.
Have a great evening.
We will talk to you Friday night for Friday Night Live.
And don't forget to follow me, freedomain.com slash connect to get the various places to follow me.
Lots of love from up here, my friends.
Take care.
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