Millennials Will Be Stuck In Debt Forever If They Don't Act Today | Adam O'Brien | BFM235 - podcast episode cover

Millennials Will Be Stuck In Debt Forever If They Don't Act Today | Adam O'Brien | BFM235

Feb 26, 202647 minEp. 235
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Episode description

Adam O'Brien is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Bitcoin Well, a non-custodial Bitcoin platform on a mission to enable worldwide independence.

https://x.com/adamobrien


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🕑 TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Introduction to Generational Perspectives00:30 Debt and Financial Sovereignty02:48 Biblical Insights on Money and Debt04:47 Bitcoin as a Tool for Personal Agency20:25 The Awakening to Agency and Control21:03 Resistance to Bitcoin: A Psychological Barrier26:45 Navigating a High-Tax, High-Surveillance Society32:16 The Role of Bitcoin in Personal Freedom35:15 The Concept of Boring Bitcoin38:10 Proof of Work: A Reflection on Value and Incentives43:18 Core Beliefs and the Journey to Truth


ℹ️ EPISODE SUMMARY

Bram Kanstein and Adam O'Brien discuss why millennials are debt-maxis in a fiat system that sells slavery with a slick UI. They confront mortgages, credit cards, and Buy Now Pay Later as culture, not just finance. O'Brien breaks down why Bitcoin self-custody demands faith, and why it is actually the cheapest sovereignty on earth. They map Bitcoin as engineered truth, rules not rulers, and proof of work against proof of stake authority. They close on habits, time preference, generational wealth, and why truth-seeking can get spiritual fast.


RELAI DISCLAIMERRelai sponsors this show/podcast and is authorized to provide crypto-asset services in Switzerland and across the European Union under the MiCA regulatory framework with its license issued by the French regulator, AMF (License No: A2025-006). The company is actively expanding its services to EU member states following the completion of passporting notifications.

Transcript

The Bible warns that the borrower is a slave to the lender, and in a world of 50 year mortgages and buying burritos with buy now, pay later schemes, we've made debt our new religion. Adam O'Brien, CEO of the Bitcoin Well, joins me to explain why millennials are actually highly productive slaves with a better UI and how we traded our sovereignty for a credit score. We dive into the brain rot of outsourcing responsibility and why Bitcoin is the only technology that demands personal agency.

Adam breaks down why the wisest man on earth was a generational wealth maxi, why critical thinking is the rarest commodity in 2026, and why the path of field money always leads to the same destination, zero. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Let's dive in. Adam O'Brien, welcome to Bitcoin for Millennials. Man, finally a show talking about the supreme generation to ever March this planet the millennials, the millennials got to be we always talk about the boomers, the Gen. Z's like the prodigy and the millennials are here to pick up the slack on both sides and so represent my man represent maybe a big.

Question I I really wonder what you think about this because I think the credit card culture in the US and Canada is way bigger than in Europe. Do you think average millennials actually a sovereign citizen or just a highly productive slave with a better UI? Dude, highly productive slave, better UI. I think that millennials especially, we praise debt. We we run down debt like that's, that's a business strategy is debt.

It's like buy property, lever it up, buy more property, buy property, get some debt, fix your kitchen, get some more debt, buy a second property, get some more debt. That's like that's the business plan for like freedom in the real estate market. It's I think that we I mean, we saw the collapse of that in O 8. We're not that's that's not

going away. MST Rs entire value prop was unlocking the captured debt that exists and we saw bitcoiners and millennials ape in to the bitcoiners, millennials Gen. Z, whoever owns MSTR basically owns an equity that owns a pile of debt and and and the you know the assets that they buy with that debt. It's like we have a financial system so rooted in debt, which naturally just tips the scales. It just tips the scales in one way.

It's crazy to me that we have so much debt and we have quarterly revaluations on the interest like every single quarter your monthly budget can just get turned upside down. It is, it's so volatile and we're seeing, you know, what we are kind of believed to be the end of the, at least the transition of the Fiat world and, and, and the Fiat economy.

And that's only going to get exasperated and exaggerated as this kind of, you know, we tip closer towards the, yeah, financial revolution, the the great reset, whatever it is you want to call it. Something's brewing. We can feel it. And I think it's, I think it's catastrophic the way that we look at use normalized debt, which is a form of, of, of slavery. I mean, the Bible is clear on it.

You made a comment earlier like, so this concept of debt comes up in the in the book of Proverbs, but earlier you mentioned this concept of Fair and equal weights that came from the second book in the Bible called Deuteronomy. And it's written by a guy called Moses. And Moses wrote that directly from God like it is it didn't,

it didn't magically appear. It's like the guy that created the world in the universe spoke to Moses saying, hey, Moses, you got to go and tell everyone how to live fair and equal money is like the money section. That's like the original law. And then what's even crazier, even like you drove down the the debt. So at it written in the book of Proverbs, that's written by a guy called Solomon and Solomon wrote lots of the proverbs and God himself called Solomon the

wisest man on earth. So it's like we don't, these aren't just like nice fables that we kind of like look at and read and like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Like, no, no, the Bible written by the divine spirit of God called Solomon the wisest person on earth. And he's out here saying, Hey, yo, the the the lender is a or the borrower is a slave to the lender. And another little tidbit bitcoiners. He also said, this is my favorite line from Solomon, a

wise man. This is this is the wisest man saying this a wise man leaves an inheritance for his children's children. Like how how based is that? How much of A Bitcoiner, you know, sentiment to that like generational wealth mindset coming out of the wisest man on earth on on earth, kind of like highlighting the risk. He doesn't say don't take debt, which is interesting. He just highlights the slavery component to debt, which I think it's a healthy mindset to walk into debt with.

You've said that having holding Bitcoin as a bearer asset demands a little faith. So I wanted to ask you what is the difference between believing in Bitcoin based on your research, right and seeing a certain future? But then what is the step to faith? What, what is the difference between believing and having faith in, you know, taking it off an exchange, being your own bank, having it in self custody, etcetera?

Yeah, it's question. It's kind of well, yeah, it's I mean, it's kind of this concept of personal agency Bitcoin, like the revolution of Bitcoin is not this number go up, right. You like, I mean, Haktua coin had number go up for a period of time, right. We've had gold does number go up? Oil does number go up? We've we we've got all kinds of number go up assets and even scarcity isn't the invention of of Bitcoin. We've got scarce assets, quasi scarce assets.

We don't have known scarce assets. So that is kind of a little bit of a of a benefit. But you think about physical assets. Let's let's let's let's pick on gold and oil. So gold, you can self custody gold up to an extent, but if you're going to continually be buying gold, eventually you're going to accumulate such an amount that it's going to be difficult to self custody and you're actually incentivized to give it to a custodian because they have better security.

You know, you have the option of building out steel fireproof vault in your house with like the security systems and the bodyguards and the the lasers and you know, all the, all the crazy things that you do to secure shiny yellow rocks. Or you can pay someone a couple 100 bucks or a couple 1000 bucks who's already done all that and who pools all those resources together to kind of create that as a value prop.

So it's actually gold gets harder to self custody the more that you have and you're actually kind of quasi forced to centralized that way. Oil is the same thing. We actually, I'm not sure you remember during the COVID crash, we saw oil drop to negative $20 a barrel. That meant that holding oil was such a nuisance.

The physical custody of oil was so catastrophic that oil companies whose literal job was to pull oil out of the ground and store it, they were like, Nah, I'm not going to do this storage part. We got way too much oil. I can't be bothered with this physical custody here customer, here's this asset that we're going to pay you to take. Like, imagine that world where we see custody of an asset become such a nuisance that we are paying people to, to take it

off of our hands, right? A resource, a natural resource that's allegedly scarce. And we are just paying people like who's going to pay you to take custody of their Bitcoin? But yet we see that happen. And so what's, what's the innovation here, right? What's the, what's the, the real innovation is that Bitcoin, no matter how much you hold, costs

the same to self custody. So you kind of don't have the gold and the oil problem, but you also have institutional grade security built in to the protocol. So you don't even have the like economies of scale problem. Like, oh, it doesn't make sense to secure my $18.00 of Bitcoin. It's like, well, it costs the same to secure $18.00 of Bitcoin as it does $18 billion in Bitcoin.

It's the same like we've never had said that before, it costs way more to secure $18 billion in gold than of than of Bitcoin or or or of of $18.00 in gold. Same thing with oil, same thing with diamonds, same thing with like Pokémon cars. Like the more you get of something physical, the harder and more expensive it is to secure. But with Bitcoin, you have infinite security inside of a finite asset. And that is just like that's innovation immensely. And So what does that mean?

Why isn't everyone self custodying it? How on earth is custody even a business? And it's strictly because of that Fiat mindset. And this this kind of like personal agency risk calculation. People for whatever reason are petrified that they are not responsible enough to own and control their wealth. And I just think that's such a backwards mindset. It's straight programming brainwashing from the system. It is 100% of fallacy.

If you are responsible enough to drive a 5000 LB piece of metal at at earth shattering speeds down the highway, you can protect some words on a plate of steel. If you are responsible enough to usher in children or like think about like there's doctors, there's like we have a lot of personal agency and personal responsibility that we entrust in people. And yet somehow we think collectively we're too dumb to protect wealth.

Like it's just, it's we need to get over this, this brain wrought mindset and understand that custody is a feature, not some nuisance bug that you have to deal with like it has been for other physical assets. When it comes to holding Bitcoin securely, Peace of Mind starts with architecture. On Ramps multi institution custody model distributes control access across three independent regulated key holders in a two of three multi state quorum.

No single point of failure, no pooled or omnibus exposure, just segregated client titled vaults. You retain full legal ownership or on ramp coordinate security, compliance and operational workflows behind the scenes. Multi institution custody is the foundation for everything that On Ramp builds sound infrastructure that distributes counterparty risk and provides fault tolerant resilience with clear audits and institutional

controls. And now on Ramp is piloting flat predictable pricing to make best in class Bitcoin custody and financial products more accessible than ever. Visit on rampbitcoin.com to learn more and sign up with code Bram. That's BR AM to receive $150.00 in Bitcoin after your first deposit on ramp strength in many simplicity in one. What do you think about the fact that you know, the, the, the American dream, but I think also the, the Western dream to a degree, right?

It it it, it used to be all about personal agency and having ownership right? And now it's really about outsourcing responsibility. It's about credit scores like we, like we mentioned, what do you, what do you think happens? Like what, when, when did people decide to train to trade their sovereignty for, for this convenience? And, and what do we need to, to get back?

Because my, my idea around this is when, when more people actually have that agency, when they feel more in control of their life and they want to be more in control of their life, that's when we actually make big steps, right? Because then you have to go out there and do things and create

value, etcetera. And now it is too easy to either rent seek or, you know, you have these examples of people who work three days a week because it, it does, there's no reward in working four days a week, for example, with government benefits and, you know, stuff, stuff like that. So if they would work one week a day more, they would have to work a whole day to get like, I don't know, $20.00 or €20 extra per per week or something, right. So they're obviously not doing that.

So yeah. What, what are your thoughts around that? Because I, I again, I think there's such there, there's this weird dichotomy between it's either you're responsible or you're outsourcing everything to random other people that don't know who you are. They are not better than you. They don't know more about the thing that you're outsourcing, right? You can learn about that yourself. So for me the line feels very thin, but in reality it's quite

wide I would say. Yeah, man, I think if I had that so my gut reaction to like when did this happen? I would you know, my gut reaction like most Bitcoiners like 1971, obviously this is when it happened. But as I've been thinking about this for, you know, as you were talking there, I think it's actually probably the industrial revolution that began this like kind of mass programming for a

future world. You look at the industrial revolution and pre industrial revolution, we, this concept of like a global market or this concept of, of economies of scale wasn't really something that we, we, we considered you just did things because it made sense for you and your community. You worked hard, you enjoyed the fruits of your labor and you, you know, you lived in a tiny community. And then the industrial revolution comes along and, you know, boom, we get kind of mass

programming. We, we start experiencing like, you know, state education, you know, state incentives. We start, we start seeing, you know, we start understanding that economies of scale kind of one person or one group can all of a sudden govern millions of of people. I mean, you look at like Russia's a great example of this, Like Putin governs over 9 time zones.

That is like mind blowing. Like you can't, you can't effectively run a country or any organization, any institution across 9. I got a hard enough time with four time zones that Bitcoin, well, I can't imagine. And hey, listen, maybe Putin's a lot smarter than I am. OK, fair play. But like 9 is crazy. And I think that this concept of like economies of scale and this concept of mass leadership and kind of like mass organization, mass efficiency, I think that's kind of where it really started.

And when you, when you want something on mass, you have to train a society to start thinking on mass. And so you know, you can't think on mass if your bread comes from your neighbor and your meats comes from your other neighbor and your entertainment comes from across the street and your books come from your local author. Like you just don't, you just don't think on mass. You're, you're, you're thinking inside of your inside of your community. Now there's, there's benefits to

both sides, right? Like you said, fiat's a great invention up to a certain point. Well, probably same goes of the industrial on mass, kind of like mindset, this industrial complex mindset of, of like, yeah, we have technology. We have you are actually incentivized to spend, to burn millions of dollars researching and innovating. So we can have the iPhone, so we can have the Internet, so we can have the Bitcoin protocol, so we can have encryption protocols.

Like, yeah, all this innovation comes from this big high level on mass mindset, but it also requires us to keep our economies or our our individuals, our our citizens and our society well trained in this, you know, don't, don't remove personal agency. There's this this quote that I like that I probably subscribe to. And it's like the tighter you are, but the more like centralization and like, you know, for my family, I'm

straight communist. I'm like, you know, there it's all for the collective, for my community, my extended family, probably pretty socialist. For my neighborhood, I'm probably pretty centrist. And like, the further out that I get, I end up at pure anarchy for like, you know, the whole world. And I think we've kind of camped ourselves into these identities of like political type of

environments. It's like we, we, you can't, I feel like the world is designed for us to hold different opinions based on circumstances and data. And we've camped ourselves into like, no, no, no, I'm a socialist. I believe that everyone should be owned by the head. And, you know, personal agencies should be 0. And that's a phenomenal mindset for like you and your kids and maybe your parents and maybe your sister, but like, that's terrible for a country.

And you have to kind of identify which ones are which. Can you kind of elaborate on your thoughts around Bitcoin being the only kind of like power structure that doesn't really have a human point of failure? It's just this thing. And when you adopt this thing and you contribute to it, you can gain benefit from it. And everyone that does that is incentivized to do more of that and so on and so on and so on. Yeah, that's really the key thing, is just the aligning incentives portion.

You're actually more incentivized to contribute to the security of the Bitcoin network than you are to try to hack it, which again, is not really true of of any other asset that I can think of. You are much more incentivized to try to social engineer and hack into a bank or hack into a stockbroker or hack into a gold shop. Like how much money can you really earn? Like there's such this, there's this, there's this misaligned incentive between a bodyguard and the thing that the bodyguard

is guarding, right? Or like the security guard, you know, you give you give a guy a gun and, and 30 bucks an hour and you ask him to protect 1,000,000 bucks. It's like I got to work for a lot of hours or I can just point this gun the other way and go and grab the 1,000,000 bucks and get a payday. That actually happened in Edmonton like two or three years ago. There's a, there's an armed guard and they always send two of them. And one of the guys, there was

just cash on the table. And one of the guys, he just shot the other armed guard and took the money and ran. And this misaligned incentive doesn't happen in Bitcoin because we've removed the human condition. We've, we've removed the morality, the depravity and the, you know, like naturally evil state of humans and we've protected it with rules, but not rulers. And I think that that's the the key. Like you said, you can't blackmail a Shaw 256 encryption

protocol. But you know, apparently the president of the free world can go ahead and head to an island and he can get all the blackmail he needs. And so it's, it's, it's quite an interesting thing when we look to people to be our saviors, when we look to people to be our protectors, when we look to people to kind of protect our future and guard our future, we run into a bunch of misaligned incentives and, and ultimately no one's perfect.

And so you end up in this weird spot where you have to kind of either defend this person or you need to find a new person if you're but when you can root your time in energy. Energy is kind of like agnostic. It doesn't really matter, you know, like energy is just energy and they're trying to demonize energy, right? Boils the oceans.

It's it's creating hurricanes and like the worst weather pattern since 1964. It's like, sure, you know all the FUD you want against energy, but at the end of the day, humans like we our time is you literally like I'm not sure if you've ever done like a health thing where you stand on the thing and grab the handles. It's like you just by existing burn 1700 calories, a unit of energy just by breathing. That's what your body takes just to survive.

And you need to fill your body up with 1700 calories worth of energy, which means somebody has to produce. That's 1700 calories worth of energy. And it's like we all boil down at the end of the day to production and consumption of energy. And the fewer objects we have in the way to incentivize negativity or to incentivize thievery and like, yeah, manipulation and all these bad things, the better. I don't think anyone can say anything other than that.

And so with that frame of mind, now you have to look and you have to be like, all right, if we want rules and no rulers, because all human rulers are bad and we need to perfectly preserve energy, what can do that? And I'm like, yo, show me a better asset than Bitcoin to be able to achieve those two things. Because without those two things, I think you're off on the wrong foot already. And those two are the most

important things. Why do you think a lot of people still have so much resistance to something like Bitcoin, arguably a tool that can protect them from the most predatory thing in their lives, which is the manipulated money, which is the most important technology they use every day in in their lives. But the same people also talk about freedom, right? Like I want to be free. I want to be, you know, do whatever I want to do in my life. I want to be, you know, self-sufficient, blah, blah,

blah, blah. But they don't adopt Bitcoin. What is that? Yeah. I think it's it's a deep condition around kind of what I made was talking about earlier around this like this, this people honoring or people heroizing other people and we've kind of camped ourselves into our thoughts and beliefs and ideologies. It's like I am X, whether it be a political ideology or a bitcoiner or even, you know, you attach what you do. I'm a welder. And so, you know, all of my welding friends think this.

I am not thinking anything other than that. I'm a high school student. Well, all high school students have cell phones. And so I have to have a cell phone. And from a very young age, we've kind of got this concept of my peers all think this. Therefore I think this. And it's not because I've rationally thought it out. It's not because I think it'll make the world a better place. It's simply because somebody else that I trust, rightly or wrongly, thinks this way.

And then when somebody points so then then what happens is our ideas become very spiritual. They become very much a part of our soul and our our way of thinking, our hearts, they become a part of us. And so when someone comes along and tells us that our ideas or our opinions are wrong or bad for a certain reason, we get this like really adverse reaction. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't know, you don't understand.

My hero thinks this. This person that I trust, Mackenzie thinks Mackenzie thinks this. No, no, no, no, no. The governor of my state thinks this. You have no idea. My favorite is celebrity thinks this. The hockey player that I like thinks this. My mom thinks this. My best friend thinks this. And it's like, you don't care about the opinion. You just care about who shares the opinion with you because you think it makes you more like them.

And it comes from this place of really, truly, dramatically overemphasizing humans over like God is, is like the root of it. But even like if you don't want to get that spiritual, it's, it's this goal to just fit in. And I think that's where it ultimately stems from. And if we are comfortable, like the amount of Sailor Sims that I see that credit to sailor. I think the treasury space is interesting and I think it plays a role in, in our environment. And I'm running a treasury

company. So like, you know, we're a productive treasury company. We're different than MSTR, but like, let's call a spade a spade, right? We print shares, buy Bitcoin like that's, that's the base of it. And but the amount of people that won't, that are scared to call him out on the things that he could do better means that they they idolize him. And it's not just sailor, it's, it's literally anyone. And we should feel very comfortable saying, yo, I like

that guy. I disagree with AB and C, but on the surface, I think this is what I like and the ability to say, oh, I liked that guy. I'm not talking about anyone in particular, but just in general. I used to like that guy, but this sent me over the edge or I got some new data and it changed my opinion here. We're all just like so married to our opinions. We think that we learned something one time and it just is that way forever.

And you know, that's why Boomers and Gen. X don't adopt Bitcoin. And, and that's why, you know, we got a hard time believing in new data. In truth, it's like, you know, all the conspiracy theories, like, no, no, no, no, no. You know, the, the guy on the TV told me it was this way. How dare you tell me it was a different way? Like you don't have ATV. And it's like you're you, you don't have a fancy suit, you

don't have a microphone. And it's like we need to kind of slay our heroes and just be in pursuit of a goal and then optimize for finding truth towards that pursuit of a goal. Yeah, I, I, I think it's interesting because I have a certain opinion about Saylor, which I think is different than than than yours. But I also think that is, that is fine, right? Like I'd in general, I think in, in Bitcoin, people are very critical thinkers, right?

And I think people like to have discussions etcetera, right. So for. Sure. But I think even like, I want to double click on this sailor thing because I think this is deeply interesting. I bet you and I would agree on facts. We would perhaps or maybe not disagree on our like overarching opinion of that fact. And that disagreement, the fact that we can, that we can agree on facts, I think is half the battle. Disagreeing on the opinion just means we have different objectives in mind.

And I think that's the whole, that's the whole point is that we all need and want different objectives, but we have to get to a part where we agree on facts. And if you're walking around here and you think that let's pick an easy 1, the COVID vaccine was in any way a net positive to humanity, Like that's not a fact. That's just like there are facts that show that to be false.

And so I think that we need to get to a spot where we are OK to like zoom out, look at facts without opinions, look at the data and then take the data in part our objectives to. Make opinions. Yeah, well, maybe that's a nice bridge for something else. I wanted to to ask you.

We just mentioned, you know, when when you pick Bitcoin as your money or when you make this conscious decision that you don't want to participate in this debt fueled money system that is not designed for for a better future for you, right. Like that is kind of where where the freedom comes from initially, I would say. And I think a lot of people in Bitcoin talk about, you know, the the sovereign individual book or heard, heard people talk about it.

And I don't think, yeah, again, it's about, you know, chilling on some tropical islands or whatever. It's about having mental jurisdiction, like being in control of what you what you think, what you understand, what you're studying, you know, and eventually what, what you're doing. But how can people that have this mindset still operate in, you know, a high tax, high surveillance western, western country where to connect to what

you just said? A lot of people in charge are saying things that they think have value because they are in charge and they are on the TV and they have on a suit, you know, and, and a lot of people feel that they should follow those people because, well, that's what what we've always

done. But I think when you start paying attention and start thinking for yourself and trying to be critical also in a way that makes it uncomfortable for you, right when when you start seeing stuff you fought was true, which isn't true. And when you know it isn't true, but the person with the with the suit at the tie on TV still says it's true, you know, that's that's super uncomfortable.

So maybe you can share a bit how, how you are approaching that or how you see other people approaching that and, and maybe just your general thought about, you know, if you, if you wake up in a society like that, it doesn't mean your life gets easier. Yeah, I think, I think everywhere has their has their problems. Like we're we're about to go through an insane revolution. I think that you and I are probably going to be on the tail end of our lives when it when it kind of balances back out.

And I hope that, you know, Gen. Z and Gen. A&B and whatever the other generations are called, get to pick it up and kind of rebuild it back better. For my European friends that want to buy Bitcoin with ease, check out Relay. I've been a long time fan and happy to partner up with what I think is the best Bitcoin only platform for Europeans. They offer a super simple beginner friendly app with no distractions and no shit coins.

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There is nowhere safe. I mean, even look at you like El Salvador has a really nice, I think game or like thought experiment where it's like we got this guy in charge. He changes the rules in order to benefit society. That's amazing, right? El Salvador has more prosperity now than it ever has had. But we can't ignore the fact that the guy had to change the rules. And if you can change the rules for good, that means that the next guy or even this guy can change the rules for bad.

I mean, you want to talk, I'm sure I'm not sure if you and Pastor Coyne talked about this, but it's like that's the story of the Bible. God appointed like the most godly man to be the first king on the on the whole earth. And his name was Saul and he was amazing for like decades, maybe not quite decades. And then he falls to like pride, corruption, self indulgence, like all these things. And he just corrupts the Kingdom.

And then So what does God do? He like he appoints a new king that's King David. You probably have heard of King David, like musician dude. He's he's like David and Goliath kills the giants and same thing. He's like got a, a heart after God and he's like ripping through, you know, God dethroned Saul, David's patient. Ten years after Saul is dethroned, David like stands up and becomes king. It's amazing. And then he falls. He has like 700 wives or something insanely just immense

lust and like terribleness. And then like, it's like when you put a human being in charge and, and all that power, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And so, yeah, if you're in a high tax, high surveillance area, it's like, what's the trade off? And you got to start making those decisions with yourself. I'm convinced there is no one right spot to live for everyone because everyone wants different things out of life for my

family. And I like, I'm a little bit ashamed to say it, but I just love the convenience that Western Canada has for me. It's beautiful. The climate's pretty good. It's not perfect, but it's fine. It's like, you know, I can pretty much order if I need a camera or I need whatever electricity is always on, Internet's always here. I can flush my toilet paper.

Like, you know, there's like modern conveniences here that don't exist in some of the nations that are are, you know, have less surveillance, less tax, but also less convenience. Would it be better if Canada had less surveillance, less tax?

Yeah. And so I'm going to park here and try to fight for that and make that happen through Bitcoin. Well, through get base, like through all the other all the other stuff that, you know, all the efforts that we get to do. But at the end of the day, you got to choose to point your energy to something. And if you're going to point your energy to running from the system, the system probably never changes.

If you're going to point your energy to fight the system, you probably lose, but at least you try. Well, I, I, I think that's an honest reflection. And I think it's also something that a lot of people are, are thinking about, right? Like, you know, in, in my country, there's going to be or well, they have plans to have a 35% unrealized gains tax where, you know, people are fighting against that. It's not final yet, but they're, you know, I think they're fighting against it.

And yeah, asking the question do do I, do I still want to stay here is becoming increasingly relevant, which is incredibly. And you think about why Bitcoin is so important because like, if you've got an asset, you got a home. If you got a, a stock portfolio, if you hold MSTR, if you've got any kind of traditional asset in that system, like you are exposed and legally you might, you might even be exposed with your Bitcoin. However, you can take your Bitcoin and physically leave with it.

And I think that's the difference. You'd be a, you'd be a delinquent and you'd be subject to fines and criminal charges in your country and all this stuff, but you'd be out. And I think that in a draconian world, you got to stop thinking about the arbitrary rules that the human beings have put upon us and start thinking about the

laws of physics. And if your country decides that a 35% unrealized gains tax is the best way to treat its citizens, then you're exposed to selling the stuff before you get like, or you have to abandon it, which sucks that that's 100% tax. So that's like, not good. You have to play the game, which also sucks, or you have to pick up your assets and leave. And we are locking ourselves inside of all kinds of assets that don't allow you to pick up and leave. And like, you know, crypto

broadly is one of them. Bitcoin not in self custody is one of them. One of the only assets that you can actually pick up and leave with is just real Bitcoin sitting in self custody. What, what does it mean when it when Bitcoin gets boring? Is that a a good thing or is that a dangerous thing? We see, you know, with this whole, you know, Epstein stuff for the price going down.

We, you know, I see a lot of uninformed people that have never researched or talked about Bitcoin before, but they do have a big audience, you know, saying all kinds of things about it, incredibly uninformed. I I do, I do think that is dangerous in a sense that, you know, every, every asset, every development, whatever has a certain narrative or idea around it, right. So it's, it's, it's in that sense always. How do you say that? Like, you know, the, the perception is malleable forever,

basically. But yeah, when Bitcoin becomes more boring, like, is that a good thing, a bad thing? What? What do you mean by that? Point neither. I think that I'm a dopamine junkie, so I definitely like exciting Bitcoin. I like the green candles and the red candles and you know, work is always more chaotic. I'm a chaos maxi. So it's like, you know, but I think philosophically speaking, like we don't want our money to be exciting.

We don't want to have to be beholden to like like the fact there's even currency markets to play and forex markets and like, you know, we have to gamble our hard earned and saved money just to survive. That's a problem. And I think when we have boring Bitcoin, you and I are never going to experience pure boring Bitcoin. But if you watch Tomer, have you do you know who Tomer is? You watch his his video about about like the prosperity that is Bitcoin. I forget what the title is

called, but it's beautiful. It's is it that one or is it Bitcoin is generational wealth, I think is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, for people listening, look up those two. Bitcoin is beautiful and Bitcoin is generational wealth. It's fantastic. I'm actually, Tomer and I are sitting down next week to have him on the Adam O'Brien show, which I'm super pumped on. But I, I, I just, I really can't help shake the feeling that in 100 years, the total market cap of Bitcoin will be equivalent to

what humans can produce. And like really, everything else is a consumable. And to Jeff Booth's point, everything falls to the price of production. And I think that we won't see that. But that is the Bitcoin promise. And you want to know how boring bitcoins going to be when it's when it's when the price of Bitcoin can only move because human beings have innovative and produced. That's going to be boring because it'll be real innovation at that point.

It won't be fake fairy dollars that have been air dropped in from some executive order. It's going to be actual value driving the conversation, real money, human energy driving the value of your money. And when that happens, we're going to see and find out real quick how valuable people think climate initiatives are and how valuable people think, you know, all these nonsense government initiatives, like all the virtue signaling stops real quick when it's coming out of your direct

pocket. And I think that's probably where the world starts to prosper and thrive. What I like about bitcoins that this proof of work is in everything. Like like you said, if you if you see someone talk and not walking the walk, it's fucking bullshit when you know that there there is something else that exists that incentivizes you. To walk your talk basically, right, like once you know that exists that that is why Bitcoin is this mirror idea, right?

You, you can uphold that kind of like level of, of, of, of what you expect for, for other people to do so yeah, I don't really know where I wanted to go go on which direction, but it's just so fascinating that the proof of work part comes back in everything. And it's only because we know that there is something like proof of, of work, right. We, we could actually argue that. Yeah, the people with the suit on TV, that is proof of stake. It's look at me, I'm sitting in this chair.

I have this title. I'm therefore, yeah, like, and therefore what I say is true or has value and well, and, and that is pure nonsense because that is not the only option. It doesn't make sense that that is the only option for us. No, of course not man. And I think again, it's like slaying the hero, right? It's fine to take different tidbits from what people say. Hey, listen. Like that's it's the only way to communicate is by listening to

other people. That's that's really the only way to learn, whether it's in written form or it's in verbal form. You cannot learn unless you listen to other people. But we have to kind of decouple this idea that people are the things they can teach you and you can love what somebody says without loving that person. And I think that that's a really important distinction to make.

You know, like I, I call people all the time, like if I'm going to disappoint you, like if you know, if you're looking at me as some like as some idol or some perfect being, don't I'm going to disappoint you. It's fine to listen to what I say and and take it for what it's worth. But like, you know, me and the man on the TV and the person you

will act and you know everyone. You just cannot have your personal being locked in that kind of a hero because it just, it'll fail you time and time again. Yeah, Yeah, I fully agree. So to wrap up to two questions. If if someone is listening and still feels, you know, like someone our age, a millennial and they they feel or they start seeing that they are a slave to a lender right now. And that kind of that path is something that doesn't excite

them toward the future. But they, they have no Bitcoin or a little Bitcoin. How, how do they start? Like how do you start becoming, you know, the, the, the, the rebel or, or, or you know, the rebellion against your old self or something, something like that. Like how, how should people start? Like what's a practical tip or guidance you would give to people? Yeah, I think you start with your habits, forget like the last step is buying Bitcoin.

You got to you got to right size your your heart and your habits before owning Bitcoins going to mean anything to you if you own Bitcoin and at 10 XS in price, right we go from here to 100K because that's what's there are two 2,000,000 bucks because that's what it's going to do. But you haven't right sized your heart and your reasons and your your time preference. Then you're going to sell that Bitcoin to buy something dumb.

Like 10 years ago I put away one Bitcoin and I was like, when this Bitcoin can buy me a McLaren 720 S, I am here for it. I got my one UTX. So I'm like it's locked away, it's protected, I'm ready. And today that one Bitcoin is like earmarked for my grandkids. And I think that that mindset shift is just so important to realize. You don't really need a 720 S, right? You don't really need a new house or like this, you know, fancy, updated, whatever. It's like you need generational

wealth. And so step one is to find a path to build those habits, whether it's spending within your means, right? Forget paying off your debt. How do you just start living without consumer debt? Let's just start there. Can you go on a cash diet and still save money? If so, great. You can probably pay down the debt that you already have. Once your debt is paid down, you're going to have such a good

control over your impulses. You're going to be so financially disciplined that you're going to be able to accumulate Bitcoin at an alarming rate and you won't blow it the second it's green. And I think that that three stepped approach is probably like one of the most important things that we can, that we can highlight is just you don't get generationally wealthy by accident. You get it through discipline and a strong mindset, you know,

understanding what that means. And that's probably where most people go wrong is they think they do all the right things, but they do it without the the the change of heart, so to speak. And I think that's where people get caught. Awesome. Like, yeah, I love, I love that. My last question, and I ask everyone the same question, which is what is a core belief that you will never let go of? Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior of our universe. I just, it's like it's tough.

It's tough to ignore the apologetics. That's got nothing to do with Bitcoin. But I do have a presentation that I call Jesus is a Bitcoiner. And and I think that, you know, if I want to write this down, I actually think that you're your journey, your Bitcoin journey has three phases. It's kind of got this pre bitcoiner phase, It's got this Bitcoiner phase and then it's got like this Jesus maxi phase. And I think that Bitcoin ultimately leads you towards

objective truth. And it is so difficult to ignore the objective truth of Jesus Christ. Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing and thanks for your time. And yeah, let's stay in touch. Looking forward to it, Bram. Thanks so much. Cheers. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, you can click here to find more just like it and click here to find all Bitcoin for Millennials podcast episodes.

Also, if you want to help me shine a light on the message of Bitcoin, please like this video and subscribe to stay connected. I hope to see you for the next episode. Bye.

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