If you are the U.S. government, you don't go after tether and try to arrest the team behind tether and put them behind bars for what you alleged money laundering or anything like that. You think the I love them for doing more for the benefit of the U.S. dollar than the government has for the last 100 years? Here's where I like tether is because you meet people from Colombia, meet people from Venezuela, you meet people from Africa. They don't necessarily need Bitcoin.
They're not there necessarily to generate wealth. They just want something more stable than their own currency. And the US dollar represents that very well for them. 99% of the big companies in Bitcoin colluded to increase the block size. And it was never about the blocksize. It was all about control. If they had succeeded, that would have meant that they were in control of the development of the protocol. But they weren't because the users were. Patrick. Welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show.
Nice to have you here. I thank you so much for having me here today. It's a pleasure to meet. Yes. Since this is the first time we're having you on, why don't you give, our listeners a tldr on who you are and what you do and how you found Bitcoin and all of that? Good stuff. Oh, I could talk about that forever. But just a quick tldr about who I am and what I do. So my name is Patrick Lowrey. I'm the CEO of Samara Asset Group.
Samara Asset Group is a publicly traded holding company based out of Malta, albeit publicly listed in Germany. Our primary focus is on deploying our balance sheet into funds. We basically have, over 20 funds that we are participants in as, limited partners. And we leverage Bitcoin as our primary Treasury reserve asset. So any assets that we don't currently have deployed to the funds in our platform is actively managed in Bitcoin. Oh, that's that's a mouthful.
So it is I could keep going if you'd like me to. Yeah. Please do please expand a bit on that and how did this come to be? Like what? Where did it start from? And like what? What's the what's the trajectory here? What is the future you envision? Yeah, sure. So, Samarra massacre was actually founded, back in January of 2018, by German entrepreneur Christian Ingabire and Mike Novogratz of Galaxy. I don't think I need to explain to anybody who that is.
Basically, the idea was back at that time to create a merchant bank for all things crypto in Europe. And you might remember back then, Malta was really pushing this blockchain island stuff. They really wanted to have, this new regulatory framework to welcome the exchanges, welcome token issuers, etc., which actually for a while was going reasonably well for the island.
They ended up having a whole bunch of the exchanges like Binance and OKEx come over and it started to push a little bit of adoption until basically the ECB looked at them and said, well, the fuck you are right. You're you're clearly not, adhering to European banking laws by allowing what you want to have happen, happen in Malta. So unfortunately, they weren't really ever able to get Cryptology Asset Group to be the merchant bank that they were intending during that period of time.
But cryptology did invest in a handful of companies in the bitcoin and the crypto space that did phenomenally well. One of which was actually the company I was CEO of at the time, Deutsche, a digital assets, used to be called iconic. I'm just an expert when it comes to rebranding, I suppose. But iconic was one of the very first issuers of Etps backed and traded by Bitcoin and other crypto assets in Europe. We started that back in 2020 or so after many years of work.
Other companies that cryptology had invested in included, Block.one, who I probably don't have to necessarily introduce to everybody. They were the issuers of the EOS Bitcoin. And they went on to have a large Bitcoin balance sheet, which being a shareholder of block one, we absolutely loved because that gave us indirect exposure to Bitcoin from day one. We were also invested in Northern data, which is a publicly listed European miner of Bitcoin. They're one of the largest in Europe.
And over the last few years they've been focusing on HPC and AI. So we're actually pretty excited about how that investment went. But in 2021, when I initially stepped in to some of our asset group and took over as CEO, I looked at or I had a conversation with our shareholders and said, look, we can continue to use our balance sheet to invest in early stage crypto companies as, cryptology had been doing at that point in time. Or I think it would be much wiser for us to use our balance sheet.
And instead of investing 500 K or small checks here and there into new projects or into new companies in the crypto space, rather, I felt it would be a better strategy for us to deploy to asset managers themselves to actually deploy to funds. That way, we wouldn't have to build out an army of analysts and significantly increase the amount of people that we're working at Samora and therefore our overhead.
But rather we could leverage the network, leverage the infrastructure and leverage the due diligence that all of the managers that we would be deploying to, and our shareholders would therefore be able to participate indirectly, of course, in the performance of the managers that we would deploy our balance sheet to. So since then, we built up that position of over 21 limited partnership stakes and funds.
But in parallel, because I am, at the end of the day, a Bitcoin or myself, we do use Bitcoin as our primary treasury reserve asset. And at this moment in time, I think we're sitting on something like 540 Bitcoin. This recording's in early February. And that is, largely from liquidations of assets that we've had on our balance sheet prior, as well as at the end of last year, 2024.
We became, at least to my knowledge, the first issuer of a bond in Europe from a publicly traded company, that was backed and collateralized by Bitcoin. We raised €21 million in that bonds. Or what I like to say is roughly $21 million, for obvious marketing reasons. We were pretty excited with, our successful placement there. Okay, so so I'm going to have to, to, unwrap this a bit and ask about the, the ethics of the whole thing.
So like, what is your like how has your position on bitcoins changed over the years and what is your position now and what did it start out like like so yeah. So from my perspective I first I mean, I remember the very first time I heard of Bitcoin, I was working back at PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers. This was maybe 2011, 2012, something along those lines.
And I had a friend that worked in the tech department at TWC, and he basically said, like, look, I mean, so I was actually on top of the world at that moment because I had gotten what I thought was a great Christmas bonus. I got a whole $500 Christmas bonus. Check from PwC. And I was a young kid, too stupid to know any better, so I thought I was on top of the world. Anyways, my friend in the tech department said, hey, you know what? Take that $500, put it on this thing called Bitcoin.
Thank me later. So I did, I took the $500 on bitcoin. And when, you know, at about 2 or 3 months later, that $500 was magically worth about $100. So I yelled at my friend and said, this Bitcoin thing is the stupidest thing on earth. I can't believe I put money on it and that was it. Now fast forward, a couple of years. I get to 2015, 2016, and I had left the United States and was living in Germany at the time.
I had just completed my MBA here, and I actually started working for the Deutsche, a business venture capital team. Deutsche, a buzz of being the operator of the Frankfurt stock market, the largest stock market in Europe. Now, we had five main areas of focus that we were going to be investing, and one of which was blockchain and DLT. So mind you, this is 2015 and we're looking at the Ethereum ICO going, Holy shit, these ICOs are going to completely destroy how capital formation works.
And I actually do still at my core believe not necessarily in ICOs or certainly not ICOs, the way that they ended up going, because frankly, they all just ended up becoming by and large scams. But I fell in love with the concept of tokenization. And I would say that that is where even though I held Bitcoin before, the idea that all assets would inevitably be tokenized and secured on a blockchain, that was so self-evident to me, that's where my foray into crypto started.
So I believe that all debts, all equities, all parcels of land, bars of gold, etc. would be tokenized and traded on a blockchain. So that is where I really started to get into crypto. I founded my company iconic. We began actually has an investor in ICOs, and I would be more than happy to tell you about that because I think we were actually doing it the right way before. Well, we ended up going down the ETP route, but I mean, I still hold to my core that all assets inevitably will be tokenized.
And with the advent of Bitcoin layer tos for me, I'm really excited to see what will happen when all global assets around the world will be traded on and secured by Bitcoin. All right. This is this is the fun part. But because this is where we get into a hard disagree because I don't believe in tokenization at all. And the reason I don't is that I don't believe in blockchain technology at all.
Because I believe that the blockchain is a, or as I prefer to call it, the time chain is a byproduct of the Bitcoin technology, which is more, of course, which is more of a social agreement than an actual technology. So in my mind, it's a it's a, an agreement on a fixed set of rules. And the reason that we agree on this specific set of rules is because the rules are more that they're set up in such a way that they're more expensive to try to break than to just follow.
And there is no such thing exists in the crypto sphere or in the token sphere, because in the token sphere, it is cheaper for an attacker to try to attack the system than it's. Or it's at least it's not necessarily more expensive, which it is in Bitcoin because in Bitcoin the users are actually in charge. And my conviction came from the outcome of the box size wars, which was like, holy, holy shit moment. Because like 99% of the big companies in Bitcoin colluded to increase the block size.
And it was never about the blocksize. It was all about control, where if they had succeeded, that would have meant that they were in control of the development of the protocol. But they weren't because the users were. So they had to abide to whatever market, the market, whatever signal the market sent to them. And this market was clear, we don't want this. We are going to abandon ship. If you do this, and we're going to continue on our own chain.
So they all had to bow down to the node runners and the users of the network, which means this is exactly where Ethereum fucked up, right? I mean, whoa, whoa, the trade. All right. Yes, but but this is where I differ because I don't think it was a fuck up. I think it was a deliberate scam. It had a 70%, 100% mine.
And I believe that the founders were they were they knew about this all along, that if you look at Ethereum, it's like a long, slow rug pull where they had to change the narrative over and over and over again over the years. Like, first it was like a world computer and there was ultrasound money and all sorts of bullshit. And it was like a little for the internet, I think, where they were trying to pitch at one point, the bitcoins, the gold, Ethereum's the oil for the internet. Yeah, yeah.
And the Litecoin was the silver and blah, blah, blah, all of this. Exactly. And it's all bullshit. And, so if you look at Ethereum denominated in Bitcoin, which is the way, by the way, the only correct way of denominated anything, if you're going to if you're going to have a measurement of how your investment actually performed, then you can see that, Ethereum was about twice as valuable back in 2017 than in the second bubble in 2002 and 21. And now it's just a disaster.
Right. And and I believe that the at the core of this very fundamental problem is that the only thing, quote unquote, digital asset is, is a, a number on the internet. That byte, for some odd reason, cannot be copied. And any copy of that, any attempt to copy that, what I prefer to call a discovery rather than an invention just because it's so unique. Any attempt to copy that phenomenon is, inherently doomed to fail.
Or if it succeeds, it it it would wreck the entire sphere like it would kill Bitcoin to. If if bitcoin could be replicated, it wouldn't work because the whole the whole point is resistance to replicability. So like I'd like to pick your brain on what you agree and what you disagree with with that argument. So I actually don't disagree with much of anything that you said there. Except for the fact that you don't necessarily believe in tokenization.
So when I say tokenization, I don't necessarily mean ICO's on Ethereum or the bullshit NFTs that we're seeing launched on Solana or Pump that fund or anything along those lines. Tokenization, I do believe. So you're going to start seeing the Deutsche abuses, the New York stock exchanges and the Nasdaq of the world having blockchain based exchanges. Now these are going to be blockchains that are permissioned and they're going to be blockchains that are regulated and governed.
So it's not going to be a completely open source blockchain in the way that we typically think of in the bitcoin in the crypto space. But I do believe that having those elements of assets traded on a more transparent ledger system does make a lot of sense. So that's where I think of tokenization so completely different than crypto.
How is it how is a blockchain more secure or more transparent than just, a spreadsheet if it's centralized so it can be changed by, oh, spreadsheets or easily spreadsheets are very easily manipulated. Right. But so are blockchain. So that's my point. A blockchain that isn't the Bitcoin time chain is also trivial to change and also erase the history of because it's not because it's not governed by the user.
It's like the whole reason the time chain works is because it's being checked on constantly by by the users of the network. A centralized blockchain wouldn't be that. There would be nothing to prove that it wasn't tampered with. Well, but it doesn't have to be completely centralized, right? So effectively, if you think about how capital markets work today, what is the one centralized agency that governs ownership of any individual assets? Well, it's the CC'd.
That's quite literally why we call it the centralized, depository agency right now that CC'd recognizes the moment in time that assets theoretically swap hands. That is the legal moment when a equity or a debt or derivative, whatever it may be, is recognized to have exchanged ownerships hands like in Europe. The examples would be euro clear or Euronext right are clear stream. Now in the blockchain we recognize that as what happens whenever one asset moves from one wallet to another, right.
One is decentralized, the other one is centralized. Right now. Decentralization. I do believe, has, unlike genders, a spectrum. I do think that there is full decentralization, which I think Bitcoin is the absolute perfect and most closest that we've ever gotten to from that, especially from a monetary perspective. And then you have full centralization like the CSD, and then you have a whole bunch of other nonsense and different consensus mechanisms in the middle.
Now, in a heavily regulated world like our financial markets. And believe me when I say I'm not advocating for regulation, I'm just acknowledging the realities of the system that we live in. I think all regulation is bullshit, but given the construct and given the reality that we exist in today and how those capital markets operate, those market participants, the users themselves are brokers. They're investment banks.
They're the exchanges themselves, their placement agents, those different types of users, and somebody infinitely more intelligent than I and will have to create this consensus mechanism. But there is a world that I see a permissioned pseudo decentralized. I don't say fully decentralized, obviously, but pseudo decentralized, blockchain, where we can have tokenization and issuance of these assets. That's just at least what my hope would be. Well, actually, let me rephrase that.
My hope would be is that I would like to see a fully decentralized marketplace where any market participant can transact in these different types of assets on top of a completely decentralized, permissionless and censorship resistant layer one which effectively would be Bitcoin in this case. I just don't know if that's going to be technologically possible. I don't know if the core Bitcoiners are going to allow for forks of Bitcoin to get to that road.
I don't think that's reasonable to expect that we will. Layer twos might be able to offer that in the future. But hey, you're sacrificing decentralization and security in any way or two, which is core to Bitcoin's value proposition. Right. So it'll be interesting to see how that transpires. As new regulation and new technology develops over the coming decades. Yeah. I Sam, I agree, I mean, I do believe that there's always a trade off.
I wouldn't necessarily say that you sacrifice the central station if you're running your own lightning nodes. And so like, of course, it's a layer above, so it has its own trade offs. But so lightning is unique in that regard that it doesn't really sacrifice the decentralization elements. Does it sacrifice security potentially. But it doesn't even really look like it does as well. I as I say, you can't have one without the other. And this is where I have the biggest problem.
You have the trilemma where you have the centralization security and what's the third one? Scalability. Scalability. Exactly. Yeah. So, so and if you, if you're sacrifice like if the, the only thing that doesn't sacrifice, decentralization and security right now is bitcoin and you have to sacrifice scalability.
Anyone that the sacrifices one of the other two is actually sacrificing both because if you sacrifice decentralization then you can't have the security in the long run, because the decentralization is what makes the users be in charge and not the miners. And if you sacrifice security, well, but you're not decentralized. That not that well, you're not secure. So so so so so that is the thing. And like I view it as if you got perfect money or damn near perfect money.
Money that is good enough to last forever. Then no token for anything else is ever needed, because this money can be exchanged for everything else. So it is actually already like, a part of every stock in the world, every every bond, every equity. It's a part of everything else, you know, everything divided by 21 million. This is this idea that this thing can be exchanged for everything else. And I well, that's where I do believe that everything does inevitably go to zero against bitcoin.
But yeah. Yeah. Natural price is infinity right. I and I think it's very hard to make an argument against that at this point in time. Yeah. With that said because it is money. That does mean fundamentally that I mean, unless you envision a world where, let's say there will be no stocks, there will be no bonds, there will be capital markets. The way we think of today, I do I think that's the end game.
I do think that these things you're talking about might make sense in a transitionary world, but, but only if we we have to keep the goal in mind. Because the other thing that I'm and sorry for taking up it like, oh, please, I love this conversation because because I love this. Like trying to connect with the framing here because, the the, where was I here. Yeah. Ownership. So right now, as you say, ownership is like of stocks and bonds. It's the centralized time stamping server, basically.
The other time stamping is super important in, in Bitcoin, the Satoshi figured out that you can't have that centralized because that allows for double spending. That's why we need to sync. That's why we need this. So in my in my view, the decent realization in Bitcoin is a, unfortunate means to a much greater end, which is, copyable number or absolute scarcity. Without that, you cannot have the 21 million.
It is absolutely dependent on its users being vigilant enough to check on that at all times. Like otherwise that doesn't work. So that's why the digital energy narrative is it's it's slightly off because without the human beings, it would there would be nothing. There would just be a giant nothing burger. So ownership is a legal, relationship between you and a thing. That's that's what ownership.
It's possession is a layer deeper because possession is you actually having access to the thing and being able to defend it. So, yeah, I can steal your car and then I'm in possession of it. But you are the legal owner and I can just hope that there's a police force around trying to give us what they say. Possession is 9/10 of the law. Right. But yeah, exactly. But the thing is, with Bitcoin you cannot own it and you cannot
even possess it. Yeah. The only thing you can do is hope that no one else has access to the same key as you do. So everything in Bitcoin is probabilistic, and the only reason you say that you own it is because you find it very unlikely that someone else holds the keys. And the only reason that you say that there will only ever be 21 million is because you find it very improbable that everyone on earth would agree to change that number at some point in time like this.
But at the end of the day, these are just numbers and probabilities. It's yeah, this is like an abstraction, like a very abstract thought trying to bridge the the subjective world with the objective reality. Like that's what it is. And we've finally figured it out in that sense. I don't know if I can explain it better than that, but this is why I mean, I absolutely love the concept, but, when you say tokenization and owning this on a blockchain here, this and that, to me, these are all mirages.
And and there are, at best, prolonging the system we're living in now and not necessarily helping hyper bitcoin ization happen faster, which I think should always be the goal. Hello there, fellow Bitcoiners. Take your coins off the exchange right now. You need to take self-custody of your coins. Now, how do you do that? First of all, you need a good hardware wallet. And I would recommend the beatbox. So go to beatbox Dot Swiss Slash Infinity and get your beef box now with a discount.
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So check out pip box, Stamp Seed and the Bitcoin Advisor or Chief White. Back to the show. So let me ask you this. What does what does that to you. Hyper bitcoin is Asian look like because it probably doesn't look like Michael Saylor buying as much bitcoin as humanly possible. Right? Absolutely. It doesn't look like my samsara asset group using I mean, we try to stack as much bitcoin as we can. Obviously just on that and I salute your shareholders.
But at the end of the day we use Bitcoin as our Treasury reserve asset. Do you own your own keys. Yes. So we do hold our own keys except for the assets that we deploy into our managers. We do have a couple of funds that were invested in that are denominated in Bitcoin. Those managers themselves, of course, hold their keys. But that's just the way that we use bitcoin to compound Bitcoin. We earn bitcoin in Bitcoin right. All right. But outside of that we do have our own keys.
We also do custody with other providers just because we're a regulated company. So we do have to have a certain element of our assets deposited in custodians just because, hey, it's not your keys, not your crypto. Like I always tell everybody, no, no, no, I would say not your keys, not your coins. If it's crypto, it's not yours at all. But but, that's true too. But if if you, So, so if I ask you straight up, how many of these what was it, 560 bitcoins.
How many of those? 540. 540. How how many of those percentage or whatever you want to say, like, are held in actual self-custody and how many are outsourced to like Coinbase or something? So we don't have any big thing on a Coinbase. We would we use BitGo. Largely that is what is, our asset manager some our alpha. They deploy through different strategies on Bitcoin predominantly. We do have one banking partner in Europe that we have 100 Bitcoin deposited at.
And we use that as collateral for leverage for just ongoing operational expenses. We get bank we get bank loans against our bitcoin. So naturally the collateral is posted. And then we have about 150 or so bitcoin in Self-custody. So then we have a mechanism of about 25 ish percent, 20, 25%. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Like I said, we we put a good amount of our bitcoin to work. I mean, these are Bitcoin denominated funds. Therefore they capture all of the beta of bitcoin relative to fiat.
But they earn bitcoin on bitcoin in the strategy. So we always want to import bitcoin right. And then the other is leverage we use for operations. So again putting Bitcoin to work as an actual treasury asset rather than what Saylor's doing, which is just trying to buy as much Bitcoin as humanly possible and let it sit at Coinbase. So let me ask you
a personal question. Sure. If you if you had insider information to some new innovation on Ethereum and you knew that Ethereum was going to go up next week, would you sell Bitcoin to buy US area and buy Bitcoin back after that like without knowledge? Absolutely. So we don't have a theorem or exposure to any other crypto assets or tokens on our balance sheet. There's a couple legacy token investments that are on our balance sheet for many, many years ago. What? We haven't.
Oh, God. I think we the company. Before I stepped in, they invested in Leo. It invested in real? Yeah. Remember owner said Leo from, Bitfinex. God knows how long ago that was. Holy shit. Yeah. And you, you said Mike Novogratz. I thought that was like, the Cretaceous period to, you know. Well, it wasn't he the guy you tattooed? Lou nine. His. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Is that. Yeah. That's that tattoo, I think. And at least he says that he wears it as a reminder for mistakes he's made before. Right?
He's he's a great guy, though. But, yeah, I think he still actually has that Luna tattoo. Yeah, there were a handful of. Yeah. And then, like, for, like, during DeFi summer, we invested in a couple of things that were just going on here and there. We ended up turning like 100 K into like 3 million or something, but we decided to liquidate all those positions because frankly, we just decided DeFi summer. Okay, great.
While we were able to kind of harvest those gains and convert them to Bitcoin, but it's not something for us we would rather be deploying to managers, allow them to professionally manage assets from our balance sheet. The only crypto that we touch anymore is either a Bitcoin or because it is a stablecoin and it's the most widely accepted stablecoin tether. Naturally. All right. Yeah, that's that's when within my acceptance, frames or whatever. And yeah.
So sorry for being so, so attacking on this but but it's a no please I love it to to kill. Look at the sheer coin narrative. So I'm just making sure here. Yeah. Well, so here's a narrative that I don't even think you've, thought to ask, like, why should a company, why should people buy a publicly traded company like mine even have Bitcoin on its balance sheet? What real value should shareholders get from being invested in a company that has Bitcoin? And my answer to this is always you should.
If you want exposure to Bitcoin, you shouldn't be investing in publicly traded companies or even Etps or ETFs to get that direct exposure to Bitcoin. Me personally, all of my bitcoin not tomorrow's but mine personal is private keys, cold wallets, private keys. I have a whole system set up. Even the wills and the trusts and everything where elements of the private key or, words will turn over to certain individuals.
I trust that they don't even know that they're going to be getting those words in the future, just because I don't necessarily trust my wife to screw up accessing that Bitcoin at some point. So okay, I have to I have to sacrifice elements of my own Bitcoin security. So God forbid if I get hit by a bus later today, I know my wife will be entrusted with that Bitcoin. I don't have any of those problem because I lost. I lost all my because in a tragic boating accident.
Oh, I was going to say, actually, I should be. I should be telling the IRS this, I take that back. It's. I had a horrible boating accident. This is what you would have done if it had you still had them. Yes, yes. It's somewhere on the off the coast of, Gozo, if I remember correctly, we've never been able to find the, Bitcoin. Yeah. No. So anyways, like, I really shouldn't be saying that because, hey, I run a publicly traded company heavily investing in Bitcoin.
And I also created some of the first etps, the European version of a Bitcoin ETF in Europe. But see, for me it's all about what maybe the type of user experience investors want. Because unfortunately, the reality is, is there's a lot of people out there that don't trust themselves to go out, have a Bitcoin cold storage wallet, remember their seed phrase or remember their words, remember their private key. And then, you can go a step further in operating your own node.
I mean, you're not holding Bitcoin the right way if you're not operating your own node. That's just the essence, the truth of it. Right? So the reality is, is that if we want Bitcoin adoption, the way that I think elements of the community want Bitcoin adoption, ETFs and Https and publicly traded companies holding bitcoin are just an inevitability of that. Yeah. But that okay to their own. If they want exposure that way I don't recommend it.
But hey if you want to trust a professional asset manager like Deutsche Digital or trust a public company like MicroStrategy or some Aura Asset Group, please, by all means. Our shares are traded in Germany. Yeah. So. So that, let me give you my perspective on that and then and see what you think about it because like, I'm interested if, if like you agree with the framing. So. Oh the ETFs are absolutely an attack vector that I already know where you go. No no no look I'm not going down that road.
So so there okay. So the road I'm going down is like yes, I do agree with you. I think these things are inevitable, especially like in the transition period for sure. And I don't know if we ever get to like you ask me before what how I define hyperbolic ionization. And I think that's a super tricky question. I think most people get it wrong. First and foremost.
I think hyper bitcoin ization is a personal thing, and I the thing is, I don't see an end point to it because there's always one more thing that could come into the Bitcoin economy. Even if all fiat is dead, there's always people are going to the economy can still grow. They can still be like the I don't see an end point to it. Also the holding your own keys and doing Bitcoin properly is by far like it's absolutely not risk free.
So if you're a clever person, you need some type of diversification. It's not good to have all eggs in one basket. And by that I mean like yes, put as much as you as you can stomach into Bitcoin, but you should probably have some kind of other lifeline because what are you going to do if like, all of a sudden there are zeros all over your computer screen, like you are a risk to yourself, you can bump your head and lose your keys like that. It's not entirely risk free.
So yes, I do agree that some some type of diversification and but the thing is what what, so so so these instruments and these half measures, if you might call them that are absolutely a step on the way. And they are a good option for the boomer who doesn't trust his own skills with a computer or whatever. Like they're very much, tools for them. And I like it because at the end of the day, all roads lead to Bitcoin. Like this does lead to Bitcoin getting more powerful.
What I don't like is the, the, the road bumps that can be put in the way.
Like if one of these pension funds starts investing in Bitcoin and the crypto, for instance, or or would like when people issue NFTs on, on Bitcoin or any, any other bullshit use case than the monetary use case and the date like dilute stuff, dilute Bitcoin's pure value as pure money because I believe that, just as houses or real estate become a worse form of housing by being money so that the billionaire buys all those beachfront properties, all the beachfront property and, and, every,
every middle class person gets, out, compete in, on the market and can't afford a house next to the sea. So every house is empty. So that makes real estate worse as what it's intended use case. The same is true for money. Oh, you should go to Dubai. That's in Dubai. Yeah. It's like I know 90% of all the houses and everything is just empty. But Dubai. Dubai might have a beautiful future if they hope for Bitcoin. Nice. Because then the money works. And if. But the same is true
for money. That's my point. Like if if money is being used for arbitrary data storage and Jpeg creation, then then it's by definition becomes a worse form of money. So like, the, the framework to have in your head the Satoshi is special because it's the purest money we have. And and because it's a very, very personal thing. The Satoshis don't even exist except for in people's had the ability to move them exists, and that's all in people's heads. Nowhere else.
So. So like, this is what makes the Satoshi absolutely unique in comparison to anything else. And, so, so I'd say all roads lead to Bitcoin, but you can put up roadblocks on the way, which makes that process slower. For instance, if people fall for shit coins and get get burned, it's very unlikely that they get back to Bitcoin directly after that. It'll take them another ten years before they.
So so I don't think that that it's accelerating anything except people thinking that Bitcoin is a scam when it actually isn't. So yeah. And I don't think that's primarily but that's like primarily where Bitcoin has distinguished itself relative to every other a crypto asset in the entire space. Because Bitcoin is at its core, the most perfect form of money humanity has ever conceived of. You can't say that about Ethereum. You can't say that about any of the other layer ones.
You can't say that about tether, and you certainly cannot say that about any of the ICOs or NFTs or anything that has been tokenized on any of those other blockchains. You can. There is no second best. Exactly. There is no second best when it comes to money. Hello there. I'm Kurt Swann home, and I'm an International village idiot and author. These are my books on Bitcoin. Bitcoin sovereignty through mathematics. Bitcoin independence reimagined. Bitcoin. Everything divided by 21 million.
I'm Bitcoin the inverse of clown world. These are now re-edited, redesigned and available from the Bitcoin Infinity store. I mean look at that. Look at how your collection could look. Oh. It's upside down. But there they are anyway. But more than that, all of these books will be released for free. Chapter by chapter, week by week on Noster. Also accompanied by a video that Luke and I will make talking about the ideas in the book.
Where we answer your questions because you can sign up for the Bitcoin Infinity Academy and join courses for each and every one of the books, and talk to us every now and then and get other perks like a free set of steak knives. So go to the Bitcoin Infinity store right now. Get the books. Sign up for the Academy. Now the question is, is what are they? Because then there's other assets, right? You have equities. That's derivatives. Every other financial instrument that we've ever conceived of.
Now, is there a world where Bitcoin as the most perfect money ever created and these other assets coexist? Yeah, it's kind of the world we're living in today. It's just that these assets, except for the bullshit crypto assets we currently see in the world today, they're traded on capital markets. They're highly centralized on the New York Stock Exchange and other OTC desks in private equity and venture capital, etc.. Right. They're in real estate funds.
Now, the question is, is can and should we bring those assets to the blockchain or can and should we bring those assets to Bitcoin? Now the easiest and shortest answer I think is no. Yes. Well, for, for, you know. Right. For me it's. Yes. Because creating a global economy that trades 24 over seven, that allows everybody in as permissionless a manner as possible to trade these types of assets and realize the value capture of the appreciation of those assets over time.
Well, I, I frankly love that idea. Can it happen on other coins? Yeah, we've already kind of seen I mean, there's already been tokenized funds on Ethereum, right. You've seen tokenized went to shit because it was a scam. So so I would say no, that hasn't really happened. That's not necessarily true. There's a couple of funds I know like KKR that is tokenized. I think they had like what 700. But but it was but there are winners and losers in this. There are only winners
in Bitcoin. That's the point. You don't have to like this is not a zero sum game. And this is what people get wrong about it. And by the way I think the I hardly I, I have a hard disagree on putting anything else on bitcoin for a very simple reason. There are two scarce assets in Bitcoin. One is the Satoshi itself and the other is block space.
And if you fill up block space and if you block the utx all set by putting arbitrary data into it and making more and more, you take those you you, what you inevitably end up with is a higher starting cost for firing up that node, and what that inevitably will lead to is, sacrificing decentralization, which means Bitcoin is just another shit coin, and then we're all fucking doomed. That is the inevitable result. So there's like interested.
Yeah. So so there's an interesting, conversation I had recently. There's, 1 or 2 groups out there that I've become aware of over the last six or so months, that their entire thesis is exactly aligned to what you just said, that if we do start to see tokenization on Bitcoin, like not just ordinals and everything we've seen thus far, but like we see maybe layer twos that build tokenization or there's an update to the core code that these groups are already anticipating that that could happen.
And they're building futures platforms, to purchase, the future rights to block space because the block space becomes more scarce then the Satoshi is itself. I mean, when Bitcoin hits $1 million a Bitcoin, the Satoshi is worth a penny a day. Just to clarify that the block space cannot be scarcer than the Satoshi, only within a limited time frame. So per time unit it can, but not in an forever mode. It cannot. It's such. Yeah, but only within that block
it can be. Right? Yeah. Which basically is what they're selling. It's a, it's a forward or their platform would be selling a forward on a future block, that you would have priority with whatever node group or miner to settle whatever transaction you have.
If Bitcoin becomes too crowded from a transactional standpoint, which is actually kind of fascinating to think of, which is then where the conversation has to go, that I believe that you have to push any of what that theoretical transaction volume would be to a theoretical layer two or a parallel coin or, an adjacent coin, which again, then it's somewhere else, right? Exactly. Or somewhere else completely. Which is actually interesting.
Did you see, in El Salvador, at plan B, tether announced that they're going to be trying to bring tether on top of Bitcoin. Yeah. And and like this is what would your thoughts be on that. Because the first time I, the first time that I saw that I was like that sounds incredible. So and this is maybe just where I think of Bitcoin slightly different than you do because I think of Bitcoin with my accounting brain. When I put my CPA hat on, I think of Bitcoin as a ledger system.
And I want all of global finance to transact and be immutable and be permissionless and be transparent. On top of that, what I think is a perfect ledger. So that's I think that's, that's a utopia and that is that the entire system is dependent on the Satoshi being the asset. Like, yeah, Bitcoin doesn't reward its miners in dollars or tether or, or fucking monkey JPEGs or anything else. It's it rewards its miners in, in Satoshi's. And it's actually not like the miners do not search for satoshis.
They don't mine bitcoins. They mined blocks and they mined blocks. Based block space is the asset they produce. And the Bitcoin miners who run the nodes and actually actually run the system, we pay the miners to do our security work for us and create blocks. So the miners get paid by the Bitcoin. It's not only in the new newly minted Bitcoin, but also in the fees. So the two aspects of that, the fees and the newly minted coins.
And as soon as you start messing with those incentives and create other things and pretend that you can order satoshis, which you can't like, there is no ordering in the actual Bitcoin protocol or the ordering, in in the ordinals bullshit. It's made by third party websites.
So when you see if you go to mempool dot space and you see something, the like, you see this transaction is data and you can even see the block looking like a picture of Donald Trump or something, you have to remember that mempool dot space is not Bitcoin. It's a third party website that chooses to to visualize the blockchain in this in this way. But it's not real. It's it's absolutely third party has nothing to do with actual Bitcoin like that is not internal to the system.
All of that is external. And this is why it's so crucial for the for the system to be pure and internal to itself. And I'm a huge a proponent of ocean mining and knots and Luke Dashers work here because right now he's the only one and he's done it before, protected Bitcoin from itself from its, its ignorant users. But but for instance, he came up with SegWit as a, as a soft fork instead of a hard fork. And so he's once again pointing out something that no one else saw.
And, Short Ocean won't be the only alternative. I know that other mining pools are coming up that are going to be transparent like this, and also are going to filter out the bullshit because it's absolutely. And meanwhile, fucking wizards get 30 million, ordinary cut bucks in funding from some other firm that have found out another way to rug pull people. What, what? These are chip coins. They're doing the exact same type of scams as they were back in 2017.
It's just that they figured out a way to fool people that you can do it on Bitcoin, but in reality, owning anything, owning any arbitrary data is not ownership at all. It's just like owning a star in the Andromeda galaxy where you can say it's yours, but you can't fucking do anything with it. Yeah, it's everyone else's too. Like it's on there on the blockchain. The only thing that makes the Satoshi different is the probabilities that we talked about before. It's, you don't actually own it.
You just find it improbable that someone else will figure out the key. This is not true at all for any other token, because the issuer of that token and whoever owns the third party website can do with it what they wish. At any point in time. And you've seen this with fucking NFTs that were unique to just about every project out there. Yeah, and just about every crypto asset, as you call them. I call them fucking share coins. And that's the proper name. It's not crypto assets.
There is no second best like this is this is the whole point. If there was a second best, Bitcoin would also be pointless because Bitcoin would just be another shit coin. So yeah, but I so I don't disagree. The one question I would have for you though would be is so where do we see investments in companies in equities or other financial. Yeah. Where do we see investments in financial instruments okay. In that hyper bitcoin ization world that you're describing.
Because I'm describing this tokenization world. Yeah. And I hope that that comes to Bitcoin. And like so if I even expand that a bit further. So I would love to see a world where the construct of an organization or a corporate charter, which is, I mean, still largely based off of the East India Company, back from like the, 15, 1600s. Right. If you I would like to add a 10th of a ship. You. Exactly. You're only a 10th when one ship sunk. Yes, exactly.
Like I would like to see what the construct of an organization is from a theoretical as well as from a legal perspective, changed entirely. And really be a community driven thing, which for a little bit, it looked like ICOs might have been a way to solve that, but hey, then that all went to shit. So at this, okay, like in crypto, we create something that could be a technological innovation and we end up screwing it up anyway. But I guess that's because to your point, it's all bullshit.
It's all scammers anyway. Yeah. So in that hope. So. That's why it's all boils down to the double spending problem. You can double spend crypto. So therefore the double spending problem is like at the very nature of the double spending problem is of such as like that it can only be solved once if you really think about it. If you can solve the double spending problem twice, you haven't solved the double spending problem. It's a cult. So how do you have a copy of a copy?
So it's so hard to resolve the. So how do you solve the double spending problem for investments in financial instruments? And the answer I have like in the current system, a blockchain adds absolutely fuck gold because it doesn't provide any additional security. I just don't buy that it's you still rely on a third party, and you might as well rely on the judge that you're relying on anyway, when the crypto bullshit you attached your equity to it goes to shit.
So I don't think that adds anything of value. It's just buzzwords and code. So in my opinion, having said that, you asked what happens with equities and stocks and bonds in a hyper bitcoin ized world. And I foresee that as like being more and more unnecessary. So you'll have like the way I see it is that the so-called financial sector, developed in parallel with the printing of more money and now it owns the world. Everything is in the financial sector. And this is not a good thing.
This is a bad thing. And on on a pure Bitcoin standard. And I know this because I'm in these types of groups already. You can run a company without any friction at all. You can just have okay, three guys in a basement, we, we get a third each of whatever this company makes. And it doesn't have to be more than a telegram group. You don't have to do any accounting. You don't have to do anything.
You can be completely sovereign and just have the funds of whatever you sell directly, directed directly to you. So all of these other layers, like, legal entities and what, what I like to call, to quote my good friend Dave Bradley, lubrication companies, like, what, what, a company like Deloitte or something is actually doing or any like, legal that helps you with one government because this is, this is an interesting thought process. So you have this company with your three friends, right?
How do you verify that each and every single one of you is entitled to one third of the revenue or the profit from that company with you because you don't have a legal entity right? Oh, well, because at the end of the day, you at the end of the day, you're going to have to trust one another or trust whoever is managing the books, or you say there is no accounting, but you're going to have to trust. There has to be revenue coming from somewhere, denominated in some currency.
Obviously, it's probably Bitcoin in this scenario. Well, if you have open source software and you write the website, you're selling stuff from yourself or like just set up a Bitcoin server and have that direct the sets three ways, then then no, no further trust is needed because you can you can verify it for yourself. It's like how are our expenses covered?
And who is, paying for the expenses for the AWS or whatever hosting service you're using for your in the same way I mean, I don't believe in totally decentralized companies. I do believe in hierarchies. I think there's nothing inherently wrong with hierarchy. So so like like I said before, I think decentralization is a unfortunate means to a greater end, which is sound money, because if you have some money, you can do all the other stuff.
And, and what do you say about legal, the legal stuff, like who owns what to whom? Like, yeah, I still believe in contracts and needs. You should uphold your contract. Got it. What we're doing now is that we're outsourcing legal, whether we want it or not, to an entity that takes our stuff, namely the state. Like so we've outsourced everything legal to an entity that is inherently criminal. So so so and if so. So those lawyers are obviously criminals. I couldn't agree with you.
No, but this is where where we get into libertarian, ethical and moral philosophy. Right. What what is okay and what is not okay. And there are already entities out there that are trying to, like, like they are giving people options so they so you can employ a libertarian legal, firm to say that. Okay, I have a contract with this person. And if there's ever a dispute, I want you to solve it. And not whoever the government tells
me I should use. You know, these companies already exist, and I think they will be more and more popular in the future. When when people like. Because Bitcoin inevitably puts people on the path to understanding Austrian economics and libertarianism. And give them this lens to view the world. Why?
Because what, if anything, Bitcoin has taught us how much we're being scammed by the legacy system, how much we're being scammed by inflation and by if if someone can print money, then why the fuck do we have laws at all? Like everyone's being stolen from at all times. And if you denominate in Bitcoin, you can see that all prices can and ought to to decrease over time, and everyone gets more wealthy without it having to be at the expense of a of a third guy.
Like we can all get wealthier and it's it's super easy. It's just limit the money supply. Oh, I agree entirely. And that's where I think Bitcoin is as perfect. I mean, I, I mean I couldn't have conceived of bitcoin 20 years ago. I don't think anybody could. That's why Satoshi created it. I can't conceive of anything that will replace Bitcoin as the world's most perfect form of money ever.
Probably somebody that has a higher intelligence, or I don't know, as a fourth dimensional traveler is going to have to think of something, completely outside of the scope of my comprehension. I think all of humanity's comprehension. Right.
But that's still, at least for me, doesn't necessarily solve the problems that we do see in capital markets specifically related to, transparency, related to inclusivity, related to 24 over seven access to trading facilities, which, I mean, they only run 9 to 5 every day, which is horribly unfortunate. I mean, that's why. But but if you have something to sell and, you know, another Bitcoin, you can call that guy whenever you want like that. Bitcoin is always open.
Like but what if I want to I mean but what if I know what if I know somebody that has something to sell. And I'm a strong believer in his vision. I'm a strong believer in the product that he's created and his ability to sell it. And I would like to have an ownership stake, or rather. And so let's think about like this. I don't want to have an ownership stake in his company and the future of equity that like, equity. Right.
But maybe not consider it equity, but, what was the, what did you call it? You don't own Bitcoin. You possess bitcoin. I want I want a possession of you don't even possess it. But anyway, going hey, you want a part of his company like you want to part of its company, which is an equity. And then in that bitcoin ization world I still can't outside of you create some sort of automated contractual system where I don't believe I of the I don't believe that either. I don't believe in smart contracts.
I think they're dumb contracts because you're still always going, oh, you mean the you mean the wonderful if then statements that we pretend are smart contracts. Yeah, exactly. And unlike as soon as as I said before, with a set being the internal mechanism of the system, as soon as you attach a blockchain to something in the outer world that does something external, then it then it messes with the internal incentives of the system.
So it's just doesn't work because you can tamper with the outside world and whatever it's attached to. That is why bananas on the blockchain makes no sense. And so on. So, I remember when I met the banana coin guys. But anyway, we got
to answer the last. Yeah. So to answer the question about the equity, I see now, as I said before, I see no benefit of adding like a token or a blockchain or anything like that to that, because at the end of the day, a judge is going to decide whether the contract was upheld or not. So I still think equity is something that we'll have to be in a written contract between two people. What you can do with Bitcoin though, is timestamped that contract.
So that's that, that, that and you know that's makes it a tiny bit better. Not only a tiny bit but quite a bit better because you can actually have a proper time stamp that we agreed on this at this very moment. Yeah. So, so that I believe it can be used for but little else. And it doesn't need to, because if you have perfect money, then you can exchange that for all of these other stuff and people where this is the this is the real tech, kicker here.
Because if if I have bitcoin and you have bitcoin, you and I are both incentivized to help each other succeed in life because we know that if I know that if you succeed, you make more money and therefore you make my money more valuable. You see. So all Bitcoiners are incentivized to help one another and to to with whatever endeavors they engage in.
And at the same time, we, So and we're all incentivized to help Bitcoin succeed, because we know that if we do, we help other Bitcoiners succeed because we're part of the same system with the bitcoins, and the Bitcoiners are the same entity, and which is what which is where the real mindfuck come in, comes in, in my. So if I have a contract with you and I know you're another Bitcoin, or I have less of an incentive to screw you over than I did on a Fiat standard.
So I think many of these disputes and many of these, things that you're talking about, the how can we make it more secure. And so they come, they come with hyper bitcoin ization automatically because ironically, I think there's don't trust verify what it leads to in the long run is that people actually can trust each other more because they know that it's expensive to try to cheat the other guy. So it's a utopian. But but this is like my long term outlook. So it's a great outlook.
And I would love to say that we have the ability to fully and exclusively trust one another, that we trust people. And I do think that Bitcoiners are more trusting of other Bitcoiners than they would be of anybody else. So, for instance, when I, when I meet a startup that's trying to build something in the Bitcoin ecosystem versus I get pitched something that's being built on Solana, I can already speak to the morality of any of those individuals, right?
I can already speak to the intelligence of those individuals. I trust the people that are building a Bitcoin more than I would in something else. Right? Yeah. I, for instance, am more trustworthy working with people that, accept payments in Bitcoin. It just makes perfect sense to me, right? But for me, I don't necessarily think that that still solves the issue of ownership or what we'll call here possession rights of individual assets or equities, which as you said, are based on contracts.
Because I've been in enough disputes over liquidations of, companies that maybe the investment just didn't go the way that they were supposed to. Or you have a very activist board member that sits on the same company that you sit on the board of, or you have a founding team that misappropriated elements of assets that I've seen other VCs and other groups invest into. You still do have to have that big element of trust.
Yeah. And while I do think that your point of in a hyper bitcoin world, hyper bitcoin a world that there is more trust that individuals can have with each other, that is true, but it's not unequivocal. You still have to have trust with each other, and there are still going to be people out there in that hyper bitcoin world that are going to fuck other people over, which is where the courts come in. Absolutely.
I agree, but my question there is, is there not a world that we can fathom, where we don't necessarily need the courts for those types of disputes that we don't necessarily need arbitration or mitigation for certain disputes because we're able to enact them in some capacity on the blockchain, where, for instance, I can definitively show a ownership, right, a possession, right, whatever you want to call it, in cash flow profit from a company that I'm invested in.
Now, maybe that's the so I'm maybe taking this on the flip side to a completely different utopian, manner than you are. So you're in you're living in this utopia of people will understand and trust one another, and we can trust that trust. I'm on the other side going, okay, I don't necessarily know if I can trust that trust, but hey, here's a technological utopia that allows me to not have to trust anybody in that financial ecosystem.
Okay, so the answer to that is, pretty long, but, I'll do the tldr. Like, like I said before, you can already choose to use another judge, the one that the government appointed, if you choose to use, so a libertarian law firm that that allows you to settle disputes with one another without having anyone else meddle with them. So you can already do that. And you could do that. You could agree that, okay, we're going to use this token on this blockchain to settle blah, blah, blah.
What I just want to make people aware of is that that adds absolutely zero in terms of security of, of or, or transparency. Since that blockchain is inherently centralized. Because it's not Bitcoin. So it can be tampered with. So I would not advise people to do that. However, I have nothing morally against people making bad decisions by their own volition and agreeing to stupid stuff like go ahead and do that. Like go ahead and be a hero. Honest.
If you think that's clever, like I don't care as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. But my role here as like, still, I can I can tolerate stuff but still disagree with it. So I don't think there should be regulations around cryptos or whatever. I think people should be free to go to the casino and lose all their money. That should be up to each and every individual. So I nothing morally against that. That's being the case.
What I have something morally against is is the scammers themselves like people trying to scam other people. And I think anything on the blockchain that isn't the Satoshi is a scam by, by its very definition, because it's the only chain that is decentralized, and it's the only thing on that chain that has that actually has anything to do with the incentive structure of the chain. So so that's why I'm adamantly against every other quote unquote use case.
So I see, like, why not just, make your own form of equity? Forget about the blockchain bullshit. Just make your own contract and, and appoint, a lawyer, the, a libertarian lawyer. The thing is, once you sign that contract, one party could still go to the government and say, I got screwed over. And so that's exactly what I was going. That's that's the point. Like, we're still living in this world where the legacy system still exists, and it's very hard to get around that.
And I don't think a blockchain solves any of that, because I'm still going to have to ask at one point where I'm super disappointed because Vitalik took all my money. I'm still going to have to prove that in court, and there's still a judge that's going to have to to make a verdict. As long as I live in a in a world where governments exist and I have a gun to my head, every time I don't pay my taxes, I'm still I'm still beholden to them.
And no blockchain in the world can fix that problem except the time chain, which can allow us to do to go on with our day and do our business without them having any, like, it's a tool. That's all Bitcoin is. It's a, it's a tool for the peaceful revolution. A shield against, like, its armor against this weapon of threat that they're using to to extort us. Like, that's, that's what that's how I view it. And that's why I don't think any other blockchain can come at the end of the day, help.
Neither in the short term, medium term or long term with any of this stuff. I, I think that it's a waste of time to go down that road. That's, because I think it's a nothing burger. I so I don't disagree when it comes to all of the other layer ones or whatever we conceive of as blockchains and crypto assets that exist today. I am personally very bullish on some of the Bitcoin deltas that we're starting to see to fruition or come to fruition.
I'm very bullish on tether, exploring ways that they'll be able to leverage elements of Bitcoin security and decentralization to enable tether transactions. I would much rather see tether exist on Bitcoin than on Solana or Tron or Ethereum or anything like I think. I think the majority of tether is on Tron right now, right? And that's probably God knows what Justin Sun's doing money laundering wise, right? I would much rather see all of this on Bitcoin.
That's why I'd rather see capital markets trading on bitcoin relative to trading on the NYSE or on the Nasdaq. That's where I would rather see equity certificates. That's where I would rather see marriage contracts. I would rather see arbitration and dispute resolution enacted in a technological way on Bitcoin, the same way. Layer two I agree, if you can do it completely on a layer two, but not on the base layer, like no. So that's a that's not what I'm speaking. I'm not on the base layer.
I don't think you're ever going to I mean, we're going to have to see you would have to see so many forks of the core code to enable that on Bitcoin. It would completely destroy what Bitcoin is today. Bitcoin has to remain the money system. Yeah. It has to remain the world's most perfect form of money. And then on top of that, if you can have layer twos that don't sacrifice too many of the elements of security and decentralization, but offer utility and flexibility
and scalability. Yeah, that's in my world, the perfect scenario. And I think we're going to see over the next few years that come to fruition. I hope it does. I think because when tether talks about, tether on Bitcoin, they're actually talking about tether on liquid, aren't they? Or on lightning somehow. So I, I don't know that there's a couple of protocols. Yeah. So I know there's a couple of protocols out there that tether has been working with. Yeah. We'll see what happens.
But I could see it being liquid. I could see it being, and they were talking about doing it with taproot. I think, at one point in time, I don't know. We'll see. It's it's going to be exciting. I mean, they're able to do that liquid. Liquid is, like, for better or worse. I think that's a good trade off, if any, in the, in the coin space. Of course it's not. It's not liquid. Liquid. I don't view that as a shit coin.
I view it as, Bitcoin with a slightly worse security or lightning with slightly worse security. And it's still useful to a certain extent. I think the that you have to start thinking in, in layers and in, yeah. But this, this kind of way of getting, I don't know where I stand on tether in the long run being, being a good or a bad thing. Another reason I'm conflicted is that I don't know if it prolongs the fiat scam or if it accelerates hyper because it's so it absolutely prolongs the fiat scam.
But you and I, we come from the western side of the world, right? We're from Western civilization. So the way that I think about it is. Okay, fine. Tether for tether, at least for the United States. I think the US government should be Tether's absolute best friend. The reason being is that tether, because it will create a digital transparent and on them know I transparent.
I don't want to use that word, but because it creates a digital dollar that transpires borders and could be used by anybody at any point anywhere in the world, as long as they have a device and connectivity to the internet. Tether is the one true way the US dollar, I think, can continue its position as the global fiat reserve currency. Will it be the global reserve currency?
I hope not, I hope that does become Bitcoin, but as the fiat reserve currency that people from all over the world transact in, maybe that does stick around a little bit while longer, because tether exists now and it will make them in the West a powerful. Yeah, well, it makes America even more powerful. And I don't think the government is smart enough to see that. But I've been saying this for years.
If you are the U.S government, you don't go after tether and try to arrest the team behind tether and put them behind bars for what you allege is money laundering or anything like that, you thank the fuck out of them for doing more for the benefit of the US dollar than the government has for the last 100 years. But we'll see what happens. I don't know, there's so much there's so much comfort out there about tether, but yeah. So on one hand. But here's where here's where I like tether.
It's because you meet people from Colombia, meet people from Venezuela, you meet people from Africa, and they don't necessarily need Bitcoin. They're not there necessarily to generate wealth. They just want something more stable than their own currency. And the US dollar represents that very well for them. Like okay, you and I can have a discussion about the merits of the US dollar. I think you and I both hate it.
But for these people, if they're really only getting I mean, so if the U.S government says there's 3% inflation this year, the truth is it's probably more like 10% inflation. But hey, 10% inflation is wonderful for people that live in that area of the world, which is an awful thing to say, but it's the unfortunate truth. But how about deflation? Like this is this is why it's why I'm so conflicted about it.
Because while I also think that the US dollar is the least worst of the fiat currencies, it's still a fucking scam like this. And these people that you're talking about in in the poor people in poor countries, they are the ones being scammed the most by it, like, and, they're, and if they all went to a Bitcoin standard instead of, of going via tether on to go on to a dollar standard first, they would all be better off.
Like everything would work better if they just adopted the because Bitcoin standard directly. That's why El Salvador is booming like it's exact. Much better for them. So so in that sense like yeah tether is better than all the other shit coins, including all the other fiat coins, including the dollar. Because tether is digital dollar, but Bitcoin is still better than tether, so like man, oh 100%. But this is where, this is where I'm confused because.
So for instance, tether, they're doing their headquarters in El Salvador now. Yes. Yeah. So it's going to be in Bitcoin nation. Now. Even Bukele has kind of said and I don't know if he was strong armed by global powers that be into saying this or if it's the actual truth. For instance, I was in El Salvador, in January. I was there for a conference. And what were you at the Palm Beach conference? No, I wasn't at the plan B conference. So I didn't see you there, though.
So, like, I was, I was there, and, Oh, are you. Dude, you're. No, I just came back a week ago now, so I was there two weeks earlier. Max and Stacy were hosting a pseudo. Oh, the going conference with the golf tournament. Yeah, yeah. So I played in the golf tournament. Yeah, yeah, I said no to that because I don't play golf. I was in Colombia just before that when the golf tournament was, I think, wonderful.
Oh, you should have try to play in the golf tournament if you, got a hole in one on the 17th or 16th hole, you would have won one of my bitcoin. Oh, I should have been there. I was a hole in one competition. Exactly. But in parallel with the golf competition, there was actually a very good conference. I mean, I mean, Max, you can you give Max a microphone? He can talk forever. Yeah. It's, so Mexican up on stage. Him and Stacy, they were doing, like, unconference sessions.
They had guest speakers, etc. and actually was a very good intimate conference, I think. But even then, like, we tried to pay in Bitcoin at certain places and it just wasn't possible. So I don't think the Bitcoin experiment is going maybe as successfully as Bukele or even you and I would have wanted. That's just the unfortunate truth. And I do think that. To get to a digital standard tether is a good way to help us get there. But that does long term hurt.
Bitcoin's potential or it rather it hurts the long term potential of seeing Bitcoin hybridization. Right. Because it's a stopgap, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I mean, I yeah, I, people told me this before I went to El Salvador. Don't expect hyper bitcoin ization. But like I was positively surprised because I tried to use it every here and there. Like I was surprised that you couldn't use it in absolutely all
places in in Santa. Yeah. But almost all, but but in San Salvador, just went around and asked random places if they accept bitcoin. And to my surprise, most of them did so. So I think that's a double sided coin. I think it depends a lot on what expectations you enter the country with. And I didn't expect it to be hyper bitcoin. Nice. But yeah. But so I was happily surprised that everywhere in there people started accepting people accepting bitcoin.
And in malls and everywhere, you know so so yeah, I was positively surprised by it. At the end of the day, if we end up in a world where there is a we see hyper bitcoin ization, plus we see a reasonably viable fiat alternative, that's not the worst thing in the world. Do I want to see everything in Bitcoin. Absolutely. Is that achievable? I think so, but there are powers that be that are going to be fighting against that for obvious purposes. Right.
So am I willing to settle for a digital dollar? I mean, as long as it's not a Cbdc and it's a privately issued stablecoin like tether. Yeah, I actually think that's that's absolutely perfect. I don't want to say that this is settling, but I wouldn't be too upset if we saw the world transacting in Bitcoin end tether, let's put it like that. Especially if tether is secured by Bitcoin. Yeah. I, I agree on most of that and I yeah I still want to go to these conferences that, tether funds.
So I'm not going to say anything more. I love plan B in Lugano. I didn't make it to El Salvador, but I love the Lugano conference. I thought they did a phenomenal job there. And it's, actually interested to see what. How did we see each other there? Like, I don't, I can't remember. Oh, I have no idea. I mean, so many people at these conferences, it's hard to keep track. Same here. Yeah, but we'll we'll have to have a chat that the next one. Are you coming to Prague, for instance?
No. Unfortunately, I'm not coming to Prague. I've been in the month of January in three conferences on three or across four continents, actually, because I had a little layover in Europe. So I'm taking the next month or two off from traveling. All right. Need to recuperate after the holidays, plus three months of, a month of running around the world. All right, I'm sure we're going to bump into one another at one of these events. Sooner or later. But, Patrick, this been.
Well, hey, if you come to if you come to Bitcoin. Miami, we're the title sponsor of the Bitcoin Miami golf tournament. You can try your best at winning another bitcoin I, I probably, Miami. Oh no I'm sorry not bitcoin Miami bitcoin Las Vegas Vegas this year I'm probably not going to that for several reasons. I think that's the city coiner fumes are starting to smell a bit too bad for my taste. And I have another conference that, is also.
I'm not going to shit on, on on, Bitcoin magazine too much here because I do like events. I, I do pretty well with them. I sometimes wish they would have made other choices. When it comes to like, what, what sponsors they take in, to me bitcoin. Bitcoin first is a shit coin company. Bitcoin only is a bitcoin only company. And that's what they should focus on. But having said that Patrick I got to go here.
So and so I'm sorry for that I don't know I love this conversation and I, I, in advance I want to apologize for for putting you against the wall and calling you a shit coiner and all of that. I hope it was enjoyable for you, too. And, I had a great conversation today. I always love having. You know what? Podcasts are not fun unless they're slightly confrontational. If you have two people that get together and just agree about everything, what the fuck are people going to tune in
and listen to? Right. A little a little bit of confrontation, a little bit of name calling is always a fun time. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And we should both be lucky, that Luke is not here now because it wouldn't have been as confrontational if it was because he makes me a better diplomat. But but, But anyway. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Is there anywhere you want to send our listeners? Like, where can they check out some our group and what you're doing and so on. On the inside.
I mean, you can just check us out at Samara Dash Agyekum if you want to learn more about us. The funds were invested in and our Bitcoin position. I have my own podcast, proof of words we call it, if you want to come and listen in to, I thought it was pretty clever. Right. So if you want to come listen to the Proof of Words podcast, just look up proof of words on Google or wherever, and you can tune and listen into us. Fantastic. So, Patrick, thank you very much. And thank you very much
for having me. Life. Yeah. Looking forward to it. Have a great day. You too man. This has been the Bitcoin Infinity show. Thanks for listening.