Building a Bitcoin Future with Francis Pouliot | Bitcoin Infinity Show #151

I got into Bitcoin first of all because of politics. I saw Bitcoin as a political instrument to destroy the state. Bitcoin allows us to achieve similar ends, which is a complete to restructuring of the state and political order. And all we have to do is basically run these little computers and like download these apps on our phones. It's beautiful. In my office, I have a gigantic metal frame with two words, which is destroy Fiat. That's the mission. The mission is to destroy fiat.

Was Bitcoin an invention or a discovery? My contention is that Bitcoin was invented. I see Satoshi's genius as being the person that created all the components and made them come together. Like an engineer who was designing a motor. The underlying principles of like a motor, like thermal dynamics were discovered, but the motor itself was created and engineered. Bitcoin does not exist in nature. It's definitely like a manmade phenomenon.

The stupidest argument to me that you shouldn't spend Bitcoin. Oh really? What should I spend fiat if I shouldn't spend bitcoin? Because Bitcoin is going to be worth more in the future. Why the f*** should I be holding Fiat in the first place? People think money is the root of all evil when it's actually the other way around. Evil is the root of all money except bitcoin. Francis, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Thanks, man. I'm so happy to be here. Yeah I'm very happy to have you here.

Unfortunately, Luke is not with us here at the beginning. I hope Luke can join later, but right now, it's just you and me. And we've been waiting to do this for a long time. I'm so happy to have you here. So let's let's start for our listeners that don't know you, can you give us, a tldr on Francis and what you're doing now and how you ended up there? Yeah. Well, I'm, bitcoin og quote unquote. I've been working in Bitcoin for, 12 years now.

I've been doing many things in my bitcoin career, but the last ten years I've been, focused on, self-custody tools for, sovereign individuals. That's kind of like my, my focus in Bitcoin is to facilitate, sovereignty and, by creating software, by creating apps. And the most known app of that is the Bitcoin exchange, which is, a Bitcoin only non-custodial exchange. And what a non-custodial exchange is, is basically when you buy Bitcoin, you can't leave it there.

You actually have to give like a lightning address or a bitcoin address before you buy. Like there's just no option to leave it on the platform. So 100% of every Bitcoin purchase is also a withdrawal. So kind of forcing people to take custody. And I also work on a lot of open source software initiatives. That's been my my passion for the last couple of years. I built a non-custodial, bitcoin wallet, the Bitcoin wallet. I work on back end infrastructure.

So my background is more of, like an economics policy type guy originally, but over the years, I kind of gradually went into the software and business and app development side of the coin. And I think if I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but, just as Luke, you're a refugee from the People's Republic of Canada also, right? They have, yeah. Fled the communism over there. Yeah. Right. That's that's a very big part of my story. So I was born in Montreal.

I was, Quebecer, for most of my life, and actually in Montreal, we had a physical, Bitcoin community center called the Bitcoin Embassy. That was great from 2013 to 2017. So, I was really like Montreal. Like, I love the city, but I decided to leave, during Covid. You know, it was pretty bad in, in Quebec and living in a big city in, in, like, Montreal is really awful. So I left Canada for, Costa Rica, where, completely coincidentally, I hooked up with this, local group of Bitcoiners.

Well, not coincidentally, because you know how you know how these things got right. So, you know, you move to a new place, and like, I was telling myself, okay, I'm going to. I'm going to stay low profile this time. I don't want people to recognize me. I don't want to be a Bitcoin guy. And then after like a few months, I'm like, I'm organizing a Bitcoin meetup. Fuck this, you know? And like, where is all the bitcoiners? I want to see my people.

So we organized a Bitcoin meetup and then I moved to this place called the Bitcoin Jungle. And here there is, a really, really incredible Bitcoin circular economy project. I think that a lot of people have seen some of my videos. There's there's like a lot of videos of, you know, people going around Costa Rica like buying stuff at the farmers market. But the scale of of it is hard to comprehend where like, I don't use fiat, I really don't use my credit card, almost never ever.

And I also don't use cash. I use bitcoin, everywhere throughout the country. So we have a physical office here for, Bitcoin education. And so that's also kind of like my passion project is I came from the Bitcoin education side. That's how I started at the Bitcoin embassy like 12 years ago. I love installing wallets.

There's like nothing I like more in the world than to signing up someone to Bitcoin by signing up, you know, showing him how to download the wallet, showing them what a backup is doing, the first transaction, signing up merchants. And, it's a really fantastic thing. We have this public office. It's basically like office hours. It's like a it's like an information desk. And people walk in and they're like, they have a problem with Bitcoin, like physical, like a like a practical issue.

Or they want to learn more or they want to move money and they need some advice. And then every day there's kind of like, you know Bitcoin is kind of weird. So you always have like these interesting stories. And, you know, just the other day I have this guy who walks into my office and he just says, I'm here to reclaim my sovereignty, like this American guy. And I'm like, well, you're in the right place, buddy.

So, you know, we move the coins away from his coinbase onto a call card, and we do that for free. It's just a really fun passion project. Yeah, I've heard a lot of good things about Costa Rica. I was just I just came back from El Salvador first. First time I've been there. And like, I love it. I love the, the the fact that you can walk into any place, just randomly and, ask if they accept bitcoin and, and a lot of them do like, more than you think. So yeah.

And I had of I had heard a lot of like no adoption is not what you think it is. They don't accept it everywhere. They're not. But I think the adoption is absolutely phenomenal. And, in El Salvador and I think it's orders of magnitude higher than everywhere else. Right.

So yeah, like, you know, so, even, even if you have a few places in the town that accept when it's already it's it's already more than, you know, like, I don't know where to spend bitcoin in Paris, maybe like, you know, ten locations for a city of like, 10 million people. Whereas it's very ironic, like here in the, where I live is kind of like Bitcoin beaches. So it's, it's pastoral. It's the countryside. It's far from infrastructure.

People are, you know, people are not necessarily poor because there's like tourism, but they're not, you know, it's not a big city. And you'll have like these very incredible situations where you have like a person selling fruits on the side of the highway, like a, like a grocery store with a tin roof. But they have Starlink and they have BTC pay server running. It's it's really it's really mind blowing, you know, and for them it's

totally ubiquitous. Right? So if I go to a store and I say, hey, can I pay with Bitcoin? It's like, yeah, sure. You know, take the phone, scan the QR code and that's it. So they don't they don't have that kind of like psychological barrier to Bitcoin that a lot of Western heads do. Where a very good example if I turn to Orange Village merchants here in Costa Rica this is how the conversation goes. Hey can I pay with bitcoin. And they're like no. And I say why not?

And they will reply, well I don't have the app. I don't know how it works. And I just say, okay, cool, give me your phone, I'll download the app. Right. But you know, do a things on the phone and then I explain and then I do a little payment and then they have bitcoin and then that's it. You know. And nobody's going to say like I don't want to accept bitcoin. It's money for criminals or terrorists.

Like they don't have that like normie psychological block that, you know, you would get in Canada or Europe or something. Now that was my experience in El Salvador too. Like this. This one tooth old lady. And, in a supermarket. And I ask if you accept Bitcoin and she's like, no, no, no, but my daughter is around. I'll call her. And ten minutes later, her daughter shows up in a pickup truck and accepts bitcoin. So it's nice, but but I love the the the like.

The first word that comes to mind when I think about you is based like and the same thing for for that like in Costa Rica it's as you say BTC pay server and Starlink and stuff. It's the real deal. It's not some silver wallet bullshit. It's it's, it's full on hardcore. And the same goes for bull bitcoin. Yeah. I remember like first time I saw you I think was in Riga 2019, which is like the first real conference I went to. And like so many, so many connections I made there, it's it's just insane.

In hindsight, what kind of people were there? And, bull bitcoin. You had a whole squad of, of Canucks over there. Yeah. Mate X was there, there was a bunch of people there. And, you know, we organized a shooting range for bitcoiners to shoot your first gun, and. Yeah, it was great, man. And it was. It was right at the time, I think, where four Bitcoin started to exist as a new brand, because I had been running for Bitcoin under another brand for many, many years under brand called bills.

And bills was to pay your bills with Bitcoin. So yeah with the way you bills. Yeah yeah yeah I remember that. Yeah exactly. It started out as a as a bill payment processor. Kind of like kind of like a bit refill ish I guess. But more more focus for like big purchases, like buying cars and like paying your rent and like that and stuff.

So we rebranded it to bought Bitcoin in late 2018 where, you know, I had this kind of like midlife crisis in Bitcoin where I was like, so what am I doing in this thing? Because I had also been, you know, doing some, some, you know, research and blockchain. I was I was like into debates with shit corners about blockchain technology. I'm like, what what am I doing? Like, what is this thing? And we were like coming out of the four corners, you know?

So I was trying to figure out like, what is the identity of like what we're trying to do. And it was bitcoin maximalism and cypherpunk values like this is this is like what's as a as a company we're not just a company. We are a cultural thing. Because after the fork was we kind of like realized that there is some kind of there's some kind of politics in Bitcoin and there's different factions.

You know, there's like the normie NPCs, Bitcoin, blockchain people, and then there's a Cypherpunk and then there's the new maximalist types. And I was like, okay, so like we are like in this in this corner of the, of the cultural zeitgeist and we really want to push for that. So like, our identity is basically like sovereignty cypherpunk principles and maximalism. Like we came out with this Bitcoin only, kind of like theme, which I don't want to take credit for, like a bitcoin only company.

But I really think that there was like very few companies that were using that as a marketing thing. Right. So some people, some companies were like, they just are a Bitcoin company, but they were not a bitcoin maximalist company like outspokenly. So. So we kind of like said like let's make this our theme like fuck this shit coin. So like as a, as a, as a corporate strategy, you know, and now that was fun. And then everybody that Bitcoin is is very based, you know, it's a self-funded startup.

It's very organic. It's started out, you know, me and another guy and, you know, I was paying bills every single day like manually like when people were sending Bitcoin. It started out really like garage. Like the way the bills worked is like I had a electrum wallet and people would send coins to my wallet and I would log in to a banking system and pay people's bills for them. So it was really, really manual and it grew really slowly.

It took a long, long time for us to grow because I didn't want to take any investor money at all. So like everybody had one Bitcoin that I recruited was was very deliberate and I only hire like based bitcoiners. I discriminate 100% when I hire someone. And nowadays, you know, I discriminate a little less because we have like very talented engineers that are maybe they're not as based as, as I am. But yeah.

So, so the company is really just when you say base like that makes me very proud and satisfied that that's the first thing that comes to mind. No, but that I absolutely love it. There's one of my favorite companies in Bitcoin for short, just because of this attitude, because there are so many companies that that take pride in following the new Mica regulation and doing the ESG score bullshit and doing the KYC properly and all of that stuff. And bull Bitcoin, it's like the opposite.

They're like, refuse to take orders and like, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can mail cash in via the Canadian postal system and get bitcoin on the other side, KYC free. You used to unfortunately, we were we were shut down, in Canada on that specific thing and the the order to shut us down came. We don't know where exactly, but it's, it's very clear that it came from from pretty, pretty high up, in the government.

So, yeah, you used to be able to buy because, you know, there's, there's like there, there's when you look at regulations, like my attitude, my personal philosophy is to, interpret it in the way that benefits the users the most and to never give a single inch on, on any technicality. Right.

So really, like, for example, in Canada, there's KYC requirements, there's AML, and there's all that stuff, but there is like a threshold where you can, you can allow no KYC transactions under a certain threshold. So of course we're going to allow that. And of course we're going to encourage that. Same thing for selling Bitcoin, you know, and there's all sorts of things that, you know, they sound like technicalities.

But the way that even we create our databases, the way that we report information, you know, like, we're always giving the least amount of data humanly possible in a way that, we can stay in business. And my attitude is always to be like, well, we're just gonna we're just going to do it. And then the regulator is unhappy. Like, let them send me a letter, right? And then we'll figure out where the line is, because companies, tend to be over compliance because they're

they're afraid. Right. So and it's even in the case of Micah, another regulations like there's some, some of the things that the exchanges are doing, they don't have to do. They don't have to do them. Right. They're just they're just over complying in order to please the regulator to make sure that they're going to. And there's in the exchange space. It's all it's it's kind of interesting. There's there's a fear of getting debunked.

So, I don't think a lot of exchange operators are afraid of going to jail. What they're afraid of is that their bank is going to it's going to close down their bank accounts, because they're non-compliant. And you know what? I've been doing is just opening tons of bank accounts everywhere. And. Yeah, it has happened. You know, when we had this thing in Canada where, it became known that you could buy Bitcoin with no KYC at the post office.

And, you know, maybe it was a mistake on my part, but I definitely advertised that a lot. You know, I, I made it a big thing and it was incredible. Man. The volumes were insane and like, it was crazy. People were absolutely lining up at the post office buying bitcoins with piles of cash. And, as a result of this, you some politician heard about this, obviously, and became offended like a little virgin and then, pressured some of our banks to the bank.

Us and, you know, I lost the bank account over that, but I have many others, so. Yeah, I mean, the the it it's and it's interesting because as a, you know, I'm a big libertarian. I'm like close to the as close to an anarchist anarcho capitalist as you can get without being a full and cap. You know, I'm kind of like I'm kind of like just I'm a monarchist, so I don't, and I am passionately. So that's how I got into Bitcoin. I got into Bitcoin first of all, because of politics.

I saw bitcoin as a as a political instrument to destroy the state. Right. So that's like why I'm in here. So it is it is very, annoying to run a Bitcoin exchange because you are faced with all sorts of compliance and it's really, really like emotionally and like psychologically and spiritually damaging to have to comply to regulation. So, you know, we do we, we we do the best we can, you know, to to to do as little as we can in order to stay, alive.

And, you know, I've always known in the back of my mind, like maybe, you know, the idea of Bitcoin getting banned, is always in the back of my mind. Like, I know that it's something that that can happen. And, you know, there are certain lines that I'm not willing to cross in order to make money. So right now I think that we're navigating the line of mica, for example, like mica is a fucking pain in the ass. It's really annoying. But there's certain things that we can do to soften it up.

Like, you know, certain ways that the travel rule is implemented. Like there's ways to for us, like we don't have to do as much as some exchanges do. So we try to do that. There are certain lines that I, that I like while cross, like, for example, you know, giving, a government, the entire database of everybody's transaction as a big dump because they want to tax them. Like that's not something that we do. Like we don't do that.

The governments don't ask us for people's bitcoin trades unless it's like suspicious of money laundering and stuff like that. So there's like certain lines that we don't cross. And that's also why I've been working on this. I have other projects, you know, like the Bitcoin wallet. Bitcoin wallet is great because it's a non-custodial wallet. It's not linked to an exchange. I don't have a bank account.

So, you know, if if I become too based to to be allowed to exist, I can always work on an open source software project. I don't mind doing that. Hello there fellow Bitcoin or 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 bit box. So go to big box dot Swiss Slash Infinity and get your big box now with a discount.

Also you need somewhere to store your seed phrase. So why not get one of those wonderful steel seed plate storage thingies from stamp seeds.com/infinity and you can get the everything divided seed plate. It's beautiful. Also, if you're advanced and if you want to start with the generational wealth thing, which is a fun hobby I have, you can go to the Bitcoin Advisor group of lovely fellows from Down Under that can help you store your Bitcoin for a long time using multisig solutions.

So check out pip box stamp seed and the Bitcoin Advisor or Chief White box. The show I think that some of now first of all the Ancap angle I think the correct way to view or correct, I mean, the way I view it is that, no government at all is probably utopia, but fighting for a smaller government is always the right choice, regardless of how small it is. Like, you can always try to make it smaller. That's probably the right thing to do, right?

So yeah, I think that's what you meant by minimalist or something. Like something. Yeah, yeah. And I really, I really like the, the, the, the terminology of monarchists. So anarchist is basically law like courts. Courts of law. Yeah. And like a prison system and like a police. Right.

So I've, I've, I have been and kept it like fully and kept in the past that back when I first also got into bitcoin and you know, like AC decentralized assassination markets and private armies and all sorts of, you know, like zero zero government kind of, snow crash, utopian future.

But then again, something happens also when you have like, kids and when you become a little older, you're like, actually, you know, like, I'm not sure I'm not sure if I, I think having courts of law like a strong rule of law for, for enforcing contracts, it's probably, probably good. And no, the contracts are not going to be enforced on the blockchain. And yes, you're going to have, you know, to have some kind of police and courts to settle disputes.

Not everybody's going to be, no, everything is going to be a smart contract that's just self-regulating. So and that's and that's the that's the goal. I'm not in my office, but in my office I have a gigantic metal frame with one big word to words, which is destroy fiat. That's the mission. The mission is to destroy fiat. So, yeah, the way that I, the way that I got into Bitcoin was I was, a libertarian policy analyst. So what does that do?

It's basically I write these little academic papers and like blog posts talking about the free market and why the government sucks. And, so, so it's like a think tank, right? I was working for a libertarian think tank. And then, the the goal of the libertarian think tank is kind of like what Elon is doing with Doge. You know, it's kind of like, we're going to cut a little bit here, and then we're going to cut a little bit there. And slowly but surely we will unravel the state.

But then it's kind of like trying to scoop the water against the tide, like you cannot stop the tide. And even though I really appreciate what they're doing with Doge, there's like systematic things that they can't change, which is a like they're printing an insane amount of money. And as long as you have the money and then at some point you realize what is the source of all of this, like, why is the tide rising? You know, it's like, what's the gravitational force making the tide rise?

And it's the money printer, the money printing, the money printer. Is that so? It's like, okay, I can cut I can try to cut taxes by 10%. But then if the government still has the the control over the funds, they can still finance all of their bullshit. Right? And there's a whole cycle of government debt, of interest, of boom and bust cycle and all of that. So, so the goal of both Bitcoin is destroy fiat. And the end goal of that is to have a small state.

So I see Bitcoin as a there is Bitcoin is is a thing in itself for me also because at some point like you start Bitcoin is its own end. It's not just a means to an end, but you know, it's it is also a means to the end, which is the massive reduction of, of the state. And ultimately, if the government cannot pay the enforcers, the enforcers will not work for free.

So the bureaucracy, the spy agencies, the, the global cabal that is trying to micromanage our lives, they are paid rather well, actually, that's what we're seeing with Doge. You know, it's like these bureaucrats, they're paid 450 grand a year, you know, to, like, enforce these policies on it. So it's a cut off the money printer and then the state will shrink, on its own. And it's also beautiful because that's that's like a peaceful revolution, you know, throughout history.

What do you do if you want to have a revolution against a state and change a dramatically? I'm not talking about like a little reform like they're doing in the States. What I see what Trump is doing is not a revolution. It's a reform. He's a reformer. He's not a revolutionary. So historically, how do you do a revolution to completely change the state? You have to kill people, right? There's like, that's that's just the way that it's been done.

So Bitcoin allows us to achieve similar ends, which is a complete restructuring of the state and political order. And all we have to do is basically run these little computers and like download these apps on our phones. It's it's beautiful. Right. So we're really lucky to be able to be revolutionaries, but without having to kill people. It's it's awesome. No, it's the peaceful revolution. It is being advertised as by us, I guess it's it's absolutely great.

It allows you to elevate yourselves, outside of these systems so that you don't have to comply with whatever bullshit they come up with because, like, yeah, if you believe in the non-aggression principle, which is basically saying you have the right to be left alone, no man has the right to decide over another man's life if, if it doesn't intrude on other people's, property or, or, or physical being. So if I don't, violate against you, you have no right to tell me what to do.

And Bitcoin allows you to to live that, to actually live that. And I think it's absolutely beautiful. We were we we talked a bit about exchanges before and them being afraid and therefore they comply with these whatever, whatever the regulators say. And some of them are afraid of losing their bank accounts as you said, they opened a ton of bank accounts. I think, I'd love to pick your brain on this. I think a lot of them are actually, their goal is to be bought by a bank

at some time. So. So they they, they follow these regulations and they're good little boys. So good little dogs just in order to for, a big bank to that they hope that a big bank will buy them at some point. What do you think? I think I think that's probably correct. And, you know, as a, as an entrepreneur, which is running exchange, you think about it. Okay. So, so what is what is my exit strategy. Right. So you can do an IPO. But doing IPO is really, really hard and really, really risky.

And like not it's it's not it's not the best way to you know liquidate your your company. So an acquisition by a bank is probably what a lot of people are aspiring to. I think some exchanges also are thinking about becoming banks as well. I think we're going to see that more and more where they have, you know, they have so much capital that they can literally apply to become a bank charter.

So yes, it is not only that they are looking to, keep their existing banking arrangements, but also I think, yes, they, they do want to become part of the system because that's, that's how you kind of like liquidate your assets and and there's, there's, there's like two ways, you know, at both like I and also I, I'm not sure how much visa I don't know how VC works, to be perfectly honest, I, I've never had a VC.

I don't know I know a lot of VCs, you know, like and we have friends in common that are visas. You know we have like yeah, we have a lot of friends that are venture capitalists. So I know them, but I've never had a working relationship with a VC. I think some of the ones that, we know are probably not as bad as the other ones. And I'm talking about, like, you know, like 1031 or, when Jeff Booth and Preston and, time chain capital and, Alan Franco, there's like.

Yes, like a few VCs that I think are are probably cool guys, but I think there's a lot of VCs that are putting pressure on these exchanges to be like, shut the fuck up. Take zero risks over comply, and then, you know, raise the second round and then we'll raise the third round. And then after the fourth round, we're either going to IPO. And if you IPO you have to be ultra compliant, ultra ultra compliant of course.

Or we're going to get acquired by Chase or by JP Morgan or by this other big bank. So I think that VCs might be putting a lot of pressure here. And there's there's another thing which is very interesting. So again, I don't want to talk too much about those, but it's on my mind because it's on, you know, it's on Twitter. But you have these, when a company becomes very big and companies become very, very big because they raise tons of money. Right? Because bull bitcoin is not very big.

We have like 32 employees. And we probably have, you know, like I would say we're not we're not like a big exchange. Right. So we're not Coinbase. We're not Kraken and we're not Bitfinex. But we're also not in the small exchange category. We're like we're definitely like in the middle category. You know, we don't publish our volumes, but they're big like we do big volumes.

But we're only 30 people, whereas, you know, and I don't want to take a stab at Kraken because I like the Kraken guys, but, you know, they have like 5000 employees or something. I don't remember the 3 to 5000 employees or something. So these companies, they grow really rapidly. And what happens when they grow rapidly. And so you have like these factions within the companies that become their own little bureaucracies.

So like a compliance department for example, will comply over they comply because they need to to justify their existence and their paycheck. Right. So you have these companies that have compliance department that are like 75 people that are almost like this segregated micro entity within the company, which which has its own decision making power. So raising a ton of money really early and growing really, really fast.

So like, you know, if you look at, like I have a personal touch on every single part of the business and the compliance people that work for me, there are people that share our ideology and share our values. Right? You know, whenever a decision is being made, is is this causing a privacy leak? Is this causing a security leak? Is this necessary or are is the data that we're giving the minimum that we can?

Are we giving too much data like and they think like this because I spent time with them and I have like not control over them. But you know, like we stick on a regular basis. Whereas these very large companies that raise a ton of money, the founders vision, because the founder may have been originally a cypherpunk, but that the value of the founder has not permeated the company because it grew too fast.

Look at guys like like Jesse Powell, like crack On, or you look at the Bitfinex founders, like the tether founders, you know, and even guys like Mark, even guys like, I don't know, maybe not Coinbase, but some of these companies like I kind of think like early on they must have been cypherpunks like, they must they must have in the very early beginning of their careers, at least because they got they all got interested in Bitcoin, you know, between 2011 and 2014.

And that was like the cypherpunk libertarian era of Bitcoin before it became, you know, mainstream. So I think these guys must have originally been, you know, pro privacy and pro sovereignty. But then their companies grow to too big. And then you know, they're focused on the finance side of the company and growing, user acquisition and this and, you know, also the other thing is like they listed all these check coins, right? So now their mind is just filled with shit corners.

And, and they have to do with securities regulation and all that. By the way, like being a Bitcoin only company is so clutch in terms of like not having to deal with securities regulation, compliance, all that kind of nonsense. It's so amazing.

And even just like focusing on technology, you know, so, there's things that, that we focus on that we do at bull that it's not really well advertised and marketed, but, you know, in 2017 we started to to sign with every single bitcoin invoice that we were, publishing because I thought, okay, so what if what if, what if, what if someone wants to, wants to pay a car that's $70,000 and I display, an invoice on my website, and then I change the address afterwards, and I tell the guy you sent it

to the wrong address. I could do that. I could screw people over all the time. And they'd be like, no, no, no. I sent it to the address that was on the screen. I'm like, well, you must have sent it to the wrong address. How does the person have a proof that this was a legitimate invoice created by me? Or maybe there's, like, a man in the middle, or maybe it's a spoofed website. Or maybe I can change the rates and be like, oh, actually, like, the rate was this rate when you sent it.

It's like, no, actually, I'm pretty sure was it. So we start the times to sign those with PGP and timestamp. Right. And this took like a long time to build because we, we only had Bitcoin to worry about. We're not worried about integrating Solana or Ethereum or Monero like this takes a long. I had this conversation with a hardware wallet manufacturer years ago where I was like, why don't you make this feature? I think it was PSV or whatever. And I was like, yeah, we kind of want to do that.

But you know, we have to integrate Monero. And this also recently happened with, with, our software, mobile wallets, like we integrated pay, join in the Bitcoin wallet and it wasn't insanely hard, but it was like, not trivial. It was like a it's it's a pretty it's pretty sophisticated thing to integrate pay join. And I was talking to this other wallets and it's like why didn't you integrate pay join. And you know I was looking at their their what they're doing.

It's like, oh it's you guys are working on Solana right now. Okay, I see, I see. Right. So you don't have time for pay. Join because Solana is the new thing. So you have to run after Solana. And so instead of like getting deeper and deeper into what Bitcoin can do, you're, you're, you're scratching the surface on all the shit coins and bitcoin right.

So because Bitcoin can do a lot more things and we can develop, we can have an app layer on top of Bitcoin which solves a lot of the protocol problems that people say that we need to solve for for I'm not like anti off fork forever. I have I'm, I'm a bitcoin conservative right. And but I'm not like I'm not like out of principle opposed to soft fork but and partly because a lot of the problems that we're trying to fix with soft forks actually we can fix with apps instead. Right.

So pay joins a good example. So page one fixes some of the privacy issues that we can do. There's all sorts of stuff that we can do with, silence payments with the liquid network with Noster with lightning. I'm not like the biggest fan of E cash, but there are there are some things that we can do with e cash and and if you combine lightning liquid e cash noster Bitcoin sum after our Bitcoin protocols, you can achieve some, some like pretty incredible things.

If, if you focus on bitcoin in a nutshell coins that's the key right. Because if you're just doing the main features of bitcoin send and receive. And then you move to Solana and then you move to the other thing and then you we never have the we're never going deep enough in Bitcoin to like fully exploit it. So Bitcoin is under exploited. And also if you look at the blockchain you know all the spam that's happening like all the exchanges are doing transactions that are spammy.

And I'm not talking about ordinals, I'm talking about just the way that they use Bitcoin is so inefficient. It's unreal. Like major exchanges like like Binance they have like this. They reuse like one address for a bunch of shit.

And then they do these stupid ass consolidations at random times and you're like, okay, so before we increase the block size, like if all of the exchanges had guys like the guys that work at Bull Bitcoin that were that were given the leeway to be like, hey, can we spend like four months to just look at the way that we create transactions? And I bet we could reduce the, the, the size of the existing transactions by like 80%, right? I'm sorry, I was going on a big rant here. Oh no, no, I love it

I love it. Yeah. But yeah, the whole point is like focusing on Bitcoin allows us to get deeper into Bitcoin and discover what we can do with Bitcoin, which right now, is being massively, I think massively under exploited. Now I, I0I agree with all of these points and I love it because like I grew up with a Commodore 64.

So all you had was 64kB of memory to do everything, which meant the programmers had to be really careful with how they used code, like the code had to be super efficient and like, so. So when I see people harass the the time chain with bullshit, the consolidations and or even worse, like the ordinals and runes and stamps and whatnot, like the equivalent of like, 14 year old girl spamming the internet with cat pictures. I mean, it's vulgar to me.

Like, and and I think in the long run we'll have to people will have to use, based base layer Bitcoin more efficiently because it's going to be insanely expensive to, to, to be wasteful there. And that's a good thing. So, yeah, that there was something else on my mind. Luke usually helps me out when I lose my train of thought like this. But but. Yeah. What what are your thoughts on the whole spam issue? Because, like, I was, recently had a talk in San Salvador.

So let's let me lay it out for you. So, the way, the way I view it, like real estate, for instance, when being used as money, but which it is now because money doesn't, work as a store of value or, or as I prefer a medium of exchange over time, because I think the dichotomy is false, like median emotional store value is just two sides of the same coin. It's just another dimension. So right now the billionaire buys up all the C from

real estate. Because because it solves a problem for the billionaire. It solves the inflation problem so that, because he can't hold cash, he needs to buy, equity or, stocks and bonds or real estate. So buy up all the real estate, which also drives up the prices and, like, eliminates the middle classes that no longer can live in a nice house at the beach and the houses are empty and there's no one in them, which is like house is being used as money is destroying.

It's destroying their functionality as houses. And I think the inverse is true because I think there's like I call this the first law of cloud, where the dynamics that everything that is true for fiat, the inverse is true for Bitcoin. So I think any other use case, then there's a strict monetary use case for money reduces its functionality

as money. So if you could put a legit the cat pictures which aren't even cat pictures because they have nothing to do with you can't order sets like but if you say that you can and you spam the chain with this bullshit and if you do bad consolidations or whatever, then you're not using bitcoin as money, which actually makes Bitcoin a slightly worse form of money. Every time you do that, it makes it more expensive to send, and receive Bitcoin. Because you're using it for other shit.

So so what do you think of that? Can you. Well, I, I agree 100% with what you said. And you said something very interesting. I really like the way you said it about, store of value and medium of exchange being one of the same. Yeah. The first time I actually heard someone say it in this way. But this is exactly the way that I've been thinking about it, and especially with something like Monero.

And I'm just going to divert very quickly to an arrow because, I have this thing where, I don't know, I just, I just pick on whenever people are like, I don't know, maybe they they pick on me or something, I don't know, whatever. But, the reason why Monero is not a good medium of exchange, because the Monero people argue, oh, you guys going to have your new and will do the medium of exchange. And the reason why Monero is not a good medium of exchange is because it is also not a store of value.

So in order for someone to accept a mineral payment, let's say you're a drug dealer, okay? And you accept them in error payments. What are you going to do with that? Monero? Well, what they say is, well, what if we just keep the Monero in a circular economy? Because of course, if the drug dealer is actually going to do is he's going to convert it to Bitcoin, that's what he's going to do. Right. So so the first thing he's going to do is he's going to go on a peer exchange.

He's going to switch that to Bitcoin. And then he's going to move the bitcoins around going join them. And he's going to sell Bitcoin. He's not going to sell them when they work for fiat. That's not that's not what these guys do. They sell them when they work for Bitcoin. They move the bitcoins around. If they're smart. If they're not they just sell it right away. But they all go back to bitcoin and fiat because when I roll loses its value over time. And that's undeniable.

So because because if you want adoption you need a circular economy. And if you want a circular economy, you need the value of the currency to to remain. So I fully agree with you. Like for me, new and medium of exchange are one and the same. You cannot have a medium of exchange without new or at least you know NI like it's either number goes equal or number goes up like it needs to be either equal or up, right. For people to accept as a medium of exchange. And I don't, I don't really see.

And that's another huge philosophical argument, I guess. But I, I, I don't really see the new use case being at least that solid without medium of exchange. Right. And, of course, the reason why people buy beachfront property is because it is, scarce. Right? So land is not scarce. There's a lot of land, but what's scarce is beachfront land that's fucking scarce. And especially with a nice view. And people understand scarcity instinctively.

They understand that if I buy something that is scarce, and it's like a very, like, 80 IQ way of thinking about it. But it's like, if I buy something that's rare, it's going to go up and this land is facing the ocean, and there's only eight lots that are looking at the ocean here. So and clearly we cannot build more ocean view lots. I mean, you know, you can build more condos, but you can't build oceanview lots. Like there's just a finite amount of ocean of view in the world.

So people understand that. And they respond by buying it and investing in it. Right. So, so seeking scarcity is just it's probably hardwired in our brain through, you know, the human evolution. We understand that there's some things that are, hard to get. And if you find something that's hard to get and you can get it, you should probably get it, because even if you don't want it, someone else might want it in the future.

So so scarcity is, like, baked in, and of course, that's, that's that's why real estate, especially like, land costs are, like, insane, insanely high, because of that pursuit of scarcity, which is ingrained, I think, in the human psyche. And regarding ordinals, you know, as I was very, very a perturbed because I'm, I'm a big proponent of, and also, you know, what's interesting, when you run a company like Bitcoin, every purchase is a Bitcoin withdrawal.

Okay. So we do a lot of transactions like, we may not have as many users as Coinbase, and Kraken and Bitfinex, but we do a lot of transactions because 100% of every trade is a Bitcoin payment. And even though we, we have used lightning since, I mean, the first lightning prototype we did was 2018 didn't work really well. And then we fully launched it in 2021. I think, it's it's mostly on chain, right. It's still still mostly on chain.

And we also we also do a lot of internal transactions, to manage our wallets in order to, let's just call it, make it harder for hackers and fraudsters to spy on our users. Right. So so we do a lot of unchained transactions. So when the fees go up, it actually does cost me a lot more money.

And, you know, at some point, the, the amount of money I'm spending on fees per month is, is an amount that's so high that I think people would blush, you know, that I, I'm a big financier of the Bitcoin mining industry. Let's just say for bitcoin. So obviously when the fees go really high it hurts.

And even though we are doing our best to optimize, the, the subsidy of Bitcoin VC money into the Bitcoin network is being, so these technologies are subsidized to make Bitcoin transactions that we also have to pay for. And it's like, you know, people say, hey, like let them spend let them spend their money like idiots. Yeah. But like I'm also spending the money. Right. So like when they expand the chain, I spend money too. It's not just them that are wasting money,

they're wasting my money. So, and and obviously I agree with you. Bitcoin should not be a data layer and, usage. Yeah. More importantly, they both the utxo set and make, running a node is firing up a node more costly. And that's absolutely crucial to so, so it's a bad behavior and it's a flaw of the fiat system. This infinite lending thing that allows them allows them this amount of cash to to do bullshit like it's not productive.

No one in the world, humanity is not better off because someone spams the blockchain with JPEGs. Like that's just not okay. And I think that there are so many like we're going to see more of these, like late stage Fiat games, like having their, debit bounces. Yeah. Trying to trying to like, mess with bitcoin, you know, various degrees of success. But it requires bitcoiners to be somewhat vigilant and like, take the fights when we need them.

I mean, yeah, we won the battle, the big battle, like the hash size or the block size force or, which were never about block size but about control. But we want that. So like, we showed the man that the users are in charge. We need to win the next such battle as well. We need to stay vigilant. The AI, in my view, is absolutely the only only threat to to to Bitcoin is the US not being vigilant enough or it's, what is the complacency is the word I'm looking for like absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah. There is like this phenomenon that okay, so, everything's good for Bitcoin. Why? Okay. So so this is something that a lot of Bitcoin is say like well everything good for Bitcoin anyway. So why is everything good for bitcoin. Well that's because of the antifragile nature of bitcoin. Like let's go deep in that. And Bitcoin is antifragile because it's composed of humans which react. It has white blood cells which are nodes. Right.

And so if the white blood cells don't do their job and Bitcoin is not antifragile. And in that case not everything is good for Bitcoin, everything is good for Bitcoin. As long as as you say, as long as we remain vigilant. That's like the premise. So people should say everything's good for Bitcoin as long as we are not complacent. Right.

That's like the the thing that people don't said the second, the second part of the of the mantra and what when when the original things happened, I, you know, I was I was very upset because I was thinking like, these guys are using we are in a time frame of easy money. So. Right. So there's the fiat money printer, which goes down to the funds, which goes down to the LPs, which goes to the VCs, which goes to the owners to pay for their Bitcoin fees. Right.

So it all flows from the money printer because in a sane society like, you know, most downward the right and like and like in a sane society like, of course nobody would spend thousands of bitcoins on transaction fees like we had of the housing in 2024, 2024. Right. So, so that's that's completely irrational behavior for people to, to spend bitcoin transaction fees in order to get their Jpeg faster than the other guy's Jpeg onto, whatever it is, the scheme 20 I don't know.

So it is obviously behavior that is eliminated, from the market over time. As the subsidy of the money printer, it goes away. Right. But but you have these short term, periods of time where the market has not readjusted itself. Right? And they actually do, some damage. What eventually, you know, and the beginning, I was like, fuck it. Like I was the kind of like, on the mechanic, bitcoin mechanic, like, side of things where I was like, we should fix the filters. And that was my first thing.

It's like, we should fix the filters. We should increase the dust limit. We should. We should do that something. And then, you know, I, I began to realize that there is things that we can do. There are things that we can do. But these are like, these are some pretty severe nuclear options, right? And, they require us to be willing to die on that hill. Like we could we could solve for Bitcoin and, like, reduce the block size.

We could, you know, we could do some things with, like removing the SegWit discount, for example. Right. That was put in, which is what was initially exploited by the Taproot Wizards, which is the fact that, you know, some part of the data is not counted towards the blocksize. And, and, you know, you can you can sneak your shit in there. That was not part of the social contract. That was one of the things an unforeseen consequence of, yeah. Well, well-intended move. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In hindsight, that was definitely a bad, a bad decision because when, when the and the block size was increased. Right. So I hate it when people say that, you know, they refuse to increase the size. What if no, no, it's increasing by 150%, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think it's, it's, blocks are pretty much three and a half, megabytes. Yeah. That's like 250% like. Yeah. Because yeah, they met with one megabyte before. Yeah, yeah.

And then, and then the social contract was we want to encourage the use of SegWit. Therefore, all the nodes agree to subsidize its SegWit usage by discounting the size. Right. This is this is like very important. Like we wanted to encourage specific type of transactions. Therefore we agreed to share the burden of that transaction because we want people to move over to SegWit. And then the corners that figure it out, that they could use this to put their JPEGs on the chain.

So we are encouraging the use of ordinals with the SegWit discount like we are encouraging it. No, no, we're encouraging the use of the, false notion of ordinals because they don't exist. I know, I know, and and of course, it's an important point because that we shouldn't give the scammers like this. We shouldn't encourage them more because what they are selling is complete vaporware. First of all, you can't own a JP. But the thing is, the sets aren't ordered.

They only ordered on a third party website. That has nothing to do with with Bitcoin. So it's all false. It's like it's like someone claiming you can, only own a star in the Andromeda galaxy. Yeah. No, it's the same thing. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's, But but it's not only like it's. You can own a star on this third party website that that shows a picture of the Andromeda Galaxy. Exactly. And it will clog people's nodes. Fantastic. Like it's the oldest scam in the book, man.

Like, they've they've done this before. Exactly. Like selling moon land or something. You have a moon land certificate. Like, try to enforce that without my like your piece of paper is worth. Yeah. So also that's also don't exist, right. No. No. Exactly. That itself does exist but sides don't exist. So all of your entire premise is false.

And like that's that's also why I had this, this war with Bitcoin magazine, which is really which is really a shame because I had that a really, really long and great relationship with Bitcoin magazine, because the Bitcoin Embassy was the first retailer of the Bitcoin magazine. So in my office in 2014, 2013, I was selling physical copies of the Bitcoin magazine like a newsstand, you know. So I knew David from way, way, way, way, way back.

And that thing with the originals, that's that's what I think like really was bothering me so much. It's like you, it's somehow real OG legit bitcoiners. And despite what you want to think about. Bailey. Right. You know, he says some cringe things sometimes he is like a fucking real legit og bitcoin or, you know, and they were bamboozled into thinking that ordinals are good for bitcoin. Right.

And like how how exactly this cognitive dissonance appeared in their head where it's a good thing if all the shit coins happened on Bitcoin because I think it's probably like Ethereum derangement syndrome where a lot of bitcoiners, they hate Ethereum so much that they are happy to take away the shit corner away from a theorem and onto Bitcoin. But at what cost? You know, at the cost of no decentralization of Bitcoin.

Yeah, we were back at the the monetary use cases, being the only legit use cases because everything else you reduces is functional. I love the debate. And I was like, well, Bailey, one thing he, he tweeted once that all roads lead to Bitcoin. And my first thought is yeah. And I think I tweeted it back like, yeah, but there are roadblocks like you can put up roadblocks and this is exactly what you're doing by allowing the shit coins to be here.

Yeah. Like yeah there's no there's no there's no need to take the long road. And I don't know, I think that's a detour. And a lot of people think like, oh, like shit. Coining is a necessary part of every bitcoin or is like. So I mean, it's not it's not like I never had a coin face, but I mean, you know, I had and $10, I spent $10 on a coin, $1 and each and eight of them went down and two went up. And I'm like, fuck this. I'm never going to like, it's bullshit anyway. Like so.

And it's like, why I, I, you know, a lot of normies, you know, they don't need to get rekt in order to understand Bitcoin like I can. You can persuade them not to get rekt. There's, there's no neces it's not necessary for them to get rekt. Right. And I, I find it I find it very, very sad because a lot of people and also they say like, well, you know, if you're buying Trump coin it's because you're fucking retards and it's it's two by three.

There's a lot of, there's a lot of like victim shaming in Bitcoin where it's like, well, if you're investing in these coins, you're fucking retarded. Well, you have to see it from their perspective. Like they are not inside the maxi circles and they don't necessarily understand. And they think that bitcoin and crypto is one thing. And they heard about Bitcoin. They like Bitcoin. So everything must be the same. And they are getting defrauded by psychological abuse and manipulation by con men.

Right. And it's like some of them are gen gamblers that know what they're getting into. It's kind of like the casino, right? So some people are professional poker players and they know what they're getting into, but some people are being and like not everybody is high IQ and not everybody is is has wisdom. And just because someone is a little stupid and like it's not it's not knowledgeable does not does not make it okay for them to be to to be scam.

And like the reason why I became so toxic, by the way, is because when you run a physical bitcoin office like I did from 2013 to 2017 and like I'm doing now in Costa Rica, you see the scammer, the scam victims face to face, right? So the old lady who got bamboozled by her grandson into pulling the money and putting it into a meme coin and it's all gone like that exists, right? And people who thought, you know, like, you know, they they saw an ad on Facebook to buy Trump coin.

And, you know, a lot of people are fucking scared because their retirement savings are like going down. And a lot of old people also are very vulnerable to these high yield like scams, because they see their bank account and they're like, I have $200,000 in my bank account and I'm 67 years old. Like, I'm fucked, right? You are fucked, right, man. Try to live for 20 years with 200 grand. Like it's just not going to happen.

And then, yeah, I make like, you know, I make like 8% a year on my savings account, but the fucking money goes down 8% a year anyway. Everything's 8% more expensive a year anyway. So these people are like, I need to do something. I need to do something to increase my wealth. And you know, they see this scammer who's like, hey, like, you can make five x with this fucking shit coin. And they don't understand that you're being scammed. They're being manipulated.

So I see that as being like evil right. So scammers are evil people. They are corrupt in their souls and they're taking money and it's like it's not okay. It's like it's not fun and it's not like, oh, well, you know, like, are you against gambling? And it's like, the thing is, it's different with gambling because everybody understands that casino like like most people understand the casino like the risks and the rewards of the casino.

Whereas these meme coins and shit coins and NFTs, they're, they're they're being pitched as like, you remember when when ordinals came out, people were like like even bitcoiners were like, these are going to be worth fuckin like, this rare sight is going to be worth like an insane, insane you. Right. And they were selling SATs for like 100 bitcoins, right? Arguing that they were rare where SATs don't even exist. It's like it's so dishonest. Anyway. Yeah, we agree on that.

I know we agree on that. So, I'm going to run for a little while now because, like, I really want to go deeper and pick your brain on a couple of things like, I love the run. Like, first of all, let's go back to, yeah. Because my train of thought came back, the organizational thing, like, how companies that are too large become institutions in themselves and become bureaucratic. I think this has something to do with Dunbar's number. Like so. So Dunbar's numbers around 160 individuals.

And that's the the amount of people you can know personally and like, remember who they are and have a personal relationship with. And this is it's about the same for, for humans as for our closest relatives in nature like bonobos and chimpanzees and stuff like that. Right.

So, and I think the, the, the reason that humans can, can form organization, ones that are bigger than that is because we can have this collective hallucinations or collective fantasies or whatever you call them, like religions, nation states, money, or fiat money, I should say not proper money. But but all of these frameworks we build around ourselves that we believe in, and therefore we can form larger groups with maybe a evolutionary good for the group, but not necessarily for the individual

in the group. So. So you may be part of a great nation, Lord, like the Soviet Union was big, a big as fuck for a while, but the people in it were all like living completely miserable lives. So I think like, I saw that back in my old Fiat, y'all, by the way, my last don't laugh, but my last Fiat job was as an H.R. manager for a shipping company, and this was a company that was had just outgrown the Dunbar's number. So like 2 or 300 employees.

And I saw all sorts of growing pains that came with like, the CEO not knowing everyone anymore. And I think maybe on a Bitcoin standard, it would be a lot harder to form these organizations because you don't need to and the like organization will stay like 160 individuals or less. So you get these smaller entities, but more of them and more more this distributed I like distributed better than the centralized. That's just that's a word I don't like the buzzword.

I think the centralization is an unfortunate means to a greater end in Bitcoin, which is sound money. But do you think there's something there with a Dunbar's number and that that that may be a force at play here? Absolutely. And Dunbar's number is also there's an evolutionary mechanism to it where, you know, that's, that's the amount of people in, in your tribe in, like, an actual animal level tribe. Exactly.

You don't need to have these, systematic processes like laws and money and, institutions, if everybody knows each other. Right. If everybody knows each other, then you can you can ad hoc, improvise, you know, social relationships and for sure in companies, it's it's the exact same process. And this is where it becomes very critical to have. So this hallucination that you talk about this framework, right, this, cognitive, space that we all agree to share or that we all share spontaneously.

It needs to be simple and it needs to, to, to be very, very strong and un bendable, so that the institutions are not necessary. This is why, for example, like the US was so successful as a nation for the longest time because they had a simple constitution with simple principles of individual rights and freedoms. And like that's something that we can all agree. We can all agree on this small thing. It's like I have, I have rights, you don't have the right over me. It's, it's it's very clear.

And this is why Bitcoin scales really, really well because it has very, very simple and flexible rules. So Bitcoin as a social kind of like system can, can scale to a very large number of users. Right. Because the, because the rules are extremely difficult to change. Extremely. And that's, that's good. Why has the US gone to shit. It's because the US Constitution is not being respected, right? It's not. Which is because of the Federal Reserve.

As soon as you get control of the money printer, you care not who makes the country's laws because you can bypass them, because you can fucking bribe everyone. And this is back to the shit coins again. Like the original shit coin with a precedent on it. It's not fucking trump coin. It's it's the dollar. Yeah, and that's not even issued by a precedent. It's issued by us. It's a so, so I, I like to frame it as klepto currencies and cryptocurrency.

So yeah, klepto currencies are the old Fiats and the crap those are the cryptos, but they're the same thing. And by the way, number go equal is also someone scamming you. Because on the free market, if there's actual sound money number has to go up because the prices of everything else drops. It's like the easiest way of framing that I think is like if you practice doing something, do you usually get better or worse at that thing? And it's obvious when you get better.

So why aren't or why aren't oil prices dropping forever? Well, if you use the correct denominator, or so I congratulate. Absolutely. This is probably the biggest scam. The biggest psychological psyops of all time is that people believe that prices going up over time is a natural phenomenon. It's like a winter. It's like summer. It's like the moon. It goes up, it goes down. Prices just go up over time. That's just the way it is. Right?

But that's not like and some of it is the opposite is true because like if, if we have better technology to make the same thing and better organizational processes and like stronger connected trades ties, like obviously this fucking coffee cup should, should decrease. The price should decrease over time because we're getting better and better at it. Right. And and we have technology to make it more efficient. So like deflation is the natural, state of prices.

And, you know, unlike other guys like, you know, I think Jeff, Jeff Booth has, this, this, this thing, it's like, everything's going to exactly zero. It's not going to go exactly to zero, right? No, it's marginal cost of production every, every go down the field, it approaches its marginal cost of production, which is right trending towards zero. That was a but so like, zero marginal cost. I think it's a book like written like 15 years ago maybe. Yeah. Everything is trending that direction.

Yeah. Never, never go to absolute zero. But it is trending in that direction. And there's things that you can't produce, like you can't produce human time and you can't produce beachfront real estate. Right. So so there are things that so, so, so money will always be, like even if there's deflation over time, the argument that money is going to disappear one day because everything is going to be free is, is nonsensical.

Because there will there will always be a, a pick an original Picasso and you'll say, well, I can 3D print that Picasso with I. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. Like I am not. I am willing to pay for the original Picasso, even though you can create, the exact you can create the exact same thing, Adam. For Adam, it will not have the same value as the original Picasso. Right. There are there are there are things that people subjectively value, and that are that are objectively scarce.

Like an original Picasso, there will only be one Mona Lisa, regardless of how many Mona Lisa's you 3D print with. I you know what I mean? And only when people at the same. Yes. Oh no one so so this is I'd love that. I love this because this this is something I've been thinking of for a long time and having difficulty explaining, but this is like one of the most one of the deeper parts

of the rabbit hole. So. So you say it like, imagine this world where everyone uses Bitcoin as the denominator, so they can actually see that everything is dropping towards zero. Except, you know, beachfront houses and stuff. So things that are actually scarce, but everything else is becoming abundant and available to people because the cost is so low denominated in the right denominator, which is Bitcoin in sets.

So, and add to that, this whole thing that the dichotomy between store of value and meaning exchange is false. So you have meaningful change over time and space. In my mind that that world looks something like, barter and, and, you know, people just being kind to one another actually goes up and the number of transactions that need to be done at all monetary transactions, the need for them goes away.

Because I think, and this is such a weird mindfuck, because micropayments, everyone's talking about micropayments and lightning is great because you can zap people for nodes and stuff. But micropayments in my mind is a very fiat thing. Like paying $0.50 to go to the bathroom at the central station will be replaced by some subscription model where you can go buy any train anywhere in the world for the rest of your life with a one time bitcoin payment, because numbers go up.

So so I think like the there's a scaling solution there, quote unquote solution there. And just money not being as needed because why was money invented or discovered. We'll get into that later. It was between people who didn't know each other. Like if you didn't trust the other guy, then money was a very good medium of exchange. And you didn't need it if you knew the other guy, because then you could just trust one another.

And ironically, this don't trust verify that underpins Bitcoin has led us to a state where we can trust each other more. I mean, you, for instance, I've, I've known you for, a couple of years. We've only met in real life like a handful of times. And we've had brief conversation. We had conversations like this a couple of occasions. But still, I know you from your reputation online, and I would trust you with my savings. I don't think you'd fuck me over like I know you that well.

And this goes for so many other Bitcoiners. So, like, ironically, like this reputation we've gained from not, not compromising our principles has given us this amazing ability to trust one another. And, like, I know that if I pay for a dinner with a bunch of bitcoiners or someone else will pay next time, like, we're we're inherently good to one another. And it's also because we know deep inside that what is good for the other Bitcoiners is good for Bitcoin.

So we are doing it for egotistical reasons to we're pumping our backs. But it's it's all and all of a sudden you get to this insanely powerful utopian society where 8 billion people are helping 8 billion people whatever they want. Like if we can get to that, like I this is why I'm bullish. This is why I think this is so powerful, because it's just it increases the value of being a human being, and it increases the value of other human beings around you because you can trust them all of a sudden.

You can. Yeah. But what are your thoughts on this? I think, the, you know, the Maslow pyramid, right? Like the, the most, the most basic needs of hierarchy of needs. Yeah, yeah I agree. And these I think what's going to happen is the things that are the most needful for people are going to become exceedingly cheap, if not three and just an example I was thinking about when you were talking

is water, right? So, clean water, if you go to anybody's house and be like, hey, like my car broke down, can I have a glass of water? I mean, you know, no, nobody's going to charge you for water, right? And water is, like, pretty much free at this point. But this is something that's exceedingly crazy in terms of human history, that clean water is available pretty much anywhere in the world for free. Right.

And then if you think about other stuff like food and lodging, the cost of food production should be very, very low in the future. The cost of lodging also should be low, it should be very low in the future. And we're not talking about, of course, expensive beachfront real estate. We're talking about just like basic lodging, clothing, kind of like the basic needs like these are going to these prices are going to drop.

And I think you're right that on a long enough timeline, you know, maybe not food, but also kind of food like they will trends to a very, very, very low cost. And if they are exceedingly abundant like these are the things that are creating conflict. Like when you when you're competing for food and you're competing for lodging and you're competing for water and you're competing for like, you know, safety, you know, or security. So these are the things that cause, like human conflict.

And I think what's going to happen is as these things, the cost translate to very little, then we're going to be starting to think about we're going to we're going to go up into the Maslow pyramid, and we're going to be starting to produce things that were previously incredibly hard and difficult to produce. Right?

So it's like now that these things are basically free and the the margin of return on like, you know, something is, is, is so low that who cares about, you know, who cares about reducing the price of corn, 0.01% more than it already is. Let's produce other things. And this might be technologies, this might be medical sciences, this might be space travel.

This might be, I don't know, like building fucking cathedrals for no good reason other than because it's fucking awesome or, you know, so, so I think like, not everything is going to be free, but the stuff that the stuff that we are competing over now will be very variable costs. And then this, this will free up our time and energy to produce things that were previously thought to be impossible to produce, like life extension technologies.

And I think space travel is probably like the better example. And, you know, like once, once, once. It takes far less people to build housing, you know, like, what are people going to build? They're going to be fucking space rockets, because that's the new thing that's in demand. So this is how this is how we evolve as a society. Like stopping this, stopping to focus our energy on low Maslow pyramid things.

And we go higher, higher, higher into the more like, I don't know, like, you know, like extending life, for example, is not a priority for a peasant. Right. So the peasants has no concept of maybe I can live to like 150 years. You know, the peasant has the concept of need to feed my family, like the next three quarters, you know, subsistence lifestyle is basically like the next three months in a, like a medium case scenario.

And like the worst case scenario, it's like the crackhead on the street, which is like the next six hours. Right? But, as, as we extend like, okay, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good for the next ten years, you know, like, I'm, now let's think about more and more and more. And this is how we elevate ourselves above, like the our base nature of, like, subsistence. So, this is why deflation is good. Like deflation allows us to elevate ourselves.

And if the price of things are always going up and due to. And I just thought about something that the stupidest argument ever is the argument of like, well, if the price of things goes up when the price of wages goes up also. Yeah, but the wages, your, your savings are still being devalued. So if, if you use that argument it's like okay, so you have to keep working forever just to catch up. Right. You can you can never escape like the fiat slave mindset.

You can never be like, all right, I have enough savings now. I don't need to work from 9 to 7 every single fucking day of my life and like, you know, work on this hobby that I have. I have an idea for this, like, new motor. You know, I'm a mechanic, you know, like, I have an idea of how to make cars, more efficient.

But I don't have time to do that because I'm a fucking fiat slave, and I hate to fucking work 9 to 7 every single day, including Saturday, in order to just keep up with the cost of living. So the idea that deflation is bad, I think, and I mean, I haven't you know, I stopped really getting deep in economics like, you know, years ago now I'm more into technology, but the idea that deflation is bad seems to be like current. It still is current, like mainstream economic theory.

It's it's the biggest lie ever told. And it doesn't pass the smell test of the layperson. So it can only be created through a science. Because if you ask the average person, it's like paying less for the same stuff over time, good or bad, everybody that has a fucking brain is going to say, well, obviously that's good. Like it takes a lot of psyops to make it the official like dogma that, no, actually it must be 2% more every year. That's like the necessary target. And that's like

Unchallengeable. Right? Like our entire system is like, you know, it must be between 1 and 3% more every single year. And you must accept that as being true. And people don't even think about that, you know. 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. 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. There's an economic, phenomenon called Jevons paradox. And it's states that when prices go down, you think that people will buy like what they need in terms of that product and then stop buying it. But that's not true. They'll buy more of the product because they can afford more of it. It's very simple, like the whole notion that prices have to go up in order for people to spend their money. It's it's it's bullshit.

Yeah. And, and the best example in the real world, I think, is the, is computers and the internet, like a device, like a mobile phone, which is like James Bond with dream just 20 years ago. Like, we have everything, access to absolutely everything. You can manage your entire life and have all the world's entertainment in this thing, like books, CDs and, movies, everything.

The fact that you and I can have a conversation without lag between, like, from on different sides of the planet, it's just insane. Mainly good. Like. And this is the thing. And this is just a tiny little taste of what's to come. If you start using the right, the nominee and quality will go up, like people will buy more and you will like, okay, so this computer thing.

Yeah. Just to finish the point, like, yeah, it's it happened despite fiat because it's so it's so powerful that despite all the Fiat being printed just that actually hinders the process. It happened anyway. And like when you remove that, like it's absolutely mind blowing what this can lead to. So yeah. Yeah. No, no. And absolutely you're right.

Like we have seen deflation for certain things where the technology innovation was so rapid and so like powerful that even despite fiat it's still cheaper over time. Like, you know, like the TVs, you know, that we have in the random Airbnb that are fucking gigantic like that used to be. You are a multi fucking millionaire. If you have a gigantic flat screen TV in your house. And now every single cheap Airbnb in the world has like four gigantic televisions in it, it's like a commodity.

Yeah. And to your point about, about quantity and quality and deflation, of course. Okay. Let's say that I'm again, I'm a peasant and I spend $10 on, I don't know, cornmeal to feed my family. And now cornmeal is $1. I'm not going to buy ten times more cornmeal. I'm going to buy ribeye steaks, you know, and I'm going to be increasing my quality of life with higher quality goods.

And when ribeye steaks are $1, I don't know what I'm going to buy, but I'm I'm not going to buy ten times more ribeye steaks, but I'm going to buy stuff that, you know, I don't know, organic fruits and I'm going to sweat. I'm going to stop buying the fucking disgusting pesticide full, fruits. And I'm going to be buying the organic fruits and so on and so forth.

And then, you know, once I've reached my the highest quality of food, then I'm going to move to quality of housing, and then I'm going to move to quality of health care, and I'm going to get high quality transportation, and then I'm going to get high quality education, and I'm going to get how high quality entertainment, you know, and so everything is just going to get and it's and but I'm going to still be spending the same amount of money. Right.

So like, you know, I'm going to be I'm still going to be spending money, but I'm going to be getting more for my money and I'm going to be more happy. And and I will save two. Right. So there's like both sides. So, so let's say that everything goes down over time. Like, yes, I might be spending the same amount of money because I'm buying higher quality goods, but there's like a max level of quality that you can get. You know what I mean?

Like like like a, like a rib eye, you know, I mean like, no, no, no. Okay. You can't get much better than a ribeye. And I, like, you can buy a $30 bottle of wine and you can buy a $3,000 bottle of wine. The difference is less than between a $30 and a $20 bottle. Yeah. Like, yeah, like the absolute limit. Like. And life doesn't get much better. Like. Yeah, I mean, I, we partied at Saylor's house. I mean, he still has to take a shit in the morning, like. Yeah, with friend.

We were still human beings. It doesn't matter like basic needs, but it's the Maslow thing. And I think the, the, the thing we're getting away from is vulgar consumerism and, like, buying Chinese crap just for the sake of buying crap. And it's going to be so good. I think this is also one of the deeper thoughts I have. This is a saying that rings in the back of my head for my grandfathers. I used to say that which you can do without your own.

And I think there's a profound truth in that, because I think the the opposite of quality is not, lack of call it, it's equality. Yeah, yeah. But like, you can't have both. And I think, like you, you get to this inside of that, which you can do without your own. Now, if you if you have money that's appreciating in value, you don't want to spend on shit like you want to spend on quality. What you actually need, and you don't use the urge to spend on other shit just goes away.

You know, the sell all your cherished meme like, yeah, that's what. And Jack, my, for instance, a great example of that sitting in that empty closet and just, no, I'm not I'm going to stack. I'm not gonna I'm not going to fall for any of this bullshit. Like, yeah, yeah, I love that. I absolutely love that. And this is, this is very bullish for art.

So, you know, like, one of the reasons that we're talking is, I think you were talking with mate X. Yeah, mate, we had a couple of conversations with, with mate X, and they proudly. So that's, our other friends in both Bitcoin right now. Yeah, we have many and but yeah. And mate X you know he's he's basically my best friend. I've known him for a long time and, and, I, I was never interested in art before.

Before meeting him and before kind of, understanding his his vision and his principles for art. And, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, cathedrals and the Renaissance and how we can, why is this art's so important to the human soul, first of all? And why is the art not happening today? And, you know, one thing, it's like I have this is the only this is the only piece of jewelry that I that I own. Right? And it's a, it's a mate X bull. Bitcoin gold, gold pendant. Oh yeah.

I have a 2007, Rav4 and a 1978 old fucking LandCruiser. I don't own anything really expensive other than a laptop and a phone. But I do collect art. Like I do collect art that I find to be very, very good out of principle because, this art is the only thing that's, like, worthy of my money, right?

The art is the only thing that can't like that can't be easily reproduced or, you know, like the the, it's very, very difficult to, to reproduce, like extremely good art versus like a fucking, for example, like a fucking jpeg. So thinking about, like, a second architectural and artistic renaissance, especially when you think about like increasing the quality of stuff, architecture and building, man. Like the house that I'm in, right now is just a typical Airbnb.

I don't know how long it took to to fucking build. Probably three months. You know, I bang on the walls and it's oh, my camera's automatically. I bang on the walls and like the, you know, it's it's the constructions shit, you know, and it's not going to like this house is not gonna last more than 20 years before it needs to be taken down from old and shit like that.

And how come you have these buildings in Europe, for example, or in Asia, that are built of stone and that have been built in the 15th century, and they're still livable and great today. It's because they had sound money there, and they had very, very low time preference, in their building because they had sound money and because they thought on the very long term. So I'm very, very bullish on art and architecture. No more ugly fucking shit. No more cheap Chinese crap. And and.

Yeah. So, you know, this this is the, the one of the topics I love the most about, about, like, high and low time preference. And, you know, I never really thought about that until reading safety in the book, which was, illuminating. And that was probably in 2018 or something. The cons and and this, this is probably the line that I talk to people about, like, what's the social gain of bitcoin? You know, a lot of people are. And my immediate answer is to tell them, like, who gives a fuck?

You're right. It's good for you. So like you, you should use it. But, but people do want to hear, you know, what's the social benefit of Bitcoin? And even though it makes me cringe to have to justify the social benefit of something because who gives a fuck, right? If it's good for you just to do it? I that's what I talk about and I talk about lowering people's time preference and what happens in a society where you have, generalized low time preference.

Well, you have cathedrals, you have monuments, you have the Mona Lisa and the David. You have gigantic stone aqueducts like the Roman Empire had. And you have generally, just incredibly beautiful and high quality things.

And is that not something that you want, like, do you like living, seeing these condo towers that are fucking cheap and that are going to crumble in 70 years and you know, that are going to become low income housing, you know, these modern condos that you have there all the fucking same. Every fucking city has the same goddamn fucking condo, same fucking thing. It looks exactly the same. It's the same fucking building materials. It's the same architecture.

And like these are supposed to be modern, expected, expensive things. And it's insane. Like you'll pay $1 million for a condo. I guarantee you that in 50 years, this is going to be low income housing, right? This is going to be like a whorehouse, right? It's incredible. No. And isn't it insane that we're personal friends of people like, matrix and and Fractal Crypt and apex and all that, like these are the, the Leonardo da Vinci of of of RH, like. Yeah, yeah. And we're fucking buddies with them.

It's just insane. Like because they have this low time preference thing. Yeah. And I love it. Even though I would say that I can, I can appreciate some high tech reference art, like pop music. There are good pop songs and, like that, in a way, they're not both a high time preference, because they're probably made by people who had a lifetime of experience producing this stuff. Yeah. And I, I like to this is another rabbit hole, but I like the term proof of results rather than proof of work.

Like I think pop songs are fine. I don't, I don't, I like to listen to pop songs and like house music. You know, the thing is, every house music song is more or less the same song, right? Yeah, yeah, every, every pop song is more or less the same song. But it's enjoyable, right? It's like it, it's like our base, you know, the bass, the drum, you know, it's like kind of, Sometimes you don't want to elevate your spirits, you know, you don't you don't always. You don't want, always want to have the

the ninth Symphony with. No. You know, there's only one, right? There's only one ninth Symphony of Beethoven, you know, I mean, yeah, none of the none of the symphonies are alike, you know what I mean? They're all different. But all the pop songs are the same. But it's it's okay to have some cheap shit, you know, we we can't have or are guilty pleasures, but it's the illusion. It's the illusion of diversity of the cheap shit, right?

It's like the same thing with, like, not same thing with, with all the shit coins and thing with all the houses. It's like you have an illusion that, you have some diversity. But it's all the same right there. It's like 200 different brands of cornflakes, like. Yeah, well, you could have the ribeye steak, like. Yeah, exactly. Exactly the way or the way I look at time preference is like, if you take the shortest time preference I prefer short or long, but this is just all this bullshit.

But anyway, if you take the highest time preference, possible, which is all the, all your possessions are removed, so you're naked in the streets and you have nothing. What? It's that like that is a state of fear. And if you take the opposite of fear, what's the opposite of fear? Like it's love. So the longer your time for like time preference is. So the process of civilization delaying gratification is.

It's the Robinson Crusoe example of like delaying saving up fish so that you can eat while constructing constructing the fishing net in order to, catch more fish per time unit in the future. That is the process of civilization. There is no other like like the opposite of that is just bashing the other guy over the head with a stick and taking his stuff. So and that's the highest time preference there is the crime. So, so it's, it's it's the dichotomy is fear and love.

It's the same thing as a high and a low time preference. And I think I use that a lot. I use that a lot here because where I live, it's a very, kind of hippie, kind of pagan, almost, like element, I guess. Like, like, isn't it? Right. So it's it's yoga, it's surf, it's nature. People who are here, they are. I guess it's kind of a weird, left libertarian type of people where everybody's like Antifa, but it's kind of like Robert Kennedy style, you know?

Like, you know, everybody's kind of like anti big pharma, anti-capitalist, but also they're all entrepreneurs and they all make money. So it's kind of like weird. But I use this example a lot because we are facing this, political situation of gentrification, right, where there's a lot of foreigners are moving here and, people are anti capitalistic because they think it's bad for the environment.

But I explain to them, like, like if I am a wealthy individual and I move to Costa Rica and I'm buying a thousand acres of land, what is going to be my desire to do with this land? I am going to preserve it. I'm going to preserve it because I don't need. And then, if but if I am a peasant and I have a thousand acres of land, what am I going to do? I'm going to cut it all down. I'm going to sell the wood, I'm going to burn it, and I'm going to make a field for my cows. Right.

So so I use this this example of, you know, it's kind of like the fear, love and subsistence and, and higher, higher achievement. And it's like if, if we're all rich, we're not going to be fucking building condo towers on the land that we buy. And, you know, I also use this example with people here. And it's like the for me, the, the ultimate luxury to own is a Jaguar. But I tell them it's I'm not talking about a car, I'm talking about an actual fucking Jaguar.

Like, I want to have 10,000 acres of jungle, and I want to have jaguars live on my land, and I derive an insane amount of pleasure from knowing that I have jaguars in my backyard like that. And that's that's because I'm. And I'm able to value something so abstract as like the fact, the fact that I'm allowing the jaguar to exist and to do its life and without that, without me protecting him, he would not exist because someone would have cut the forest down. So that I can make a field.

I derive an incredible amount of pleasure from that. And this is like the state of love that you're talking about. Like, I mean, oh, there's a yeah, sorry for interrupting, but but but I get that like, this is the typical lefty derangement thing because they think they're against capitalism when what they're actually against is crony capitalism. Yeah. Because we never had capitalism. We never had falling prices.

It's always been a centrally planned economy where someone has access to a money printer. So we never seen actual capitalist, we never seen the state of love. We never seen the state of that which you can do without. We all know we haven't seen this greater civilization, but we're about to and it's yeah, it's fantastic because we have a front row seat. It's just amazing. And and here when we try to orange build this kind of community. Right.

So, the kind of like Bitcoin jungle and, yoga, alternative community. This is very interesting for me because the argument that people have is against money itself. Right. So you explain to someone, you don't need to explain to someone here that fiat money is evil. They already know that, right? They they understand. But in their mind they have made the connection that money itself is evil. Therefore the solution is barter. Right?

So a lot of people here they are for barter and then the end and and then you have to explain like I understand where every argument you have against money is a good argument, but that's because you don't understand sound money and specifically censorship resistant sovereign wealth like Bitcoin. So I don't have to argue against fiat and credit cards here. I have to argue against barter and like, well, you know, like sure.

And barter works as you say, with like kind of like a Dunbar's Dunbar's number type of situation, but like, okay, like we if you want to barter, that's completely fine. But fucking give me your iPhone. Yeah, yeah. No, no, give me your conurbation. No subway station was ever built without money. Like there was never a barter civilization. Because you. Because your kids will by mutual coincidence of need. And it never happens. Like your your children will die at childbirth. And be a mother.

And you will live to be 55 years old, if you're lucky. And that's that's totally fine. And I'm not. And you have to explain, like I'm not talking about having because. And then they'll think like, I don't need to Chinese shit. I'm like, I'm not talking about fiat Chinese shit. I'm talking about like, high quality food and high quality shelter and high quality and efficient transportation, you know? So, yeah, people have insight ups into thinking capitalism is bad and the. Yeah, other.

And then so what we need is, is, is radical utopian communism and barter and it's like that is that is a destructive mindset, super destructive. Like these people think money is the root of all evil when it's actually the other way around. Evil is the root of all money except Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin in a way, I think it's degrading to Bitcoin to call it money because it's more like it's just a way for us to communicate love like, and to to actually be good people to one another.

And we have a mathematical formula for, for expressing who we truly are and, and our true potential. I think it's just insane. So yeah. Yeah. Let's let's go. There was Bitcoin an invention or a discovery? This is something you tweeted the other day. So we should have a battle like let's go. Yes. My my contention is that Bitcoin was invented. And sometimes, you know, I, I understand that it's not a, it's not and it's not like against the Toshi.

And when people say that bitcoin was discovered understand that it has it's not like an insult to Satoshi, but I, kind of get triggered on that because, I, I see, I see Satoshi's genius as being the person that created all the components and made them come together like an engineer who was designing a motor. Right.

So, like the underlying principles of, like a motor, like thermodynamics were discovered, but the motor itself was created and engineered, and that might the distinction that I bring is basically that, Bitcoin does not exist in nature. Bitcoin is not a natural phenomenon. It's definitely like a manmade phenomenon. Right. So the idea, for example, and one of the most mind blowing revelations I've had with Bitcoin was, okay, so how do you prove that something that's not exists?

It's something that in nature you cannot do right because the space is infinite. Then like, how do I know that this big Spaghetti monster is not right behind me? I can't verify that the Spaghetti Monster is not like, right, right above my head. How do I prove a negative? I can't prove a negative. So what I did was he conscripted. He created a box, which is the blockchain, and each block. And he said, for the purpose of us talking about money, this box is the entire size of the universe.

And you can download it on your computer. And if there is no double spent transaction inside this box, we agree that it is not exists. Right? So so what's associated is like we are able to prove the absence of a double spend by reducing the size of the universe. When it comes money to this little block and this other block and this other block. So, Bitcoin did not exist before Satoshi invented it.

Although I will concede that, like the underlying, you know, the underlying principles and digital digital scarcity also did not exist. So the other counter argument is that okay, so Bitcoin was invented, but digital scarcity itself was discovered. No digital scarcity did not exist. It did not exist before it. We needed to engineer it. And not only do we need to engineer it, we need to maintain it. Right? Because if Bitcoin crumbles, digital scarcity will.

It's not like it's still going to be there after Bitcoin crumbles. And then we can rediscover it again. So I my contention is that Bitcoin didn't exist before. Before Satoshi digital scarcity did not exist before Satoshi. And yes, some of the mathematical principles of Bitcoin exist. I think mathematical principles exist, right? And I think physics exists outside of us, right? So if we die, if humanity just all dies, gravity thermodynamics will still be in mathematics.

Mathematical patterns will still exist, but Bitcoin will not. All right, all right. So devil's advocate back here I love the whole box thing that it's very reminiscent of Jesus. Fantastic. Like the the map is now the territory. Like it. Bitcoin is the first thing ever where the map defines the territory and the other way around. And I love that way of looking at it.

So for me, the reason I've been promoting the discovery thought is that it it helps, to I think that that kind of framing helps the no coiner differentiate between bitcoin and crypto, because saying that it's an invention implies that it, that it can be something better, can be invented, or that it can be improved upon and like in ways that Bitcoin can really be improved upon.

And as you say, if, if, if, Bitcoin stops functioning from for some reason, let's say they ordinals people actually win this war. And it becomes unusable. And then people stop using it. Then we can't we can't really replicate the experiment because everyone would have insider information about the first time around. So this, this, immaculate conception, the first ten years, it's very important that they played out the way they did.

Like, if I, if I use a towel before I take a shower, I get a very different result than if I use the towel after I take a shower. So the order of events is what makes it that unique. It needed this immaculate conception and this this way of spreading to the people, because otherwise, like it's a it's just another shift coin. So that's where the discovery part comes in to me. Like that's why I choose to view it as a discovery. And you can also say that like numbers do numbers like sets.

Not not really, but they're in our heads. The sets, do they exist? No. There are, you Texas on the, on the time chain. And but the actual ability to move the sets are in our heads. Like everything in Bitcoin is probabilistic. We we say that we own them because we know that the probability that someone else has the same key is so low.

And we say that there are 21 million of them, because we know that the probability of exchanging any at any time in the future to a different number is also so low, because it's in the collective consciousness now, that's how it works. So all of it is is this it's between the worlds. It's bridging the objective and the subjective. It's bridging the the realm of the mind with the realm of the of of what we call objective reality. It's it's some, some type of bridge between the two.

And you can also view it. This is also an argument for discovery. Bitcoin has always existed since the Big Bang or whatever, whatever. Bang. And since the dawn of time, let's just say that, the it's just that the hash rate was zero, up until 2009. So you could view it that way, like, well, every component was there. It's just that the hash rate was zero.

So, so but but my main, my main like practical argument and like real world argument for framing it as a discovery is because I think it helps no corners differentiate between the real thing and the shit. Like if for for sure, for sure it does. And it and it's and it's because the other explanation about the immaculate Conception and what makes victims scarce is very complex.

It's it's and and like in order to understand like why you why can't someone copy bitcoin a and make bitcoin be and like make it work. Right. And the immaculate conception is is very hard to grasp for a lot of people where not only there's like so not only you have like this historical figure which basically sacrificed himself for the greater good,

which is Satoshi. Right? Because, you know, I, I, I, I kind of believe that he, he actually he or they, most likely, most likely there is a he and there is also a they that's, that's what I think that there's once it's oh sheep. But there was also a group. But one of the guys was actually Satoshi. That's, that's kind of like the way I see it.

And what is the likelihood that he or they decided not to spend their bitcoin or to deliberately burn their keys like, and not, and not do like a pre-modern. It's, it's it's very, very, very, very low. And then as you say, bitcoin was it was was not antifragile at birth. Right. It was very difficult. And it would have been if you launch a shit coin today, everyone going to attack it with hash rates and all sorts of things.

And it benefited from this historical point in time where it went under the radar and was allowed to organically develop an immune system, because why do people have premiums and all that? All this centralizing aspects is because you need to inoculate it at birth with like a foundation, which is going to whatever, build it.

And then you also had like this unique moment in time with the cypherpunks that are willing to work for free on something and willing to die on this hill, like the how things of the world and the the marketing money of the of the world. And like all these guys. So and also you have like this very intricate play of economic interests that are decentral ideas and hash rate and node and businesses and all of that. You can't copy that into something else.

And it's like really, really difficult to explain. I have a I did a talk, in Calgary in 2020. I need to find the video where it was like, these are the five layers of Bitcoin scarcity. Just to finally kill that argument, which is like, well, why can't we just create a better Bitcoin in the future? And also if you fork bitcoin, it does not. And that's another thing that, it's very hard to explain. You can't hard fork Bitcoin. You cannot. It is not possible because the other Bitcoin

will exist still. Right. So what you can do is you can airdrop a new token onto a new blockchain with the same balances with the same you texels right. You can copy the utxo set, dump it on a blockchain, and you can call it Bitcoin, but it will not be bitcoin because it will not be compatible retro compatible with the original Bitcoin. And that's and diverging a little bit here. But that's my main argument against raising the block size. That's my main argument right.

Because could we actually raise the block size to ten megabytes? I mean, in terms of computing resources like and so the argument is moot from the beginning, right? It's like, well, if it was a soft fork like SegWit, you know, well, I'm like, let's I'm not for it. I don't want another hard fork. I don't want another blocksize increase even with the software. But if it's a can decrease, we can decrease, we can decrease, we can. And that are just the fact that we can decrease it with a soft fork.

That makes it a possibility that I can entertain in my mind. But a hard fork for me, it's it's it's it's none. Because every single person needs to be retro compatible from the beginning. There is a social contract in bitcoin, right. That is if you if you bought Bitcoin in 2011 and you put it on a fuckin paper wallet, you expect to be able to spend it in in 2050 without needing to have like that weird airdrop where you split your coins and all of that.

So, so it's it's very, very, very difficult to explain why Bitcoin is unique to people. And, it that and that's why we make these shortcuts. You know, like when it, when somebody is trying to I'm explaining it to someone, you know, instead of explaining all of this thing, I'm just going to show them a chart of Bitcoin versus a coin. You know, it's like, why should I buy Bitcoin and the other ones? Well, here's the chart of bitcoin and here's a chart of all the shit coins. So I yeah.

And like it took like how long do you think it took me to understand why Bitcoin is unique. I mean for sure like from 2013 to 2017 I didn't know how bitcoin worked, like it was only the block size. Was that really like how is Bitcoin governed? Like who controls bitcoin. That question. Was it the miners. Is it the nodes I mean it is it is the nodes. But it's not only the nodes, it's the nodes and the miners. And it's also the economic nodes. And like what exactly defines an economic node.

And then at a certain point you realize, okay, it it's, it's, it's the fact that the node is receiving payments on a continual basis that makes it an economic node like a holder. It's not exactly an economic node if you start, because if you stop validating payments coming in, you're not validating. So all all of that and like the whole interplay of, of like finance and engineering and, and core developers and like the, the core developers control Bitcoin.

I mean, no, but if everybody auto updates because there's one implementation, then kind of yeah, you know, so it's very complex, very, very complex. And then on top of that, you have so so that's why Bitcoin is is like scarce because of this interplay. And on top of that you have like the whole like mystical birth and the, the ways that of course it's, it's so hard, it's so hard to explain to people.

But like at least you know, and one of the things I'm the most grateful for, for the soft fork wars and the for choirs is like, we have a proof of Bitcoin's resistance, right? Because people say, all right, what if Blackrock what if Blackrock wants to fork Bitcoin and increase the size of bitcoin? Well I mean you may not know that. But in 2017 we had our own Blackrock and it was Coinbase right. So Coinbase was way more powerful back then. Yeah we had we had Coinbase. We had BitPay.

We had blockchain. That info. We had Kraken, we had this guy and we had like the 30 top exchanges, which are like 95% of all trading volume in the world. And then we have 90% of the hash rate in the world. And then you have all these influencers and podcasters and whatnot that are for this thing. And then they were not able to fork Bitcoin to double the block blocksize, which like is not a huge deal compared to doubling the amount of bitcoins.

Because the 21 million is the social contract, the block size is not part of the social contract. The block size is a technical thing, right? So like the social contract is, is that it's decentralized and there's 21 million and that nobody can like that's where the contract. If Bitcoin is still decentralized at eight megabytes and there's no such. And we had a soft fork to raise it to eight megabytes, I don't think we would be massively breaking the social contract. But still they were not able

to do that. Right. So it's impossible that they're going to be able to do that with a, with a hard fork. And then, you know, there's nothing. My God, there's nothing I would love more than a confrontation with Blackrock. It will suck. I love this so much Francis. Because like my story is, is exactly the same. I don't view myself as understanding Bitcoin until like that. The Blocksize wars and the outcome of that was like, Holy shit, that actually fucking works.

Yeah, and like, hang on a minute, the miners aren't mining for bitcoin, they're mining for blocks, and they're totally the slaves of the node. Like how what is. And I think this is why, Riga 2019 was so special because all of us that were there and not that your random crypto conference. But we went to this Bitcoin only thing. By the way Bitcoin

first means bitcoins. And so we were all there like oh all of the like the people that have so many people that there that were there that are still as based now as they were back then and just walked the walk all the way through. And I, by the way, for for you. Yeah. My mind is all over the place here, but I'm going to go back to the discovery invention argument like one.

One of my most popular quotes is for my second book, and it's called the One Shot principle, is my pretentious attempt at, explaining why Bitcoin is unique in one sense. In one short, a couple of sentences, and it's something like, absolute mathematical scarcity in a sufficiently distributed, digital network was a discovery rather than an invention. It cannot be replicate.

It cannot be replicated by people aware of this discovery, because the very thing discovered was resistance to replicability itself. That's how I put it. Like that's how I view it. Bitcoin might not have been discovered, but but engineered. But the resistance to replicability that that is what was discovered. You cannot replicate the resistance. The replicability either works or doesn't like. It's only one time thing. So that's. Yeah. What do you think of that? Oh I, I totally agree.

And that's also why like during the four corners and after why I'm so like we only have one shot. Like we can't, we can't create Bitcoin again. You know, and like we all have ideas of if we had been Satoshi what would we have done? I have an idea of what I would have done. I would have had a much less aggressive reward schedule. Right. I would I would probably have had the rewards schedule be softer over time. And because we have 21, we have 20 million coins out. Right.

So like the subsidy is kind of like gone. So transaction fees are pretty high. And, I think that Satoshi, I think the reason why Satoshi did this actually, is because he understood that we needed to bootstrap rapidly, to protect the network. And what I would tell Satoshi is basically like, by the way, like, nobody's really not going to give a fuck for, like, the first ten years.

So, you know, like, there's not going to be state level tax for like the first ten years maybe, but like and the reason why the block reward is decreasing is also because you, you like want people to come in early. Right. You want to incentivize people to come in early with with a block reward that's decreasing because you know that it's going to be much, much scarcer in the future. And I would have told Satoshi, you know, people will work on people will mined bitcoin for fun.

You know, like we don't need to artificially incentivize miners to join the network so early on. I mean, this is just like my contention, but you know what? Like we can't fucking change anything. That's a totally fucking decided, you know what I mean? And it's like, it's is it perfect? Like, it's it's perfect because it exists, right? So it is perfect in that sense because it exists and it works. I mean, it never needed to be perfect. It just needed to be good enough to last forever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, exactly. And and it needed to be good enough to last until the, it became too big to be a tax, right? It needed it. We needed, like, an when did it become resistant to a tax? Well, at least by 2017. We know that. Right? So by 2016, 2017, it was big enough to resist the tax. If the four quarters had happened in 2013. It there's like a much higher chat. The who knows right. Who knows what would have happened. But it was it was strong and resilient enough.

And that's the Rick replicability argument. Right. Which is why people don't get it's like we needed to have this period of organic growth that you can't replicate. Right. And you cannot bootstrap a blockchain without centralization. That's just not possible. No, it's just why Mars Coin won't work. For instance, like you cannot bootstrap a new Bitcoin on Mars. I just don't buy that. No, no, no, of course, of course not. So like we have one shot and you know everybody accepts this.

Like the gravity pull of Bitcoin. People come to accept it if they're honest and if they are self-aware. A great example of that, is like, there's there's a famous Nostre developer. I'm not going to name him, but there's a famous Nostra developer. And I've been hanging around Noster developers more and more. And, a lot of them are like total commies, right? They are not at all. They're not at all, like, based like bitcoiners are.

And, they're all great people, you know, they're all like, they're kind of like the left wing activist types, Antifa types and that kind of stuff that are into decentralized networks for other reasons. But this guy, we were, just three weeks ago, we were at this conference in Costa Rica, and he said something that was so interesting, which is esthetically, I am so for Ethereum, like, I like and the guy has like purple hair, you know, and he's, he's a he's a great guy.

But he said something like I, I associate esthetically and culturally with Ethereum. But I cannot help being a bit corner. Right.

I just cannot help being a bitcoin or no matter like it's just and it's just everybody kind of like realize that when they it's like it's the one and it doesn't matter if, if there's the smart contracts are different or this doesn't work the way it I want, then it's like autistic nerds are kind of like, oh, well, ripple is better because you can have this, you know, like none of that. None of that matters, right? None of that matters.

What matters is that there's only one that can actually work overtime and, like, resist attacks. And you either submit to that or you get destroyed. And another great quote about that is like, you know, Paul starts so Paul starts it's kind of a friend of mine, you know, and I've known Paul for ever. Like, I think the first time I met Paul was in 2014. And, you know, we drank together, like back in the day. So we go way back, and I actually really like the guy, like, I really like him.

I think he's very smart. And I think he's probably one of the people in the entire world that understands Bitcoin consensus. The best I have I have no doubt that if he really, truly wanted to force his soft fork on Bitcoin, I think, I think that he is probably, under knowledgeable of how the, the, the loopholes of consensus, the loopholes of USSf and the loopholes of are and all that dynamic. Like he's he's very, very smart. I have no opinion on that 300.

By the way, I am absolutely neutral on it. But not and that's the way that consensus works, by the way. It's like if I'm neutral on something, it's not going to happen because I need to be able to willing I need to be willing to die on that hill. Right. And I will die on the hill of a, speedy trial. Right? I will die on that hill. It doesn't matter how much I want confidence, right? Or ktrv.

I will die on the hill if you try to to sneak that in and, and, and if someone tries to force it, I will yourself it. But he says something. Money is the strongest network effect. Because if you're on the wrong network, you die. And that is the difference between languages, social media, Http versus Https. What happens if you learn the wrong language? Like you're not going to die if you don't speak English? I love that for me, I love money.

Money is the strong because if you're on the wrong one, you die. Like, I love that because money is like, was handsome. On top of that said, it's, the back to that Hopper quote. It's the the the best available. Insurance for uncertainty. Like hedge against uncertainty. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. That's what that's what it is like. And that's why the dichotomy me the only cents over time and space. Like why it's false.

Because it it needs the overtime factor to be able to be the over space factor and vice versa. Doesn't work if you can't send it and it doesn't work if it doesn't hold its value like it's super simple. Yeah. And and and that's the that's like the practical logic, practical arguments for, Bitcoin maximalism is that because the risk of being on the not the wrong network is so high, the default behavior of everybody is going to go on the safe network, right?

The, the one that is the least, the one that's the least likely to cause me to have zero money and like, not be able to feed my family. So, so the safe bet is always, bitcoin. And then another revelation also, in my bitcoin maximalist journey is, I used to be a fractional like Bitcoin maximalist, where Bitcoin maximalism is inevitable because of economic forces and because of human rationality and human behavior. Right?

Human behavior will lead people to go to Bitcoin and everybody, everything else is a distraction, because the market will essentially correct itself by moving to Bitcoin over time. And then the other, side of it was actually and this is like where the toxicity of like Bitcoin and all of that came in and it's like it's not only a practical argument, there is a ethical argument that we must destroy this bitcoins as fast as possible, like they must they must be destroyed for ethical grounds.

Because the existence and that that arguments came I was I was at a party in like 2018 and someone I can't remember exactly the situation, but someone told me, like, all right, so I'm talking about shit coins, and someone's like, all right, so you say they're all Ponzi schemes because everybody wants to, like, just pump them and dump them and, like, why is Bitcoin not a Ponzi scheme? Like, don't you just want to like, hold the bitcoin and also like sell it when the price is high?

Like, isn't that what you're talking about when you're talking about, you know, and you and about deflation. And then I was like, I didn't really have like a really resounding argument against that because it is true that I'm it's true that I want the price of bitcoin to go up and that I inevitably, at one point intend to spend it. And then what I realized, and I started thinking about, like the dynamics of it.

And the first thing I realized was, I don't want to buy Bitcoin early because I want to sell it for high. I want to buy Bitcoin early because it will it it the amount of time I think about like salary right. Let's say you make 50 grand a year a Bitcoin is 100 grand. I don't know. These are not the right, pleasing examples, but it's going to take you like two years to acquire a Bitcoin today in the future, it's going to take you ten years to acquire a Bitcoin on salary.

So I can acquire a Bitcoin for ten x less time today. And and I'm going to want that bitcoin in the future. So I don't buy bitcoin to sell it I buy bitcoin because it's cheaper for my current self than for my future self to acquire. Right. And and and I tend to spend it on goods and services in the future. Not to trade traded for fiat. And then the other thing about capitalism is like in capitalism.

And I realized this really early on because I started to do currency trading at the Bitcoin embassy like cash to Bitcoin, and I got into currency exchange desks and that for a while we were like running a traditional currency exchange kiosk with euros and pounds and, you know, U.S. dollars, $90 and all that and, and capitalism and a purely capitalist system, every trade is mutually beneficial, provided that it's not fraud, provided that the information is like, you know, let's agree

that the information is is free and there's no deception. Every trade is, is is mutually beneficial. There's no winner. There's no loser. Everybody gets what they want because it's consensual. Right. And I thought about currency exchange trades. There is always a loser in a currency exchange straight. There is no scenario where someone is going to win and someone both are going to win. One currency is going to go up, the other is going to go down. Someone's going to end up being a loser.

So if capitalism is good because both parties benefit and because both parties benefit, the amount of wealth increases in the world through a trade, generally speaking. It's a good thing, right? But a currency exchange trade is inherently evil. It's inherently destructive because one person is going to lose every single time, right? There's no scenario when what we're both people will. If I trade €2 for dollars and one of them goes up, the other one goes down and that's it.

So currency exchange trades are the only type of trade that's like widespread, which is inherently bad. Where where where someone will lose. So we we must eliminate currency. There must be only one currency in the world. There must be. Right. Otherwise we are letting this kind of like, evil, destructive behavior continue. So as long as there are multiple currencies, there are transactions that are win lose. If there is only one currency in the world, all transactions

are a win win. And a win win. Transactions is something that creates an a win lose transaction is something that destroys. And ultimately, regardless of the morality that you have, whether it's Christian, whether it's I believe that the root of of morality is creation versus destruction, right? Destruction is bad. Creation is good. Period. Yeah. Right. Yep. So, so like regardless of religion. And that's why like, you know, an atheist, I think that you have also strong opinions on that.

And I think we're 2.5 hours in. So we want to think on this. We we go we go Noster the God debate next time. Right, right, right. But but yeah, yeah, I would say I have a sense destruction is is a universal. I think it's a universal moral principle. Like. Yeah. Is that creation is good.

Yeah. I think like for just a short one on the atheist thing, I am not saying that I absolutely think that there is no God, like most people would probably call me an agnostic, but I think that's a bit of a copout. I would say that I'm an atheist in the same sense that I'm a libertarian. Like I don't want others to impose ideas upon me. I want to come to my own conclusions. I want to be in the driver's seat. So that's that's the thing.

If there is and and the word God to me has so many different definitions, every person I talk to have said their own definition of it. So I think the word is kind of redundant, like whatever that is. And I think morality, by the way, handsome man, hope it back to him again. The argumentation ethics, perfectly frame it like it's, it's if you argue with some someone about something, you argue to come to a conclusion over a conflict over something. So it's communicating rather than using violence.

And if one if one party chooses to discard the argument and whatever you came conclusion, you came to and and violates you instead. So for instance, if you have an argument with the taxman or during the lockdowns when you tried to leave Canada, where having an argument with some of the mask mandate officers or something, if you can have a sound argument and the guy can agree with you, but if they still choose to enforce that shit, it's not an argument anymore.

It's mockery and therefore unethical. So, and this is where absolute property rights come from. And I think like we have as humans, we have two ways of resolving conflict. One is words, the communication speech and the other is violence. And there's this is a civilized way and this is a barbaric way. And right now with inflationary currencies, there's always a percentage of aggression in every single trade we make because someone has access to the money printer. And Bitcoin removes

that completely. Completely. You're sure you have to pay the miners a tiny fee to facilitate the thing, but it's transparent. There is no fraud. There is no aggression. There is no one that can take advantage of anyone else. And and it's so much more powerful than people think because 5000 years of history have been tainted by some people elevating themselves. Let's say that they're kings or they're central bankers, or they're closer to God.

Whatever you choose, it's all from this people saying that they're better than others. Like, yeah, that's where evil. Evil is the root of all money. Like, except Bitcoin. Yeah, that's that's the way I view it. So, so like, but yeah. And yeah, the way that I see like the moral argument there is also, if something allows you to liberate more time for yourself, it is inherent. That's and that's also the definition of wealth that I, that I try to explain to people like what is wealth?

What constitutes wealth? Wealth is basically the time that you create for yourself, for your future self. Right. So, let's say that, wealth must be measured in terms of, of your, of your time, like how, how much time it, would it take for me to create a sandwich from scratch, like years? Yeah. Right. Like like it takes years to create a sandwich from scratch, you know, like, it's it's not. It's probably not even. And with with enough time, you can do anything. Right.

So it's like if I was if I was living a million years, like, of course I can create a computer from scratch, like, I'm not going to be, you know, I'm going to be creating class. I'm going to be creating plastic, and I'm going to be tinkering, and eventually I will be able to create a computer. But, that's the I'll say you would create nothing like. Oh, right. Sorry for interrupting, but this is like one of my arguments against God.

If you were immortal and indestructible, you would never have an incentive to do anything, because it always postpones everything to the day after. Of course, of course. Like, if I was if I was immortal, I probably. Yeah, it probably would take me, like, a trillion years to create. You wouldn't need the sandwich in the first place. I would yeah, I would, I would I definitely would not need the, the sandwich. But yeah.

So like wealth is hard to explain and like I find that explain wealth in terms of time and explaining the fact that like do you want more time or less time? Is it a good thing if people more people have time to do other things? And this also comes back to this idea of like moving away from the magical pyramids. It's like it's objectively it's objectively good, right? Like deflation is objectively good because it allows us to devote more time to other things.

And then, you know, and again, I, I'm also like a libertarian. So I don't really give a fuck what you do with your time. Like you, as long as it doesn't fucking harm me, you know, and as long as it doesn't create a system which systematically oppresses me and, you know, going back to like also one of my first, like retail. So when I got into Bitcoin, I was still annoy me. When I got into Bitcoin I was like a libertarian normie. Right.

So you know I'm like your typical like conservative Republican style, libertarian style normie. And I didn't really understand it. Yeah. And like what I was doing, it's only like maybe 2014, 2015 where I understood that by holding, when the government creates money and I decide to hold it, I give value, I give purchasing power to the government. Right. So I allow the government to spend that money, purposefully and we finance the government in two ways.

We give money to the government with our taxes, and we hold the government money giving it, because we are the we accept to be the bottom of the Kantian pyramid, right? Yeah. We're allowing them to print it. So whenever we hold it, they're printed. So we're effectively stealing from our children by holding fiat. Yes. We are stealing from our children and we are financing the government. And what is the government doing with our money? They're killing people. They're repressing people.

So so my framing and I was like maybe 25 at the time or something like ten years ago, I was like, if I hold government money, I'm complicit. I cannot claim, I cannot claim to not be complicit like I, I, I know that my money is being used. I know that my time and my energy is being used to kill people. And I have the choice to not do that by opting into Bitcoin, and I'm not taking that choice.

So I went full Bitcoin as a and I didn't have, you know, I'm an OG, but by the way, I was a student at the time. Like I was getting paid like 20 bucks an hour. So I wasn't like making a big move in Bitcoin. I was just like, I'm just not going to hold fiat anymore, right? That's I'm just I'm just I would not hold fiat. And that's also the funny argument. It's the stupidest argument to me that you shouldn't spend bitcoin. Oh really? What should I spend?

Fiat. So if I, if I shouldn't send bitcoin because Bitcoin is going to be worth more in the future, why the fuck should I be holding Fiat in the first place? It makes zero sense, right? So when you're spending you're always spending an opportunity costs right? So if I'm spending fiat, I'm spending the the I could have bought bitcoin with the fiat that I spent anyway. So I decided to go for bitcoin only I'm like I'm going to fucking spend I'm going to spend bitcoin.

I've been spending bitcoin forever. But guess what? I've also been earning bitcoin right. So what matters is that positive Bitcoin cash flow just like and what's what's interesting with Bitcoin is like when you spend bitcoin you need to fucking make fucking money fast. Because if you want if you want to make it back. So there's two things that happen when you live on a Bitcoin standard eight you spend less and B you earn more, right.

So it's like but the argument of like don't spend bitcoin because it's going to be worth more is completely ridiculous. Because whenever you're spending fiat you're spending bitcoin. Opportunity costs. You could have bought bitcoin with the same bitcoin. So that's like a ridiculous argument. And like yes, maybe it's like less convenient. And by the way why okay so in Costa Rica we have this thing where we created this Bitcoin to fiat real where you can.

So a lot let's say like 500 merchants accept Bitcoin directly. We also have this fiat rail where you can spend bitcoin and the merchant receives fiat automatically. So even if my mechanic doesn't accepts bitcoin I can still spend my bitcoin. And he gets fiat. And this is what I had built with bills in Canada where the the reason why I decided to go on a full blown bitcoin standard is because I discovered this trick, which is you can have negative fiat with a credit card.

That was my first like I was like, so because I got debunked basically, like in 2015, I got the bank, I was doing, I was doing like local bitcoin trading and then my personal bank accounts were shut down. But my credit card, ironically, was kept alive. So the bank was allowing me to have a credit card, but not a bank account, and I was able to pay my credit card with bitcoin through bills because there's allowed credit cards payouts. So I was like, oh, you mean I can live on negative fiat?

So I don't have the taint of owning fiat, but I can still spend fiat by owning bitcoin. And like that's that's kind of like the thing. And that's also the thing that I'm doing in Europe, by the way. Like in Europe we also have bills like with Bitcoin in Europe. And that's what I replicated in Costa Rica. And I'm replicating it in Mexico. So I'm a big fan of just fucking hold okay. For me it's like just just hold all your fucking wealth in Bitcoin. And you know what?

When it's a bear market, just earn more money. Like earn more money. Get off your fucking earn. Devil's advocate question here. This isn't new Fiat created every time you go negative fiat. So because you're basically taking a loan and you need to pay it back with interest, and that's how the banks like conjure up the new money, right? So you're actually aren't you aren't you like just accelerate in a way. It's like I'm like Beth from Fiat. So so it's a good thing that way.

But but you're also creating more fiat by by going I'm credit. I might be, but I'm not holding it right. I might be, but I'm not giving it. I'm not giving you purchasing power. Right. So I might be I might be participating in the creation of fiat. You're accelerating the death of fiat. Yes. Yes. And I'm not prolonging it by holding. By holding fiat. You're prolonging the existence of fiat. By borrowing fiat, and, by borrowing fiat.

And, you know, either buying Bitcoin or buying or, like, not selling bitcoin, right? So if you borrow fiat, you don't have to buy bitcoin, right? You borrow fiat, you spend it because you're not spending bitcoin. So you're holding bitcoin by borrowing fiat. Whether or not you're actually buying it with your credit card or you're actually, you know, buying a coffee that you otherwise would have spent with with Bitcoin, you're you're moving the money from fiat to bitcoin.

And and honestly like, when I made that decision, I'm like, I'm just going to opt out of fiat and like see what happens. And that's that's like my that's like my, my story of being like, well, you know, I never invested in bitcoin actually. Like I was not investing in Bitcoin. I was young and I was stupid and I was I didn't have kids and I didn't have expenses. And I was like, I'm just going to do this thought experiments where I'm just going to opt out of the banking system entirely, right?

Still, to this day, I don't have a bank account like I have a I have a pseudo bank account somewhere. In an undisclosed location, but I don't actually use it. By the way, I haven't used a bank. I haven't used a debit card in. I mean, like three, two and a half, three years. I haven't used a debit card. I've just been living off of credit cards and the Bitcoin standard on the list and zero. And, it's just been.

And it's, it's, it's it's possible to do that now and that's like that's that's what, that's what I do for a living at this point. It's like I need. And that's why Costa Rica has bought Bitcoin. There's, there's, there's a in Costa Rica although it's huge in Costa Rica it's it's by far the biggest exchange. It's like and it started out where I was like, I need to replicate what I did in Canada in Costa Rica because I want to use that. Right. And the same thing is happening now in Europe.

Where in Europe? We well, we replicated Bitcoin in Europe, but we also have this thing where the thing that the thing that sucks in Europe is that people don't pay each other with Sepa like at the store, whereas in Costa Rica, like they have Sepa, you pay it at the store like I go to a grocery store and I will pay with the separate equivalent, like with a bank transfer. Like not credit cards, like not debit cards. People use bank payments because they're like SMS based.

So it's like, you know, I put your phone number, it's a bank transfer that has it's not an SMS money, it's a bank transfer. But that uses SMS as the communication layer. So we can't replicate the same thing in Europe because you're not going to pay your dinner with Sepa when you go to the grocery store, right? You're going to pay with a debit card. But, for anything else like so if because I want to live in Europe, I do want to live in Europe like I, I've, I've had my time

in Costa Rica. It's great. I'm going to always live a large part of the year in Costa Rica. But I miss the civilization of Europe. Like, you know, you've been to El Salvador. It's great. It's awesome. But think about living there for five years. It's it's long, man. It's like it's long. Yeah, yeah. That's why I also like when I met you in my there, I was like, yeah, I mean, I was there was great because it's kind of like it's kind of like a little jungle and the little out there.

Yeah, but all still civilized. Yeah. When I went to live there, I was like, there is fucking. There was the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, which is my favorite symphony, playing at the orchestra of Madera. And I'm like, I kind of missed that because like, the only thing to do here in Costa Rica and I mean, I know a lot of people want to move to Costa Rica, and I highly encourage you to do that. It's a great lifestyle. It's amazing.

Like you'll be healthy, you can do nothing in Costa Rica and be healthy. Like you'll just become healthy by living there. It's hard to explain, but you will. You're going to become stronger. There's more manual labor. There's some the fruits, the meat, everything's great. But like, what is the social thing to do in Costa Rica? Well, you just go to the beach and watch sunsets, right? And the sunsets are amazing. But, you know, it's I'm like at my 1700 sunsets. It's like I kind of.

But still the whole point being if if I'm a sovereign individual and I want to live in Europe, I need to have a bank account because I need to pay rent by car, I need to do all those things. So that's why we replicated this like bills in in Europe. It's because I want it. My wife is French. My baby is French. I'm also a French citizen, even though I'm a Canadian citizen. I'm also a French citizen. So so it's like if if I'm going to live somewhere, I want to be able to live on a Bitcoin standard.

And if the infrastructure doesn't exist or it's not as good as I want, I'm going to build it. Yeah true that but I Frances this this has been a great conversation. I absolutely love it. It's always great to see you and always great to see like to confirm that you have this deep connection with other Bitcoiners that may have, like, discovered this thing through a completely different route than you did, but you still have these core values that are just that. I just that just resonates.

I absolutely love it. And if there's anything me and Luc can do for, for, for to help build bitcoin, take over Europe, we will be more than happy with any type of collaboration. Anything we can do for you. We love it and I hope to see you again soon at one of the conferences. Oh, definitely. I'm going to be I'm going to go project this year. Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to be in Prague this year. And like the the Bitcoin crew that we have in Europe is fucking so good.

These guys are French bitcoiners. So you got, Theo Meunier, which is just incredibly intelligent and like extreme the base. And what's funny is like the bull Bitcoin team in France is like, not at all like the general culture of France. It's like I just got the most base guy. Yeah, we got Jimmy G and yeah. And JJ JJ is like insanely JJ great. Yeah, yeah yeah JJ is hilarious. So so we got we got these guys and then, you know, we're starting out so it's available everywhere in Europe.

But we started out in France because, you know, I'm French, we all speak French. And what bitcoins. Well Bitcoin is like international, but like still a lot of us are from Quebec. So French is like the the main language with English. So it just made sense for us to be in French, but in France.

But yeah, man, I'm like so excited to start doing content in Spanish and Italian and Portuguese and, the way that we, you know, what we call marketing, it's like it's it's really like there's two things that, that, that we use for our mark called marketing. It's meetups. And, and content. Right. So it's like for me meetups is the absolute key. I mean, I've been running the Bitcoin. I don't run it anymore. But I'm the owner of the Bitcoin meetup since 2013, in Montreal.

And like why do I have such a deep knowledge of Bitcoin? It's because I, I've been to like I want to say like 300 bitcoin meetups in my life or something like that. And it's my favorite thing to do. It's, it's like this. And you've been to, you know what it is because you go to a lot of conferences. Right? So you understand that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm made up to like, this is the way I view it.

Like after having traveled the world for a couple of years, ping ping pong the conferences I like Bitcoin is small everywhere, but it is fucking everywhere. Like, it's absolutely everywhere. There's a Bitcoin on every one horse town in every country on earth. Like we're everywhere and we're unstoppable. Like it's insane. And the odds, the odds of you becoming friends with, like a random guy at the grocery store is low.

The odds of you becoming friends with a Bitcoin are high regardless of what other childhood you may have had. Experience inevitable background and like you know. And if if it's a cypherpunk Bitcoin maxi, the odds of you becoming good friends are like I would say like 85%, you know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like it's like, no, it's very rare. It's very rare that I, that I'm not friends with a Bitcoin. I'm actually cypherpunk guy.

And like it might not be a safe long term strategy, but I as you said, like if I know that your values are solid in terms of these two things, like you are for privacy and sovereignty and self-custody and also you're not a shit corner, then I, I'm going to I'm going to have a soft spot in terms of trust. Right? I'm going to immediately lower my barrier. And again, that's going to be exploited.

So people have to be careful because anybody can tell you that they're a cypherpunk maxi if they know that that's what you want to hear. And I live out of the Bitcoin embassy by people telling me they were libertarians, right? Because I used to immediately trust libertarians. And then I realized that not only a lot of libertarians are fucking scammers.

I don't know if that's the way when the name of the game is money itself, it of course attracts a ton of scammers, like 99%, which is why crypto exists. But it also attracts these high integrity, high intelligence people that are the tiny fraction. But they're the best people in the world.

Like, yeah, and thank God for open source software and Twitter and social media because like when I meet someone and this is something also that makes talk me it's the question is like, okay, what do you do for Bitcoin. Yeah. Like what have you built like show me, you know, like, and you don't have to be a software developer, right? No. Like like, okay. So you know, you have content from your content, like, you have this.

Show me this, like, prove to me, like, what's your proof of work in bitcoin, right. So and, you know, if someone tells me like, oh well I've just been holding bitcoin and doing nothing, I'm like, okay, I'm not going to look at it. I'm not going to use that against you. You know, because it's totally fair. It's totally fine to just hold a coin and do nothing for Bitcoin. That's totally fine. But it's not that interesting. No, it's not that interesting.

And I'm not going to have this rapport with you because even though we are all bitcoiners, if we hold Bitcoin there's, there's a there's a difference between a bit corner and like a Bitcoin builder, like someone who, someone who is in someone who's like I'm in Bitcoin and like because it's my mission, is different than I'm in Bitcoin because I want to preserve my wealth and that's totally respectable and it's totally fine.

But it's not the same thing saying no. And I think like I can only speak for myself, but I can't help myself. Like I needed to be evangelize like, yeah, spread this skeptic's version of the gospel, if you will. Like. That's what. That's what it's just I couldn't resist. Like, I needed to write. I needed to get out there

and create content. Yeah. So it's like it's kind of like these, early European, like monk, monasteries or something like, the thing that we have that bring us together is we have we have a flame. And it's hard to explain what it is, but, like, we all have this burning desire inside of us. And like, I see it in other people, and I'm like, if you have this burning desire and I have this burning desire, then like, it's it's like there's you can't have the burning desire to evangelize Bitcoin

if you're evil. Right? It's really hard, you know, but we've seen like the, we've seen the, we have the truth goggles thing. Like we've seen the future. What it can hold like we've seen how beautiful it can be and what greater costs to fight for. I don't know, Francis. I'm going to have to, like, stop that. Yeah. So I got to go to. The thing is, I want to say a couple of other things. You're coming to Prague. You said, I think I'm coming to Calgary. I don't know, I don't know.

Oh, shit. Really? Sorry. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go to both. It's in the final stages. I think I'm coming. We're still negotiating, but. But there's a good chance, And I want you to come to. Or we want you to come to BTC hell in, August, if you can. Are you coming up Baltic Honey Badger again? Yeah. The week after in Helsinki. Oh. Really? We are. Luke and I are part of, organizing this conference in Helsinki. And Marty, old man's, also there.

I'm going to be spending my summer in Europe, so, I'll be I'll definitely be around. It sounds good to say how we'll send you all the details and stuff. Like, we'd love to have you there. The Scandinavians need based voices. They need to hear that there's, there's another way than just being a sheep and saying bye bye and following whatever. And the authorities. I'm. I'm glad you're coming to the rodeo. We're going to have great fun. And we're going to give you a taste of the cowboy lifestyle.

So, yeah, mate, X is a proper fucking cowboy. Yeah. So we're we're going to we're going to do some redneck, redneck North American shit, you know, shoot guns, blow shit up. I love to have tons of fun. All right. It's great. Is there anywhere on the on the internet do you want to send our listeners before we wrap up, other than Bitcoin everywhere or Bitcoin.com? Yeah. Well, actually, so the, well, Bitcoin has two apps right now.

There's the Canada app and then there's the European app, which are fully different apps. So if you want to try it out, go to app dodgeball, Bitcoin.com, app dodgeball, Bitcoin.com. If you go on Bitcoin.com, you're going to see like a Europe kind of button. But if you just want to go straight to the app, go to Apple Bitcoin.com and, you know, try it out. We launched it like three months ago. And, it's a new app. It's not the same as the Canadian one. So it's, you know, it's not in beta.

It's like, obviously it's functional, it works. But if you have any suggestions or comments or, feedback is like absolutely critical. And, it's not like complaining to Coinbase where they're just going to tell you that. No, like if you have something that you don't like or that you like or something that's missing, that you want, as I say, we're a small team and like people would be surprised how quick we can add stuff, you know? Hey, I would like to have a button here to do this, like.

Okay, cool. Like, I didn't think anybody wanted that, so I'll just put the button there like you want it. So. So it really is, like dynamic. And also the Bitcoin wallet on right now it's only Google Play. It's going to be on iOS as soon as I, I'm in a little legal scuffle with iPhone anyway. Paperwork stuff. But it's, it's way easier to create an Android app than an iPhone app, I guarantee you that. But try try to make an app.

There's also a telegram group when you, when you download the Bitcoin wallet, if you go to settings, there's a telegram group for enhancements, comments, improvements, that kind of stuff. It's it's pretty active. It's actually pretty fun. So try it out and then same thing like we have, I don't know, 14 engineers working on bull. We're a lot of engineers. Half of the team is engineering. So. Hey, I would like this feature, but just just don't hesitate to say it.

And there's like a non-zero chance that we'll just immediately put it in if you want. So bull Bitcoin app on on Android download it, join the telegram group. Give feedback at double Bitcoin.com. If you have feedback, there's a live chat. This is actually my favorite feature with bull Bitcoin. We never had a ticket system. I was always I'm against customer support tickets. There is just a live chat that's never ending. So there's no it's just and it's a human behind it.

So if if you want questions just go in the live chat. I guarantee you someone's going to answer within like 30 minutes. So, give us your feedback, let us know what you need. Let us know what's missing. And, we'll we'll find a way to find a way to put that in there. Yeah. Right. Thanks. Going to we'll have to put in the code infinity for some special feature, because you can use code infinity for all sorts of other stuff on the internet including.

Oh yeah. Okay. Cool discount on the tickets to all those conferences. We would talk. Yeah. No, no. So yeah, we'll, we'll give you a code and then whoever uses the code gets, 0.25% off on the Bitcoin price. So it's actually pretty good. So all you heard it from the man. Yeah. All right. There we go. Thank thank you friends. This is you. Have a good evening. You timelines. This has been the Bitcoin infinity show over and out.