Hey, everyone, Welcome to another episode of the Market Disruptor Show, and today I am joined by John Wallace. He is the host of the Bitcoin Rapid Fire podcast. He is a deep thinker, he's an educator. He's he read a lot of a lot of literature, helping other people discover that literature. Um, I'm excited to have this conversation to day. John, Thanks so much for joining. Alright, it's great to be here.
I'm looking forward to this. So. Yeah, I know you put out a lot of content and for those paying attention, they start to kind of get an idea of your viewpoints and whatnot. But for those of that are new to you at this point, um, why don't you just give us a little bit of background on, um, you know, kind of what you're focusing on and what you're doing. Sure, very briefly, I started my career in wealth management. I lived in China for a decade, in Shanghai and Beijing,
and uh really did not enjoy the incentives there. You know, it was very the how the the legacy system had degraded and decayed and kind of broken was very apparent to me. And I had always been you know, kind of unsettled by the state of the world. It looked to be going in the wrong direction to me, and being in the belly of the beast as it were, you know, just kind of proved that out to me
even more. Hey, guys, let me just interrupt this interview real quick, just to plug the show sponsor, and that is block Fi. Now. Block five is doing amazing things in the bitcoin finance space. As a matter of fact, they've cracked some really big news by bringing on the x cftc UM chair Chris gian Carlo Um and they are one of the most transparent, most heavily regulated UM companies inside the United States, which gives me a lot
of trust into what the services are. Now. I've recently did a video talking about how to retire off bitcoin and you can do that by leveraging debt and interest against bitcoin. And Block five is the number one company in the United States or maybe in the world to go to and use UM. They are leading the charges or paying interest on your bitcoin if you park it
with him, or you can borrow against it. Now, as I broke down in that video, you can borrow against your bitcoin, and when you take debt against it, it's not taxable. It's not taxable. Event you can use that debt for anything that you want, including to live off of, to leverage up and buy more, or roll it into another asset. Um you can do something like I've done recently, like sell some real estate put that money into bitcoin.
Now as that bitcoin price has risen, I'm able to borrow against it and go back and buy the same real estate or something similar. And I still own the bitcoin, and I also owned the new asset as well. Lots of ways you can do this um. And block five is the company that I recommend. Down in the description, I have a link that you can click on. If you choose to use that link, you can earn up the two h fifty dollars in bitcoin just for using
that link. So check out block fine now. And so you know, I wandered for a while, try to learn, try to figure out, you know, you know, what could resolve the world's issues. And then you know, around thirteen fourteen, I came across bitcoin. I started going down the rabbit hole, touched it a few times before it really clicked. And then, you know, like many of us, uh, it's been a
never ending journey ever since. And and conviction and interest just continues to increase as I learn more about both bitcoin and all the different things that it touches and
the implications that it's going to have on society. And so, you know, my focus these days is not so much building the case for bitcoin and discussing, you know, where it sits in the economic and financial paradigm of the world and investing all that is really interesting and I think you know, um, there's a lot of great acommendators, including yourself, that that really delve into those topics, and I really appreciate your insights as we're discussing before we
fired this up. My main interest is looking at what are going to be the implications of having this form of money emerged on the world. What are the characteristics of the parallel system that is emerging as you know that that is the bitcoin culture, let's say, and how it's changing people, you know. That's that's my big thing is nothing matters unless it changes behavior, right, That's why
things are interesting, That's why things are important. That's why tools are relevant and useful because they allow a certain form of novel behavior or they improve upon a behavior that was you know, that existed before and so for me, the interesting question is is what does this thing mean
for changes in human behavior and interaction? And I think if you're in the bitcoin quote unquote community, if you're mixing it up on Twitter, if you're paying attention, you're starting to notice that a unique culture is emerging with certain principles and certain values, and certain forms of communication and certain ideas and certain methods of interacting. And that's what I really like delving into. And uh, it's it's been a real honor and a privilege to be able
to do so yeah, yeah, it is. It is awesome, and I want to dig into that. Um uh, well, we'll position that towards the end. I want to. I want to I want to start by kind of setting a stage a little bit kind of for where we're at right now, and then uh, really I want to kind of dive into, um, you know, more actionable stuff like what we can set up the stage with some of the problems that we see and maybe some underlying reasons, and then we'll dig into maybe some actionable stuff and
we'll talk about this parallel system that's being built. As as you said, this whole culture of people is kind of congregating and doing real things that I that I think brings a lot of hope if people were to learn about that. But UM, if we start kind of at the beginning, um, or I should say a present day, Um, obviously, the world is in a state of uh, I don't know what you want to call it, the disrepair. I mean that people, everybody knows there's something going wrong, and
it seems like tensions are boiling high. Um, all across the world. I know you're in you know, we're in different countries, but we're all still seeing the same things. UM. Kind of give us a I mean, I guess you studied a lot of like history, right, so a lot of these books and they've kind of foretold a lot of it. But now we seem to be learning some of these same lessons that our forefathers warned us about.
So what what do you think is happening right now in the world that maybe could have been avoided or we were warned about that that we're that we're all staring at right now. Well that's the sixty four million dollar question, isn't it. But you know, I think down yeah, yeah, I mean they say history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, and that I think is one of the reasons why we continue to make the same mistakes, because the circumstances of history are always different, the players, the times, all
that kind of stuff. But the let's say, the psychological processes that underpinned the thinking and the decision making are, you know, are very similar, you know so, and I know some people will find this extreme, but lately I've been digging, digging into nineteen thirties Germany, right because I I wanted to see or I want to try to understand better what psychological processes, what assumptions, what biases, what you know, what was going on in the cultural zeitgeist
at the time that allowed that circumstance to unfold the way that it did, because I reject the the simplistic explanation that either everyone was scared of that out of their boots and they just act yes too, you know, a tyrannical leader, or that they were you know, somehow corrupted and they were all evil and they were uniquely evil for example, and that couldn't happen to other people
because you know, for whatever reason. I mean, the fact is is that we're all human beings, and so the behavior of any one human being exists and is every human being is capable of the same behavior. The question is is what circumstances draw that out? What what psychological processes allow that to occur? And um, you know, so that the times we're in right now are really concerning for me, because, um, I see a lot of delusion
in the world. I see a lot of dishonesty. I see a lot of I see this the strength of ideology in the world. I see the corrupting effect of the cultural zeitgeist that causes people not to see things clearly and not even want to see things clearly. So,
you know, that's all extremely concerning. And what I think is different this time, you know, to be honest, and to bring it back to bitcoin, is that Bitcoin I think is a genuinely unique thing or element that that we can interact with that really changes, um some of the changes that the dynamic in a way that might allow us to not make the same mistakes that we've made in the past. Now, you know, will it, will it catch on quick enough? Will enough people get it?
And are we correct in our assumption about what it is?
But you know, I don't have to explain to you but just you know, for your audience, the corruption of the money has been one of the repeating problems throughout history, you know, whether we're talking about Roman times or whether we're talking about the modern nation state, and of course the regime that we're under globally right now since nine the powers that be, whoever they are, and and to be honest, I think most of the time well intended,
you know. I I don't ascribe so easily to you know, the notion that we have evil overlords that are you know, intentionally enslaving us. I think a lot of the time it's incompetence and ignorance, not malice. But nevertheless, the process that unfolds is that the money is corrupted and we lose a tether to any sense of reality and in the creation of our money, and as a result, a
world of illusion emerges on top of that. And it's it's almost, you know, poetically correct that if you if the value underpinning the society is an illusion, is created out of nothing, then why would you expect the perception of the society at large to be anything different? And that's that's all. That's that's a lot of good stuff. I want to unpack some of that stuff for it
for just a minute. So, UM, A couple of things that you said, and I think it's important for everyone to pay attention to you, is that you know a lot of times people who want to just focus on the money and like Mark, I just subscribed you just to hear about money and economics and what the FED is doing. But like all of this is intertwined, right, So you have to understand like, you know, human you know humanity, as you said, like humans are somewhat predictable. Um,
you know we have we all have human nature. Basically, humans are motivated by two things, right, Uh, moving towards pleasure moving away from pain. Um. And so we're kind of like on this bumper ride, like moving between that. UM.
So you have to kind of understand human nature. You have to understand societal stuff, um to to really get that and and kind of what you were talking about, I think if I have this right, but if you look at um, you were looking at nineteen thirties Germany and obviously that was a time of great turmoil that
led to the whole world going into a war. Um. It was almost like society is always like a push pull, right, like when it's a cause and an effect, so like when this type of environment happens, then this is kind
of the outcome. So I guess are you seeing when you're back in nineteen thirties, are you seeing like these certain factors were apparent in the world or in Germany at that time, which was then led to that outcome, And then maybe we see those same type of factors setting up today that could potentially lead to the same
type of outcome. The simple answer is yes. I mean, I'm not going to pretend to understand all the different variables that went into the psychology of your middle class German citizen in the early nineteen thirties, but broadly speaking, what I think is happening is that people are being led astray by ideology and there's not enough of a commitment to developing a perception based on clarity and truth. Right,
There's not enough, uh, dedication to that. And if there isn't, I think it's easy to be led astray by fear, by ideology, by a charismatic leader, by the you know, by the different delusions that emerge as a result of how the government spends money, creates money, all that kind
of stuff. So you know, broadly speaking, one of the thing it troubles me the most, and the thing that I guess I try to articulate is don't you know, make up your own mind, critic your own critical thinking is of the utmost important here and never stop refining your perspectives because that's what That's how we give away our freedom far before we're locked into a cage or a country or what have you, is we we delegate our perception to somebody else. We allow somebody else to
construct it for us. And there's many reasons for that, and there's there's reasons of incentive and in fear and that those kind of things. But I think if we need to get back to a place where we trust ourselves more than anybody, and if you're going to trust yourself, you have to put in the work. You have to educate yourself. And you know, again, in today's society, most
people rely on outside sources, uh for their education. I mean, most people take the nightly news and they read maybe the newspaper and a couple of people that they follow online and they feel like they've got to grasp on on what's going on in the world. And um, I also think there's we're so deep into the let's say late stage Fiat big government dynamic, um, that it seems so natural and normal to people. And again you could you could probably easily make a parallel to nineteen thirties
Germany that things the status quo is very intoxicating. It can feel normal, like you emerge in a world and you think, well, it's always kind of been this way, so this is the way that it should be. Exactly. These are the defenders of the status quo. This is basically the crux of their argument. Whereas I think we would come from the perspective of looking at things from first principles and saying, is this the way things should be?
What is wrong here? And what is wrong based on perhaps moral principles, what is wrong based on you know, uh, previous outcomes in the past that we can glean insights from and apply them to what's happening currently. Um, And there just seems to be not enough of that going on, and I think that's partially why we're we're going down the wrong road in many cases. Yeah, um, it's interesting.
You know, you were talking about kind of this education and people are differing their education or relying on relying on so called experts today rather than trying to figure things out for themselves. And it's interesting, right, it starts with consuming information and then thinking through that, and then you're thinking changes your actions. You had talked earlier about right, we have to change actions. Um. But but you know it's interesting if we look back through history, we can
see that many times. Let's say, you know, before the separation of church and state, right, the church was the state for so long, and the people didn't have the information. They didn't have the Bible, so they relied on the Church to tell them what the Bible said, and they just whatever the Church says, that's what the Bible says. Right. But once that was decentralized and everybody had it, they could all read it for themselves, and it was that
education process that freed them. I think we could see again, um, the Roman Empire seven years of you know, an amazing republic, and it fell, we went to the dark ages. They lost all the education, and then the Renaissance people got the information again and boom um, and and we might almost see the same thing happening today. To your point, where all these people don't want to educate themselves. Um,
but maybe that tide is changing. Maybe, as you said, there's a whole group of people that are are starting to pull out those whole books, dust them off. Maybe there's another renaissance coming from that education. Yeah, what do you think? Undeniably? You know that the the Internet and you know again this show, my show, all the amazing content coming out is at least creating a free market and information. The incumbents still have a lot of influence.
There's you know, a lot of ingrained behavior and network effects of that kind of stuff. But I think that is changing. And the reason why bitcoin is so useful in that regard is because you know, some people may not be that compelled to learn or enhance their perspective for just for that reason. But when there's greed involved, when there's money involved, people are far there's a star
far stronger pull. And so what I find interesting about what's happening in bitcoin is a lot of people may come for the gains, right, come for your portfolio diversification, come for your inflation resistance, whatever, but you wind up in this community that is really has a tremendous appetite for learning about all the different ways that this thing is relevant and meaningful, and so yes, that means in the economic, financial, and investing realm, but also means in
the social. It also means in the historical. It also means in the psychological. That also means in the philosophical and even the spiritual. And we're still figuring out what all that means. But the point is is that these people are it's kind of a revivification of their intellectual curiosity where I think a lot of people you get put through the meat grinder of of you know, formal education. You know, you come out of your KG well school, you're going to university, a path is kind of set
for you. You put your blinders on, you work, you try to enhance your your life and achieve the things you want to achieve, and your your intellectual curiosity gets
dialed down dramatically because you have to focus. I think what bitcoin is doing is is turning that back up, and because it's it's kind of proposing to people like, hey, there's a new world emerging here, there's a new paradigm emerging here, and it's going to change a lot of things very radically, and you know, it behooves you to learn about what's going on and what those changes might be.
And also, hey, look, I think at least from my perspective and a lot of people I speak to, it reminds you how fun it is to learn about something that's both interesting and meaningful. Right, It's not just an intellectual you know, uh exercise, it's actually relevant learning. And that's a that's a blessing. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a great point that you just brought up. And I think, um, you know, if you look at like an art, so martial arts or painting or any type of art, it's
really like it's a lifelong journey. Right, you don't ever achieve that the pinnacle of that. And if anybody's done a sport or a martial art or even just working out or whatever, like you love up those gains like oh I learned this new move, I can't wait to try it again, And and there's fulfillment in like getting better at that craft. And I think education could be
the same way. Like, um, you take that red pill and all of a sudden you have this new world and now there's this curiosity and each time you learn something, you realize how much more there is to learned. And so maybe it's kind of like that flywheel. I like that. Um, now you said something earlier that you said, uh, you know, you don't know how there's the world of illusion. Um, you don't know how much was well intended versus evil. I'm curious, you know, it seems like it seems like
I would agree with that. We have generations now that have been taught wrong information and so I guess they're just naive or they're ignorant or whatever. However, if we go back, we could almost see that there was like a uh, intentional takeover of the education system to change it. So maybe it was like intended, uh you know, fifty years ago, sixty years ago, and now today it's just
what people thinking they're doing well intentions. Yeah, I mean I think there's almost always agendas, right, But I think very very few people consider themselves to be evil, right, I guess. And it's a it's a matter of where you stand. It's a matter of perspective. Right, one person executing on their agenda and their incentives might be construed as opposing the incentives and the agenda of another person,
and maybe they characterize that as evil. But is that like outright evil, like a desire to do ill in the world. Probably not, um, although you can make a case that it's always subjective. But my point is just that I think most people are playing to their incentives and doing what they think is best for themselves, and maybe there is often not enough consideration for the greater
good or the people that those actions might impact. You know, that's definitely the case, especially in the current regime money
regime that we exist in today. But um, the point for me is it doesn't matter, like if you're a type of conspiracy type, like I don't think you're ever going to be able to discern the truth, right you You might have clues of what's going on or whose agenda, what agenda might be operating, but I just don't think that stuff can never be discerned with any degree of certainty.
And I don't think it matters, right like I think whether it's some grand conspiracy to enslave you, or whether it's a an issue right at the basis of the system that creates all these bad incentives that allows people to take advantage of them everywhere, all the way up the ladder, I don't think it matters in terms of what solution is best. Right. So, as we were discussing before, we came on to me, Bitcoin is the greatest force
for positive change to the world has ever seen. And so I'm just gonna lean into that as hard as I can, rather than trying to specifically identify the source of all the different problems. And I think it's good to be educated about, uh, what's going wrong because that can be a motivating force about how much you you know,
the energy you bring to finding a solution. So I think there's a an element of identifying what's going wrong, but maybe not all the way into knowing exactly why that is because I think that the most important thing is is a solution available, is a solution in front of you? If the answer is yes, then learn as much and engage as much as you can about and into that. And I think that's the way the best way to resolve things. Yeah, I actually really like that.
I agree with that. I think, um, it's important, it's important to understand what the problem is because then we need to make sure we have the right cure for that. But we don't have to know, you know, we are where we are and we don't have to like, was it intentional was a conspiration, doesn't really matter. We are where we are and and the understand that situation and to make a plan for that. Um. That's why I've always really tried to focus my content on why why
is bitcoin even important? And you have to start to understand what those problems are in order to understand how bitcoin can start to solve that. Um. So let's let's transition into that a little bit. So, UM, you know, we are where we are, as we just said, uh, we're in We're in this world that has gone increasingly towards centralization and globalization and all those types of things. Um, we've also seen I think the Internet allowed, you know,
the rise of centralization. So Google took over, right, Kids in first grade are starting with Google grown books like that's all they know, right, and so, uh, you know, the Internet has allowed that rise of centralization. But what we've also seen is that this manipulation, I like to say manipulation always leads to I'm sorry, centralization always leads
to manipulation. And so Facebook still in the data and well as Fargo is putting fake bank accounts on and the government's doing whatever, right, and so we've kind of got to this point where like all these institutions maybe education, healthcare, finance, and media, I mean they're corrupted. And that's uh, there's in my opinion, I don't think there's any going and saving that system. But as you're saying, we have a tool now, UM to actually just allow us to go
build this alternative system. Hey, sorry to interrupt this video just one more time. I'm not running Google ads. So it's actually way less interruption than I normally would have on a video. UM. And that's because it's sponsored by block five. UM. They are opening up the world of bitcoin and financial products, offering to pay you interest on your bitcoin UM. Better than own in a rental property that you have to manage and control and have the risks. You can just earn interest on it or you can
leverage against it. Now, I plan to hold my bitcoin forever and literally never sell my bitcoin. So how do you do that? Well, if I need money, I don't want to sell that bitcoin. I'm gonna pay tax on it all right, I'm gonna end up with less and I don't have the bitcoin anymore. So a better way to do it is to borrow against the bitcoin. So I've put all my money into bitcoin. If I want to buy a car, or I want to buy a house, I can borrow against it at very very low competitive rates.
Get my house, get my car, whatever that may be, and get to keep the bitcoin. I've done a whole video on this. You can find it. I'll link it down to the description below, how to retire off a bitcoin without paying taxes, and you can do that with Block five Services' link to the video down below. I'm also going to put a link to block Fight. If you choose to click on that link to check them out, you can earn up to two fifty dollars in free bitcoin just for using that link. And that's it. Let's
go ahead and get back to the interview. And it's kind of like, uh, like the book Atlas Shrugged, or if you if you watch the movie Outlas Shrug, but all the people, all the productive people in society just for leaving to go create this new society. And uh, I think there's some parallels to that we're seeing today. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know one of the points a couple of minutes ago we were talking about this kind of reinvigorating
effect that bitcoin is having. I think a huge part of that is also the hope element, you know, Like I was saying, I when I was younger, in my early twenties, Um, you know, I looked out at the world, I did my best to understand how it all worked, and I came away with a fairly despondent attitude because I was like, you know, there's, of course, there's beauty in the world, and you can have a good time and all that kind of stuff, but large scale things seem to be going, you know, very much in the
wrong direction. I didn't see how that could be turned around. And so that's all the more reason why you put those blinders on. You just try to create, you know, the best life you can for yourself and kind of
ignore everything else. Um Whereas bitcoin, I think that one of the reasons why it's invigorated people is because it now has changed that perception of the future from not such a rosy picture to the rosiest that you know, you could ever imagine, you know, the Renaissance times a hundred or times a thousand, and so this just awakened so many things in us too that maybe we're latent,
so that we didn't even know existed. To learn and to engage and grow and uh, as you say, I think a parallel system is emerging, and I think we're seeing the initial stages of that. And and there's a couple of elements of that. One is people are going where you know, there's a there seems to be a greater respect for individual freedoms, right, because this is, after all, I think, a revolution in individual sovereignty. Bitcoin allows you
to be self sovereign over your money. And once you have that experience of self sovereignty over perhaps the most most important thing over which you can can have that, I think you that gets juxtaposed to other areas of your life, and you say, well, this is such a great empowering feeling of being sovereign over my money. What would it feel like to be sovereign over my education? What would it feel sovereignty over my my living circumstances
and my food supply and that kind of stuff. And I think people are going out and trying to develop those solutions. And I also think, what's interesting, and I agree, I don't think there's going to be much changing the incumbent system. I think we're going to have to build
something better. And what's what I'm finding really interesting is that people with the orange colored glasses on, right, big people that kind of took the orange pill, and they're seeing the world through a very, in some cases dramatically different lens of sound money, of self sovereignty. They're looking at these things like education, like the food supply, you know, like whatever, whatever, and they're actually reimagining it through that lens.
And it's really fascinating to see some of the solutions that are beginning to emerge as a result of that. And I don't think it's a shock. I don't think it's a surprise to many people. Because if we're being so critical of what's emerged as a result of using you know, fiat money, let's say that the mindset that emerged from a society using that, then we should expect a fairly dramatic perception of mindset to emerge from a
society that is predicated on a incorruptible sound money. Um. And you know, one that that I spoke to some people on the podcast recently was this you know, decentralized cattle coop, where, uh, these guys are reimagining how to raise cattle and they're bringing together people who want to ranch investors and landowners and uh, you know, getting ancient DNA very resilient cattle to both regenerate kind of a permaculture sort of idea where they're regenerating the land, they're
giving people the opportunity to be self sufficient. UM. And it's you know, I won't explain it very well. UM, So I refer people to to that podcast with um that I had recently. But the point is that people are seeing the world differently and they're developing different solutions,
and we're just at the very beginning of that. And I'm super pumped to see because one of the things people ask me a lot is, you know, I'm super into bitcoin, but I'm an architect or I'm super into bitcoin and I you know, make chairs or whatever, and I want to be more involved in bitcoin. And so, you know, up to this point, it's been like, well, you can start a bitcoin company, or you can be a podcaster, or you can do it not very many
different things. And what I think is interesting that we're starting to see now is people are realizing that bitcoin is money, and money is relative. You know, money touches everything, and so whatever it is you do, I suspect that when you put on the bitcoin lens, you'll see what you do differently, and you'll see an opportunity to do what you do but with a bitcoin twist. And I think that's what we're starting to see, and that's what's going to be the impetus for creating this parallel economy
that we've been referring to. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a that's a great way to put it. I kind of look at it like imagine like a giant tree, like a giant oak tree, and it's got, you know, I don't know, thousands or tens of thousands of leaves on it, and like each leave is like representative to like a problem in society, right, Uh, the incarceration rate, of the divorce rate, or the homelessness rate, or whatever it may be. And we can sit there and we can pluck each
leave and we can discuss it. But at the at the base, at the root, that's the money. Right. So it's like that's the root of of all those problems that we have. And if we you know, we if we can fix the money, we can fix the world. Um and so um. As you said, I think it was a perfect right. You have that orange colored lens and so you first take control of that money and it just changes the way that you look at the world.
So it gives you a different time preference all of a sudden, Right now you can focus on the future instead of you know, taking away some of the uncertainty of the of the near term. And what it's doing kind of like back to the Atlas shrug, right, it's attracting this mind share of of people that are pulled together on value. So like society today is trying to break people into identities, but like people don't. People don't
usually group on identities, right, they group on values. And so it's pulling this whole group of people that have this freedom loving, self sustaining, um, self reliant culture and now they're reimagining that world like that that like that like that cattle company, which is great. Even even like education, I know, I mean you do. You're doing like book clubs, right, so you're like pulling people together and like let's look at this book and let's study it, let's discuss it.
And even that is is a different way of doing things. And now you're kind of taking on education. Yeah, I mean, this is what I love so much about this This whole phenomenon. It's like it is about each and every one of us changing and developing. Like we kind of end up having this idea, at least some of us as we grow up, Like we kind of have a set image of ourselves, you know, how we fit into
the world, who we are, that kind of thing. And what I love about this is this is I think inspiring people to uh reopen that that door, right, and the kind of explore who they might be and what they might be able to understand and the perspectives they might be able to inhabit, and then to feed into
a culture that values that. And that is all about kind of enhancing that and a genuine excitement about what it means that we we now have this thing that we can coalesce around that is inspiring us to develop and grow and allowing us the opportunity to feed into it, to to kind of grow the whole. So I think it's awesome, and I think your point about how it's kind of a magnet bringing people in is is amazing.
And I think it's so great to see that something with the principles that you articulated, you know, something that is about freedom, something that is about fairness, something that is about personal responsibility, something that is about independence, Like these are really good values and principles, right, and to see this thing, you know, self selecting, to pluck out all those people around the world who are kind of on the front the initial stages of embodying or feeling
or or valuing those things all being pulled into bitcoin to make this thing stronger, make this thing more robust, make this thing more dynamic, and as a result of doing that, they expand the surface area of what this thing is. So then the next cohort of people will be pulled in as well, you know. So it's it's a a brand new culture emerging around I think, far
better principles than the one we currently have. And it has this magnet like effect on picking out the people that are closest to those principles already, and then further away, and then further away in the further way as it expands and it gets bigger, and you know, it's it's a genuine paradigm shift and a genuine cultural phenomenon that's underway. Something else that's interesting I think is um I think if you look at the United States, the founding of
the United States. And really, I think you know what's made the United States great was was a belief in individualism. And um, it's the individual that should have the liberty and the freedom and and that then adds to the collective good. And so what do I mean by that? Well, um, you know, you and I were different people and we look at the world differently. And that's a good thing
because I see different problems than you do. And so now I can go out and solve those problems, um, which you probably wouldn't have seen and you wouldn't have solved. And so if we're all we're all the same, If we're all you know in a collectivism, U, we're not solving all those needs. And then so I think layering onto what you've just said, Bitcoin is attracting people who are about self reliance, about self responsibility, that are into individualism and so they've come together on a shared a
group of values. But because they're all individuals, Um, it's this decentralized method of going out and seeing these problems, whether that be getting good meat on a sustainably raised land to people, um, of of seeing people that are starting like little pods for schools. Right, everyone's being homeschool today or a lot of people are, A lot of kids are, and so you know, maybe a decentralized way
to attack um. Education. Obviously finances already being disrupted. Um, so we're seeing that and so really all these institutions are are being broken down. Um what about government or maybe governance? What are you what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, well you touch upon something that I think is one of the conceits of both our times and times in the past when things have gone astray. And because people might hear the word individualism and they might disagree, but
the fact is that there is nothing but individuals acting. Right. To assume that there's collective action is a fallacy. It's a delusion. It's a bunch of individuals. They may be acting together, but it's still individuals acting. And I I think that's in our current times, people for ideological reasons
or otherwise assume that that's not the case. They assume that there's like some sort of group uh identity or action rather than individuals and as you say, like individuals acting and taking responsibility for their actions and then engaging with other individuals to achieve whatever ends they may have a mind that's the point, and that's the strength of individuals interacting on a voluntary basis in a free market.
That's how you get the best outcomes. But to misconstrue that relationship and assume that there are certain groups that are kind of destined for ideological reasons to act in a certain way, and that those ideologies should or could be imposed on others to get them to conform to act in a similar way. That is what ultimately leads into tyrannical relationships, right of imposing what you think is best on somebody else. And that's the that's the problem.
And I agree that you know, the founding of the US and the founding documents of the US were phenomenal ideas, and you know, all things considered, they've held up fairly well. But you know the problem is is that we've never had something that can keep those ideas and the people
that are meant to steward them in check. You know, how how can we stave off the corruption of of the individual And I think this is where we get into kind of ah esoteric territory with bitcoin, because we can make rules and we can all agree to abide by them, But what do you do when people cheat? And what do you do when people cheat at scale? And what do you do when when powerful people cheat? And you know, there there's answers to that, but there's
no great answers to that. And I think that is why societies have kind of always degraded, or or at least they've they've gone away from their founding principles because humans are corruptible. And and if bitcoin, I mean the the the proposition or the possibility here is that bitcoin is somewhat of an incorruptible substance that will allow out us to coordinate human interaction, not only in a better way than we've ever done before, but in a way
that maybe cannot be corrupted. And I know that's a big statement and time will tell if it's accurate or not, but it's on the question of governance. UM, I think most of the governance should be in the free market, and the free the fundamental, the most important piece of the free market is the rails on which it runs,
and that is the money. So if the money can be incorruptible, and if it's fair and the rules are the same for everybody, then I think you get a market that is far, far less susceptible to corruption, and as a result of that, the voluntary interactions of the market participants will be will will be self governing. Let's say that being said, will human beings still want to come together? Um, for you know, collective action that can't
be facilitated by the market. Probably, But I'm not willing to you know, I'm not able to identify right now what that will look like when we have a global free market, because in principle, I think that if you if you want something, and if enough people want it, then there's an opportunity there, and the market will provide it an absent and ability to corrupt that relationship, you should probably get it in the form that you're demanding it.
So I don't think government or governance will go away entirely, but I think most of the governance will be a natural manifestation of a market based on incorruptible money. Yeah, yeah, that's I think that's a great point. And I think you know what, typically what smart people would do is they would look for areas that had success and try to kind of reverse engineer that success leads clues. I always say, so like, wow, this was very successful. What
were the ingredients that made that successful. So we can see examples all over. I mean Hong Kong was a good example of that. The United States was a great example of that. And uh, the way what's interesting of the United States was founded was it was founded on a decentralized government. So they came from like this monarchy, which is the ultimate centralized government, and they came and they created a republic where all the states were to
be independent of each other. Um. In that type of a role, the President of the United States is really inconsequential and like the President of the United States, nobody even really cares because they don't really have any power other than some foreign affairs. UM. But that's trended to become more and more centralized. And so looking at where success, right, the United States had massive success um for hundreds of years based off of that principle. Like I said, Hong Kong,
we could look at Germany, East and West. I mean it's a perfect example. But um, I can see it's decentralized, you know, decentralizing more in smaller pockets of government. And I would say that, I mean, million people United States is just way too many to be under one regime. Right, because they don't know that. But back to the point you were talking about and laying that found that foundation with bitcoin. UM, I'm looking at it like UM, if you if you, you know, cleans a lot of things.
And that's why it's so difficult to understand. UM. There's been four technological revolutions in the last two and fifty years, and and not new technologies, but revolutions where it literally changed human life. Right. So, uh, we had the Industrial Revolution bringing people out of farms into factories. That was a massive change. We had steam, steam engines and and steal, I mean steal that was massive, on and on and on. We had automobiles like people had walked for all of
mankind and now they could ride um. And and if you look at that, every fifty years basically is how that breaks down. The last one one was the invention of the microprocessor, which of course allows us to do what we're doing right now. Fifty years from one is
right now today. And I think we're on another technological revolution with this decentralized technology, obviously the bitcoin blockchain UM, which will change the way society works forever UM, just like the microprocessor did, just like the automobile did as well, and so um A lot of times people try to say, oh,
it's kind of like digital cash. I get that, Sure, it's like digital goal Okay, but to your you know, the point we're both making, I guess is that, uh, moving towards this decentralization and we can see that setting up and so whether that's decentralized government or whatever. But yeah, it's a it's a technological revolution. I think human humanity is going to be forever changed off of that. I
couldn't agree more. And I think it's really difficult to even you know, even get catch a glimpse of of what that means and what the implications are. I mean, we're we're kind of in the eye of the storm of an exponential technology that's going to foster a complete
paradigm shift. So we have this like tingling in our spine, like this is big, but it's so hard to see beyond the event horizon that you're just left with, you know, kind of contending with what it is now and those kind of fleeting you know, images that emerge in your mind about what it might be in the future, and then you know, we don't want to be led astray
by our own ambitions or hopes or dreams. So we we try to stay grounded into what is right now, and we try to poke holes in this thing, and we try to we you know, ground it in an an objective understanding. But I think what we're dealing with here is even stranger than we can suppose. And as you say, you know, gold two point oh was a nice narrative, you know, sounder money for the world is a nice narrative all one per cent of of what's
actually happening. And I think it's a genuine transformation of people, of human beings will be the result of this thing being distributed and widely used over what period of time I'm not sure. I think, you know, probably even after
the world is on a bitcoin standard. But I keep coming back to what I'm seeing in the people that understand are beginning to understand and are beginning to engage and use bitcoin, you know, prime early from you know, interactions and Twitter and on podcasts and stuff like that. I think that gives us the clues to what kind of a culture will emerge on top of this thing. And I'm amazed at the kind of impact and the
speed at which that impact changes people, you know. So I've I've spoken to people that have been in bitcoins since two thousand eleven, and I've spoken to people that got in in in mid and just to hear the stories of how understanding and engaging this thing has changed their perspective radically on so many different things, in a manner that the universally deemed is beneficial. And uh, it's it's one of the hallmarks is that it's super humbling.
You know, you're now kind of in the presence of a change and a thing that's creating that change that you cannot understand, but that you that you know is incredibly meaningful and and is a tool to use for the improvement of your life and the improvement of broader structure of the society that you're in. And that's really humbling. And I think that's why there's such a hunger for trying to understand it, because you don't want to take
that arrogant or huboristic position. We're like, Okay, I get it, it's goal two point oh, bounce out my portfolio, sharp ratio or whatever. You you there's just this sense that you're like, this is way bigger than I'm I'm capable of comprehending right now. So I want to try to push my understanding into as many different looks and crannies
of this thing as I can. And the only way to do that is to talk to people, learn from people, read the books, you know, quiet contemplation, whatever your process is, to try to get a sense for how meaningful this
thing is. And and that's why we're so lucky to have the great writers that we have in the space, and the great speakers and all the great books on articles and and stuff like that, because they help us gain insight into what this thing actually is, because it's still very much ill defined, i think, even in the minds of the most convicted you know bulls out there. Yeah, yeah, I agree, great point and you know, kind of wrap
it up. But I think that was that was kind of a great point to kind of transition to just um the hope. Right. So, we obviously started talking about a lot of problems and the world's messed up, and it's easy to be super scared and and on top of that, not just the problems that we have, but we have some leaders, you know, the World Economic Forum telling us by you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. Right.
So there's definitely people that have that agenda for us, and that's that's very scary and a lot of times, you know, maybe people are like an Austris with their head in the sand or whatever it may be. But the reality is, and I like to just remind people that if that's not the future you want, then that's not the future you should have, and you should be working towards bringing a different future the future you have.
And uh, now people have a tool, right, So it's like it's easy to be frustrated when there's you don't see an option. And I'm in America. I'm a set, I'm a strong second moment supporter, and I have a lot of guns, but I don't ever want to use those. That's the last thing I ever want to do. But now we actually have a real tool, and so I think it's encouraging seeing people coming and and even just
encouraging knowing there's something actionable that people can do. Yeah, I mean, I'm with everyone on the frustrations that the current worlds circumstances uh caused me to feel, you know, And I've got to remind myself on a daily basis not to engage in the frustration, and not to engage in the mud slinging, and just to focus on the solution, because you know, we we referenced the sovereign individual maybe before we started recording, but um, that book kind of
elucidates the fact that it's the technological changes and the technological innovation that emerge on the world that the primary cause for the shifts and the structure of governance and and the you know, the quote unquote logic of violence that basically limits people's degree of freedom right, so instead of and and I think a lot of people know this in their own lives, Like if you try to persuade them of an opinion you hold, that's a very
difficult thing to do because they're grounded in their own perspective and worldview. But if you engage in a solution that's positive, that enhances your life, that benefit is apparent to people. And I think that's what causes them in their own mind to say, what's going on with that person over there, Like they seem happy, they seem successful,
they seem like they're engaged. Like those are things that people are attracted to, and I think that they're curious about and that's the thing that will lead them to place on pause their own you know, perspectives and their own opinions and dip their toes in the water and
see what else might be there. And so, you know, I totally agree Bitcoin is a weapon of freedom, um, and it's a peaceful weapon of freedom, and it's one unlike that we've ever had before that I think, if we're right, fixes a lot of the systemic issues that a lot of us have been identifying and that frustrate a lot of us. So, you know, I think that's that's the way forward here. Don't get mired in the quicksand of the political arguments do youre or the social problems.
Engage in what the emerging solution is. Engage that community or the people in that community that are thinking in a similar way, whose mind is on a hopeful future, a positive future, a better future, and do that both for the betterment of your own circumstances and for the broader picture. And I think if we all take that upon ourselves to improve ourselves, engaging things we believe are meaningful, uh, and engage with people that you know, we think are
good and doing good work. If we all do that we're gonna wind up with a better world at some point in the future, and that's probably the quickest way to get there. So you know that, that's what I've been doing, and um it seems like that's what you've been doing and a lot of other people in the bitcoin space, and that's what's so exciting about what's happening right Well, that's uh, that's that's a great note to end on, a great, great message of hope. So we'll
go ahead and wrap it up with that. Um, so hopefully everybody, uh solve the problem. But now they see a solution. And I think, like said, once you once you you know, human nature is like we I feel like humans need like that goal, just like a carrot to chase sort of thing. And so now everyone has that that carrot. So great, great time, John, I appreciate
you taking the time and talking with us today. I'm gonna make sure that we're gonna link your podcast in the show notes down below because it's great and everyone should be paying attention to that and subscribing anything else that you want to plug, anything else coming up or that you're working on. Uh No, man, I just appreciate you having me on. Appreciate the chat, and I look forward to doing it again sometime. Cool John, thanks so much, appreciate it. I'd probably take care all right,