CBDCs Will Be Irrelevant, Don’t Worry | CK

conversation with CK. We're gonna talk about bihoin, We're gonna talk about crypto, We're gonna talk about the staking, We're gonna talk about the US government crackdown. We're gonna talk about the rest of the world's demand where this is going way into the future. We get into that conversation, lots of fun, amazing conversation with c K. Let's go ahead, just jump right into it, all right, c K, thanks so much for joining me today. We have a lot

of questions. I've been working on some new big YouTube videos and doing some research into some of these topics, and I'm pretty excited to talk to you about them today. So anyway, thanks for joining me. Yeah. Mark, super honored to be here. Thank you so much for the invite, and to the listeners. I know you're all big Marks, big Mark Moss fans. I am as well. It's been an honor to get to know you over these years

being in bitcoin. Thanks thanks, K appreciate that. So a couple of things I want to talk about is the big bad government and kind of this this choke point two point zero that seems to be kind of coming back around. Wilde seems to have in my opinion, I think it's crashed the cryptocurrency markets back in twenty seventeen. It seems to be coming back again. And then there's a lot of stuff going on in the cryptocurrency markets

against staking, against stable coins, things like that. So I want to talk about those things, this potential choke point two point zero that seems to be back, and some other questions. So, you know, the first thing is I like to say, just super simply, markets stopped going up when there's no more buyers, which is why we have blow off tops, because you suck in all the buyers for that cycle, and then then it crashes back down

in twenty seventeen. Well even Previous to that, twenty fourteen fifteen sixteen, the Obama administration had been implementing something called Operation Choke Point, where they were basically cutting off funding to lots of different organizations that were legal, legal organizations like paid a lending, you know, AMMO guns, but legal things where they're cutting off And then we saw at the end of twenty seventeen they cut off access to

get into cryptocurrency, so cut off credit cards, banking, you couldn't wire money to coin base to buy bitcoin anymore, kind of a thing like that, And we're not going to say it caused the crash, but it certainly didn't help when no one could get into the market. Now we're kind of at this point where maybe with Gary Gensler, the SEC looks completely horrible. They should shut down and disgrace. In my opinion, over FT fiasco, they didn't where they

weren't able to protect anybody. But now it seems like they're coming after like innocent people maybe and really coming hard after staking and stable coins. So let's dig into that for a minute. Let's start with the Let's start with the stable coin issue. Now, anyway, let's start with that.

What's your take on them coming after these stable coins, Like they're cracking down on Paxos, which is a a regulated exchange in New York, no less, which is the harshest state to be regulated in, and they're saying that a stable coin is a security. I mean, I wish that I was more of an expert insecurities, but I can tell you this. You know, the crackdowns on stable coins, the crackdowns on staking, these are things that bitcoiners have

been kind of forecasting for a long time. There are deaf only trade offs, you know, only focusing on Bitcoin. But there's a reason for that, and that is that Bitcoin is actually separate from the system. Bitcoin is not a security, that's been said by the CFTC, the SEC And if you just kind of like look at what a security is offering is on paper, Bitcoin doesn't, you know, fails that test. So it's really the only thing that's

fully kind of outside of the existing regulatory arm. But when it comes to stable coins, when it comes to staking and this kind of stuff, it's all part of the fiat system. So at some point it has to conform to whatever the rules or whatever the expectations are of it, whether that those rules or expectations are effective or just or whatever. So you know, it's it's becoming

like the writing is on the wall. If you're holding significant value and quote unquote stable coins, Uh, you know those are not safe by any means, and they're not they're not separate from or or or different than any other uh you know, illegal financial or legal or illegal financial instrument. Yeah. I just to kind of clarify what you said. You said that bitcoin is the only one that's kind of outside of the financial system or the

regulatory system. It's not that it's outside of it, it's that the previous head of the SEC J. Clayton and Gary Ginsler both said that bitcoin is a commodity, and Gary Ginzler reiterated that it's the only one I'm willing to say that about. So, um, they're out of the out of the crosshairs of the security crackdown. I think it's probably what you're meaning. Yeah, I mean bitcoin is its own thing, and bitcoin is not reliant on any

entity outside of itself and its incentives to persist. So when it comes to these stable coins, they're all reliant on bank accounts and dollar equivalent assets and traditional banking, and they're all trying to serve a legacy product. They're trying to serve a dollar in a method that works for different kinds of users. There's immense amount of demand

for that. Our CEO, David Bailey was recently in Turkey right after the horrific earthquake there and the place is completely taken over by tether, stable coin, and bitcoin because the lira has failed and people are trying to get

into dollars. And that's the only thing that you know, has really had significant market penetration because it is slightly permissionless, but it's still part of the dollar system, and that is you know, that is going to put it within the purview of US regulators and ultimately, you know, hold those instruments back, especially if they don't kind of bend the knee to what is meeting dollars from getting into Turkey and other places like that in the first place. Right,

they have to conform because they're tied to the existing system. Yeah, and they certainly don't want to give up control over that. It's interesting. So he was in Turkey after that and he's seeing a massive amount of adoption going on there. That's what he's that's what's reporting back. Oh yeah, I mean the lira is in complete, is in complete, shabbles and yeah he was, he was posting pictures within our slack, our internal slack. And it's just like one money changer

after another. Everyone is using tether. Um. You know, you get into a cab and you know their preferred their preferred money is tether. Yeah, now what do you think about um? So, so just for everybody listening, I mean I agree with everything that you're saying there. Um. We we're kind of stuck though, in this kind of like transitional period though, right where we're kind of moving from one legacy system as you called it, as I call

it um dying and another system UM. And it seems like these stable coins have some sort of a use case in this interim process and in emerging markets, right, I mean, people need something to transact with. I think you would probably agree, correct me if I'm wrong. But you know, Bitcoin may not be the best form of money for your daily and weekly spending because of the

volatility going up and down. And so maybe these stable coins kind of work as this medium exchange and bitcoin kind of more of a store of value maybe working together, and so maybe they're they're important in this kind of like interim step. They're totally important. Here's the reality is money is a medium exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. The unit of account part is literally a mental operating system. Right, So the world is running on the dollar as the unit of account. Right.

That means we have to get ninety nine percent of the population to change how they measure value on paper in contracts in their head to something different. And until that happens, until everyone changes their programming to bitcoin. Uh, you know, something that's like a a permissionless dollar cash token is going to be super useful because it kind of falls in the middle, but it definitely has issues. Right.

There's a reason why Stoshi, you know, he chose fixed supply and not fixed value because that's something that you could do in a desentualized market base, whereas like something that's based off of another fiat, like it's inherently always going to be tied to h you know that system. So I think sable coins are super helpful, right, but if you zoom out, like why are they helpful is because US dollar banking is permissioned and they purposely marginalize

populations that's part of the system. So it's like, who makes the unbanked, Well, it's the bankers, right, it's not it's not like cash is not helping them. It's not like there isn't financial instruments that are emerging in the markets that have permissionlessly served people across the planet. It's literally banks and permission that it's part of the system.

So you know, the stable for oins have kind of found this niche where you can use a permission a semi permissionless blockchain, you can use tokens that resemble a

dollar and generally hold value against a dollar. And that's something that people who have been cut out of banking systems, whether it's the lira or I forget what the Lebanese currency is called, where you know the currency is being devalued, banks are shutting down, they're losing their accounts and they need to turn to something else, or whether it's like in Africa where there's there's no access to bank accounts

in the first place, they need something else. So you know, the culprit here is banking, it's government, it's kyc that unbanked people that create this need for people to get financial instruments on the Internet that are permissionless, and we're living in a dollar world still, so of course a permission US dollar token is going to have a lot of utility. Yeah, that's such a good point that you bring up. I mean, you know, I believe that the

unbanked has been coming down. I think in like twentyeen it was like close to two billion adults, and it's it's been dwindling down a little bit, but still we have over a billion people without access to banking. And to your point, it's because they don't have permission to join. It's a banking and government failure. Like before, before electronic banking, before permission banking, no one didn't have access to cash

or precious metals or whatever. Those things always had a market rate and we're you know, the they were you know, a bear instrument, if you will. So once you got into that permissioned internet banking world, that's where the marginalization started. That's where the unbanked happened. Right, It's a failure to to serve those people, either purposefully or or or you know, just based on incompetence or unwillingness to do something whatever. But it's it's actually a a failure from the banking

and government sector why people are unbanked in the first place. Yeah, certainly, I mean with the permission aspect, and so if you're a fifteen year old kid growing up in Iran, sorry, you don't get access to the bank. There's also or in the US. Yeah, I mean it's it's ages too, So I'm bullish on bitcoin unlocking the potential within our youth as well. Yeah, that's true, you know, but also

then you have like an El Salvador. It's just not economical for people to have bank accounts, right, So it's like it's twenty five bucks a month to have a bank account. I can't afford twenty five bucks a month, so I don't have a bank account either. Or it's like it's it's I'm so rural for me to get on a bus and ride five hours to a bank and then I don't even have the documentation. But I guess that goes back to the permission aspect of it. Yeah,

but government's marginalizing people. That's why most people are unbanked. And yeah, I mean it goes to say, like if most people can't afford bank accounts, you know, it makes you think, like who's paying the bank like where Like clearly they're not making their money by serving customers, so they're making the money somewhere else. Yeah, and that's a

good point, you know. I think it's important for everyone listening to pay attention because what happens is we apply our own biases to these things typically, and so typically what I hear is everyone looking from this very US centric viewpoint of like, what's wrong with our money? What's

wrong with the banking system? It seems to work pretty good for me, without taking into consideration the rest of the world that is, to your point, being marginalized because of this, and it seems like jumping into another form of digital money. We have these now CBDCs that they want to shove down our throat, and a lot of these governments, you know, you got the IMF or the ECB, and they're like, well, what people want is they want

digital money. That's the problem we need to give them. Look, Bitcoin just shows that they want digital money, So let's just give them digital money and then that will solve everything. They think without taking the consideration it's not the digital money, it's the access and permission that people want. Yeah, I mean, I personally, I'm a CBDC respect and I personally do not think that they will ever ship. They will never

actually make any real market impact. I know that there's a lot of people who are in the United States or globally period A lot of people are fearful of CBDCs. They will never ship, and when they do ship, they're gonna have a difficult time with adoption. And where will bitcoin be? I think that's the key here is. You know, you look at the Bank of England. They're saying, oh, we're gonna ship the britcoin in twenty thirty. Well, where's

bitcoin going to be in twenty thirty, right? Bitcoin is out in the wild in production, right, we're talking about the ECB Central Bank digital currency. You know, also similar forecast twenty twenty five to twenty thirty, still in you know, beta, still testing, still doing all this stuff. Well, you know, the longer that these entities don't ship. And again I don't think that you know, many people even within these different governments, are saying CBDC is a solution looking for

a problem. You know, I really don't think. I'm not fear full of them. I don't think that they're gonna ship, and I'm you know, honestly, I'm not very confident and really any government's ability to compete against bitcoin as digital money in the long run, well, I think they're gonna ship. I would agree with the second part, though, I don't think it can compete. And we can see this in

real time. So obviously China's shipped. There's in Nigeria, they've shipped the Niara, that e Niara, But the problem is they can't get anybody to use it. They can't get anybody to adopt it, and so they tried first the carrot, which was like, hey, if you use this, you know, we'll give you discounts off your taxi, cabs, etc. Nobody wanted that. That was the carrot. So then came the stick, which is like, well then we're gonna limit all cash

withdraws and force you to use it. But the people, you know, are like, wait a minute, we didn't want It's not that we didn't want it because it wasn't digital. It's because the Niara continues to lose value, you continue to evase it. That's why we don't want to And the e Nira is the exact same thing. So we already got bitcoin like we're good, Like we're rejecting that, you know, I mean, yeah, bitcoin is here and bitcoin is still nascent, So where's bitcoin gonna be twenty thirty, right,

you know, that's that's another seven years from now. I'm calling for hyper big cooinization. Mark. I don't know about you, but you know, I think brickcoin is going to be quite the joke if they're trying to ship in twenty thirty. The other thing that I'm the thing I'm slightly bullish on, or maybe not slightly, maybe heavily bullish on, is the incompetence of the government. And so I mean I was

looking at some things. I'm sure everybody remembers the famous Obamacare website rollout where they spent like billions of dollars to build a website that just helps you shop insurance plans, Like we don't have like a million of those, and they weren't billion dollars and they couldn't even get that working. We have the IRS. The IRS has been trying to overhaul the computer system for decades. They every year send out millions of tax returns that are wrong because the

software is no good. Last year they said Okay, fine, we give up. We're not going to overhaul the software. We're just going to fix the core things, and we hope to have it done by twenty thirty. Like, but the court things by twenty thirty. What where's bitcoin gonna be? Mark? Yeah, So every time they say that something where's bitcoin going to be? Bitcoin is innovating faster than you can imagine

in a compounding manner. So good luck. Now what's interesting I think too, back to kind of having this US centric viewpoint right where it's like if we look at it just from a developed world or a US centric world, like, it's it's one one view. But one thing that I keep in mind, I mean back to kind of your point bringing up Turkey emerging markets is where they really

have the use case, where they have the need. I mean, if you're in North Korea, you don't have to convince somebody why that money is no good, or in Turkey or you know, Argentina or whatever. And so one thing I've been thinking about is like, um, you know, the Internet grew really fast in the United States because we had phone lines everywhere, but we saw like in Africa they leap frog past that and went straight to wireless. So now the dollar, if you look at the dollar

above everything, the dollars like a payment network. It's like a wired network right with a correspondent banks and the Swift system, and so that system and a lot of dollar bowls will tell you, Like even I had Nick Bodion and he was talking about how the dollar can't be replaced because of this network that's there, just like the phone lines were there for the Internet, but then it leap frog past that and went straight to a

new network, a wireless network. And I think we're seeing that happen with bitcoin, where we're seeing this adoption really happening in Africa, in Turkey, in South America, etc. Yeah, I mean I say it simply. Bitcoin is money that works. That's it like, And as long as it continues to work, it will continue to be adopted. And it always wins on the margins, so it wins in the most marginalized places.

And really where we see this idea of hyper bitcoinization is when the margin or the mark I guess like the overall size of the bitcoin market reaches parody or close to parody with the size of the traditional market. And then and then I think that's where you know, the the S curve kind of goes vertical, So bitcoin wins at the margins. It wins in the areas that are being purposely unbanked, debased, shut out, sanctioned, whatever. That's

where bitcoin will will win. Bitcoin's going to just take all the low hanging fruit and continue to get bigger and bigger. And you know, I agree that, like, people who have very very bad money are obviously going to turn to bitcoin and other alternatives more readily, especially because they've felt the pain. But I don't think that the first world doesn't need it per se. Actually think that the first world has been held back very much by

their exorbitant privilege and by the dollar. And there is no way for us in retrospect to calculate or try to make make, you know, try to like evaluate what was lost because of inflation, what was lost because of the poor incentives from the Federal Reserve and from dollar printing and from the cantle On effect. It's going to

be impossible to evaluate that. But I can guarantee you that using bitcoin, a perfect monetary system with a clear and fair mechanism for distributing coins and managing a monetary policy that an economy will will be superior on that kind of a foundation. So I'm very excited for a world on a bitcoin standard, and I'm very excited for the West to embrace bitcoin. Finally it might get leap frogged.

It's most likely going to hit critical mass in the Global South and in the Middle East, in other places that are really on the losing end of the dollar. But everyone is a loser from the dollar. No one is a winner. Yeah, I certainly agree with that. I guess I wasn't saying that we don't we don't need it. Certainly we need it. I think it's just that humans, we typically only move when the pain gets high enough,

and a lot of us have different pain thresholds. It's kind of like that junkie, right, They're only going to seek rehab or seek change when they hit rock bottom. And so everybody's going to be forced to move at some point. It just depends on how early or how much pain you have or something like that. And so if you're in Argentina or Venezuela or North Korea or Turkey, like you have a really big need to do something asap, whereas in the United States, like we're bleeding slowly, you know,

so like we can kind of especially relative. Yeah, I'm going to I was gonna say, I'm going to Argentina next month, and you know, everything I prepaid for as all of a sudden gotten a lot cheaper. So I should have just waited as hyperinflation ripped. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely cushy being the beneficiary of receiving dollars directly and being in the United States. But you know, as you look at the map, the rest of the world

is hurt. And I think here, here's one of the most insidious things about the dollar system, mark, is that the dollar system is a global system. The dollar system marginalizes in de banks people, and the dollar system requires that the dollar system actually can't support one hundred percent of the planet on a fair system. The dollar system requires that seventy percent of the planet is either enslaved or debanked or destitute in order to support a lifestyle

for a smaller and smaller percentage of wealthy elites. Why why does it require that the seventy percent of the people are unbanked? I mean, how do you get your products without slavery in Africa? Mining? That cobaal right, like, how how does how do the French deal with keeping costs down in France without the CFA frank and without being able to extort everyone who is inside of that

system in Africa? It can't. These systems require extortion. They require then, they couldn't without they couldn't without massive inflation. Yeah sure, but you know that these systems are systems of control, their system of colonialization, and their whole purpose is to extract resources. Alex glad Scene's done an enormous amount of incredible work around this, around the IMF, around the World Bank, around the CFA Franc, around the Petro

dollar system. All of these systems are around extracting resources from the global South and putting them into the West. It's all about getting cheap labor from elsewhere and shipping those products to the US for so they can be consumers. And that's it's part of the design. They don't function otherwise, they don't give benefit to the West otherwise. Yeah, shout out to shout out to glad Seam for doing all

that work on that. He wrote a check your financial privilege, you know, kind of breaking this down and really kind of put this whole CFA Franc issue into my radar. Right lately we saw the new PM of Italy. Maloney was thrown it in Macrone's face saying, you're still you know,

you're still doing this colonialism with your CFA franc. And so for those listening that don't really understand what that means, basically colonialism is where you know, the colonial powers France, England, Spain, et cetera, would go and basically take over areas, islands, whatever. But then what's happened is France forces these areas of Africa to use France's money, this CFA franc, but France

itself doesn't even use it. France uses the Euro. So like they're forcing these African countries to use a currency that they don't even use themselves. And the reason to see case point is what they do is they continue to inflate that currency to make the goods they're buying cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, basically stealing from the people. And so they're doing that, They're using this control with the currency that they don't even use themselves. Again, Mark,

the only way these systems work is by exploitation. If they were one hundred percent fair, then there'd be no reason to maintain them, right that we go back to old so like again the whole purpose, like the dollar requires seventy percent of the world to be unbanked, destitute, and slaved like that is the dollar requires that. Otherwise

they would have probably solved it by now. Yeah, yeah, that was it really put that That Joe Rogan interview where he talked about the kids, you know, bringing the lithium or whatever, the cobalt out of the minds really kind of put it front and center to everybody, and you can see just kind of how that's that's affecting

people down there. I think, you know, moving on past the monetary system, now they're using the energy system for that, right, So now they're trying to restrict these countries from getting in any energy, and the energy is what would also help bring these people out of um you know, bondage, of of of being broke basically and could bring prosperity

to those countries. And I guess maybe that fits in with kind of the point that you're making, which is maybe that's just another way to keep them down so they continue to bring that slave labor to market. We need to keep our carbon down so that the upper thirty percent can consume an exorbitant amount in the bottom sent you know, can can maintain the floor, right, So use these systems of control are systems of control, and they're about improving the lives of the elite and subjecting

everyone else to destitution. So Bitcoin is the opposite. Bitcoin's about bringing the world online. Bitcoin's about bringing energy resources online. Bitcoin's about creating P to P networks and creating P to P infrastructure across the globe. So that's why you see Bitcoin is blowing up at the margins, the areas that have been marginalized. So this is why bitcoin, This is why I work at Bitcoin Magazine, This is why we put on the Bitcoin conference, is why we educate

the world about bitcoin. And I think this is you know, why you do what you do at Market Structures. Yeah. Um, if anybody's doubting what CK is saying right there, there was a video clip of good old Bill Gates going around the other day and they said, don't you think you're a hypocrite talking about you know, all this CO two emission, but you're flying around all in your private jet And he said, no, not at all, because I donate, I spend billions of dollars to offset that by buying

carbon credits. So what he's basically saying is you're broke, You're a peasant. You can't afford to pay or buy these fake things to offer your energy, so you just need to stay in place. But because he's rich and he's privileged, he has the money and he can pay for that. So if you doubt it, think about that now. M c k. You are the general manager, very general the general manager at Bitcoin Magazine, and Bitcoin Magazine has been putting on the largest largest bitcoin conference in the

world for a number of years. I think twenty nineteen might have been the first year. ACRAC I don't know if he's it's twenteen first. Yeah, and it has gotten big, I mean from that first one in twenty nineteen, I don't know, a few thousand people maybe too. I believe last year was like thirty five thousand people, and so, like, what do you see with like the growth of that, with the demand and with the space kind of evolving overall? Yeah, No, it's absolutely wild and it's been amazing having you a

part of every single one of those. So thank you so much for you know, speaking and supporting and attending all of our events mark. But yeah, Bitcoin twenty nineteen eighteen hundred people. Bitcoin twenty twenty was on track for four thousand, got canceled due to COVID. Bitcoin twenty twenty one twelve thousand people. Bitcoin twenty twenty two upwards of twenty five thousand people, not quite thirty five thousand, but

we'll hit that mark soon. And it's been wild seeing it go from, you know, an enthusiast led conference to one of the biggest fintech events in the world, right so, and I really do feel like the event is a physical instantiation of the bitcoin ecosystem. So like in twenty nineteen, at that point, there was only so many people and so many businesses willing to come together to celebrate bitcoin.

And then fast forward three years, you know, we've we've effectively ten x that, right, and we have the biggest companies in the world participating and all of the major financial players, governors, mayors, presidents attending speaking wanting to do what they can to get in front of and show

leadership in bitcoin. And that's why I say, where's bitcoin going to be in twenty thirty when bitcoin tries to ship is because I've seen the bitcoin ecosystem in person expand exponentially, so you know, but you know, what's Bitcoin twenty thirty You're going to look like, you know, our impression is it's going to be one of the biggest events on the planet period. It's gonna be like the

pilgrimage of bitcoiners and of this movement. And it's going to be an energy conference, it's going to be a markets conference, it's going to be a personal help conference, it's gonna be a culture conference. Know, it's gonna try to encampsulate all of these elements that make bitcoin a multifaceted, in very fascinating ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is definitely shows the growth of that, and it's like a perfect proxy to show the growth of that. And I mean, man,

from whatever nineteen hundred to twenty five thousand people. I'm curious though, Um, I mean last year, I guess we were already kind of in that downward decline, right, Um, I'm curious that now we're kind of maybe in the depths of the bearer market, if you will, in bitcoin price, crypto overall is completely soured with you know, FTX and the crack down there of crypto ascids are down on

the gutter, but bitcoin bitcoin prices down as well. I'm curious, do you think that's going to affect the event at all or or have you seen it as I mean, great question. So you know, last Bitcoin twenty twenty two, the bitcoin price was about forty five thousand dollars, so we've come down more than fifty percent from there, but the ticket sales have not slowed down at all. Um. It's actually been absolutely incredible seeing how resilient the ticket

sales element are. From a sponsor perspective, they're in a very different position. Sponsors are hurting. Companies in the space

are hurting. Usually, companies are a lot more over leverage than individuals, and we can definitely see that in both their appetites as well as their marketing budgets and even you know kind of like looking down the line of rosters of sponsors from last year, you know some of them aren't even with us anymore, which is it's sad to see, but you know, that's one of the beauties of bitcoin is that you know you're not too big to fail, and that you know there there's kind of

like this market cleansing that happens every few sites, every few years. But with that being said, you know, sure the crypto ecosystem is taking hits, the bitcoin eCos the bitcoin native ecosystems taking hits from a sponsor perspective, But now we're getting interest from energy companies. Now we're getting in trist from other entities, from real from real finance companies who are eagerly looking forward to how do we

start to make moves in bitcoin. So, you know, despite the market, the price of bitcoin going down, despite bitcoin native companies and crypto native companies, um hurting, um, We're we're still seeing a lot of optimism just because bitcoin is getting more serious and bitcoin is integrating into energy and finance in a much more real and much more tangible way than ever before. Yeah, speaking of I see a Shell oil icon on your list of sponsors. What's

up with that? Yeah, they came inbound. They were like, hey, we were at bitcoin right, Like, yeah, yeah, the big one, the one that you that that always has way too expensive gas at the pump. It's always like twenty percent more than than the next one. But yeah, I mean, I guess that's quality. I really don't know how to evaluate what oil is better than others. But Shell is one of the biggest energy companies in the world, and they attended our event last year and they wanted to

be a part of this event this year. There. You know, my mental model for bitcoin mining is that bitcoin mining is necessary for energy companies and energy producers to be competitive into the future. Bitcoin mining introduces an immense amount of efficiency within the energy markets, especially as a producer, and because of that, every energy company will be a part of the bitcoin industry, and every energy company will want to be a part of the Bitcoin conference. So

Shell is the first, They're definitely not the last. Our Inbound, as I've been bragging about on Twitter, has been absolutely wild with the amount of B to B interest that's coming in. And there are other companies that we're speaking to and that are interested in this event that you know, I can't speak about now because things aren't efficient quite yet. But I don't think I don't think that Shell is going to be the last. Yeah, wow, I mean what

I can say. So, first of off, Bitcoin Miami again this year May eighteenth through twentieth of this year in Miami. Check it out b dot TC Slash conference. Man. It started in California, and then because of the COVID pandemic got kicked to the East coast and now it's over there, so I gotta travel. But it's a good place to go to. So check that out b dot TC slash conference and check out. I'll be there speaking. You should

come hang out. I want to shift gears a little bit. Well, I want what I do want to say just real quick for anybody listening that's somewhat interested in this, is that you know, the world changed a lot of the last couple of years, and everything's become super polarized, and everybody's at each other's throats, and a lot of people who maybe used to be really good friends with maybe you're not that good of friends with, and maybe where you live, like where I live, I don't have really

good deep conversations with people around me. And so now it's required that I travel a lot to go find that community, build that community with people that I vibe with right the vibe, And what I would say is that at the Bitcoin conference, it's almost like this electricity in the air where you feel like this vibration, this high vibration where and I believe it's it comes from

that many people coming together that share values. Like the media, I want to tell us that we align on race or sex or gender preference, whatever it is, but we align on values. And then the higher those values are, the more that we're attracted together, the more that we align. And so I think bitcoin it for me represents freedom for me, mostly for other people, it represents opportunity, represents

a lot of different things. But when you bring those people together with those shared values, I mean, the vibe is high. This is your tribe. This is where the good conversations come. And so you can't get the same from watching the YouTube videos. You can't get it. It's kind of it's it's like watching you know, it's like listening to a CD and then going to a live concert right emily completely different. So anyway, I'd recommend checking

that out. Be dot tc slash conference. Yeah, and Mark, if I could just say one last thing, it's I really do think that the twenty twenty one event was really really special because it highlighted how different and how individual and how freedom focused and liberty focused the bitcoin community in particular is compared to the entire rest of

the world. I truly believe that bitcoiners are at They're at the bleeding edge of freedom right and because of that, they were capable and willing to come twenty five thousand strong, or sorry, come twelve thousand strong together at the depth of the pandemic, at the peak fear, before the vac's mandates or any of this stuff started rolling out, Bitcoiners were gathering, and I believe on Event break in twenty twenty one, we were like the second biggest event in

the entire world on their platform just because we are the We're literally the only ones gathering. So, you know, being able to come together with people who are not scared, people who are hopeful, people who care about freedom and liberty, and people who really have very little bias outside of you know, do we agree on those high level values. It's intoxicating. So I'm so proud to be able to put this on. I'm so proud to be able to work every single year to create this environment and create

this this pilgrimage for freedom fighters and freedom lovers. And yeah, I mean I couldn't recommend it more so, Uh Yeah, go to bettc May eighteenth through the twentieth in Miami Beach. It's going to be an amazing show. Just just to kind of comment on what he said, right, It's it's not hyperbole when we talk about the freedom aspect, because without the freedom to transact, there is no freedom at all.

And so what we're seeing what I kind of started the interview with was talking about this operation choke point and to choke point two point no, where basically you have the government, the Treasury, the FDIC, the DOJ, etc. Basically taking away freedoms not by law or legislation, but by cutting off access to payments. And so if I'm guaranteed by my constitution the right to assemble, but I can't put gas in my truck to drive to the assembly, I don't have freedom. And so it always starts with

the freedom to transact. Everything starts there, and so that's why all freedom springs from the ability to hold my money and transact. That absolutely I want to I want to just jump to another topic that seems to be hot right now, and that is that you know, I've talked about bitcoin as being like this sixth technological revolution, and how technological revolutions are are bigger than most people realize. They're not new technologies, they're revolutions and they change the

course of humanity. And one of the things with technological revolutions is they give us a new building block that allows us to build new things. If I had a deck of cards, I could build like a TP. If I have legos, I could build something more complex. So it's a different building block. Steel allowed us to build skyscrapers and bridges. But also one day we made a space shuttle out of it, right, and so it's like

new building blocks. And I'm just curious, you know, these new technological revolutions they have like a first killer application, so electricity, which was I think the third technological revolution. The first application was a light bulb like a digital candle, but that's not what all one electricity was. It was the first killer application. And I'm just curious with your thoughts on this because the Bitcoin time chain, not the blockchain, the Bitcoin time chain gives us a new set of

building blocks. And so it's a immutable, censorship resistant, decentralized ledger, and like what can we do with that? It's like a new set of building blocks, right, And so obviously the first killer application is money, and Sotoshi in the white paper call all that a peer to peer cash network. But we're starting to see this new building block being used for other things that maybe we weren't thinking about.

So Jack Dorsey launched this um um you know, he's calling it Web five, which is the decentralized identifiers where I can control my ID and that needs to be in a censorship resistant location so no one could take it offline, and so they're using the Bitcoin time chain for that. It would be like an example, yeah, and then and then now we have like these ordinals that just popped up, and so that's what I kind of

want to talk about. Now we have these ordinals now right now people are stuffing you know, NFTs and JPEGs in that, and we'll talk get your opinion on that. But there's other use cases for that that we could use, like for example, putting um, you know, uh, three D gun schematics in there that could be censorship resistant and we could transfer that across space right potentially. So I'm curious what your thoughts are about this this new building block and could it be used for more than money,

like the IDs or ordinals. You know, what's your viewpoint on that? Percent agree with you in terms of the framing of another technological advancement. I'm sure you know this. I'm a huge fan of the book The Sovereign Individual. The way that they frame this is that there's certain technology that changes the logic of violence, and because of that,

that changes how control is able to be enforced. And one of the key kind of just immediate benefits of bitcoin is that it turns money into information, which reduces the custody costs to zero and the carrying costs and transportation costs to zero. And because of that, now an individual has the ability to secure their wealth independently, and

that changes the logical violence. But beyond that, just talking about what does the technology bring other than you know, enabling human freedom and our ability to free, you know more freely move around the plan and make governments compete, is you know, it creates a new, uh like a new layer of trust in a new layer of security

that we can all reference. So I think that this is really important because when it comes to some form of file sharing, when it comes to some form of expressing yourself, there's going to be censorship, there's going to be people that are going to try to get in the way. But the reality is with bitcoin, if you can if it's worth the cost to transact on the blockchain itself. There is no one who can get in your way from making that data available, putting your signature

on the blockchain. Whatever it is, whether it's an NFT, whether it's three D gun schematics, whether it's saying that this isn't this video is not a deep fake, this is actually me. So I think what bitcoin is is the time chain, the blockchain, the distributed physical network of

computing hardware that is enforcing this network. It creates a beacon of truth in a world of you know, effectively endless AI generated lies that humans just have a very difficult time making making you know, making making ends of it, right,

like trying to you know, evaluate what's happening. So with this barrage of this dedas of kind of fake information and psy ops and all that stuff, Really, what the time chain is is a beacon of truth that's economically incentivized to only showed truth rather than you know, the you know, effectively what can be just autogenerated using computing hardware. Elsewhere do you think you started out by saying the ability to store and transact wealth, and so then like

what is wealth? Right, I think of wealth as my assets, and so my assets could be everything from this collectible baseball card I got when I was a kid, to my goal to my realist stay, to my bitcoin to my cat, Like those are my assets. That's like my wealth, and so like maybe the way that we think of money or wealth or value changes over time, and so, um, my ip could certainly be my wealth. Right, that's my my property, my private property that's worth money, that's value

to me. So I guess maybe do you think that we kind of continue to expand the way that we think of that, and so then that wealth, that value can then be in this time change and can be transacted I mean, or is that stretching too much? This is a pretty like big philosophical conversation, and the reality is that very few of us are intelligent enough to like forecast into the future. Yeah accurately, you know, Like the way I like to frame how stupid all of

us are at forecasting is pre electricity. There's probably only one person on record that was actually like even directly correct on like what was going to do the world. That was Nicola Tesla. So um, you know, no, very very few people, right, Like bitcoin is equivalent in terms of the technological innovation that next love. You know that that technological revolution, you know, it's it's a technical, logical evolution,

just like electricity. So it's very difficult for us, you know, plebeians living here in the Dark Ages, to forecast like what that future looks like. My mental model though, is that value gets standardized to bitcoin. So I really do think like collectibles, real estate, all these other ways to store value while we're living in kind of like this the Dark Ages of value storage, it's going to get standardized to bitcoin, and that's going to change how resources

are allocated across the globe. That's going to change how we manage our time. That's going to change how we make every single decision, make decision we make, because uh, you know, our mental operating system for wealth and value is going to change and I think become a lot more efficient. Yeah, yeah, to your point, I agree. I mean, humans are no good to imagine in the future. All we can do is imagine better versions of what we

have today. And because we don't have those other building blocks to build those new things, we can't imagine that. Going back to just the question of the ordinals, because that seems to be the big topic right now. Do you think this is like wait in the sea, let the free markets figure it out, or do you look at this as like this is a massive problem spam attack, and we should probably try and do something about it.

I think it's a wait and see and if anything, I'm pretty convinced that that everything that happens within the Bitcoin consensus rules aren't good for bitcoin. You know, I think a lot of people maybe think otherwise. But what happened with ordinals is someone without changing the code whatsoever, this guy named Casey Rhodemore came up with one a way to index and look at the bitcoin block chain, and then two came up with a way to put

data into the witness data element of bitcoin. So that's turned that That's created a lot of debate within the technical community. That's created a lot of excitement within the greater crypto community, people who are NFT fans, because the easiest thing you can do with that new structure is put an NFT on the blockchain, which actually, these NFTs, these inscriptions on the bitcoin blockchain have a lot of properties that make them better than other, you know, forms

of NFTs on other blockchains. But ultimately my heuristic here is Bitcoin is permissionless, Bitcoin's censorship resistant, and Bitcoin's economic incentives work. So this is a permissionless innovation. People are using it in a way that maybe someone wants to sensor them, but you know, they they want to do it, and it's allowing it, and it is affecting Bitcoin's incentive

in a positive way. Fees are going up, more people are are downloading full copies of the time chain, They're running full nodes on their computers in order to actually leverage this new system. And then on top of that, people are starting to do things that I actually do think are super interesting with this technology. So it started off with JPEGs, It started off with all this kind of like clownery, but that's how the Internet started as well, and I think it's very quickly moving into a very

serious woe. So as long as Bitcoin's incentives work, as long as Bitcoin remains permission list in censorship resistant, I'm bullish. So this fits within my mental model for bitcoin one hundred percent. Yeah great, Yeah, I was at first going, dang, I guess this is why we shouldn't be messing with it, why they have to activate tap root, which you know we should still consider moving forward, like do we want

to keep changing? It's because of the lava and intomic consequences, And that's a great I think that's a great discussion, right. I think bitcoiners are learning about bitcoin in real time, so maybe we will be much much more adversarial thinking before putting in a change. But with that being said, all of us here sitting here thinking about what bitcoin can do today, we have no idea what bitcoin can

do tomorrow. And Mark, I'm convinced of this. The best bitcoin developers have yet to be born yet, and the best Bitcoin innovations in UK use cases have yet to be invented yet. So who are we to say what bitcoin can or cannot do? And that kind of goes back to the steel steel. Oh we can, we're going to design new bridges and whatever, But we didn't know that someone's going to design a spaceship or space shuttle

at some point, right, so yeah, totally. Hey, you know what if someone said, hey, steel was never intended for flight, screw space travel, right, like I forbid it? Like no, absolutely not, we don't know, we don't know, so therefore he just got it like bitcoin requires a little bit of faith. It requires the faith that the systems incentive work, and if you look back historically, they have always worked. So i'm i'm I feel pretty steadfast that bitcoins incentives

will continue to work. And I personally think bitcoin's binary. Either the incentives work or they don't. If they don't, I hope you have your guns and bullion. If they do, it's taking over the world. Yeah. Nice, I think that's a perfect point place to end it. We're gonna end it right there. C K from Bitcoin Magazine. You can find them on Twitter at CK Underscore Snarks will link

to it in the show notes down below. General manager at Bitcoin Magazine, which of course is doing the largest bitcoin conference in the world May eighteenth through twentieth in Miami Beach. I'm going to be there. CK is going to be there, and we hope that you'll be there as well. So check that out. B dot tc is the website. Anything else you want to throw out, CK, come to the Bitcoin Conference. It's going to be amazing.

Can't wait to see you there. Mark, give you, give you a hug, chat on the news desk, and go buy the new Bitcoin Magazine. It's the broke issue we have Sam Bankman for aud on the cover and we're calling out the media. So we were building bitcoin culture and that's what we do. A bitcoin magazine when with the Bitcoin conference and you can be a part of it. Where can they buy the magazine. It's stored on bitcoin magazine dot com. Okay, on the website. Got it? Yep?

All right, we now we're going to sign it up. Thanks so much, so kay, thank you so much. Mark Piece,