All right. Jeff Booth, the author of the Price of Tomorrow, a book that has oh Man really sent people into a different direction. Awesome book, Price of Tomorrow and ego death Capital. I don't know, maybe prolific tech investor entrepreneur will see anyway. Jeff, thanks so much for joining me today. Great to see you, my friend man so much to talk about. We were having fun catching up, just talking about fun personal stuff snowboarding and surfing and taking trips
and things like that. But I think we're both also thinking that a lot of this bitcoin technology stuff is also fun as well. So I want to dive into that the technology is advancing so fast and sort of imagining where this goes in the world and how we're rebuilding and changing things, how lives can change, how humanity can flourish. That's the exciting part to me. I've often said that the price is sort of the least interesting thing, but let's talk about that for a minute. The Bitcoin
ETF is the news. I mean, that is just dominating the news. I don't like that because it's mostly just about an investment kind of a viewpoint of it. The number go up technology, if you will. But you know, as a tech entrepreneur, you know, you have sort of this diffusion of innovation and there's a cas and that has to be crossed. Maybe we're doing that. What's your thoughts on the bitcoin and t F. Let's dig into that a little bit.
Yeah, probably similar to you. I think if you think about how many people understand bitcoin right now in the world, and you should say, say that's a one percent, and then how many people really understand what it means and how things are in a change to it. We can explore some of that through this podcast if you want, but that would be probably five percent of the one percent of so the how small a number of people
actually understand what's happening here in this asset class. And then what's happening is the technology is being built on top of this asset class and what's going to happen what it does to the existing system such a tiny piece of the overall market that no wonder people are confused. And so now if you put in perspective with that, with what the ETF is doing, it is bringing more
awareness to this asset class. And what ends up happening in this asset class is people start to see, wait, I'm living in a system with manipulated money, a manipulated ledger, and that's the reason why prices are going up. And then they learn a little bit about bitcoin, and maybe they learn about it because they think, Okay, that'll protect me, It'll give me a hedge against the system that's failing.
Over time, and then some of those people, over time learn more and more about it and start shifting more and more of their attention into it as they understand it more. So if you just look through that lens of the ATF, you'd say it's great. It's just it's marketing that is going to bring a whole bunch more of awareness about what's happen happening to money and how you can protect yourself from money being debased. And people
are going to protect themselves because of that. From there, the question is how many people remove to self custody and as well, and I think you have to look at some of the things that you see in the world today, is behind the scenes being coordinated and whether they are or not, I think it's worth thinking that way. And why I say that is is if you if you said human nature, if you could if you could get if you could steal the productivity that should flow
to society in the form of lower prices. By controlling money. Human nature says that will always happen, right, Greed will make that happen no matter what, and we've always lived so all throughout.
His will make prices drop.
You're saying no, no, no, So this natural state of a free market is deflationary, so there is no inflation over a long enough time period because what we do we use things that give us more value. Why you're using riverside right now app to create this podcast is it gives you more value. And if something competed with riverside that didn't give you more value and it costs more, you wouldn't use You wouldn't use it. If something gave you more value and costs less, you would use it.
So everything we use creates more use. It gives us more value, and that means the natural state has to be deflationary. Of a free market. The only reason things are inflationary short of short term cycles, right with the supply constraint or something. But then what ends up happening is the free mark. Because of the margins of that supply constraint, entrepreneurs attack it and create a different way of a model to great abundance. And so the natural state over a longer term is always of a free
market is deflationary. We've always lived in the opposite, and we live in the opposite because effectively, if you could steal a small amount of money from everybody over time, you can aggregate a massive control for doing nothing. So human society it always has been wired. If you could game it, you would, right. That's why gold gets corrupted,
That's why you fractionalize systems. That's why eventually you go back to you go to war, because it breaks world so much that then somebody says, I'm going to reset the system on a new standard, and then it goes through that again. So natural state is free. We've always lived in the opposite. That means every history book that anybody has ever written has this error code in it.
It also has the error code because we've never had something decentral lives and secure that could be decentralized and secure throughout time, and the winners write the history books. So it means all of our previous history to this point before bitcoin was built with this aero code. And so it makes total sense that people are confused with what this new insight drives forward rather than looking through the past. It makes perfect sense. Now what are we
up against? What does bitcoin up against? If you have a system that's ten thousand times bigger, that gains its power by stealing yours, by stealing money, then what is it up against. It's up against all human action doing that. And I'm going to get in specifically how that works. And it is also up against some coordination of you
could say, the ETF. If the ETF and what Warren is doing at the same time to try to make self self custodial illegal, right, and the ETF can short and create fractionalized on top of bitcoin and then acquire more bitcoin, then you could say, and it's worth thinking that that could happen because then you're immune from it.
But if that was coordinated, I'm not saying it is, but if that was coordinated, what would happen in that world is a whole bunch of people would trade their bitcoin or the paper bitcoin in is the ets acquired more and more bitcoin, and you could create that leverage to suppress bitcoin's price, just like just like gold has been suppressed, right, And you could create effectively unlimited leverage in that system over time and paper contracts to bitcoin.
But for people that are aired of that, and I'm not saying some of that won't happen in the short term because an office action by a Warren making it will drive fear in the market. At the same time people could short it could drive price in the short term going down. But what would that then, Cause there's too many people in the world right now, and bitcoin is self custodial, and every year it gets more decentralized and secure. There's too many people in the world that
have looked behind the curtain. And once they've looked behind the curtain and how money works, they're never going back. And so you probably run a node. I run a node. I'm not selling my bitcoin, and every time price falls we actually I buy it anyways. But there's more and more people bitcoiners that understand this that are going to
take that into self custody. So the reaction to the system driving to financialize this creates more self self custody at certain prices, and as that happens, eventually, if it was coordinated, if there was something again not saying there is, but if it was and that was an attack factor for a bitcoin. What would it end up happening is it would cause the biggest short squeeze the world's ever seen eventually, and on that short squeeze would liquidate financial
players that were not acting with integrity or honesty. Because bitcoin doesn't care. It's imposing fair rules on society rather than it could care less. It could care less about you and me everything else. It's just imposing that discipline.
Wow, a lot to unpack right there. I was making some notes. We can come back to them. I asked you if to clarify something, and it wrong, but it got me thinking. I said, so, it's it's greed that drives prices down. You said no, But if you think about it, in a true free market, if we could
stay free and not be co opted and gamed. So in a true free market, it almost would be greed that would drive prices down, because if I saw you were making a killing in a certain category, my greed would say, well, I want to step in in front of Jeff and I'll make a little bit less, right.
Yeah, And so go ahead and keep going.
Yeah. It's just you know, it's interesting when you kind of flip it on its head, and you have to kind of put that in sort of parentheses in a free market, because you know, what we're being told by the leaders is it's greed that's driving prices up. It's these greedy gas stations that drive prices, et cetera. But in a free market, greed would actually drive prices down. It'd be the opposite.
We only get paid. We get paid. Entrepreneurs get paid when they create more value for others, period, right, And and that's a competitive process. And so they see and in a free market, that competitive process continues to attack. And where would an entrepreneur go. Would you go to create the next calculator app? Yeah, it's already free or would you or would you go create? Or would you go attack an industry that had high margins?
Of course, agree, it makes perfect sense.
So the free market is constantly under attack. There is no monopoly in a free market, Yeah, there.
Can't be so in in you know, in this diffusion of innovation, you know this bell curve, and you have sort of the innovators, the true believers, and then you sort of have this chasm. And the chasm is where something has to shift, you know, in the mindset of people to sort of bring that early majority in. And there's lots of things that could cause that shift to happen, that that chasm to be crossed, if you will. I
think the ETF is a big piece of that. So all these people who think, well, it's just magic internet money. I don't trust it, it's a scam at the tulip it's whatever, it's too difficult, I don't you know, throw it fill in the blank. All of a sudden they're like, well, shoot, if my financial advisor tells me to buy it, if Blackrock has it, if you know whatever, And so that creates the chasm to be crossed. And also there's also another paradigm. And so I gave a presentation a big
buck Boom and packpitcoin on you know, technological Revolutions. I talk about him quite quite often. And I got this from this book Technological Innovations and Financial Capital by Carlata Perez, and she talks about sort of this change and the reason the things that these technologies have to do in order to sort of have this revolution, and some of that is in the mindset and so sort of we have this normalcy bias, it's recentcy bias. Hey, money always
has to go up. Hey, this is just how it goes, and so that has to change. But there's people that are entrenched in that that don't want that to happen, and so we have to sort of fight against that. That's sort of this orange pill movement, if you will. But you mentioned one more thing, and is that Ledwig Guan Misis called it the crackup boom. And then he said, and then suddenly the people realize that inflation is both
permanent and intentional. Yeah, so all of a sudden, you know, maybe in the last ten years, inflation has been sort of thrown into the forefront of things. The Fed is sitting there saying, our goal is to get it back down. We only want two percent. Oh so it's intentional that you want to steal from me, and I think people
are doing that. And so sort of bringing this together, that chasm not only being brought sort of legitimized by Wall Street jumping in, but then also the chasm being crossed where people are suddenly waking up to the fact that inflation is permanent, and you know, to the point that you that you've made I think everybody realizes I have to go protect my wealth and when you add those two things together, I mean it's a pretty big hopefully it'll be a pretty big shift to get people
to sort of see that new world.
Yeah, so think about yourself and let's let's go why does this exist? And how much do you know about bitcoin? And how much of your time is in bitcoin? And then play that forward and how and just that say how much was it three or four or five years ago as you started to understand, and how much is it now? And how much will it be? And then let's walk through how this works and so how this works.
So we've already we've already made a point. The free market is deflationary, right, The natural state of the free market is deflationary. So that means every single person that says yep and then goes on carries on their life in the other world, is making the other world stronger
to their own to their own demise. Every single the amount of time that you're measuring from the other system, if you can say yes, and prices fall to the marginal cost of production over time, and technology is a lever on that, and it's an exponential lever that makes prices fall faster, then what you're doing by trying to capture wealth in the existing system. All all of the things in the existing system are making everything worse for you.
And let me just show you how that works. So, so you know this mark that the magnificent seven the tech companies. Without the return of the tech companies, SMP would be negative, right, Okay, So what everybody does? Everybody you do. I'm not saying you do, but many people listening to this call will store their wealth in the tech tech companies, and then they'll use the tech companies that are using AI to reduce the labor because they use the tech companies because if they don't use the
tech companies, they don't get the same value. And so the tech companies are creating this artificial and general intelligence the magni that is reducing the labor. And you should have a normal market, you would probably have about five percent deflation per year compound and getting more and more. So even at that, if you were at zero percent inflation, you'd be getting five percent stolen from you a year.
And you go and spend more of your own money trying to protect your money from losing value by putting it in a tech company, and they use that at creating the monopoly and reducing more and more labor to make to drive that faster to give you more value fair And so then you say, well, how is this monopoly doing this? But if they increase their labor rate and much more or much more labor, you wouldn't use
their service anymore. Somebody else would beat them. So and then the pension funds that holds your retirement are all indexed to the same thing. So they're driving more and more money into the thing that's driving for faster and faster deflation, and you're part of your Every single person in the world is trying to store their wealth in those things because if they don't, they'll lose more money faster. Now let's look at the same thing on bitcoin. Bitcoin.
All of those companies priced in bitcoin are losing value, every one of them. All your houses, all your real estate is losing value against bitcoin, all of it. But most people are storing their wealth within the system that's debasing, making it stronger, thinking they're winning on a losing game
and bitcoin could care less. It's so this system is based on a manipulated ledger, and it's manipulating currency units, and everybody and your voting in that system to who should win, who should get more of the manipulated currency units to put to their group or the other group, And society is breaking everywhere because of this. But every single person, in fact, many of the podcast you listen to, are yelling at the same system, and they don't know
they're making it stronger by yelling at it. Right, all of their actions are making it stronger. And so why we've created ego death and why I just just tired of it. I just said it's nonsense. I wanted to spend instead of ninety percent of my time in the system that was creating this, I wanted to spend ninety five hundred percent of my time in the system that was repricing it.
But if we so let's let's take that, we'll transition to ego death. What ego death is a fund that you're in that invests into bitcoin companies that are building this new world. But let's just take that previous example. I had a good conversation with a good friend, mutual friend, Jimmy Song, many conversations. We ended up at a lot of places at the same time, but in la PEC Bitcoin and we were talking about this specifically, and you know, he's such a bitcoin purist, Maximus that you should just
buy bitcoin and not invest in anything. But I'm like, you know, who's going to go build this thing? Right, we have we have to invest our money. But back to kind of the point that you just made, right, So we're investing into Facebook to make our lives better, Right, We're getting value from that. It makes my communication cheaper, easier, faster,
et cetera. So I have more value there. But I'm putting my money into that system that's causing I'm perpetuating that system that's actually causing me to have this inflation of force.
And then I yell at other Then I yell at other people because it's their fault.
Right, But but I do it. But if I'm putting my if I'm investing my money into Facebook in order to protect my value, I'm hoping that Facebook is going to go look faster than the inflation that is debasing my value at the same time, right.
And it's not it's it's it's not it's going up at the same rate. So if you look at the monitor, if you look at the monetary easing of about the liquidity about eight and a half percent per year compounded and then so it or maybe some of those companies beat it for a fair a short period of time, but over the long term, you're just matching your same as housing, right, so exactly the same as housing.
Well, I mean, the S and P five hundred is like a perfect proxy for inflation. I think, I think what we're saying, and the media and US real estate is as well totally. However, there are scarce assets that then outperform inflation. So for example, the median US real estate went up about forty percent, Austin, the fastest growing city of the United States for the last twenty years, went up about forty percent, but homes on the lake Lakefront Lake Lakefront on Lake Travis went up one hundred
and fifty percent. Yeah, right, So sort of the S and P five hundred, which the manuf is the seven sort of make up and drive that have kept up with inflation. A few will outperform it for certain periods of time if you're a really good exactly right, exactly okay, But then contrast that too, Okay. So I am an investor or I'm just a regular person. I'm a doctor
or whatever. I'm making money I have savings. I want to protect that savings from BE and D based and so I can put it into Nvidia Book et cetera, and hopefully that will at least keep up with it, potentially beat it. Or I could put it into x y Z bitcoin company, which is also a tech company, which is also hopefully going to beat it. I mean, so what's the million?
So what's different here is the nine hundred trillion dollars of global wealth. Imagine you have a percentage of that ledger, right, and you could say, if Mark Moss has a million dollars, you could just calculate exactly what percent you have of that ledger If that ledger is one point five quadrillion tomorrow, because there's a whole bunch more manipulation of money and you're part of that ledger doesn't go up by that mount you lost money, but you didn't know you lost money.
That's what That's what you're living in, and that's what everyone is pricing their is en And when they naturally say what is bitcoin price in this ledger, they're making that calculation error. When I say it's saying decentralized and secure on the on the base ledge, then it is inevitable. If it stay is decentralized and secure, it reprices everything in the nine hundred trillion. So you could say, how much of a percentage of twenty one million do I
have for all of time? And compare and contrast how much do you need for your living lifestyle? If you can hold it decentralized and secure, it will reprice everything else. So then then your next question, I think, is why would I invest if I can invest in that asset? Essentially, if I can own a new if I can own the new Internet, not just the value on top of it, but I can own a piece of the new Internet,
and all future value accrues to me. Or is said another way that I like to say it is if prices should fall to the marginal cost of production, if the free market is is deflationary, then the anything that can measure it as a fixed currency, So in other words, all things forever if you measure in bitcoin will fall in price at the same rate they should fall in.
Price as long as it stays.
And so so now, and the only reason I say, if it stays decentralized and secure, I think it's almost inevitable, or points something one probability that something could break it. Why I say if it stays decentralized and secure is so people do their own homework on why that's inevitable. So so because they need to understand this asset class is different than anything they've ever seen, and they're through the through it the Fiat machine of manipulating money, they
won't see what's unique. They have to do the work because all of the all of the information that is in the Fiat machine would try to stop this from from working.
So then, first of all, for the listeners, of course, Jeff and I agree on this. I've been an advisor for Trambill Venture Partners for about two years, so I look at all the bitcoin only VC stuff, and I'm a partner with a Bitcoin Opportunity fund with our mutual friends James and David and Larry and all those guys. So we're also investing in the bitcoin space as well.
But just to kind of understand this point for everybody who's listening, and even for myself, to be honest with you, so we go back to sort of investing into nvidiaoir Facebook and hoping to beat inflation. But I'm perpetuating the same system if you will so whatever, or I could invest into X y z bitcoin company anchor watch, I mean whatever, you name it, right, you got on the line. The mechanism is the same. I'm still investing my money, whether that be dollars or bitcoin into a company hoping
to beat inflation. I'm guessing what you're saying is the difference is how I'm measuring that money. Am I measuring in US dollars or am measuring my return in bitcoin?
Yeah? So in Vidia they're free cash flows or in the dollars that are being deluded, And so your your your entire investment is in the debasing currency, and in this it is not so if you can if you're creating So so what I think is happening in our companies and some of the companies if you see that they and by the way, and this isn't just our fund Let's say there's lots of funds in this space, at least the bitcoin only funds that understand this your venture.
You can actually get venture returns on top of a venture asset.
So you're getting bitcoin returns as opposed.
To exactly so our company, our companies are are by creating the enabling foundations of the things that just similar to the like the Internet. But if if you owned a piece of the Internet and then and then there returns and we're collect more bitcoin because of the value
that they were creating. And if you see some of the rates of the growth of the companies measure in their balance, sheees moving up by acquiring more bitcoin because there because it's denominated in that and their transactions are based in it. You you have an underlying asset that I like to look at it as it's not going
up forever. All prices are falling against it forever. But now you're collecting more of that underlying asset, so you can by by having successful companies, so you I believe we're going to have venture returns on top of a venture type asset.
Right.
It's like so when I think about that, I think, and I can't believe everybody is not here. I can't believe there's not more people understanding this because because I can prove what I just said, because it's repriced every other asset class over the less the credit.
The critic could say over what time frame, Right, obviously over the over the last fifteen years. It certainly has over the last two years, it hasn't, right, So.
But any four year any four year cycle, it has, right.
And obviously as a venture investor, like we're thinking long term seven to ten years typically at a minimum, right, So to your point, every four years it has. And so if you're thinking, and I say all the time, I mean, if you're if you're if you're marketing your portfolio market on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis, like, you're never going to make it. Like Charlie Munger said, the big money is made not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting, right, So waiting for that to develop.
Yeah, and keep and play and play that forward. But we have a we have a system that you're in measuring your returns every every day in the other system because it forces you to do so, because it's debasing. So people are trying to store their wealth and most of their wealth is stored in the system that's debasing. It's it's insane, right. And I think when I think about risk return, I think even Sam is an entrepreneur. I think the best entrepreneurs are actually aren't risk takers
like people think they are. I think they're really great risk allicators, and the difference is they look at the risk of where they are now versus the new and what they're going to do. And so today when people are looking at bitcoin, they're looking at the risk of the new and they haven't done the work to understand it, and they think their own system has no risk when all of the risk is in the existing system. So
what you're having is terrible risk gllicators. And then as they get more as a system paralyzes them through more fear right, and you hear the WF and they yell at it all the time, and all of these things are capturing their attention, making them even worse risk galicators because they're trying to protect their money in the exact same that's thing that's staying being debased.
Right, So bitcoin is repricing everything. I can go back another quote from Letwoo Bonemesis, and I believe he said that in economics, there's no such thing as a constant, and so we always had like this commodity money, and so whether we're measuring things in oil or gold, there's no constant there, like the supply, the demand, the technology changes that all constantly. But now we have it right now Bitcoin has a fixed, limited supply, So for the first time we have a neutral asset that does have
a fixed supply. So he was right at the time. Now it's different. And so to your point that you're making, it's starting to reprice everything. And if you have a long enough vision and you think at least in four year cycles, if not longer, it is it has been historically been repricing things, you feel strong that it will as do I. It looks like even Larry Fink thinks
it will as well, which is pretty interesting. But there's one thing that you keep saying, nothing's guaranteed in this life, and you keep saying, if it stays decentralized and secure. I listen to you sort of debate this out with George Gammon, another friend of mine, and he has a little bit hard time sort of wrapping his head around that part, I think. But you had to keep saying over and over and over that decentralized and insecure, So that seems to be the risk factor in your mind.
So purpose this is almost certain as long as those two things stay true. Ye.
So and if you say what George would say, and George is fantastic, and I think, really really sharp on how the existing system works and sharp on history as well of how these things got co opted. And he would he would use, well, human nature won't let it. It will centralize it. And the question I have is how.
How?
Because because as more people understand this, and remember this is a different this is different than gold. It can't get centralized gold is so you can self custody this asset yourself, and you can run your own node. And so what he says is, well, governments will, we will take it over. And the question you ask is how into.
To what end?
Because because let's let's just imagine this place forward as it's plain, because you really have to think about if that's true, what would specifically happen to be able to break that. And so the governments, let's say they're going to print more money to be able to make their currency, and they're going to lock the doors and they're going to Janet Yellen and Warren and everything else, and they're going to conspire and make bitcoin self custody illegal in
the US. So if that happened, and it happened all over the world at the same time, yes, then that would slow It would for a time that price would fall a bitcoin. But what it would signal to the world everyone is you better move faster on bitcoin, and as price fell, more and more people would self custody. And I think it would be just like in other regions where you lock down a currency and you say
there's capital controls on my currency. The currency goes underground and there's a black market currency that actually moves faster and it is the real price. The free market is the real price, and you have a ponzie. So every single one of these things can't actually happen by the free market unless everyone in the world says, yep, I want to live in a cage. Right, nobody would do that.
It just wouldn't happen. So and then, so now let's say that what does it look like to George's point or to other people who question, so, what that would mean is as the currency units inflate faster, Bitcoin is still re pricing the world. Right and then and then what ends up happening is every every country competes for labor and capital, the best people in investment, and so as it starts to happen around the world, why would it look any different in the future than it's always
looked competing for labor and capital. It's just more of the bitcoiners will have the capital, yeah, and more of the great talent will be on the bitcoin layer, building kind of abundance for the future on an on at sledger, which would be high demand in regions that say we're going to we're going to build a free market here.
The game theory, right, and that the chance, the odds, the probability of all the governments of the world all coopting and deside at the same time is very slim. I thought it would be actually impossible. Obviously, seeing what happened during the COVID pandemic lockdown made me unfortunately think a little bit. Otherwise, it was pretty well coordinated across the world simultaneously, so that that was a that was that was a shock to my thinking. So I have
to kind of keep that in mind. But game theory is there. And so to your point, and if they did it in the West, if you will Canada, the US, you know, UK, et cetera, you still might have El Salvador or you know, Argentina now at this point or whatever, and then they're going to attract the best and the brightest kind of to the point that you're making so you sort of have that, but maybe some of the other risk factors if we just kind of want to play this out a little bit, because again trying to
think it, will it stay decentralized and secure? You know, potentially you know, Blackrock taking over Bitcoin Core developers putting you know, bad malicious code in something like that. Now we run notes, so we don't have to accept those updates, right, so so.
Yeah, so so, but again I think all of these things like that there were used to thinking these giant organizations that control us, and they're going to control us, and you make them stronger with your own thinking by allowing that to happen. And the people that are moving to Bitlin and spending their time in this and by the way, I'm not even talking about what's being built on top. If you were some of those people trying to do this, you have no idea what's coming, no
idea how fast this is exploding. If you think about fetiment and some of this stuff, the regulation is chasing where this might have been four or five, six, eight years ago.
Yeah, they can't keep up, not where it is today.
And what's happening and is the more and more people who understand why freedom matters start to vote with their time and money and energy for freedom instead of saying I can't do anything because those other people are going to control me. They take the power from those people.
That's the repricing event that is happening. So Blackrock looks so big because because our pension funds hold their money into black Rock, because Blackrock has inside ball on the financial system and it's the only way they can have a return because of the inside ball. And without inside ball and the financial system, black Rock gets smaller. And where does the money go to. It goes to you. It goes to Bitcoin holders that are repricing black Rock too.
And so, for the life of me, I can't understand people that say I can't do this and I'm going to spend all my time for fear. Well, they make the thing that they want to happen they don't want to happen happen faster to them. It's ludicrous where they are a node in the network. They're a node in this network, and good luck convincing me otherwise.
And they're literally giving money to a company that's working against their own best interess.
We're working. And I'm not talking about in the ETF, I'm not talking about anything else, but through the pension fund, through all of their actions and everything else they're there. All of the people at w UF right now right are funded by this extraction of wealth from the same people that are yelling at it.
Yeah, yeah, think about it. Yeah, to your point, all the people that are online screaming, to your point that you're making, screaming about how bad this is, they want to take away our rights all these things. Well, why are you giving them your money? Your money is sitting in there in their pension fund, in their account, and that's what they're using to go to fly to Davos to make these types of regulations.
In your in your housing that you're trying to do that, in all of these instruments that you're trying to do that, you're making it stronger, and then yelling at them saying saying, well you are so it's not there is no day, it's us and if you take your time and move it to the system, it's going to happen. Anyways, This new system is expanding because once this insight is has found as free, people want to build into a free market.
And allow what the free market should look like. It's going to impose that because there's a wall of people moving into that, spending their time and energy. And that's why I just cannot believe I get to do this. Yeah, I get to the smartest people I've ever met.
Yeah. So I think a couple of things. Just so back to the decentralized and secure. Some of it really comes down to, I don't know, I guess to your point, the education or the desire for freedom. Right. So if we look at it from the standpoint, the war on drugs has been a pretty big failure. I mean, since nineteen seventy one, they've spent you know, over three trillion dollars and drugs is the number one killer in America right today, right, And so the war on drugs has
done nothing. And that's like a physical product that's been you know, grown, cultivated, package, ship, process, distribute, et cetera. Big one is decentralized more importantly digital, so it can't be technically seen or you don't have to carry it, et cetera. But the point more in the incentive mechanism. When they don't tell you not to do heroin, it doesn't make you want to do heroin. But when they tell you that you don't have a right to store your wealth in a way they can't steal from you,
it sort of makes you want to do that. Right. That's why in America, when they start talking about gun control laws, gun sales go through the roof, right, Oh, you're going to take away my freedom, Well, then I'm going to go act right now. So they're only really speeding that mechanism up. And so you know, I would say I was thinking as you were talking, so really what we need is more education to educate people about this. But the reality is is that we are driven by
self action and self determination. And so when I have a problem, I go look for a solution. And so when I see my freedom as under attack, I'm going to go find the solution to preserving myself from that freedom. And so I mean, I suppose sure education to continue to kind of keep that in the forefront. But as and this is what I tell people all the time, do you think governments print more or less money in
the future, And of course answer is more. And do you think governments become more authoritarian or less in the future? And I think the answer is of course more authoritarian until they can't be anymore. And so I think those things are driving it. And as long as we can keep those answers in front of people, they're naturally going to be incentivized to go find those I want to
jump into ego death. So you said, if people only knew what was being built, and they would realize that the government's years behind where you know these builders are going. So I want to talk about that. Let's talk about ego death. You just announced that you're starting a fun number two, one hundred million dollars, big number. So one, I'm guessing that there's massive appetite for that that you're seeing that, So tell me about the appetite. Two, there's
massive opportunity. So there's more opportunities that you want to get into. And then maybe three you can tell us about some of these and you don't have to name specifics, but what are some of these things that maybe are running light years in front of where these regulators are.
Yeah. So, so one, the thesis of the First Fund, like many of the other bitcoin only ventures, but the thesis of the First Fund was I thought there was this massive asymmetry of knowledge that bitcoin was this decentralized and secure bedrock that couldn't scale for a long time, and that is what made the value. So all you had to do is hold on to it, and it
created and you were creating value. So obviously in a free market that if that's all it was decentral utralized and secure and you couldn't scale it, and everyone was getting rich by holding bitcoin, everyone else would naturally create other coins, saying using bitcoin's growth to say my coin is better than that coin because it does x, it's a totlet natural that would be what the market would look like it's playing out, and again it still probably
looks like that today. So the thesis at the time was people haven't done the work on bitcoin and why it's a different asset class completely and it's repricing everything else, and until they do that work, they're at a massive disadvantage and they're going to invest in all of this coins and nonsense, and all of those things over time
will go to zero. Every other thing other than Bitcoin will go to zero because you would never use a blockchain, essentially a high cost database, if it wasn't decentralized and secure, you'd just use a database, right, So you'd never do that. And then at the same.
Time, because a blockchain is a slow, inefficient database, and exactly why the.
Only the only thing, the only thing, the only use case is the decentralized insecurity, essentially the ledger of money and is the biggest use case on the planet because money is manipulated. It's the biggest thing. They say. So when people say it doesn't have a use case, have you looked at how big and bloated governments are. Have you look at regulation, If you looked at all of the things that extract wealth from you, that's what it
gives back to you. It's the biggest use case that every world has ever seen, and you can't see it right before her eyes.
Jamie Diamond at Davos, he said, you know, bitcoin has no use case. I'm tired of talking about blah blah blah. He said, it's only used for basically crime, right, he said, it's avoiding sanctions, a M l K y C. Stuff. I think, he said, you know, sex, trafficking, fraud, and it's just a bunch of people trading between themselves. Yeah, that's exactly that's exactly right. It's the work outside of
the sanctioned. You know, basically everything is sanctioned at this point, and yes, so we can trade between ourselves exactly.
So I suspect Jamie Diamond is just a highly paid actor, and he's highly paid from the money that he skims off the top from that should be in your pockets. That's what ends up happening because he sits at the top of a system that must steal productivity that should flow to society in the form of lower prices right by his space and the system. So what would a highly paid actor in that system say about a system that gives you back your freedom and power, right because it takes it so of course.
But my point is is he was basically saying the only use case for bitcoin would be so you could have freedom and power that the state couldn't have. I mean, he was making the case for it inadvertency, right, But anyway, I'm taking you sort of off your thesis for for ego death and going the first.
But again, that's that's what you're up against, and that's what the world is looking at with all of that. And it's not just Jamie Dinmond, it's all of the system that So if you think about regulation if you think, if you think about regulation today, I've said this many times, but you have regulation to protect your money on top of a system designed to steal your money. Yeah, right,
what would that look like? Right? Just be let's be really honest, Like the free market is deflationary, and that's a big topic. The natural state of free market is deflation It's so big it breaks your brain. So if you can say that and understand that, and then go back and say, but I'm going to live in this other world in price from that other world, then it's your own fault that the world looks.
Like it is from that. I mean, the regulation doesn't protect your money from a system trying to steal it. The regulation actually protects them to be able to continue to steal your money. Because why forces me to keep us my money in a system that's rent seekers in every area as opposed to letting me use it freely? Do you think?
Why do you think big tech is trying so hard to regulate AI? Why do you think why do you think why do you think drug companies look like they do? Why do you think food companies look like the big agriculture? Why do you think it's been co opted? By regulation, because regulation protects the monopoly, it doesn't protect you. Why do you think regulation is on top of money, Because it protects a monopoly of money, not you. The entire system is and just look at the evidence. Every single
industry has been driven this way. Why because prices fall to the marginal cost of production and free in a free market. What is the what is the marginal cost of production of a line of code zero? What's the marginal cost of production of a line of code created by other code? Lines of code? Where AI is going zero, The only way they can drive the prices up and create the monopoly is through regulation, scaring you that they will protect you from the very same thing that steals
the thing becoming free for you. So that is the free market, That's what it looks like. And the regulation on top of it makes it not a free market. And that whole thing is getting worse and worse and worse, and people are stuck in that fear loop making it worse. The only thing that can stop it is something that has no counterparty risk to the existing system outside decentralized and secure. So that was our take. People were so
misunderstanding this asset class. They hadn't done the work. They hadn't understand how this is the first time in history that this is something like this has existed, and we felt sure that it would become more decentralized and more secure over time, which it is. And then we said, now there's with lightning and other things emerging on top.
You can scale in layers like protocol, like the like the Internet scaled and layers, and there is going to be more and more ability to be built on top, and that's going to turn into that overtime is going to turn into a peer to peer internet bounded by energy that creates an entirely a new world. And so I selfishly I wanted to be involved in that. When
I think about I wanted to. I knew that bitcoin was repricing everything else, but so at first I had a hedge in bitcoin, and I was spending most of my time in what we just described, and I thought, I'm a hypocrite, right, yeah, I'll be protected, but I'm spending my time and energy on a whole bunch of company boards in the existing space, and every time a company wins there money has to be manipulated faster to be able to drive up prices, and so I thought, if I know this and I can see it coming,
and I can see similar to what I saw in the Internet, it's kind of the best and the brightest we're moving in this space. What am I doing spending ninety percent of my time in the FIAT world. I'm going to spend it all in this And I'll tell you it's been. It's been remarkable because you get to see that it's I didn't think i'd have another chance
to do this. Like in the early days of the Internet, I remember thinking, Wow, people don't see this, people don't see what's coming, and and the type of talent that existed there, it was just it was your brain was on fire all the time because it was just you're learning at such a rate from some of the really some super smart and dedicated entrepreneurs and such and capital.
This is bigger. This is this is way bigger because because it's the same as the Internet, but the best prayers, but it's aligned with where humans are going and so it's more meaningful. And so the type of people, the type of integrity that is built into the space, the type of people that actually understand this and are building it's so much more powerful than than than the Internet was.
Yeah, yeah, would agree. You know, I talk about it all the time, and you see it if you go to a bitcoin conference. You know, the mainstreams to tell us that we align on identities, you know, black, women, male, straight, gay, whatever it may be, but we align on values. And there's some values that I think are more important than others, like freedom and human flourishment, for example. And so to the point that you're making sort of bitcoin has attracted
the people that care about those types of topics. And when you're in some of these bitcoin events, I mean you can just feel it. You can just feel the vibration, you can feel the energy in the room, so to speak.
And so to your point, you know, it's attracted the best and the brightest, and really maybe crypto has almost sort of helped that right as this great filtering mechanism, because if you only care about the money, you're going to go to the crypto side, and if you go to the bitcoin side, you're basically admitting to take less money and to go the long, hard way. And so only.
There isn't an entrepreneur in our portfolio, or I don't think in the bitcoin space that would take money from vcs that were crypto vcs because you don't want to. You don't want a shareholder that's misaligned with your at that level, at an integrity level, or or that you have to teach about a protocol that's so different. Can you imagine trying to take money from somebody who had no clue about what we're talking about right now? Your values aren't aligned and so so why this is expanding
and why it's just such a beautiful space. And if you just look at thefolio, the portfolio of success and what's happening in the companies that we funded already, Like, I literally can't believe I get to do it. I can't believe I get to work with these brilliant people creating this value for other people, and they and they're creating value for themselves in the companies out of creating staggering value for other people and bringing on billions of
people to this asset loss. That's what's going to happen.
Yeah, And I in this presentation, I gave as I said it, a bit block boom in and Packpitcoin. I was sort of at Packpitcoin. I put a slide in where I had said sort of I showed oil like a cann of oil or barrel of oil, and so you have oil like an asset, but then you have the oil industry, so like who made the sonar for the oil tanker to sell across the ocean, or who made the satellite tracking to track you know, or who made the new drill head to go horizontal or whatever
it may be. Right, so you have the asset bitcoin, but you have this whole industry of all these things that have to be built. And if we don't invest into that, basically we have a model t in our front yard sitting on blocks because we have no tire shops and no gas stations and no roads to drive
it on. And so the sort of the challenge was to the bitcoiners in that in that presentation, was that cool, you bought your bitcoin, you're hoddling on a hill, but just like your modeltes on blocks, But if you don't go and help build out this ecosystem, then you don't have roads to drive it on. And so there's this
entire ecosystem that needs to be built. And so that's obviously we're hoping to return better capital, but it's also potentially like hey, we just need to build this world that we believe in.
Yeah, but and just building on that. I just think, So there's an asymmetry and knowledge just on the asset layer, right, So probably less than one percent I really understand the asset layer really a lot less than one present. Even people that hold it don't really understand how it's reprising everything else. Now, there's a massive asymmetry of knowledge in what you can build on top. And then you look
at this world and you say, there's all these problems. Right, What entrepreneurs do is they race for the hardest to solve problem because that's where the return is is by solving it, they'd solve it for millions or billions of others and they create something really magical. That's what. So every time you hear a problem, I just go, Okay, that's screaming at me. Here's how how would you? How would you solve that? So when you think about this
kind of the the today you could call it. Bitcoin might not, but on top of bitcoin, it might look like a backcountry roads, gravel roads. The super highways are coming, right, and all of the stuff that's being built on on top of, on top of this is coming and it's going to provide incredible value to those entrepreneurs and society by by solving those problems. So I when I when I see a big, hairy problem like that, I think that's where I want to go.
Yeah, I love it. I love it. So and you're doing it. You're building the world that you want, and you're helping other people do the same. So ego death Bitcoin, Ego death. Fun number two open and ready for business, and just maybe this last question will just transition out. I mean, I think I think it's already sort of
self explanatory. But this is obviously a much bigger fund number two, and so it's not just the demand to get into this from the investor side, but you're also seeing an explosion of opportunities that need funding to grow as well. So I mean, we've seen it on both sides. Yeah.
So that so that's why So we actually our first fund we kept small, specifically because the ecosystem was small, and that would allow us way more time to be really kind of helping the entrepreneurs and spend more time inside some of those companies that would be enablers of what would come. Now those enablers are growing, some of them are growing extraordinarily fast, like blow me away completely, like the crazy fast and you and now in those you think about the next step their Series A or
Series BE and everything else and now. But there aren't a lot of Series A funds and bitcoin only their Series A funds broadly and everything else. And those entrepreneurs don't want to go to somebody who doesn't understand bitcoin for capital because that means teaching about bitcoin and everything else and their business. So that's why the bigger fund. The entire ecosystem is maturing as you would expect it would mature, and not just in our portfolio companies. You
know this from broadly in the industry. There's a bunch of things that are starting to catch fire.
Yeah yeah, well, it's an exciting time to be in the space. I agree. We have lots of fireworks. The ETF catalyst obviously the having cycle that's coming back around as well, But more importantly, it's the explosion of this technology is going to perpetuate and really more importantly help foster a new era of human advancement, human flourishment, et cetera, and freedom. Hopefully, I think with that will go ahead and sign it off unless there's anything else that you want to add or we missed.
No, no, just awesome catching up with your markets again. Our friendship has come from the exact same same thing that you see in this, in this ecosystem, and we'd say, looking outside in it'd say, okay, there's there's these fights in bitcoin and everything else, and you don't have to agree with everybody, but but I and and that's and I think a free market makes it stronger by the debates and everything else. And so so it's okay to
be different, different and have different views on this. But what but what you see in this is the really important things are aligned. And that's why, why why Again, you can create a type of people that you meet in this you just you know they're going to be lifelong friends.
Jeff, so good, So good. I love that, look forward to catching up with you sometime soon. But that was signed off. I'm gonna put in the show notes down below. Of course, we'll link to Ego Death, your book as well anything else that people should be paying attention to.
One quick thing, Jeff Booth dot ca is my website. And the only reason I say that is if you're going to follow me on social media. Make sure the social media that I'm on is on that website, because there's just too many fake accounts.
Yeah, all right, all right, Jeff, thanks so much, Thanks buddy,