back to indexAnthony Pompliano: Bitcoin | Lex Fridman Podcast #171
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The following is a conversation with Anthony Pompliano, entrepreneur, technology
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investor, prolific writer, podcaster, and Twitter user on topics of finance,
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cryptocurrency, technology, and economics.
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I highly recommend his popular podcast and daily letter called The Pump
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Podcast and The Pump Letter.
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Quick thank you to our sponsors, Theragun Muscle Recovery Device, Sun Basket Meal
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Delivery Service, ExpressVPN, and Indeed Hiring website.
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Click their links to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that I'll be having many conversations in the coming
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months about cryptocurrency with people of all kinds of backgrounds and worldviews.
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Those who are proponents of Bitcoin, like Anthony, Nick Carter, Robert
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Breedlove, Alex Glastine, and many others.
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And those who are proponents of other cryptocurrency technologies, like Vitalik
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Buterin, Charles Hoskinson, Richard Hart, Sergey Nazarov, Silvia
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Macaulay, and many others as well.
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I'm not framing this as a debate.
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I'm simply looking to explore exciting ideas in the space of technologies that
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could very well change human civilization and AGI civilization as well.
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I appreciate that some communities are a bit more intense in their style
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of communication and others, but I personally am only interested in open
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minded, respectful collaboration in exploring ideas.
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I personally try to like to approach conversations by considering that I may
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be wrong about everything and I'm looking to learn.
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I won't engage in groupthink, social signaling, outrage mobs, mocking,
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and derision. If you do, I understand, it's just not my thing.
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I send you my love either way and hope to meet you in person or some drinks, some
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good laughs, and a good conversation one day.
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No matter the difference in style or substance, we're all just human after all.
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This is an amazing ride we're all on together.
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Buy the ticket, take the ride, as Hunter S.
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Thompson said, whether you pay for that ticket with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or
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the dollar, gold, seashells, a beer, or just a good old smile.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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And here is my conversation with Anthony Pampliano.
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You served in the US Army for six years and spent 13 months in Iraq in 2008 and
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2009. Can you tell the story of why you joined the army and what were some of
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the moving difficulties, maybe lasting experiences from the time you served?
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Sure. I joined when I was 17 years old, needed my parents to basically sign in
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order to join. And I graduated a semester early from high school and thought I was
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going to go play football in college and kind of enroll in the spring semester.
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And when that didn't happen, basically was working at Chick Fil A and Quiznos.
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And I had in my mind, look, this is probably not the path in life that I want.
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And so I knew I was going to go to college.
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I knew I was going to go play football in the fall, but I had this window of time
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and so I walked into a recruiting office and just basically was like, I'm assuming
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you guys need some help.
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And, uh, you know, they gave me the whole pitch and, uh, you know, give you a signing
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bonus, you can go jump out of planes and go do all this crazy stuff.
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I just said, okay, let's do it.
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This was, this was close to the 9 11.
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This was in 2006, about five years after.
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So what impact, I mean, do you remember 9 11?
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What impact did that have on your thinking about this?
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So I was, uh, in eighth grade, um, if I remember correctly.
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And, uh, I remember, uh, being in school when it happened and, uh, I walked into a
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classroom and the entire class, uh, somebody else's class, they were all talking to the
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teacher about something.
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The second that me and a couple other kids walked in and we got real quiet and the
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teacher was like, Hey, go back to your like, homeroom.
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And so it was just kind of a weird, like what's going on.
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Uh, and then next thing I know, they called all the students into the cafeteria.
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And this is back before, you know, every classroom really had a television in it and,
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you know, cable and all that kind of stuff.
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And so when we were there, they basically just said, listen, there's been this, uh,
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event that's occurred.
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All of your parents are going to come pick you guys up and, uh, they'll explain it to
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And so to, you know, a kid in eighth grade, you're basically like, what happened?
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And so I got home and, uh, and I remember talking to my dad about it and my dad
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basically gave me, you know, the, uh, the core American kind of talking points.
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Right. Look, somebody from another country came here and tried to kill Americans and
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was successful in doing that.
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Um, and to some extent he just said, and I'm willing to bet, you know, we're going
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to go back after them.
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Did that wake you up a little bit to the idea that there's evil out there that, you
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know, even just the idea of terrorism for many people that was, um, when it hits you
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on your own land, it's a, it really shakes up your mind in some sense, world war two.
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That's why world war two was fundamentally different for Americans than it is for the
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people like in Russia and England and France and, uh, in Europe in general is
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there's something about when there's a families, women, children dying on your own
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land, that's different.
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And that was one of the first times in America where like on your, uh, of course
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it's Pearl Harbor, but like, this is like in recent history, it's like, they hit us
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here, that was like a profound idea.
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I think America was very, very good at exporting the violence
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elsewhere for a long time.
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And, uh, there was this element of, uh, complacency, but also this element of,
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uh, um, you know, really just American superiority that doesn't happen here.
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And, uh, I think that that woke people up, not only to, uh, you know, to the
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idea that other places around the world may not like the American ideals, may not
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like democracy and capitalism and, and that, but also, uh, maybe we aren't as
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big, tough and secure as we thought we were.
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And so obviously I think you see the kind of the over rotation with a lot of the
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kind of security theater that came after that of almost psychologically, let's
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make our citizens feel like they're safe, even if the things that we're doing
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don't necessarily, you know, kind of change that apparatus.
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Uh, but on top of that, I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's
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I think that it really woke people up to, uh, extremism around the world.
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And, uh, I don't know if necessarily there was a change in the extremism as
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much as it just was an awareness thing, right.
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How, how many people, you know, kind of drew a line from, was it 92 or 93 with
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the world trade center bombing to, you know, deep levels of extremism and hatred
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of, uh, kind of the American industrial complex, probably not that many, 2001,
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And so I think that was, you know, again, as a, as a young kid, you don't
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understand a lot of this stuff.
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You basically just, Hey, somebody came here and tried to kill Americans.
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And so, you know, we should go fight back, right.
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Was kind of the, uh, the, the response I think that I had.
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What role did that have psychologically for you when you then in 2006 join the
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army, I mean, this is a very different joining the army than in the time when
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like it's more peaceful here, you're essentially facing, I mean, I don't
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know if you see it that way, but you know, there is a war on terror.
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And I know that people kind of, uh, criticize that whole formulation
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framework of thinking, but nevertheless, you are going to Iraq.
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You are going to Afghanistan, you're going to these places and are
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fighting these complicated, like, I mean, it's not even clear what you're fighting.
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Well, I think that there's a couple of key pieces, right?
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So one, like what the actual most impactful data points, if you were, or
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kind of stories for me, uh, was the Pat Tillman story.
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So I played football, uh, in high school and it was going to go play in college.
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Um, and seeing, you know, this NFL player who basically just one day said, Hey, I'm
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going to go and do this instead, uh, and walk away.
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I don't know necessarily if it was a, uh, I want to pursue the same story right now.
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So he ended up dying.
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And so not exactly the, uh, the end result that you want, but I think it
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was almost like, uh, he made it okay.
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If you were on a certain trajectory in life to go take this detour and,
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Um, but the second thing is I was 17.
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You're pretty stupid when you're 17, you're pretty naive when you're 17.
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And so, uh, I almost, um, kind of backed into the deployment because
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I signed up, uh, as a, uh, a reserve member.
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And so basically the plan was to sign up for the reserves.
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I was going to go to basic training, get all the, you know, kind of education
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and qualification, I was going to go to college and then after college,
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you know, maybe there's a chance that you will go and serve or do whatever.
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For me, I ended up getting deployed when I was a junior in college
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and we got pulled out of school.
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And so at 20 years old, uh, it's not exactly what you thought you were
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signing up for, right.
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Especially to kind of leave school to go do it.
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And then on top of that, uh, I probably had an advantage over most people, both
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on the entry to combat and the exit to, uh, kind of a combat situation, which
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that was football.
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So I always explain that, um, in hindsight, you're in a male dominated
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testosterone driven kind of combative sport where it's us first them.
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And, and, uh, there's training and, and, uh, you know, injuries and just kind of
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all of the things that go into playing a combat sport like football to now they
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give you guns, but you still have a uniform on still male dominated.
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It's just a little bit, you know, more serious in terms of the injuries and,
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and, uh, potential deaths and things like that, but also on the exit from that
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deployment, most guys I was there with, they're going back to being, you know,
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prison guards, police officers working at the lumber yard, you know, just kind
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of every day Americans.
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And so I had the fortunate ability to go back into, uh, kind of that combative
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environment, go back to play football.
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And so it was almost this like deescalation on the way out, uh, where
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they take your guns away.
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We still got a uniform, still male dominated, uh, still combative.
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And then eventually you're just a normal citizen.
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And so I think that in some weird way, I was, you know, very fortunate
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to kind of on the entry and exit, have that experience where other guys did.
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So what you were deployed to Iraq, were there any memories, experiences
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that changed you or in general, like you're probably a different
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man on the other side of it?
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How did that time change you?
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I think there, there was two main takeaways that I took, right?
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So one was, um, not a specific moment, but on multiple occasions, uh, I remember
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we were driving down the road and I would look and there would be a 10, 12,
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And if you've never seen somebody who literally has hate and disdain in their
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eyes, just not necessarily to you personally, just to the uniform, to what
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you stand for, it's all this stuff.
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When you see it, you see it right.
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And I always think of, um, if you've ever, uh, watched the movie, uh, 12 strong and
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in it, uh, they've got this Afghan, uh, Afghanistan warlord, and he's talking
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to a bunch of soldiers and he says, you know, you don't have killer eyes.
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And he's just like, he can just tell, right?
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He's, he's seen so many soldiers.
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And so I think that that was a, a memory on a number of occasions where I just saw
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young kids and I just said, they hate us.
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And, and it's not you personally, it's what you stand for.
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But the really big event was, um, when you first get to these combat zones, a lot of
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times what will happen is, uh, you basically, your unit teams up with a unit
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that's leaving and there's a handoff and happens over a couple of weeks.
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And so you can imagine almost, you know, 1% of our team goes out with 99% of their
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team, then five, 95, 10, 90, all the way till it's 50, 50.
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And then eventually it rotates.
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And then it's majority of our team and a small number of their team.
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And so what a lot of people will explain is the two most dangerous times in war
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are actually the first two or three weeks and the last two or three weeks.
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When you first get there, you don't know who the people are.
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You don't know the terrain, you don't know, you know, kind of the local cultures
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and, and, uh, who to look out for, what signs, all that kind of stuff.
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And the last two or three weeks is you basically think you survived the
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deployment, you're looking forward to going home.
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So you become complacent, things like that.
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And so we made it through that transition period with no issues.
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Uh, but the literally the very first mission, uh, that we went out as a team,
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ourselves, a hundred percent, um, there was two separate incidents.
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Uh, one was we were driving in the middle of the night and, uh, what we think was a
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sniper shot at a truck that I was in, I was standing up outside of it, uh, along
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with a, uh, another guy.
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And that was kind of just a wake up call again of never been shot at before.
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And so I'll never forget, uh, you kind of heard this whiz go by and the guy next to
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me was from a rural Pennsylvania.
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And he just said, you know, look, I've never been shot at before either, but
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I've done a lot of hunting, get the fuck down.
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And so, uh, we kept driving that night.
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Um, and, uh, later on in the night, uh, an IED went off, a guy ran over an IED,
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uh, who was at the front of the convoy.
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And when that IED went off, uh, again, I had never been in a convoy that had been
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blown up before, but the training kicks in.
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And so immediately every single person starts screaming out IED, IED, and they
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started looking and trying to figure it out.
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And you realize the United States military did a fantastic job training us before we
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went, because in that moment, nobody thought about anything.
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You just did what you had been programmed to do.
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Um, and so ultimately kind of through the end of that event, uh, there was a US
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soldier that ended up dying.
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He was, uh, shot in the head.
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And, um, when we got back to the base, uh, kind of after that entire event,
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I think it just hit us.
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And if we make mistakes here, that is the cost of, you know, kind of those mistakes.
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And this was somebody who I didn't know.
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Uh, it was somebody who literally showed up, uh, kind of as secondary
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support, uh, for our unit and basically, uh, was there to help us.
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And so it was one of those weird situations where, uh, you have this emotional connection
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because it's somebody who, uh, shared an event with you, but you didn't know them.
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And you learn their name later and you understand that they have a family and
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they have young kids and all this stuff.
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And so again, as a 20 year old kid, you're kind of processing all this and
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you just realize like the gun I have in my arm, my hands, it's real for a reason.
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And we better take this seriously.
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This is not, you know, let's joking around in kind of the barracks and, you
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know, all the things that you would expect, you know, guys you're doing in the army.
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So I think that was like the moment where I said, Hey, I'm going to learn a lot here.
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Uh, and I got to make sure I get home.
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And you snap it into the training, but nevertheless, I mean, you're somebody
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who thinks philosophically about this world now, right?
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You're, uh, very intelligent and things deeply about the world.
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So looking back, you mentioned hatred in the 14 year old kids eyes, there's death.
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So the way you kind of described this whole story is like training kicks in.
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This, this shit is serious.
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Like this is, uh, you know, there's a reason there's a gun in, in your hand.
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So there's a strategic element.
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There's like, you have to get the job done.
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There's a task at hand, but at the same time, if you zoom out, there's a kid who
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has hate for you, uh, some of those kids would probably, if they could, would kill
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you for the thing you stand for in the uniform.
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And then there's bullets flying at you.
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And then there's people that some of them you might already care for deeply are dying.
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What the hell do you make of that?
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Do you think about that?
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Does any of that haunt you?
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How do you think about the world having witnessed that?
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A lot of times when we would talk about it, we were there.
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If I was that kid, I would want to kill that person too.
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I would have hatred as well.
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Imagine if in the United States tomorrow, you and I woke up and there was tanks
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rolling down the street from another country and they were basically imposing
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their rules on us, whether they thought it was the right thing to do or not, the
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soldiers were there and they were doing this, we would probably feel not so great
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At kind of a minimum and at a maximum, we'd be really, really pissed off.
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We would fight back.
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And so what you don't understand when you're in the heat of the moment is why
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does this person feel this way?
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And so what's very weird is, well, what happens if a year ago, US soldiers came
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through, they got shot at, they returned fire and they killed that kid's uncle.
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You'd be pissed off.
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And so you just start to understand, like we look at war very black and white.
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We look at it very much from a clinical perspective.
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We're going to go, we're going to go kind of invade somewhere.
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We are the most dominant military in the world.
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We're very good at invading.
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And we will crush wherever we invade, but when you're actually on the ground, what
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you understand is the humanity of it all.
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And so what becomes very interesting is pretty much every veteran I know that
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comes back, they're some of the largest pacifists in the world.
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And I always revert back to Marcus Luttrell, who was a famous Navy SEAL, and
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there's a movie made about him and his story.
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He gave a speech one time that I saw and he basically said, listen, if you're a
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politician, your job is to be the diplomat, do everything you possibly can, not to
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send me and my friends anywhere, because when you send us, we're going to bring
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hell with us, right.
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And understand that is the business that we are in, but every single other person
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up until we get sent has a job to do to prevent having to send us.
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And I think that ultimately that's where you see a lot of kind of this generation
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that has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan that says, listen, maybe we shouldn't be
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running around the world being the police, maybe we shouldn't be going and invading
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all these different countries, because when you actually get to see firsthand
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what happens, it's just something that we should avoid at all costs.
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But if we have to go, or we have to actually send soldiers somewhere, understand
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what happens when that occurs.
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And you know, the United States is the best in the world at doing it.
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Do you think, I'm thinking about that kid with the hatred.
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Do you think there will always be hatred in the world?
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Do you think there will always be hatred?
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In the world, do you think, uh, from another perspective, do you think there'll
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be war always, is that a fundamental aspect of human nature or is that
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something we can escape?
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So war, I think has like very negative connotations in terms of bullets and
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bombs and death and kind of just very morbid type, um, um, understanding.
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Conflict on the other hand, I think people look at and say, of course
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there will always be conflict, right.
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You just can't have billions of people all on the same planet without some
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level of disagreement, whether that's a disagreement of ideas, disagreement
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over physical, you know, geography, uh, or something else.
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And so I think conflict will always exist.
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The question is what form does war take moving forward?
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And so in my mind, you know, it's starting to look a lot more clinical,
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A lot more drones, a lot less soldiers on the ground, a lot more use of special
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forces and kind of these small, highly specialized teams rather than kind of big
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mechanical armies.
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Um, and then you get into like the information warfare and kind of cyber
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warfare and you start to understand that we're at war with a lot of people right
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Doesn't mean we're necessarily dropping bombs, uh, on their countries.
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Doesn't necessarily mean we're sending soldiers there, but on a daily basis, we
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are engaged in these kind of, you know, cyber battlefields.
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And so if that's where war starts to play out, um, it, one changes the tools
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and tactics and techniques that, uh, we need to arm our country and other
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countries will arm themselves with.
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But it also changes the way that we think about war, right?
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It seems, it sounds a lot less worrisome if I say, Hey, we're going to go to war
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with a country, but by the way, there's going to be no death.
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Like that doesn't sound nearly as bad as, Hey, we're going to go send 10,000
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soldiers and you know, some percentage of them are going to die on the battlefield.
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And then we're going to, you know, basically pipe back videos and articles
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saying that American soldiers are dying.
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It does seem to be a fundamental difference between the, the Genghis Khan
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style, like if I would feel differently if somebody like hand to hand with a knife
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murdered my family versus cyber security, why I stole all their data, stole all
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their money, stole everything they own, falsified their identity, all that kind
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of stuff that those are both traumatic events, but they do seem to be
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fundamentally different, but maybe that's actually very narrow style thinking,
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because ultimately you have to think about what is life and what's happiness.
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And, um, it's like the samurai thinking, I'm not sure what's more painful.
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If I take it to myself, like, I'm not sure what I would rather live through
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being stabbed, like to death, or having my identity stolen, all my money stolen,
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or maybe reputation destroyed, like with lies or something like that.
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That that's very interesting to think about.
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If you think about quality of life and all those kinds of things,
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well, one's finite, right?
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One's the pain ends and the other is kind of a long prolonged, almost torture.
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So it's physical pain versus psychological pain.
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It's really interesting to, it's really interesting to think about.
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And I think another key piece to this, which I don't have answers to, but,
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but there is an element of emotion and rage in the physical violence versus
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again, more of that clinical, you know, information warfare.
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And so, um, it's really easy to show a battlefield where there's death on both
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sides and bombs being dropped and buildings destroyed, um, it fits very
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well into propaganda for everyone involved, right, regardless of what side
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they're on, when you start talking about cyber warfare, how many times have
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we seen a big company get data hacked or information hacked and we all, you
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know, read the headlines, maybe throw a tweet out and then move on with our day
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and don't remember it anymore.
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And so it's just very, very different.
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I think, uh, in, in the, uh, motion and response that it invokes and people
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when they hear about it as well.
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Given the conflict, do you think people are fundamentally good?
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Are we all sort of like blank slates that could be evil given the environment
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or good given the environment, or can we kind of, is there some base that we can
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rely on that people, if left to their own devices will be good and trustworthy and
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honest, I think you have to separate out intention from action.
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So if you talk to some of the most heinous criminals in the world, they've
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rationalized their actions, and so you've got to ask yourself, what is the level
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of which they understood what they were doing, that they intended to be malicious,
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nefarious, um, and kind of do bad things versus the actual actions themselves.
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And so, um, even as a society, you know, if let's say, for example, you were to
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walk down the street and you were to murder somebody on the sidewalk, completely
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unprovoked, we would look at you and say, you are a, you know, a sociopath, uh, you
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have everything wrong with you and that is somebody that we do not want in our
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society, and therefore we will levy, you know, the extent of rule of law against
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you in order to protect society from you, right?
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And you become that monster, that beast, if in the same situation, somebody walks
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in your house with a knife and you murder them or you kill them, now we put you up
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on a pedestal as a hero, and those are two very, very different responses.
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They may be just as morbid, they may be just as violent, uh, in terms of the
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actual actions, the intentions, the way it's perceived is very, very different.
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And so I think that, uh, as a world, we like a very black and white, clean cut,
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you know, good, bad, uh, I think the world's a lot more messy than that.
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And I think that, uh, a lot of times when you look at intention, it's hard for us
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to tell what somebody's intention is, but I've looked at a lot of, you know, people
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who are both considered very good and also a lot of people are considered very
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bad and they sound very similar in terms of the motivations for their actions.
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And so I think that it's just a really hard problem that probably doesn't
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have a perfect solution or an answer.
link |
Do you give much value to the intention or do you think it's better to look at
link |
the results of the behavior, uh, as opposed to the, the underlying ideology?
link |
Underlying ideology, the underlying intention of, of the behavior.
link |
I think that intention gets at the question of like, are people inherently
link |
good or bad, right?
link |
Is I think that they're generally inherently good and the intention is
link |
driving towards the thing that they believe is the best outcome or the best
link |
thing for them to pursue the action.
link |
I think is where we spend most of our time focused on.
link |
Um, and frankly, we actually may be a better society or, uh, kind of kinder
link |
as a humanity to each other if we spent more time looking at
link |
intention rather than action.
link |
Um, but again, you know, if somebody walks down the street and murders
link |
somebody, uh, it's really hard to have a conversation and it may be inappropriate
link |
for us to have a conversation about intention versus, uh, any level of,
link |
So you're one of the prominent, I would say even the faces of the, the world
link |
of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, that whole entire world was dive straight in and
link |
ask, uh, do you think, do you consider yourself a Bitcoin maximalist?
link |
I think that the way I really look at it is, uh, I work backwards off of what
link |
is the maximalism that I believe in and the world that I believe in is, uh, kind
link |
of an automated world that is run on these open decentralized protocols.
link |
Uh, and what we ultimately do is we return sovereignty and individualism
link |
and, and kind of, uh, personal responsibility and liberty, uh,
link |
to people over institutions.
link |
And what we end up doing is we end up, uh, kind of taking what has historically
link |
been a very analog or physical world economy and, uh, geographic rule.
link |
And we then kind of put it in the cloud and this digital economy becomes the
link |
prevalent way that we all, uh, conduct commerce, communicate, uh, et cetera.
link |
And so it's less about any one single technology to me, right?
link |
I think that it's pretty stupid for people to, um, almost in a way, uh, put
link |
an inanimate object up for, uh, you know, some sort of obsession, uh, to me,
link |
it's much more about the ideals, the ethos, uh, and the most rational, uh,
link |
and likely path to that kind of end result or that world that I think, you
link |
know, is at this point, just a foregone conclusion.
link |
So the distinction there, and maybe people don't know the terminology,
link |
maximalism is basically saying, I really think this is a good idea.
link |
Like, uh, you know, if you prefer a certain kind of diet, it could be a
link |
keto maximalist saying like, this is probably, maybe it's not a hundred
link |
percent, but probably the diet that's healthiest for humans kind of thing.
link |
In the same sense, Bitcoin maximalism is saying, you know, of course we
link |
don't know, there's a lot of uncertainty, but this particular technology seems
link |
to be the best representations of some set of ideals that defines progress
link |
in the future, but you're drawing a distinction between sort of, um, cult
link |
like obsession about an object of any kind, whether it's keto, uh, or, uh,
link |
Bitcoin, and just sort of believing that a technology is the best representation
link |
of a particular set of ideals.
link |
And you believe that sort of, uh, this moving into the cloud, uh, both
link |
the distributed nature of it, but also just the digital nature of it is
link |
something that's going to, uh, be a positive step for humanity.
link |
I would even take maximalism a step further, and it's not just the kind
link |
of singular viewpoint of this is the best, it's also, uh, an element
link |
of it's anti everything else.
link |
So, you know, take keto, for example, uh, the keto diet is not only the best diet.
link |
All the other diets are bad.
link |
And so it's, it's a very binary view of the world.
link |
Um, I think that what's probably most misunderstood about, uh, let's take
link |
Bitcoin, uh, as a specific example, is that most of the people who are labeled
link |
Bitcoin maximalist, they would be open minded if they believe that something
link |
else came along that was a superior technology or had a, a better, um, kind
link |
of probability of achieving again, that ultimate vision, I think where, uh,
link |
there's this controversy and kind of clashing of, uh, ideas is that the
link |
Bitcoin community believes Bitcoin is the best way to do that and has very
link |
specific arguments as to why the other things are not right.
link |
And so what ultimately ends up happening, which is very weird in the investing
link |
world, right, it's unlikely that you and I are going to sit down and you're
link |
going to like Apple stock is the best stock and there's no other stock.
link |
That's worth anything.
link |
And, uh, and then also it's very weird if you said to me, um, you know, this
link |
stock is worth zero and that's where everything that I own, I've put on a
link |
short on one single company, right?
link |
There's diversification.
link |
There's a much more kind of probabilistic thinking in finance in general.
link |
Uh, when it comes to this specific world of cryptocurrency and kind of digital
link |
assets, if you will, uh, is there's two main groups of people who are trying to
link |
build two very, very different things at the onset, but when you unpack it and you
link |
start to spend more and more time on it, you rise, they're actually trying to
link |
accomplish the same thing in two different ways.
link |
So Bitcoin is seen, I think, as a, uh, a digital currency, right?
link |
Kind of the idea that this is going to ascend to become the next global
link |
reserve currency, it's a programmatic kind of digital currency, but it's
link |
also a programmatic kind of transparent, um, money.
link |
And, uh, it's essentially just 180 degrees difference than the inflationary,
link |
you know, non transparent, uh, fiat currencies that exist in the world.
link |
You then look at kind of everything else, right?
link |
And you have a lot of smart contract platforms and various things that
link |
they're all going after at Ethereum with kind of the world computer
link |
approach, and you can kind of go down the line with all their other
link |
arguments as to what they're trying to build.
link |
I think the big difference just comes down to, uh, innovation versus security.
link |
And when you simplistically look at it via that lens, you actually understand
link |
where both people are coming from.
link |
When you say security, sorry to interrupt, do you mean financial
link |
security or do you mean like literally the, the, the security of the,
link |
of the particular cryptocurrency?
link |
The, the technical security of a blockchain.
link |
So when you look at, let's say, um, Bitcoin versus Ethereum, right?
link |
Bitcoin has decided in that community has decided security is the number
link |
one thing that you have to optimize for.
link |
So decentralization, um, over everything else in terms of transaction
link |
speeds, uh, cost, anything that you could come up with, that is, uh, something
link |
that would be important for a currency.
link |
The number one thing to optimize for is security.
link |
And as we have seen, uh, with a lot of technologies, right?
link |
Facebook's, uh, Libra or now what's known as DiEM is a great example.
link |
Uh, not having decentralization is susceptible to the nation state.
link |
And so a lot of these other platforms and blockchains, uh, they say security
link |
is important, but it's not the most important thing we believe there's a
link |
trade off between, you know, a little less security and transaction speed or
link |
composability or whatever it is.
link |
And so take a theorem as kind of the second, uh, largest, uh, community
link |
and blockchain by market cap.
link |
It was created because somebody wanted to, or a group of people
link |
wanted to do something on Bitcoin.
link |
They felt like they couldn't do it.
link |
And so they said, Hey, we're going to go create something that has the smart
link |
contracts that we can then go do here.
link |
Again, this is technology, right?
link |
And so the tribalism of like, you're right, you're wrong to me is a little
link |
childish, just in the sense of like the market is going to decide what is most
link |
And then when you go inside of that community, like there's a lot of dumb
link |
ideas, people are trying to build around Bitcoin, but there's also a lot of really,
link |
really great ideas that people are trying to build around Bitcoin, same thing in
link |
the Ethereum world. And so what you end up getting, I think, is the tribalism
link |
really comes out of the idea that there's a ticker price that is attached
link |
to all of this, right?
link |
If you go back in history of technology, venture capitalists didn't sit around
link |
the table and yell and scream at each other in this like religious zealot way,
link |
right? Because you bet on one type of cloud computing platform.
link |
And I bet on another one, right?
link |
It's just the market's going to decide, we're both going to work on and try to
link |
make our successful, uh, here in the world.
link |
I think that the sensitivity and mainly it comes out of the Bitcoin community is
link |
that a lot of this is being funded, not only by venture capitalists and kind of
link |
professional money managers and asset allocators.
link |
There's also this element of including the retail investor and the public.
link |
And so it, whether it's through ICOs or some other forms of capital raising,
link |
um, there's arguments for it saying, Hey, look, uh, this now gives kind of the
link |
little guy, some sort of access and an ability to do it.
link |
But there's also arguments against it. Some people say, Hey, it's easier to dupe
link |
them and it's easier to run scams and kind of all this stuff.
link |
And so ultimately I think that, uh, crypto is this like arena of ideas.
link |
It is literally the war of attrition and, uh, what will end up happening is 10
link |
years from now, you and I will talk and we're going to say, well, the market said
link |
X was valuable and Y wasn't.
link |
And so all of the tribalism from between, you know, here and there, uh, it's fun.
link |
It's, you know, engaging.
link |
Whatever, but ultimately it doesn't really matter because the public is involved.
link |
There's a lot of personalities.
link |
And so a lot of times we focus on the extreme personalities that do a lot of
link |
maybe, uh, pardon the French shit talking.
link |
And, and so we kind of focus on that, but that's not necessarily a representative
link |
of the communities involved.
link |
Let's talk about Bitcoin first, and then it'll help us use as a kind of comparison
link |
to Ethereum or whatever else.
link |
So when you think about what is money, right?
link |
That's kind of the first question.
link |
People really kind of go down the rabbit hole on, and ultimately today,
link |
it's a belief system, right?
link |
And you may believe that one currency has more value over another because
link |
it's backed by a certain military or a certain government has a monetary policy
link |
that you believe in or don't believe in.
link |
Um, but ultimately it's a belief system that there's nothing backing this, uh,
link |
other than, uh, a government asks you to pay your taxes in it, right?
link |
And they can have a monopoly on violence, uh, in terms of they can put you in jail.
link |
If you don't pay your taxes, uh, they can, uh, they can, uh, they can
link |
go to other countries and they can invade and do all this stuff.
link |
It wasn't always like that, right?
link |
It was historically a layer one technology was gold.
link |
And so gold was a fantastic store of value.
link |
You knew that if you held gold, it wasn't going to be inflated away.
link |
It was sound money was outside the system and no one could create more of it.
link |
And the reason why that's important is because that optimization for store
link |
of value served as the bedrock of the entire stack of, uh, money.
link |
Uh, for 5,000 years. And so the problem with that though, again, trade off between
link |
store of value is it was really hard to transact with, right?
link |
If I came in here and I, and you said, Hey, I want a couple of ounces of gold and I
link |
had a whole bar, I'd have to literally shave off the ounces of gold.
link |
Uh, it's heavy to carry around.
link |
If you said to me, Hey, you're in one city, mail it to me, really expensive.
link |
You know, there's all these issues with it.
link |
And so ultimately what people said was, well, let's create a second layer on top
link |
of that gold in order to make it easier to transact with it.
link |
That gold in order to make it easier to transact.
link |
And so we created paper claims on the gold.
link |
So, Hey, don't carry around the gold in your pocket anymore.
link |
Put it in a vault or a bank.
link |
They're going to issue a paper claim.
link |
Now you and I can trade these paper claims around.
link |
And at any point, if you want the gold, you just show up and you say, Hey, give
link |
me three ounces of gold or two bars or whatever.
link |
And so that actually made the store of value.
link |
It was allowed that to be the anchor and kind of the most important part, the
link |
security of your, of your purchasing power, but now it became easier to transact.
link |
And then eventually we built layers even on top of that.
link |
So everything from electronic money, uh, kind of electronic UCIPS, all the way
link |
to credit and other systems on top of that gold 1971 comes around and obviously
link |
we D peg from that gold, right?
link |
And it was a temporary measure at the time.
link |
We ended up not going back to it.
link |
And so what you moved or transitioned from was sound money, which was outside
link |
the system, no one could create more to now the government had full control.
link |
They could create as much as they wanted to.
link |
They tried to be responsible and disciplined, but obviously hard to do.
link |
Sometimes we've been really good at it.
link |
Sometimes we've been less good at it.
link |
And then you go around the world and some countries have absolutely sucked
link |
at it and some have been good at it.
link |
And so when you look into the Bitcoin world, I think that when you look at
link |
this optimization for security, similar to gold store value, people hold it.
link |
Purchasing power has gone up a lot year over year.
link |
It's like a 200% year over year compound annual growth for over a decade.
link |
And so you measure this in kind of the us dollar exchange price, et cetera.
link |
But there's still a lot of people who will yell and scream about it's slow.
link |
It's costly, right?
link |
All the things around those transactions that are obstacles or challenges.
link |
And so there's basically two schools of thought, and this is where we
link |
kind of get into the bifurcation.
link |
Some people just said, Hey, this technology is antiquated.
link |
It doesn't make sense.
link |
Uh, and so what we're going to do is we're going to go build something new.
link |
And so you go get, you know, kind of all of the various versions there.
link |
The Bitcoin community says, no, just like gold had paper claims and other
link |
things built on top and layer two, three, four, five, we're going to do that here.
link |
And so they've already started to build kind of this layer two where
link |
it's easier to transact.
link |
It's cheaper, it's faster, et cetera.
link |
And so I actually think that both of those worlds are going
link |
to coexist in the future.
link |
The big question is just which one has more importance, right?
link |
So again, get out of binary.
link |
It's just probabilistically.
link |
And so my personal belief is that the security that the store of value
link |
component as the bedrock for a monetary system is essential, right?
link |
Like that is the most important thing because you can always improve
link |
the other components, but you can't go back and fix that kind of core piece.
link |
So money, money's a, an idea that we all it's like an emergent
link |
idea that we believe in.
link |
You're saying that security is one of the most fundamental catalysts or fuels
link |
for that idea to sort of take hold and be stable and sort of take over the world.
link |
The other stuff is really nice to have, but if you don't have the security,
link |
you're not going to, like, it's not going to spread in the viral
link |
sense in, in our human brains.
link |
Well, and especially in light of the kind of the macro economy, right?
link |
So like, what's so fascinating about the last 12 months is, um, in
link |
investing in general, the best returns, right?
link |
I kind of put that in air quotes a little bit is something that is different
link |
than everything else and right.
link |
So being different and wrong just means you're an idiot, right?
link |
Being different and right means that that's where kind of the outsize returns
link |
are. And so if you look around the world at currencies today, they're all the same.
link |
They're all inflationary, unlimited supply controlled by a government done and
link |
decisions made in a very non transparent process.
link |
And what we've watched is the manipulation of all of those currencies
link |
over the last 12 months in direct contrast to that is this thing, Bitcoin,
link |
which is outside of the system, has a finite supply, transparent and programmatic
link |
monetary policy. And so when you see those two systems kind of, um, in comparison
link |
to each other in the United States, there's a lot of people who say the dollar
link |
works great for me. I can go to the ATM, I can get out physical cash.
link |
If I want to swipe a card, I could do that.
link |
My money in my bank doesn't lose 50% of its value in a day in terms of
link |
purchasing power. Like the dollar's pretty good.
link |
When you go to other countries, that might not be the case.
link |
And so I do think that there's a kind of a relative analysis that goes on here.
link |
If you compare Bitcoin to the dollar, there's all kinds of arguments to make
link |
that the dollar is better as a medium of exchange today.
link |
But if I go and I tell you, well, what about in these kind of extreme examples
link |
of Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Turkey, et cetera.
link |
And so I think that that's kind of one perspective to view this through is
link |
security versus all of the innovative components of a medium of exchange, et
link |
cetera. The second thing, though, that I think is really important is
link |
around censorship.
link |
And so when you look at, again, every currency in the world today, every
link |
single financial service, they're highly susceptible to censorship.
link |
And actually, I would argue the United States is in the business of
link |
censorship in terms of how many countries around the world do we sanction
link |
and cut them off in either a minimal or a very material way from the global
link |
financial system. So when you define it, when you talk about censorship,
link |
do you mean just the censoring your ability to operate freely in the world?
link |
Well, look at it a little bit differently, which is that the United
link |
States has kind of the American superiority because we have the bombs,
link |
the bullets, the soldiers and that military might.
link |
We basically impose our will around the world.
link |
And so there's a very strong argument to be made that there are certain
link |
countries around the world that are being sanctioned, that the people
link |
of those countries did nothing wrong. Now, the governments are bad, right?
link |
In terms of the way that you and I would look at democratic rule or
link |
communism or whatever it is, but the people are being hurt as well.
link |
So there's a whole group of people who would just argue, listen, we
link |
shouldn't hurt anyone at the expense of punishing one person or a group
link |
of people. There's other people argue against that. But I do think that
link |
if you really kind of zoom out and you say, I'm going to take myself out
link |
of the Western worldview, and I'm simply going to look at this as we're
link |
all part of the human race, it's censorship. And there might be an
link |
argument for censorship, but there also might be an argument against
link |
the censorship. And so what Bitcoin does, as that specific kind of
link |
payment network is it says anyone in the world with an internet connection,
link |
I don't care where you were born, what language you speak, what
link |
religion you are, your wealth status, your education status, none of it
link |
matters. If you have an internet connection, you're not going to
link |
care. If you have an internet connection, you can plug into this
link |
monetary system. And you can move value around the world to anyone
link |
else without asking for permission. And in the United States, we
link |
basically have that ability in the US dollar kind of traditional
link |
banking system, I can pretty much send money to almost anyone I want
link |
unless they're a really bad person that's on some list or something.
link |
Most people in the world don't have that capability. And so what
link |
you're essentially doing is you're democratizing access to a true store
link |
value, and a medium of exchange, right. And so what you see in many
link |
of these countries is that when their currency starts to fail, the
link |
first thing that a government or a group of people in power and
link |
influence do is they lock the citizens into the currency with
link |
capital controls. Why? Because if you let them out, it exasperates
link |
the problem. And so now what we're seeing is we basically are giving
link |
a tool to billions of people around the world that is a peaceful
link |
protest. Right? You and I had no say at all. When not only the
link |
Federal Reserve and elected officials here in the United
link |
States, but central banks around the world over the last 12 months
link |
decided to create trillions of dollars and injected into the
link |
monetary system. Right? They have arguments, and some of them are
link |
very good arguments as to why they should do that. They're
link |
trying to mitigate short term pain. Long term, they'll figure
link |
out the other issues, right? They have very kind of elaborate and
link |
well articulated kind of viewpoint as to why they're
link |
doing it. But you and I had no say. And so when you start to
link |
look at, we have a very small group of people in this world,
link |
both in our country and in countries around the world that
link |
make these decisions that have very, very far reaching kind of
link |
impact. And on top of that, in many cases, there's actually not
link |
that much kind of accountability. Because usually
link |
these are not elected officials who are making some of these
link |
decisions, these are appointed. And you can argue that, hey, we
link |
elected somebody who appointed them. But at the same time, that
link |
accountability isn't quite there. And so I think ultimately,
link |
when you just back out, you say, you know, what is Bitcoin? Why
link |
is it important to the world? It is giving access to anyone in
link |
the world with an internet connection to a store of value
link |
and a monitoring network that allows them to peacefully
link |
protest and to opt out of a system that pretty much is not
link |
working for majority of people in the world.
link |
So it's moving the power from these centralized places,
link |
sometimes unelected to the individuals and to the people.
link |
So the dollar does seem to work for Americans and for many
link |
people in the world. But you kind of have a vision, you paint
link |
a picture of a future where potentially we move to
link |
cryptocurrency. So what kind of trajectory do you see where
link |
Bitcoin can become the main currency in the world, or at
link |
least cryptocurrency become the main way of storing value in the
link |
world and basically overtake the dollar?
link |
Yeah, so I always go first to we don't need to have competition
link |
like in terms of like a direct competition between the dollar
link |
and Bitcoin, right? If you look at most technologies in the
link |
world, the really valuable ones are actually market expanding
link |
technologies, rather than simply just market share stealing
link |
technologies, right. So if you look at Uber, for example, Uber
link |
didn't just say, Hey, I'm gonna go take out all the taxis,
link |
right? It actually drastically expanded the market for people
link |
now there's literally millions of people in the United States
link |
who don't have cars because they use Uber, right. And so I think
link |
that Bitcoin is very similar in that, yes, there is a component
link |
of medium of exchange, in terms of the dollar. But also there is
link |
this component of just store value assets in general. And so
link |
when you start to look at Bitcoin, specifically, I think
link |
that what you're seeing is you're seeing a generational gap,
link |
where young people say, I grew up with a phone in my hand, I'm
link |
digitally native, the whole idea of going to the bank and
link |
sending a wire, or going to an ATM and getting physical cash is
link |
an antiquated idea in their mind, right? I one time asked my
link |
brother, he's 24 years old. And I said, Hey, how do you send
link |
money to your friends? And he gave me one answer, which I
link |
expected, which was Venmo. And the second answer, I didn't
link |
expect he said Uber. I said, How do you send money via Uber? He
link |
said, Well, we get in a car together. And at the end, we
link |
split the ride. And so again, you and I have probably both
link |
done that. But I never thought of it as a way to send money to
link |
each other. And so it is a psychological difference between
link |
even me, who's only, you know, a decade older than him or so,
link |
and his peer group. And so I think as we're watching kind of
link |
Bitcoin continue this ascent, ultimately, what we're seeing is
link |
an entire generation of kids are saying, Listen, if I look at
link |
financial assets across the board, I have stocks, I have
link |
bonds, I have currencies, and I have commodities, I know that
link |
bonds, from a real rate return perspective, is flat to
link |
negative, right? I'm gonna make no money on this, because I have
link |
a belief that my dollar is being devalued. And actually, what
link |
we're starting to see is, again, the internet has broken down
link |
these walled gardens and kind of these centralized hubs of
link |
information, in that if you were to look at, let's say the stock
link |
market, from 1971 to today, in dollar terms, it's a 45 degree
link |
angle right up into the right, right, you know, it's kind of
link |
seven, 810% growth, every year, it's amazing, just get invested
link |
in the stock market, and you'll make money over a long period of
link |
time, regardless of the dips along the way. If you do not
link |
make that same stock market in gold, the stock market is down
link |
since 1971. And so is it so much that the stock market is accruing
link |
true value? Or is it that the underlying currency in which it
link |
is denominated in is being devalued? Right? And I was being
link |
devalued in a very disciplined way, right, in terms of it's not
link |
like it went 50% devaluation in a short period of time, but it's
link |
still being devalued. And so I think that people are waking up
link |
to this idea that a traditional 6040 type global portfolio
link |
doesn't work anymore, right? 40% of it in bonds is just not going
link |
to get it done. And so when you start to look at this, people
link |
first look at Bitcoin via two main ways, in my opinion, they
link |
look at it one as a store value, should I actually go and put
link |
some of my wealth there use it as a savings technology, right?
link |
We ask people in the traditional world, if you're a teacher, a
link |
fireman, an accounting, you know, mid level manager, we say,
link |
hey, go do your job, be best in class as a fireman or as a
link |
teacher. And then Oh, by the way, you have to be a
link |
professional investor as well. Because if you just put your
link |
dollars in your bank account, you're literally going to have
link |
your wealth devalued away over time. So you can't just save you
link |
have to invest. That is a really tall task for people, they have
link |
a hard enough time just doing their job, right? Taking care of
link |
their family, right? Now they got to go be an investor. So I
link |
think savings technology for Bitcoin standpoint is, if you
link |
buy satoshis or Bitcoin, over time, it will increase from a
link |
purchasing power standpoint, because there's a fixed supply
link |
and demand continues to rise. But then you start to look at
link |
well, what other assets do people put in their portfolios,
link |
whether it's art, it's real estate, precious metals, or
link |
something else. Most of those assets are not because people
link |
actually think that they're going to go up in value over
link |
time, they're using the store of value. Right? The reason why
link |
somebody buys gold is because the store of value, right
link |
historically, that's a narrative driven type asset, though,
link |
right? We tell people it's scarce, we tell people that it
link |
is a store of value. When you look at it, though, we don't
link |
know how much gold exists in the world, we have a good estimate,
link |
right? But we don't actually we can't prove how much there is.
link |
We don't know how much is coming out of the ground every day.
link |
Again, great, fantastic estimate. But we can't prove it.
link |
And we don't know what the total supply and that's what you mean
link |
by narrative driven, we can't really prove it, like
link |
mathematically, we you I and everyone else in the world has
link |
lived in a narrative driven world for the last couple of
link |
decades, right? And what the internet and digital technologies
link |
have done is it opened up the possibility and the desire from
link |
people to have a world now where I can validate things. So when I
link |
see that headline, I want to see you say whatever happened to the
link |
news, if you're the subject of the news, rather than have
link |
somebody else tell me the story. If I see that you say something
link |
is scarce, prove to me that it is scarce. And so I think that's
link |
kind of a psychological shift, the younger generation is
link |
starting to understand because ultimately, you and I probably
link |
grew up in a world where parents could tell us the story. And we
link |
just believed it. You know, dad or mom says it must be true. If
link |
my brother heard a story, what does he do? He goes to Google
link |
and he looks it up. Randy comes back and usually tells my
link |
parents, oh, you got the story wrong, right. And so I think
link |
that that that provability or that that validation ends up
link |
becoming really, really important. And so, you know,
link |
look at something like gold, I think that people are
link |
drastically underestimating the shift that's underway right now.
link |
Gold is one down in value since April, or I'm sorry, August of
link |
2020. And so in a timeframe where central banks have had
link |
historic quantitative using literally $6 trillion in the
link |
United States, the one asset that historically has been the
link |
best store of value and has, you know, in 2008 financial crisis
link |
hit an all time high based on the government response has
link |
actually suffered for a main part of this financial crisis.
link |
You then look at central banks around the world who have been
link |
very large holders of gold for a long time and net buyers on a
link |
monthly basis. For multiple months, over the last six
link |
months, they've been net sellers of gold. And then you
link |
start to look at jewelry demand. So the actual non
link |
monetary value of gold, and that demand for gold jewelry peaked
link |
in 2013, and has continued to fall since. And so what you
link |
start to say to yourself is take just the asset of gold, which
link |
about $10 trillion market cap, and you say, Okay, well,
link |
jewelry demand continues to fall, even if it's at a slight
link |
rate, but it's continues to contract. You have central
link |
banks that now at some times are net sellers and sometimes net
link |
buyers, right? So okay, again, contraction there. And then from
link |
the investment standpoint, the actual price, the daily price of
link |
this continues to fall, which is a signal that there's a
link |
contracting demand from an investment perspective. That's
link |
93% of all use of gold, only 7% of it's used for actual
link |
technology and metal conduction and things like that. And so
link |
you have a $10 trillion asset that it appears and again, maybe
link |
data changes, and I'll change my mind and other people change
link |
their mind, but it appears is on the decline. And so if that
link |
happens, you're going to get the contraction of a $10 trillion
link |
asset, where's all that value go. And what you're seeing is at
link |
the same time that that asset is contracting, you're also seeing
link |
a massive influx from not only retail investors, not only kind
link |
of the wealthy and the elite, but also from financial
link |
institutions, corporations, pension funds, etc. into this
link |
kind of digital sound money.
link |
So you're saying that there's a kind of shift from gold to
link |
Bitcoin, because they have a lot of the same properties, except
link |
one is in the physical space, the other is in the digital
link |
space. So do you see like central banks, quietly
link |
potentially switching out from sort of gold to Bitcoin, like
link |
naturally just doing is seeing a pattern that you're referring
link |
to now, but more drastically into the future, where there's
link |
if you line up the gold community and the Bitcoin
link |
community next to each other, they'll agree on all the
link |
problems that they that they see in the world, right? They'll
link |
actually agree on the solution that sound money is the solution
link |
where they differentiate is the gold communities believes that
link |
it's the analog application of sound money, right? The physical
link |
gold, that is the solution. The Bitcoin community believes the
link |
digital application of sound money, Bitcoin, can you define
link |
sound money, by the way, someone is just outside the system, and
link |
no one can create more of it. So nobody controls it. This is
link |
scarcity is fundamental. Exactly why scarcity important in money?
link |
I think scarcity just has this very high correlation to value
link |
across all assets, not just money, right? Money happens to
link |
be the unit of account that we use in terms of daily commerce.
link |
But whether it is, you know, as we're seeing now, sneakers, or
link |
you know, whatever it is, scarcity, ultimately, is that
link |
signal of value, I think, and that's just been the way that
link |
humans derive value for literally, you know, thousands
link |
and thousands of years. Yeah, I gotta say, that's my view on
link |
life and love in general, is scarcity is what makes it
link |
valuable. People talk about immortality.
link |
You know, I would like to be immortal, but it does, it does
link |
seem that when you let go of the finiteness of life, I feel like
link |
that meals and the experiences you have get devalued
link |
significantly, like, the longer you live, the less value there
link |
are in infinity, if you live forever, I worry that all the
link |
meaning will dissipate. And the same thing with love, I think
link |
criticism of sort of dating culture and all that kind of
link |
stuff. Like I haven't had shocking revelation that I've
link |
never been on a tinder date or any of those things. I believe
link |
that scarcity in dating and interaction is like, intensifies
link |
the value of when the interactions do happen. So, when
link |
they like when love does happen. And so in that sense, there's
link |
something magical about scarcity in the more subjective
link |
psychological social world, as well. And perhaps money is just
link |
another version of that, right? It's just it's all about the
link |
stories and ideas we tell ourselves.
link |
I think they're actually more interconnected than you're
link |
giving it credit for, right? Which is, what is money? Money
link |
is time, ultimately, right? The pursuit of the acquisition of
link |
money, right, of whether it's a currency or true money, is
link |
because that should give you more time, right? And that's
link |
what would give you more time. And so one of my favorite
link |
movies ever is, and it's funny, because Justin Timberlake is in
link |
it, is this movie in a lot of me, I lose most people at that
link |
point, in time, in time. And basically, the premise of the
link |
movie is that everyone has a clock that is embedded into
link |
their arm. And so if you go to work, you basically put your
link |
arm underneath when you leave, and there's time that's
link |
deposited into your clock. And if your clock ever hits all
link |
the arrows, you're dead, you die on the spot. And so there's
link |
a number of scenes where people are basically running, you know,
link |
to get to you, and I give you a little bit more time so that
link |
you can get to work on Monday, and then you work to acquire
link |
time. And so basically, time becomes this currency. But what
link |
becomes very fascinating about it is there are sections in
link |
society, where literally, there's physical places, if you
link |
only have, let's say, 72 hours or less, you're allowed to go to
link |
Section One. Section Five, though, is because you have
link |
years and years and years on your clock. And in this movie,
link |
everyone at the age of 25 freezes from a biological aging
link |
standpoint. So everyone stays the same, but you may have lived
link |
for 1000 years. And so what becomes so fascinating about it
link |
is that rich people have time, poor people do not have time.
link |
And so in it, Justin Timberlake, the main character at one
link |
point, essentially acquires a bunch of time, and he's able to
link |
go to one of the higher levels. And now he's attending all these
link |
galas and, you know, poker nights and all this stuff. And
link |
one of the first things that he learns is that in the lower end
link |
of society, everyone is running everywhere at all times in the
link |
movie, because time is so finite, and it is so scarce.
link |
And so therefore, why would I walk down the street, I must run
link |
down the street. In the highest level of society, no one runs
link |
anywhere. And in fact, if you run, you are seen as lower
link |
class. Yeah, because wealth is time. And so that movie is, you
link |
know, it's got a ton of kind of things that you can pull out of
link |
it, but to me is the perfect epitome of money is time. And so
link |
when you start to think about the acquisition of money, right,
link |
it goes to this whole idea of time billionaire. And I know
link |
that there's probably a lot of people who've heard about this
link |
already. But if you think of a million seconds, it's about 11
link |
days, a billion seconds is 31 years. And so if I said to
link |
somebody, you have to switch lives with Warren Buffett,
link |
would you do it? Some people would say, Sure, that'd be
link |
their initial reaction. But you got have to be you know, 92
link |
years old, is the money worth the lack of time? Most people
link |
would say no, right? And there's this guy, Graham Duncan, who
link |
really articulated this well. And ultimately, what ends up
link |
happening is you rest time is more valuable than the money.
link |
But the you acquire the money to gain more time. And the reason
link |
is valuable is because of the scarcity of time. We currently
link |
have the by the biology, the physics means that this is not
link |
just the narrative we tell ourselves, maybe it is, I don't
link |
know, but it feels like pretty sure we're mortal. And in that
link |
sense, the scarcity there gives value to time, it's fascinating
link |
to think about all the thought experiments here of if that
link |
could actually be on the economy, if you can actually
link |
convert time in a frictionless way to money.
link |
Well, and if you start to pull on this a little bit and say,
link |
okay, a young person today, let's say somebody in their
link |
20s, has about 2 billion seconds left in their life, right, kind
link |
of 60 years, give or take, based on life expectancy. They
link |
usually, until they start to understand this concept, think
link |
of wealth in dollar terms. But dollars are being devalued. And
link |
so you know, a million dollars doesn't get you what it used to
link |
get, right is kind of an old adage. And so what you're doing
link |
is you're pursuing something that ends up losing value. And
link |
so it's the constant rat race, it's how do I constantly try to
link |
get more? How do I get more dollars? How do I get more
link |
dollars? Because even if I say to myself, you know, I'm going
link |
to retire when I get $100,000. When I get the $100,000, the
link |
$100,000 five years from now doesn't buy me what I thought it
link |
did. So now I need 500,000 or 200,000 or a million or whatever
link |
the number is. And so ultimately, what ends up
link |
occurring is that the Bitcoin community and many people in
link |
kind of this idea of sound money is you want to be able to
link |
acquire an asset that not only will hold the value, right, the
link |
store of value over time, but it will actually appreciate over
link |
time. And so when you look at something like Bitcoin against
link |
the dollar against other types of assets, all of these assets
link |
are down compared to Bitcoin, right? Now, some of that's just
link |
in the early days of kind of the pricing of an asset, you go from
link |
very small to something much larger. But now what you start
link |
to look at is well, if you have a finite supply of something,
link |
what ends up happening is people begin to value it more. And so
link |
in a world where dollars are infinite, and other fiat
link |
currencies are infinite, Bitcoin becomes very, very interesting,
link |
very special, and something that is very aspirational. And so I
link |
think that's where you're starting to see people say,
link |
wait a second, this is something where that finite, secure store
link |
of value is essential to wealth generation and preservation over
link |
a long period of time.
link |
And if Sam Harris is right, that free will is an illusion. This
link |
is really interesting to think about. Maybe time is a kind of
link |
blockchain, because you can't change anything. And then the
link |
physical space time of the universe is a ledger. So maybe
link |
it won't be Bitcoin that replaces gold, maybe it'll be
link |
time, once we crack open that, in fact, the universe is fully
link |
deterministic. So maybe that's what like Eric Weinstein is
link |
afraid of, once you figure out the theories of everything of
link |
physics, we'll be able to then start trading, create a market
link |
out of like the very fabric of reality. And that way break it.
link |
Well, if you look at infinite inflationary type currencies,
link |
you can't do that, right? Because it constantly is losing
link |
value. When you look at a finite asset, again, that has the
link |
provability of the actual finite element to it. Ultimately, the
link |
wealth is that marketplace. Yeah. And so, you know, I always
link |
kind of try to highlight for people, the top 55% of Americans
link |
understand something that the bottom 45% don't, they invest,
link |
right, the bottom 45% consume the top 55% invest. And that's
link |
why we have a wealth inequality gap. And it continues to get
link |
wider and wider and wider is because the people who are
link |
holding the devaluing assets, and saving are watching their
link |
wealth be devalued away. And there's arguments and
link |
controversy over how fast that's happening, but it's
link |
happening. The people who are holding the assets that have any
link |
level of scarcity, right, real estate may not be finite, but
link |
it's scarce, right? Art may not be finite, but it's scarce. Gold
link |
may not be finite, but it's scarce. Those assets continue to
link |
appreciate against the devaluing currency. And so when
link |
you then say, No, I have complete finite supply, with
link |
provability, and this transparency around it, where
link |
everyone knows how much is there and what where it's going. And
link |
now all of a sudden, you and I can transact back and forth that
link |
value. And it is a representation of time. Because
link |
what I can essentially do is if I gather or acquire more of
link |
that wealth, I then can apply leverage to my life. I can use
link |
machines, humans, or some other resources. And basically now
link |
Yeah, and it's not fun about the way you are trading time.
link |
Maybe it's a little bit indirect, but maybe not. So just
link |
because I brought up Eric and you're on Twitter, I'd love to
link |
hear your opinions. I talk to him a lot. He seems to have
link |
stepped into the beautiful dance of human communication and the
link |
social dynamics that is the Bitcoin cryptocurrency
link |
community. Do you have thoughts on gauge, theoretic concepts,
link |
conceptualization of the world, or just Eric in general? He's
link |
got a lot of love in his heart, and he's got a grace in the way
link |
he communicates. But he's also loves to play with ideas and
link |
seems to have touched a sensitive point with the Bitcoin
link |
community. Is there anything you could say that's hopeful,
link |
inspiring about that whole dynamic that went down?
link |
So I don't know all the details. But what I will say is I've
link |
listened to a number of his podcasts, and him and there's a
link |
whole bunch of people like him. I basically put them in the
link |
bucket of they're an independent thinker who are courageous
link |
enough to speak their truth, whatever that may be. They are
link |
humble enough to revisit their ideas and say, I got this right,
link |
I got this wrong information change, I'll change my mind.
link |
Obviously, a sign of intelligence to be able to do
link |
that type of stuff. And I actually think that one of the
link |
most scarce things in our society are those independent
link |
thinkers who are able to do all this. Right? Speaking of
link |
scarcity. Yeah. And so to me, I put Eric and the whole host of
link |
other people kind of, if you look at like the intellectual
link |
dark web is kind of a label that's been used. They're
link |
actually some of the most important people in our society,
link |
because they're the people who are willing to stand up against
link |
the mass kind of thought process. They're willing to talk
link |
about things that others may think are taboo, right? They're
link |
willing to change their mind, which all of a sudden has become
link |
a bad thing rather than a good thing. And so when I see the
link |
exploration of ideas in public, I actually think that those are
link |
the people who are most open to the kind of VM it blowback as
link |
well. Right? Because that's part of what they're doing is that
link |
they're eliciting, hey, I'm going to throw an idea into the
link |
arena. If it doesn't get attacked, they actually may be
link |
more nervous than if there is some level of, you know, kind of
link |
war of attrition, if you will. And so what I've seen with a
link |
number of the people who have done this, everyone from some of
link |
the best, you know, hedge fund managers and kind of money
link |
managers in the world, all the way to what I'll consider some
link |
of the most intellectual people in the world is they play with
link |
these ideas. And they play with the ideas and they play with
link |
them and they put them and they all arrive at the same
link |
conclusion. And sometimes it takes a month, sometimes it
link |
takes years, but they arrive at this Bitcoin thesis. And what's
link |
so interesting about it is it highlights something that many
link |
people view as a bug. But I think people in the Bitcoin
link |
community view as a feature, which is that community. And so
link |
what ends up happening is when you have something that is as
link |
ambitious as creating a global reserve currency doesn't mean
link |
needs to unseat any of the existing ones, but become the
link |
global reserve currency of the internet, right, this digital
link |
economy, you need shepherds of it. And so just like a
link |
technology company wants to find those loyal fans that are
link |
willing to go out and market and word of mouth and, and kind of
link |
not only promote it, but also protect it. This technology
link |
that is this decentralized thing, which uses a financial
link |
incentive in order to elicit the buy in, not from a financial
link |
perspective, but from a mental energy standpoint, has built one
link |
of the most rabid, powerful and engaged communities on the
link |
internet. And what ends up happening is those people have
link |
thought more about these ideas, and actually challenged those
link |
ideas more than anyone else in the world. And so I've got a lot
link |
of folks who will just say, there's this guy Marty Bent, who
link |
will talk all the time about the Bitcoin critics haven't done
link |
their homework in a lot of cases. So they show up and
link |
sometimes it's super intellectual, lazy arguments,
link |
sometimes actually very well thought out arguments, you know,
link |
on the counter to the Bitcoin thesis. But ultimately, what
link |
ends up happening is you're talking to somebody who's an
link |
expert, they've been thinking about for five, seven, eight, 10
link |
years, right? They've gone through every simulation you
link |
possibly can. And they show up with data, examples, and
link |
responses. Now, they're not always right. But they've just
link |
done the work. And so what I actually like about folks like
link |
Eric and others is as they're kind of going through this
link |
journey, they're incredibly smart, right? And they provide,
link |
or they apply a lot of intellectual rigor to some of
link |
these arguments. And so what it does is what does it do? It's a
link |
marketplace. It keeps people honest. Let me sort of make a
link |
few comments. It's kind of interesting. So you're exactly
link |
right. Maybe the blowback is part of the mechanism that
link |
actually develops these ideas and so on. I do want to kind of
link |
speak to a little bit of the toxicity that I've experienced
link |
in the Bitcoin community. I kind of see it, the Bitcoin
link |
community, I think you paint a really nice picture, which I
link |
kind of see it as an immune system that protects against
link |
sort of the viruses that are bad ideas. That said, the immune
link |
system can destroy a body, right? And the thing you
link |
mentioned about Eric and maybe about myself, and in general,
link |
just people exploring ideas, is there is a Dunning Kruger
link |
effect, which is when you first start exploring ideas deeply,
link |
you have an overblown level of confidence about like how much
link |
you understand. And that's actually the process about
link |
learning, then you realize you don't understand much. What
link |
I've noticed with the Bitcoin community is they're not as
link |
patient with the basics of the Dunning Kruger effect. Like if
link |
I step in and make declarative statements about Bitcoin, like
link |
I, you know, I read a long time ago, the white paper, like at
link |
the cursory level, I felt that I understand the technology,
link |
this is basic intuitions. You know, I didn't think about the
link |
social dynamics. I didn't think about any like financial
link |
implications and a lot of the deep, actually the ongoing
link |
innovations and all that kind of stuff. But I thought I
link |
understood that technology. And so I step in and make
link |
declarative statements. I think those are the first time you
link |
say, okay, what's the role of Bitcoin in the world? You start
link |
thinking about it deeply. And then you make statements. The
link |
toxicity that you get in those first few statements is really
link |
off putting to me. I'm somebody that tries to communicate love
link |
and live that with everything I do. And there is a level of
link |
disrespect that I've experienced, not directly just
link |
observing others, people have been mostly kind to me. And I
link |
appreciate that. But if you're going to criticize me about my
link |
exploration of ideas in Bitcoin, you have to also
link |
acknowledge that I'm a human being that got like a PhD in
link |
stuff. Like I did some hard shit that it could be in farming or
link |
it could be in whatever. Like I've lived life and I've
link |
really thought deeply and I really care. Like I know a lot
link |
of shit. And it's possible that I actually have a lot of ideas
link |
that you can learn from. Now, if it's agriculture, fine. Or if
link |
it's artificial intelligence, fine. Like I know what I'm
link |
talking about, about certain things. And I could be wrong
link |
about a lot of things. And there's like an exchange of
link |
ideas that makes that mechanism that you talked about more
link |
efficient. Sometimes when the blowback is too strong too
link |
early on, the development of ideas is just inefficient. And
link |
I'm not sure if there's a, you know, the way it was explained
link |
to me is that for so long, that community was like bombarded
link |
with just like bad ideas, like criticisms. They're just overly
link |
sensitive now to bullshit. They're like triggered by
link |
statements. They've heard it all before and they're like,
link |
oh, there they go again with the same old arguments. But
link |
that doesn't mean that you have to sort of, I guess, develop
link |
patience and so on. Especially when you feel like in my case
link |
that the person is coming from a good place, right? I don't
link |
know if there's something you could say that's positive about
link |
the future of this kind of overcoming this toxicity.
link |
I think there's a couple of trends that are all kind of
link |
coalescing here in these types of experiences. So one is when
link |
you look at a community, there's always a spectrum in
link |
terms of there's some people who over index on kindness and
link |
stupidity. And there's some people who over index on
link |
intelligence and basically just being an asshole. And then you
link |
get everyone in between. And so naturally, as we know, the
link |
extremist ends of any community end up being the loudest
link |
usually. The second thing is there is from the outsider
link |
view, like at the beginning of the exploration of ideas, it's
link |
very much a learning process. I don't know if I understand
link |
this or not, but here's ideas A, B, and C. From the internal
link |
perspective, there's a trillion dollars of value at stake and
link |
we must protect it with our lives. The truth is probably
link |
somewhere in between there. And again, the world's not black
link |
and white. There's this kind of more gray area that I think
link |
actually is where most people exist. The other thing that's
link |
at play here is I think the Bitcoin community understands
link |
the internet and internet culture and narratives better
link |
than almost anyone. And so you see this with kind of the just
link |
complete destruction of narratives with memes and just
link |
the visceral reaction and the use of things like Reddit and
link |
Twitter and YouTube, podcasts, just areas where I think a lot
link |
about if you are an upstart and you are going to go challenge
link |
the most well respected elite kind of establishment
link |
institutions in the world, if you walk in in a suit and tie
link |
and you say, I'm here to debate you with ideas, you're going to
link |
get your clock cleaned because they're going to trot out their
link |
lawyers, their regulators, their lobbyists, right? Like all this
link |
stuff. If you instead say, I'm going to meme you to death on
link |
the internet and I'm going to control the public narrative.
link |
You've shifted the power. The asymmetry of power is more
link |
symmetrical now. It's the ultimate insurgency, right? If
link |
you bring it back to the the conflict. Yes. And so when you
link |
think about this, you have to lean into the advantage that
link |
you have. And so what ends up happening is you and I would
link |
absolutely lose it if we saw JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs or the
link |
Federal Reserve start tweeting memes. Yeah, right. It it would
link |
almost the the validation that would give to the medium and
link |
the even playing field that it would provide would pull these
link |
establishments down to the level of what is this upstart?
link |
But now what you're starting to see is that the Bitcoin
link |
community, even though there's some level of toxicity at
link |
times, even though there's this visceral reaction, sometimes
link |
there's even what I would call bullying or or or kind of
link |
outward projection of things, right? Even though it may be a
link |
small percentage, it'll happen every once in a while. What
link |
they do understand, though, is that these establishments are
link |
made up of humans. And what you can actually do, one of the
link |
best ways to pick apart an institution is to recruit from
link |
inside of them one by one. Yes. And so what you're starting
link |
to see now is I mean, I get the messages on Twitter and
link |
LinkedIn all the time. Hey, I'm a banker by trade, but I'm a
link |
bitcoiner at heart, right? And so what you're doing is you're
link |
essentially infiltrating the organizations, not in in
link |
physical, you know, population. Yeah. But with the ideas and
link |
with the philosophies, banker in the streets, bitcoiner in the
link |
sheets. Yeah. Okay. I like it. With that said, in terms of
link |
shitposting and memes, I gotta say like bring it on because I
link |
believe in terms of asymmetry of power, I believe in that
link |
love will save the world, not memes. Or at least good vibe
link |
memes as opposed to shitposting. It's an interesting
link |
battleground, though. It's an interesting battleground to
link |
think about. The other thing I would say, too, is one of the
link |
elements that's always kind of funny to me is how much of the
link |
entertainment is love, right? So, when you start to think
link |
about how many of the memes that are posted, for example,
link |
are for outsiders versus insiders. Yes. Laser eyes,
link |
right? Which seems absolutely ridiculous, elementary, and
link |
frankly, beneath anyone in any level of power or influence in
link |
the world somehow has congressmen and senators who
link |
have done it. Yeah. They're not trying to convince their
link |
colleagues in elected positions to become bitcoiners. Yeah.
link |
They're speaking directly internally to the Bitcoin
link |
community. Yeah, there's some sense in which, yes, memes is
link |
love. Even I keep hearing Bitcoin is love. They're trying
link |
to convert me. The one that you have to laugh at, right?
link |
Probably my favorite one out of all of it is I've seen on
link |
multiple occasions, you know, Mark Cuban a couple of years
link |
ago, Kevin O Leary, whoever, you know, wealthy people,
link |
billionaires, etcetera, and you have people on anonymous
link |
accounts who who knows who they are telling them have fun
link |
staying poor, right? It's just, you know, it's just, again,
link |
part of a community and I think it's a feature, not a bug.
link |
There's bad aspects to it at times but I do think it's a net
link |
positive. Yeah, just like the immune system. It does a lot of
link |
crappy stuff but overall, it's a major net positive. Maybe
link |
this is a bit of a personal question for me. It just added
link |
my own curiosity but I've talked to Ray Dalio a few
link |
times. So, Ray Dalio, I think was one of those people that
link |
took that journey, the Bitcoin journey. Do you have thoughts
link |
about him specifically about that whole world and about the
link |
journey maybe of others that are going through the same
link |
process because Ray is, at least from my perspective, I'm a
link |
bit of an outsider. He's one of the most insightful and deep
link |
thinkers about investment, about finance, about economics
link |
in general. Actually, about life. So, it's interesting to
link |
see him go on that journey. Do you have something to comment
link |
about Ray or just those kinds of people in general? So, if we
link |
look at what I'll just consider the legends of Wall Street in
link |
general. Yeah. Right? There's no denying that they're
link |
incredibly intelligent. There's no denying that actually,
link |
especially in the hedge fund world, they're some of the most
link |
open minded people in terms of they're willing to change their
link |
mind when they get new information. There's no doubt
link |
that they are historians in the sense of having studied
link |
financial markets and cycles over time. And also, one of the
link |
things that I really respect about all those guys is almost
link |
all of them are willing to put ideas out via various writings
link |
that they do and accept the public criticism, right?
link |
Whether it's Howard Marks, Ray or others, they will put this
link |
stuff out in public. And sure, there's a lot of people who are
link |
supportive and kind of are part of a fan base, if you will. But
link |
there's a lot of people who also think that sometimes they
link |
say stupid things. And so, putting that out takes kind of
link |
courage, right? I think Ray's actually the most fascinating
link |
though out of all of these kind of legends of Wall Street in
link |
that he understands debt cycles. He understands
link |
currencies. He, for a while now, has been all over and
link |
famously said, you know, cash is trash, investible assets,
link |
right? He kind of like just knew all of it. And for a long
link |
time, Bitcoiners have said, Ray, you understand the Bitcoin
link |
argument, you're just missing the last part, which is Bitcoin
link |
is the solution, right? And so, he was gold and some other
link |
ideas. But I think that he's a perfect example of when you are
link |
part of the establishment, people view you in a very
link |
static way as the leader of a part of establishment. But
link |
whether it's Bill Gates, Ray Dalio, or somebody else, each
link |
one of these people were innovators and challengers to a
link |
system. They were upstarts at one point. And so, it's kind of
link |
this idea that like if you live long enough, you eventually
link |
become the man, right? And so, you know, Gates is a good
link |
example, right? Warren Buffett is a good example. Ray Dalio is
link |
a good example, etc. And so, you have to give credit, I think,
link |
to Dalio in the sense of he kept an open mind about all of
link |
this and more so than many of his peers has continued to do
link |
the work and come around to this idea. And now, I don't
link |
want to know if I wanted to say that he's a Bitcoin
link |
proponent as much as he believes it is one of a portion
link |
of assets that can be a solution. And so, to me, when
link |
you start to convince those types of people, when it's
link |
Paul Tudor Jones, a Stanley Druckenmiller, Ray Dalio,
link |
Howard Marks now even writing about it saying, hey, I was
link |
anti Bitcoin and put a ton of intellectual rigor into it.
link |
But thank God my son bought a bunch for our family, right?
link |
And kind of we've had exposure to it. I think what it does is
link |
more than anything, it's not going to convince somebody to
link |
go and take it seriously or go ahead and make an allocation.
link |
It reduces career risk. And so, if all of a sudden when Paul
link |
Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller come out and
link |
say, hey, I own Bitcoin and here's why, every other
link |
investor on Wall Street now can say to an investment
link |
committee, well, it's good enough for Paul Tudor Jones,
link |
it's good enough for Stanley Druckenmiller. And so, I think
link |
that it's very interesting because Ray doesn't just
link |
represent Wall Street. I think Ray in some weird way
link |
represents this like macro economic investor. And so,
link |
some of those are in hedge funds and some of those people
link |
would be like CIOs at organizations. Some of them
link |
would be at corporations and some of them are just kind of
link |
retail investors. And so, you can see this kind of inflection
link |
point throughout the adoption of Bitcoin, right? There was
link |
infrastructure that got built. Okay, that kind of led to more
link |
adoption. There was certain individuals, right? Usually
link |
they were kind of technology oriented, entrepreneurial
link |
billionaires. They would buy it and come out and say it. Okay,
link |
that led to inflection points. You started to have some of
link |
these kind of Wall Street legends come out, sort of
link |
financial institutions started. And now, you're seeing
link |
corporations start to do it, right? Eventually, there's
link |
going to be a central bank that does it. And so, you kind of
link |
walk through that line and what you understand is like, it's
link |
the same thing every time. It's just somebody new, right? That
link |
path, right? That Bitcoiners journey, if you will. And I
link |
think that that is almost the beauty of it is if you
link |
short circuit the journey, it's almost like somebody doesn't
link |
appreciate it, right? If you take, let's say, somebody who's
link |
a young kid and you just give them a bunch of money and they
link |
didn't have to work hard for it. They don't really
link |
appreciate it. Well, and Ray actually has a book
link |
principles, right? And he talks about the hero's journey. So,
link |
he's like living it in some sense in terms of, you know,
link |
thinking about digital currency in general, like digital
link |
finance. It's one of the big transitions, transformations of
link |
our world in some sense. It's not just about money. Or you
link |
could argue that money is everything. I mean, it's like
link |
money isn't just the narrow definition of money. Money is
link |
really everything. And so, where you could argue that sort
link |
of cryptocurrency is like the base layer of this
link |
transformation to the digital space and everything else would
link |
just be built on top of it. I use a different word that I
link |
think is kind of closer to your world, which is it's ultimately
link |
automation. And what I mean by that is, you know, before 1970
link |
or 1980, all the assets were analog. And so, when you have
link |
analog assets, physical stock certificates, physical bonds,
link |
right, physical deed to a home, you have to physically exchange
link |
them. When we wanted to increase transactions and
link |
increase kind of global finance and access, we took those
link |
physical assets and we created electronic QCIP assets. So, now
link |
we have in centralized databases kind of a file, represents the
link |
asset that's sitting somewhere in custody. And you and I can
link |
transact them a little bit easier, but still centralized.
link |
There's still some bureaucracy and, you know, maybe it takes
link |
two days to transact rather than actually mailing it across
link |
the world. Now, what we're seeing is a transition from
link |
those electronic QCIPs to these digital assets. And so, if you
link |
look at, again, just let's say money or currency, every
link |
currency in the world is going to be digital. You're going to
link |
have a digital dollar, a digital euro, yen, RMB. You're
link |
going to have decentralized kind of open source money like
link |
Bitcoin. You're also going to have private currencies like
link |
Facebook's attempt at DiEM and there will be others that will
link |
try to do this. And so, when you get everything digital, right,
link |
and I think that's the kind of the first step that everyone
link |
focuses on, the competition at the technology layer
link |
essentially goes away. You get some level of feature parity
link |
and sure, there's bells and whistles on each kind of
link |
implementation of a digital currency, but at the end of the
link |
day, the technology is relatively the same. And
link |
ultimately, what it will do is it will facilitate the adoption
link |
of digital wallets. So, you have to have a digital wallet
link |
regardless of what digital currency you have. Same with me,
link |
same with everybody else in the world. But what it does do is
link |
when you kind of push away and reduce the friction of
link |
competition at the technology layer, it moves the competition
link |
to the monetary policy layer. And so, when you get to that
link |
layer, now it becomes interesting because all of the
link |
currencies are the same except for this one right now and maybe
link |
there will be others in the future. But for sure, Bitcoin
link |
today and people may try to replicate in a private manner
link |
or something, but Bitcoin is kind of the only finite scarce
link |
digital somebody. And so, when you then have that pretty big
link |
difference in that competition at the monetary policy layer,
link |
it's actually not going to matter where you get paid.
link |
Right? And what I mean by that is like you and I both live in
link |
a single currency environment. I get paid in dollars. I
link |
historically have saved in dollars. All of the assets in
link |
my life are denominated in dollars and I owe my debts in
link |
dollars, whether it's taxes or in the private market. And I
link |
don't have to worry about foreign currencies. I don't
link |
exchange anything. The only time I would ever think about
link |
another currency is if I'm going to another country in
link |
their single currency environment. And in order to
link |
change or exchange my currency, I go to the bank or I go get
link |
ripped off at the airport. Right? Those are my two options.
link |
So, it's high friction to change between currencies. When
link |
the competition of technology is kind of innovated away, now
link |
I can get paid in dollars, these digital dollars, and with
link |
a click of a button, switch into any other currency in the
link |
world. And so, what ultimately happens is value and liquidity
link |
is going to coalesce around the best monetary policy. And so,
link |
you get in this very weird world where even if the United
link |
States says, hey, you're going to get paid in dollars, you have
link |
to pay your taxes in dollars. You're going to start to see
link |
people operate in a multi currency environment where they
link |
say, okay, I got paid in my digital dollar, click a button,
link |
I save in Bitcoin. It stays there or grows my purchasing
link |
power. Oh, I need to pay my taxes. Let me switch back into
link |
dollars with click of a button and pay. When you go to a
link |
multi currency world, it's not just about currency. It's now
link |
multi asset world. Because not only is the currency
link |
digitized, but that same technology is used to digitize
link |
stocks, bonds, and commodities as well. And so, today we live
link |
in a very fragmented financial world where basically I have a
link |
brokerage account, I have a bank account, I may have an
link |
alternative asset account, etc. When I can put all those assets
link |
in a single digital wallet, and I can then go from asset to
link |
asset without having to go back to a single unit of account.
link |
Like frictionless going from asset to asset. Yeah. So now
link |
what you end up doing is you start to open up the
link |
possibility for machine to machine transactions. Yeah. So
link |
today, if you and I write software code for two machines
link |
to transact with each other, they can't transact physical
link |
currency. And in many cases, they can't actually transact
link |
the electronic QCIP currencies or assets either because
link |
there's too long of a settlement time. So you can't
link |
get true automation, right? So the whole idea of the car's
link |
going to drive over a strip in the road and it's going to
link |
pay the toll, right? Well, that can't happen right now
link |
because literally the transaction won't go through,
link |
right? And so I always joke that in an automated world,
link |
it's like a CD ROM, but we're trying to take cassette tape
link |
player assets and put it in the CD ROM. It's just incompatible
link |
technology. Reference is nobody understands at this point.
link |
By the way, you need to update your reference. I probably
link |
do. It's like taking a CD ROM and trying to put an MP3
link |
player into a streaming. But I think that the reason why
link |
that becomes really interesting is when you start to create
link |
these digital assets, now you open up the world of
link |
possibilities. So when new technology is created, you can
link |
do two things. You can either create new things the world's
link |
never seen before, or you can use it to improve the old
link |
world. Most people, because it's the easiest thing to
link |
think about, want to improve the old world. So an equivalent
link |
of this would be when the internet came along, a media
link |
company that had newspapers would say, hey, we should take
link |
a PDF of the newspaper and we should put it on a website. And
link |
now anyone in the world can go to this website and they can
link |
read the newspaper today. That was valuable, but it missed out
link |
on the ability to change headlines, to test, to put
link |
multimedia, to distribute it differently, to do all kinds of
link |
things that today we understand the internet really empowered.
link |
And so what I think we're about to watch happen is we're going
link |
to digitize the assets. We're going to put them all into
link |
these digital wallets. You're going to get automated
link |
technologies where machines can now transact with each other.
link |
And we're going to do simple things like why do we pay
link |
people once every two weeks? Why don't we just pay them at
link |
the end of every day? Or why don't I literally stream
link |
payments to you on an hour by hour basis based on the work
link |
you do? It would solve incredible economic issues in
link |
our country and in countries around the world. But
link |
historically businesses can't do this because of the
link |
technology problem. They can't keep track of it all. How do
link |
they pay everyone every day? How do they pay everyone every
link |
hour? You just can't do it.
link |
Yeah, it's funny. The vision of the future you're painting,
link |
it's kind of an exciting one. And it almost makes me sad
link |
looking into the future when we'll look back at this time.
link |
It's like how incredibly inefficient financial
link |
transactions were. Like the transaction of value of any
link |
kind. Like how to pay each other. Like there has to be
link |
processes. There's like payroll and all this kind of just the
link |
entirety of the transactions is just like painful. Almost
link |
all transactions are painful. And the companies that
link |
innovate to make the transactions a little bit more
link |
frictionless like Amazon with the one click purchase button
link |
like went out huge. But even that's really painful. It's
link |
actually really interesting especially when you start to
link |
move that into the space of data. There's a lot of people
link |
thinking about privacy and data and like can we put, can
link |
we like convert data into like money so that you can pay for
link |
how much you reveal to the companies about your own
link |
private data that can then be used to assign value to you so
link |
you can use the service for free if you hand over the data
link |
but there's like explicit transaction going on. So you
link |
can empower all those kinds of things that will just like
link |
fundamentally change our world. That's really, really,
link |
One of the most interesting things to me is I invested in
link |
a company called Bridget and what they told me was they said
link |
$8 billion was paid to the top four banks last year on
link |
overdraft fees. So literally they took $8 billion from
link |
people who didn't have money in their bank account, right?
link |
And so when you dig into why is that a lot of times it's not
link |
that the people don't have the money. It's actually a
link |
mismatch of the payments. So what ends up happening is you
link |
get paid on the 1st and the 15th but on the 12th your
link |
Netflix bill hits, on the 13th you went grocery shopping, and
link |
on the 14th your car payments hit, you overdraft, and then
link |
on the 15th you actually get the check and then you're able
link |
to pay not only the overdraft but for the expenses that you
link |
have. And so something as simple as just getting paid at
link |
the end of every day immediately would eliminate
link |
some big percentage of those $8 billion of value that flows
link |
to large institutions on overdraft fees.
link |
Yeah and also I mean this whole process with overdraft fees
link |
and just many of the financial transactions we have to live
link |
through today forces many of us to be like accountants, like
link |
to understand the different mechanism of financial like
link |
the movement of money as opposed to you which is what we
link |
want to do as human beings operating in high layers of
link |
like providing services for others, of like following your
link |
passions and like working for others, like doing cool shit
link |
or you know basically providing value, exchanging value
link |
in the world and not thinking about the money. The money
link |
takes care of itself and then you see the results of it.
link |
So you're able to think in terms of money but not have to
link |
know how like the accounting works.
link |
Automation simply frees humans up to do more creative
link |
Which is why you use the term automation which I think is
link |
kind of brilliant reframing of all of this.
link |
Yeah because ultimately digital technologies are merely
link |
the conduit to ushers into that world and I think the most
link |
fascinating part of this entire industry is people who are
link |
trying to figure out now that we're going to have these
link |
digital technologies how do we usher in that automated world
link |
faster and so there's people who are building all kinds of
link |
incredible things right there's literally some technologies
link |
where you can stream for paying for consumption of content.
link |
Right there's I saw somebody recently who they basically
link |
said hey I have created something but it's not going to
link |
be released until everyone and almost like a GoFundMe type
link |
situation pays for it in combination then it gets
link |
unlocked and so when you start to think about this it's not
link |
only innovation on the technology front it's innovation
link |
around the way that we form capital it's the way that we
link |
organize resources it's the way that we build companies it's
link |
the business models right it's the application of those
link |
technologies all that stuff starts to change and go back to
link |
a 2007 that's when the iPhone came out Uber wasn't possible
link |
right I'm just going to lie like all these companies that
link |
weren't possible before when the digital technologies are
link |
kind of adopted on a global scale I think that we all myself
link |
included drastically underestimate how fast and how
link |
big innovation can be because it's just hard right like like
link |
we like to think linearly and that's not how the world works.
link |
Yeah I do find it kind of interesting it is NFT based but
link |
I don't think it has to be this this idea of I think big clout
link |
it's called or whatever the idea of sort of investing in
link |
individuals it makes me immediately think about
link |
investing in ideas so even just the words you speak having
link |
value and sort of if you have a frictionless like automated
link |
financial system then you could do a bunch of interesting
link |
things about what it means to add value to the world I mean
link |
I don't know if big cloud is currently an efficient
link |
representation of that but I am truly happy that however that
link |
thing works I'm just one notch above Vladimir Putin which is
link |
one of the that's like one of the bucket list items for me to
link |
to have a list where I'm one notch above Putin well what I
link |
think you're talking about here is important because there's
link |
historical examples you could invest in a patent in some
link |
situations you could invest in an organization that has an
link |
idea right so these are super inefficient given kind of the
link |
vision that you're painting in terms of like investing directly
link |
in an idea in a super efficient automated fashion yeah but
link |
that's how the technology evolution works right is it's
link |
really hard to do at first and then slowly kind of becomes
link |
easier and easier as technology is more prevalent the other
link |
thing that I think is interesting is this whole idea
link |
of investing in people if you really think about the
link |
origination of that is I would hire somebody right I pay you
link |
money and then you're going to create production but I take
link |
the lion's share and you don't now there's things like these
link |
ISAs these income sharing agreements where basically I
link |
will educate you on something train you on something I'll put
link |
up capital right and then over time you'll pay me back plus
link |
profits as some version eventually I don't know what it
link |
looks like but being able to get upside in somebody's success
link |
for having risk capital early on doesn't seem that far off
link |
see it in professional sports you see it in you know a lot of
link |
these things and so I just think that a lot of the focus
link |
right now is on the technology but ultimately these are ideas
link |
that are very old and have had lots of success and traction
link |
and we're just merely standing in the way of the evolution of
link |
these ideas with new technology and so it's easy to get caught
link |
up in the technology but when you really zoom out and look at
link |
it from the ideological standpoint and kind of the
link |
progress of humanity it's a foregone conclusion this stuff's
link |
going to happen it's just how I think the world is waiting and
link |
some of us are trying to create that future world which is like
link |
what are the applications of this technology that will
link |
transform the world and then you know I hate the term but
link |
killer apps like cool ideas that are implemented effectively at
link |
scale that transform the world and there's been a there's been
link |
a lot of different ideas popping up like the there's a
link |
lot of ideas about social networks that are built on top
link |
of the technology and all that kind of stuff so but let me
link |
actually drag this back down to something basic if a person
link |
wanted to buy Bitcoin store Bitcoin how do they actually do
link |
it yeah so there's a couple of different ways to kind of
link |
acquire Bitcoin and in every way you've got to exchange
link |
some form of value for Bitcoin right which is part of why it
link |
has values because you're giving up value so in one way is
link |
to exchange energy and computational power for Bitcoin
link |
so you can mine it you can literally take computer power
link |
that you have you can rent it to the network and run that
link |
software and then it will pay you a portion of the kind of
link |
daily revenue off that system and you can acquire Bitcoin in
link |
exchange for your power and your computational kind of
link |
contribution and that's the fundamental principle behind
link |
Bitcoin is the proof of work so I got a hundred bucks like I
link |
use cash app the you know they there's Coinbase there's all
link |
these exchanges like how do I convert my $100 to Bitcoin is
link |
there something disclaimer this is not financial advice and
link |
this is just us talking and just your opinions this do not
link |
use this to invest or take as financial expertise that said
link |
like is there something you recommend that's an easy entry
link |
point for somebody that's like hmm I wonder if I can convert
link |
this hundred dollars into whatever amount of Bitcoin what
link |
do you recommend what are the options so there's a lot of
link |
options I'm heavily biased I went out and I scoured the
link |
market looked at all of them I've invested a lot of money in
link |
a company called BlockFi that basically basically has
link |
financial products for crypto investors so you can go you can
link |
take dollars or other currency you have you can convert it
link |
through an exchange you can leave it on these interest
link |
bearing accounts you can earn interest just like you would
link |
earn in a traditional account but higher levels of interest
link |
because it's this new thing or you can withdraw it and you can
link |
put it into cold storage on a hardware device you can leave
link |
it in a software wallet there's kind of all these storage
link |
options so BlockFi is you know kind of the one that I'm biased
link |
towards because I'm sorry to interrupt so BlockFi is Bitcoin
link |
only or is it an exchange with other crypto it's got a bunch
link |
of different ones yeah they basically are agnostic to what
link |
it is but they provide kind of financial you know products to
link |
crypto investors okay so you mentioned a few interesting
link |
ideas that'd be nice for people who would not be familiar with
link |
it cold storage hot storage what does that mean so like I go to
link |
a website and I convert dollars to Bitcoin that's a kind of
link |
storage that's like online banking right what else is
link |
there so there's a couple of different things that you can
link |
do right and let's use the legacy system as kind of an
link |
example so if I want to get currency and I put in my bank
link |
account it sits there I have to trust that the bank doesn't go
link |
under nobody steals it all this kind of stuff there's insurance
link |
for it right there's all these kind of benefits in the legacy
link |
system to make sure that as long as I don't have you know
link |
millions and millions of dollars there I'm going to be
link |
protected pretty much if anything happens through FDIC
link |
insurance if I want to do that I'm taking that counterparty
link |
risk though so it's mitigated but there's still counterparty
link |
risk I'm counting on that bank but it is easier to move it
link |
around right if all of a sudden you call me up and say hey send
link |
me some money I can press a couple buttons on my computer
link |
and it'll send it to you if I want deeper level of security I
link |
can go and I can get the physical dollars and I can go
link |
and I can you know put under my mattress right and I can say
link |
you know what it's not gonna be as easy to send it to you
link |
immediately but if I really want to I can go underneath my
link |
mattress pretty quickly I can grab it I can get it back to
link |
the bank and then I can send you the money the third thing I
link |
could do is I could basically take those physical dollars out
link |
of the bank and I could go and I could go put it literally you
link |
know in a vault somewhere that I don't have control over that's
link |
behind 10 passwords and biometric scanning and like it's
link |
really difficult to even get to it right so if you can almost
link |
look at it it's like there's three stages of security that
link |
you could have in the traditional world the same thing
link |
is true in Bitcoin so you could buy Bitcoin on any exchange you
link |
can do it on BlockFi but you also can do it on places like
link |
Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, etc. Also Cash App. Cash App. You can
link |
do it on Cash App. I think I think they're still sponsoring
link |
this podcast. I'm not biased at all. So once you get Bitcoin
link |
on any of these venues you can leave it there on that venue.
link |
Now the trade off is you're taking counterparty risk so
link |
somebody else is responsible for the security and the
link |
protection of it in many cases big well known companies who
link |
have billions of billions of dollars of assets they have
link |
higher levels of security that's why they're well known
link |
that's why people trust them whatever but you are taking
link |
counterparty risk it is easier to quickly send to somebody so
link |
that so the trade off of like ease of use but counterparty
link |
risk is big and in the Bitcoin community specifically there's
link |
a huge thing of they really really have a keep for not
link |
leaving the Bitcoin there right for the obvious counterparty
link |
the second thing you can do is you can basically get it off of
link |
an exchange and you can put it in some level of kind of what
link |
I'll call a second layer of storage that second layer
link |
storage could be a hardware device that you can quickly
link |
just you know grab off your desk and plug into your
link |
computer and immediately use that's what they call like a
link |
hardware wallet or you can have some sort of software wallet
link |
right where it's not on an exchange but there is some
link |
level of in between between the hardware wallet and the
link |
exchange and the software wallet but the software wallet
link |
is connected to the internet yeah and so if you kind of
link |
think of it as like the exchange software wallet
link |
hardware wallet and then there's something called deep
link |
storage right or cold storage and this is you know
link |
literally there was a company called Zappo that would put
link |
things in deep cold storage and it was literally buried in
link |
a mountain right so like the odds that somebody's
link |
physically going to go there there's armed guards there's
link |
you know kind of all this type of stuff but again you're
link |
taking some level of counterparty risk because they
link |
have your Bitcoin and so the saying or the phrase is not
link |
your keys not your coins whereas my buddy Isaiah Jackson
link |
came up with he said not your keys not your cheese right in
link |
terms of sovereignty is important right and ultimately
link |
this goes back to kind of the beginning of our conversation
link |
around Bitcoin's ethos sovereignty right giving the
link |
power back to people you don't have to rely on this
link |
infrastructure in order to be able to participate in this
link |
monetary kind of economy what you are now able to do is
link |
you're able to use digital sound money you're able to
link |
keep control of it you and you alone are responsible for it
link |
so the idea of personal responsibility and then also
link |
you and you alone make the decisions as to whether you
link |
hold on to it or you use it without censorship right no
link |
one can tell you what you can do with it or can't do with it
link |
and so the purchase and the storage what I find is
link |
depending on who you are there's varying degrees of kind
link |
of concern or decisions that get made there and a lot of it
link |
comes down to personal preference the Bitcoin
link |
community though absolutely will over optimize for
link |
sovereignty and kind of hardware or cold storage I
link |
wonder if you can sort of comment on that because you
link |
have both sort of cash app and the BlockFi and Coinbase like
link |
you can store it that you can purchase and trade it there
link |
and store it there and so on but ultimately they're saying
link |
you wanna you know keep some of it there but you wanna move
link |
it to the hardware wallet and the cold storage of the
link |
hardware wallet is like you can disconnect this from the
link |
computer because ultimately stuff that's connected to the
link |
internet can be compromised can be controlled by governments
link |
and other parties and so on what are your thoughts about
link |
sort of practically speaking for maybe like a regular
link |
citizen what's what should be the role of the hardware wallet
link |
in their lives yeah so at the highest level I just think
link |
that like learning about it is important right so even if you
link |
only have five dollars equivalent of Bitcoin going and
link |
understanding here's how it works here's why it's important
link |
here's how I would actually withdraw from an exchange under
link |
the hardware wall like that alone just as an intellectual
link |
exercise is a worthwhile pursuit I think people should
link |
go do that actually go through the process of the steps so
link |
you feel like you can you can do it yeah yeah it's kind of
link |
like if I said to you you know hey we're gonna go buy an
link |
asset and you never went and you looked at it you never went
link |
and you know made a decision like sure maybe I did it or I
link |
didn't do it but like you didn't actually experience it
link |
right and so I think that that's important part the
link |
second thing is each person is different from a how they view
link |
this asset so there are some people who are speculating
link |
right there's three use cases for Bitcoin their store value
link |
medium of exchange and speculation and the people who
link |
are speculating they can't put it in deep cold storage because
link |
they need to be able to trade it right so what ends up
link |
happening is they fall in the bucket of like high risk high
link |
reward they're trying to trade they're trying to do all these
link |
things and sure maybe there are profits that they can generate
link |
if they're good at it but also they're introducing a lot of
link |
risk and so that person is very different than the person who
link |
says hey you know I bought one Bitcoin and I'm gonna save it
link |
for my child right and I'm gonna give it to them on their
link |
18th birthday yeah and so when you start to look at this what
link |
you end up saying is what are you actually purchasing this
link |
for kind of like why are you doing it and then what's your
link |
time horizon and what ends up happening is more and more
link |
people in the Bitcoin community have longer time horizons one
link |
of the advantages to this community right if you look at
link |
the on chain metrics 60% of Bitcoin haven't moved from the
link |
digital wallet in which they sit in the last 12 months so
link |
even though it's appreciated hundreds of percent on the
link |
upside there's been lots of volatility a 50% drop in a
link |
single day in terms of US dollar price still doesn't move
link |
and so these are the kind of long term holders right these
link |
are the the iron fist or or as recently has become popular the
link |
diamond hands right they just they're not going anywhere and
link |
so I think that those people are much more likely to not have
link |
their Bitcoin on exchanges or in software walls they've got it
link |
in some sort of like highly secure environment and what and
link |
one in which they have deep sovereignty or kind of prevalent
link |
sovereignty and the reason for that is because they have that
link |
long time horizon they don't want to be kind of convicted
link |
around Bitcoin sound money macro environment all stuff and
link |
then they make a mistake because they trusted you know
link |
ABCD company and that counterparty risk ends up
link |
actually being you know fatal or or detrimental so again this
link |
is not financial advice disclaimer but let me ask so
link |
in terms of investment advice on Bitcoin so you see Bitcoin
link |
potentially not just the thing that you speculate over like
link |
buy and sell buy and sell buy and sell but it's something
link |
that you can just buy only and I believe I've heard that you
link |
own quite a large percentage of of your wealth in in Bitcoin
link |
and you're basically buying only and storing long term so
link |
that's something that's a legitimate way to approach
link |
Bitcoin in your recommendation go to other cultures so if we
link |
remove ourselves from the Western world culture of
link |
investing in gamification of financial markets and the
link |
financialization of everything let's say we go to the culture
link |
of India for hundreds if not thousands of years families
link |
basically saved their wealth in gold and in jewelry and in
link |
these hard assets with the expectation to pass it on to
link |
the next generation and so it would be blasphemous to sell
link |
the family's gold in that culture right you know your
link |
great grandfather gave to your grandfather your grandfather
link |
gave to your father your father gave it to you right and
link |
so in that culture the long term kind of holding is the
link |
default I think that what Bitcoin has presented again is
link |
a digital application of the exact same thing which is that
link |
while everything else in the world is being devalued that is
link |
denominated in a currency that is being inflated away whether
link |
it's quickly or not this finite supply this scarce asset ends
link |
up accruing more and more value over time right and so I think
link |
that for me personally I've got you know over 95% of my net
link |
worth that's in this 90 over 95% of your net worth there's
link |
two important caveats to this one is I didn't you know buy
link |
some Bitcoin in 2011 or 12 right and then all of a sudden it
link |
appreciated a bunch and it grew into that but from a cost
link |
basis perspective you know put $100 and now it's a ton of
link |
money instead what I did was I basically in 2018 saw Bitcoin
link |
from a US dollar price standpoint was falling and
link |
falling and falling and in December 2018 as I take about
link |
50% of my net worth and convert it from dollar denominated
link |
assets into Bitcoin so it's a very kind of intentional
link |
decision with a very specific view on the world as to like
link |
why I was doing it I then essentially just let it sit
link |
there grow whatever until the spring of 2020 and when I saw
link |
the government step in and start to say hey we're going to
link |
really be aggressive in terms of interest rate manipulation
link |
and quantitative easing I then decided to go ahead and take
link |
basically the remainder and start to convert it as well so
link |
became very aggressive in doing that and so the way that I look
link |
at it is that's actually my savings right and so in some
link |
weird way if I said to you know what's the dollar worth you'd
link |
say well a one dollar bill is worth one dollar right Bitcoin
link |
to me I denominate my wealth in Bitcoin so I think of one
link |
Bitcoin is worth one Bitcoin not one Bitcoin is worth 60,000
link |
or 55,000 or 70,000 right I denominated everything in
link |
Bitcoin when I make a purchase in my head I'm calculating how
link |
much Bitcoin am I spending right now right well guess what
link |
happens when you have a devaluing currency as the
link |
denominator doesn't matter right like your financial
link |
incentivize to spend or invest right to consume when you have
link |
an appreciating currency all of a sudden you become much less
link |
consumptive in your behavior yeah because you're actually
link |
trading off future purchasing power for the consumption today
link |
it's fascinating to think that if if when you move about this
link |
world you think in Bitcoin you behave differently is if you
link |
think in dollars that's really fascinating people but here's
link |
the thing is the last 50 years or so is actually the outlier
link |
in history most people used to think this way yeah it's only
link |
when a fiat currency got introduced that one argument the
link |
positive argument or perspective is there was an
link |
explosion in growth but really it's because there was a
link |
financial incentive to consume yeah right and there's nobody
link |
better in the world than the United States at consuming and
link |
we consume anything and everything and if you want to
link |
see a great example look at how big the coca colas are at
link |
McDonald's right you know you go to other places they don't
link |
serve them that big and so the other example though or the
link |
negative argument is we have to consume because if not you end
link |
up being the bottom 45% of Americans that help no
link |
investable assets and actually are just having their wealth
link |
devalued away so holding the dollars end up being a very bad
link |
economic decision and so when you then switch to this sound
link |
money you say wait a second why would I if today I can trade
link |
one Bitcoin you know back in October of last year one Bitcoin
link |
for 10 thousand US dollars why would I spend that if at some
link |
point in the future whether it's a month from now or 10
link |
years from now I could trade it for something much much more
link |
than that you just become much more of a anti consumer and
link |
much more of a long term thinker yeah from the individual
link |
perspective that's pretty powerful I wonder I mean I
link |
think that's a interesting debate what's better for the
link |
long term economy no better for the growth of the civilization
link |
because capitalism is fascinating it seems to it seems
link |
to work pretty well there's this kind of like Eric Weinstein
link |
says that one of the problems is for the past several decades
link |
this whole economy society is built on the idea that we have
link |
to keep growing like it depends on that idea and it's a
link |
good question whether that's going to result in huge
link |
problems or if like a college student on a deadline the
link |
the dependence on growth will mean that we'll have to grow
link |
like the fear of death will force us to grow but I think
link |
there's a false equivalency between we're dependent on
link |
growth and then if the world was denominated in sound money
link |
we don't grow what I think ends up happening is we remove a
link |
lot of the society's bullshit yeah because right now when the
link |
money is free or the currency is free you come with all kinds
link |
of crazy stuff and people will give it to you right when all
link |
of a sudden it's really really valued by the population the
link |
decisions are better yeah you you have to provide real value
link |
in the goods and services you provide in order to get them to
link |
give it to you there's less room for corruption less room
link |
for manipulation that's and like that's not actually
link |
productive yeah definitely so you said you moved a lot of
link |
your investment into bitcoin is there when you look so you're
link |
a special human being in many ways so you're like a strategic
link |
thinker but you're also like a deep thinker about this whole
link |
thing but when you look at a regular club like me in terms
link |
of just investing and moving into thinking about
link |
cryptocurrency is there a strategy that you recommend
link |
what are the different options about investing into bitcoin
link |
yeah so i think that there's just uh kind of timeless advice
link |
when it comes to uh investing or or acquiring an asset in
link |
general uh dollar cost averaging is usually the the
link |
best way to think about it and what i mean by that is um most
link |
people don't just have a pile of uh currency sitting there
link |
right it's not like they have a million dollars sitting in
link |
their bank like what do i do with it uh that situation aside
link |
what happens is they trade their hours and their effort for
link |
currency and so as they get paid every two weeks let's say
link |
um the best way to acquire bitcoin without having to worry about timing
link |
markets and being a professional trader is to simply take whatever the
link |
percentages that you want and to buy bitcoin when you get your
link |
paycheck so if you get paid on the first and 15th of every month
link |
on that day you should go take you know let's say it's three percent of your
link |
paycheck take three percent go buy bitcoin don't
link |
worry about what the price is you should do that over time and the
link |
reason why that's important is um if in december of 2017 when bitcoin
link |
is at twenty thousand dollars it was the height of kind of this last
link |
uh big upwards movement you had taken all of your money
link |
and you had put it into bitcoin you would have had to wait almost three
link |
years just to get back to quote unquote break even
link |
in us dollar terms if at the same time you had simply bought then and over the
link |
next three years bought every two weeks you would have been up hundreds of
link |
percent three years later because what ended up
link |
happening was you bought a bunch of bitcoin when it was at
link |
15 12 10 9 8 3 4 5 5 5 you know all the way back up on the
link |
other side and so dollar cost averaging is one of
link |
these weird things that uh it almost sounds too easy but what we
link |
find is in america we have a lack of financial education
link |
and so rather than try to be smarter than markets what most people are better
link |
off doing is just saying hey set your what's called an asset
link |
allocation plan i want 30 in stocks i want 10 in real
link |
estate i want this this whatever and every time you get your paycheck
link |
just think of it as a savings account right just put it in
link |
based on those percentages and don't think about it
link |
and over a long enough period of time what we find is
link |
almost anyone in the united states right there's exceptions but almost anyone in
link |
the united states can become a millionaire in their
link |
lifetime if they follow these plans and have that long term view and they allow
link |
compounding to work for them and so don't look at the price of
link |
bitcoin and all that kind of stuff just pick a
link |
specific time specific day that you just buy
link |
and you just keep buying that's probably good investment advice across any kind
link |
of assets it's like if you don't believe in
link |
bitcoin and you just want to let's say you just want to do the s&p 500
link |
yeah you shouldn't try to time the market of the s&p 500 either right you
link |
should just every two weeks you should just buy some
link |
and over a 20 year period you're gonna end up buying it at all kinds
link |
of different prices but you're gonna get kind of a blended average
link |
and the more important thing is the compounding and the time in the market
link |
then did you buy it at you know two percent higher or lower than where you
link |
bought it doesn't really matter and buying often makes you i guess
link |
uh resistant robust to the uh to the volatility of the market or the
link |
volatility of bitcoin price and so on that said uh you know bitcoin price
link |
is volatile and you know again the argument i've heard
link |
is like everything that's going to be a lot more valuable in the future
link |
like if you look at the history like companies like apple like teslas
link |
now i mean but let's look at companies that
link |
have now stabilized right uh apple is a good example
link |
it's like volatile in the beginning and so the argument for bitcoin is like
link |
yeah this is the early stages because it's going to be a lot more valuable
link |
right now it's volatile and this is why you have to have these kinds of
link |
strategies to ride out the volatility of course everything that goes to zero is
link |
also volatile like the early days are volatile uh
link |
do you see like this volatility as like a feature or a bug
link |
or is this just like a way of life so amazon is the one that i know the
link |
numbers on in terms of early volatility uh every year since it has gone public
link |
it's had a double digit drawdown in that year uh the average
link |
is over 30 percent and one time it drew down over 95 percent
link |
sounds a lot like bitcoin right like oh wow this is crazy
link |
but it's one of the best performing stocks in the last 20 years if not the
link |
best performing stock and so volatility is not positive or
link |
negative it's positive or negative compared to the
link |
position you're in so if you're long and it's volatile to the
link |
upside it's positive if you're long holding something and
link |
it's volatile to the downside you see it as a negative it's all about
link |
perspective with that said um another way that i
link |
look at this is every asset priced in bitcoin
link |
is down significantly so over the last one
link |
three five years the dollar priced in bitcoin
link |
has crashed 99 percent if you denominate stocks it's down like
link |
80 85 if you denominate gold if you
link |
denominate bonds if you just go down the line real estate etc
link |
it's all down massively against bitcoin now you could argue that that's because
link |
bitcoin is appreciating in us dollar terms
link |
or you could actually argue that the world is
link |
repricing this asset it's doing price discovery on this asset
link |
and it's essentially comparing it's saying hey bitcoin verse
link |
this stock or bitcoin verse this ounce of gold or bitcoin verse
link |
you know this dollar which is more valuable and it continues to move up in
link |
the rankings in terms of the value that the world
link |
ascribes to this some of that's based on lindy effect just
link |
the longer it persists the more likely it is to survive some of that's based on
link |
like the underlying fundamentals of how much computing power the usage
link |
transaction volume things like that but some of it also is that as more
link |
and more people wake up to the fact that it's a finite supply asset that has a
link |
place in the world and demand increases people just naturally
link |
compete and ascribe more value to it and so the
link |
volatility i think all comes back to like what do you
link |
price your life in for majority people that's dollars
link |
and so you look at the us dollar price you get all this volatility
link |
the beauty of this is that 60 that doesn't move regardless of
link |
price upward or downward and movement those people aren't looking at the day
link |
to day price what they've basically said is i've
link |
acquired x amount of bitcoin and i'm just going to hold it for years
link |
and every time somebody's done that right if if uh you bought bitcoin at any point
link |
in the last 12 years and you held it till today you are up in us dollar terms
link |
now if we had this conversation 18 months ago couldn't say that
link |
so it's all about not only the acquisition
link |
price if you will it's also when are you looking at it
link |
right because there was a point in 2017 you could have said the same thing but
link |
in 18 you couldn't and so i tend to think a lot about um
link |
humans are really really bad at short term
link |
uh decision making because we're so emotional
link |
especially when something has a price tied to it and so it's in terms of our
link |
strategies and decision making we should be long term and have like a
link |
regular almost think like an algorithm that
link |
in that in that kind of way so i think you've tweeted that
link |
you believe that bitcoin has a chance of reaching 1 million i don't know what it
link |
is currently i think it's five the 60s which is incredible
link |
i think i remember when it was at least in the double digits i think i remember
link |
it was in the signal digits of a dollar so the fact that it's cross 50 is crazy
link |
uh but uh you're even crazier apparently thinking that it can reach a million
link |
so do you think it's possible for it to reach a million is there some kind of
link |
transformative effects we have to see first
link |
when might it reach a million like what are the signs that we would look for
link |
what's required for it to reach a million so let's just look at it from a macro
link |
perspective uh gold is a 10 trillion dollar asset
link |
and when you compare the technology of gold to the technology of bitcoin
link |
bitcoin is superior in every single way right it's more portable it's more
link |
divisible uh it's more verifiable it's more
link |
scarce on everything and so some people would argue it's a
link |
10x improvement some people argue it's 100x improvement from a technology
link |
standpoint and so we don't need bitcoin to
link |
actually kind of um capture the full 10x or 100x
link |
improvement from a market cap standpoint if bitcoin simply captures
link |
2x the value be a 20 trillion dollar market cap
link |
which would put bitcoin at about a million dollars
link |
right so kind of just from a macro perspective if you have a 10x or 100x
link |
improvement from a technology standpoint and you directionally get some value
link |
capture in that direction you're hitting around a million or more
link |
uh dollar price point can ask a quick question which is uh
link |
what's the current market cap for bitcoin uh the current market cap is
link |
right around a trillion just over a trillion dollars and you're saying gold
link |
is 10 trillion and uh sorry where did you get the 20
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trillion 20 trillion would just be 2x gold market cap
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got it right so if it's a 10x technology improvement let's just say it only
link |
captures 2x the market cap got it right and so again if it was to
link |
capture just gold market cap kind of the equivalent
link |
puts you around 500 000 right so you can kind of see there's bitcoin
link |
so if you capture the entirety of the gold market
link |
uh then it would be value of a single bitcoin uh the price of a single bitcoin
link |
would be five hundred thousand dollars okay
link |
to reach a million it would be double that that's what the 20 trillion comes
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from correct got it so if you then say to yourself
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okay how does the uh the pricing um kind of cycles work right or the
link |
boom and bust cycles gold is a very um
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kind of linear type supply schedule meaning that
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uh there is a certain amount of gold that comes out of the ground each year
link |
the interyear variation in that incoming supply is not much
link |
right maybe there's an extra mining company that gets set up or a couple of
link |
them maybe one goes out of business but for the
link |
most part the kind of inflationary uh increase to the supply of gold
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is pretty stagnant uh year over year bitcoin has a very unique feature which
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every four years there is a programmatic supply shock
link |
meaning that uh in the beginning 50 bitcoin every 10 minutes was introduced
link |
into the supply after four years of that happening every
link |
10 minutes it was cut in half so on a in a single
link |
moment it went from 50 to now it was 25 four years every 10 minutes 25 got cut
link |
in half again to 12 and a half and then recently in may 2020 got cut to 6.25
link |
when you have an asset that is determined the price
link |
based on supply and demand you normally have
link |
two inputs to the equation what is the supply and what is the demand
link |
in an asset like gold or a stock or anything else
link |
we have to do our best guess at the supply
link |
both the existing supply and the incoming supply and do our best guess at
link |
the demand and we're actually pretty good at this a lot of times in terms of
link |
directionally saying it's going to go up or down and here's kind of some price
link |
point milestones bitcoin's unique in that there's 100
link |
verifiable proof of the existing supply
link |
the total supply and the incoming daily supply
link |
so we know 100 i can show you on the actual blockchain
link |
or in the code that there's 21 million bitcoin and that's all there will ever
link |
be i can show you that there's 18.6 million
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give or take bitcoin that actually are in circulation
link |
today right and i can go all the way back to every single transaction that's ever
link |
occurred since january 2009 and then i can show you on a daily
link |
basis that 900 bitcoin a day are coming into the circulating supply
link |
and so when you have 100 confidence because you can prove
link |
the supply side of this equation you can hold it constant
link |
i know with 100 accuracy the supply side so now i've reduced the mathematical
link |
equation that i need to do to determine price movements
link |
to a 50 reduction i only have to worry about demand i don't have to worry about
link |
supply and so when i look at demand i can do
link |
all kinds of things i can take the demand over the last 10 years and
link |
the growth and just extrapolate it out i can increase it i can decrease it
link |
whatever but what you find is that these supply
link |
shocks lead to significant price appreciation
link |
as the asset gets repriced because there there's a supply shock to
link |
and so probably the best thing that i've done over the last couple of years
link |
was in 2019 i started to talk about the idea that we were going to have both a
link |
supply shock and the demand shock in 2021
link |
or i'm sorry in 2020 i didn't know when this bull market that we were in was
link |
going to end nobody knows right it's impossible to time
link |
these things but you could tell that we were kind of at late stages of a cycle
link |
there was inverted yield curves there was rep uh gyrations in the repo markets
link |
a lot of ceos leaving their jobs you know all this kind of stuff
link |
and all i said was at some point when the market turns over
link |
the government's gonna have to step in we were addicted to stimulus they're
link |
gonna have to manipulate interest rates down and they're gonna have to print
link |
money i had no clue that there was going to be a global
link |
pandemic that they were going to have to step in
link |
in such an aggressive way and move rates not down but down to zero
link |
and that they not only were going to print hundreds of billions but they could
link |
print trillions of dollars but the framework that i used to think
link |
about this was when they do that everyone is going to
link |
run to store value assets they're going to run the gold they're going to run the
link |
bitcoin etc and right as they do that it appears at
link |
the same time there's going to be this supply shock
link |
so you're gonna get a supply shock and a demand shock that are both positive for
link |
the the price i called it rocket fuel for bitcoin
link |
well it happened and here we are i now look forward and i say okay we are
link |
likely going to see a hundred thousand bitcoin
link |
a hundred thousand dollar bitcoin this year or at some point i don't know when
link |
it happens but we're moving in that so you think in 2021 we'll see a hundred
link |
thousand that would be uh my most conservative
link |
view uh i i've said a hundred thousand dollars
link |
since 2019 and people thought that was insane and
link |
crazy and all stuff now i'm the conservative guy in the room
link |
because i stick with a hundred thousand dollars and people are saying
link |
you know multiples of that number here uh so we'll see what happens but
link |
but i think that there's still a lot of room kind of to run from a us dollar
link |
price standpoint what is on the horizon is in 2024 we
link |
will have another supply shock and so that's what i think will carry
link |
us to the million dollar bitcoin from 6 to 5 to whatever 50 reduction yeah
link |
yeah and so that's what i think uh well
link |
basically when we get that that next supply shock that'll carry us up over a
link |
hundred or over a one million dollar bitcoin price which if historical
link |
examples persist and again sometimes it's hard to use historical examples to
link |
look at future events um but if that happens we would see
link |
a million dollars of bitcoin by the end of 2026
link |
after that wave so 2024 basically is the supply shock and within
link |
you know 18 to 24 months you would see the uh
link |
the kind of top of the next market hopefully without a coupling to the net
link |
to another pandemic yes we we would like to do all of this without a
link |
public health crisis so that would take it to
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20 trillion you don't have to compare it to the dollar
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essentially in some sense that the dollar could also lose value i mean
link |
there's a lot of kind of dynamics at play here
link |
now but like fundamentally there's going to be a huge
link |
move uh in your prediction of uh value into into bitcoin
link |
i mean that's a fascinating world uh to think about
link |
uh i mean but i do have to kind of ask you about the whole space of
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technology there because we're talking about the value of security we're
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talking about the the future which bitcoin will be at the
link |
center of but from my perspective of
link |
thinking how like i and others can build technologies on top of
link |
this kind of decentralized world i'm thinking about different
link |
different technologies out there different cryptocurrencies out there
link |
ethereum being one but there's a lot of others
link |
so i'd love to get your sort of ideas about some of these but
link |
so first let me ask you about what the hell is shit coin
link |
is this connected to uh to our previous discussion of the meme
link |
uh this shit coin cover basically all coins that are not
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bitcoin is it uh uh mean is it a beautiful is it's a mixture of
link |
both as with most things in life uh depends
link |
who you ask um the uh most um
link |
kind of enthusiastic and uh uh parts of the bitcoin community shit
link |
coin is anything else right kind of if you ascribe to kind
link |
of a maximalistic view of the world shit crime be anything if you look at
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people who i would say are bitcoin proponents uh yet
link |
see value in other things shit coin may be the bottom half
link |
of the other things right so i think again it's really important kind of who
link |
you ask is how you'll get that answer so
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there's tiers and the way you divide those tiers might be different depending
link |
who you ask ultimately what it is is it's a meme yeah
link |
and it's used to uh articulate the idea that whatever you want to put in
link |
that bucket has no value so shit coin right are coins that have
link |
no value yeah uh what is fascinating about it and i
link |
think that again speaks to the power of the bitcoin community
link |
is uh there was congressional hearings a couple years ago
link |
oh no and at one point uh a congressman from ohio warren davidson who uh
link |
who's definitely uh open minded and excited about bitcoin
link |
asked a an individual on the congress floor
link |
uh during testimony to uh talk about these other coins and at one point
link |
basically read into the record the terminology of shit coin
link |
he said the word shit coin uh i can't remember if he said it first
link |
somebody else did or if uh the other person did and then he uh um
link |
you know repeated it that's awesome but he definitely he was trying to get that
link |
read into the record yes uh for sure and so uh you know you
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can imagine one again the meme speaking insolently to
link |
the bitcoin community was you know made him very uh very well
link |
liked uh but also too was um it does go back to this idea almost of
link |
uh if you and i sat down with 10 ceos and we interviewed each one of them and
link |
then we went in a room and we deliberated and we said we have to pick
link |
the person who's going to be the most successful
link |
one of the inputs not all the inputs but one of the inputs would be
link |
who's the person who we believe has the best ability to
link |
raise capital recruit people and tell a story
link |
to the world that will get them to follow and so somebody like elon would
link |
probably be the best example of this when you have decentralized products you
link |
have no kind of leader right in the sense of somebody who is
link |
financially ascribed to be that leader and kind of the
link |
executive decision maker so what you have to do is you have to
link |
look at these technologies in these communities and say
link |
well which volunteer teams or which technologies have been able to coalesce
link |
these groups around it and in some way build the same level of
link |
engagement and protection and things like that and so
link |
you actually get tribalism but you also get things like
link |
shitcoin because what it does is it's not only a um
link |
kind of verbal attack towards uh others it's a rallying cry for
link |
internal what's so funny is that it was started with the bitcoin community
link |
talking about everybody but now you've seen adoption in other communities who
link |
use it you know basically say well we're not a
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shitcoin it's the it's the next guy yeah i mean the meaning to be honest
link |
it's it's one it's off it's sometimes
link |
misused i think like with anything it's like
link |
people adopt memes that used to be brilliant or still brilliant
link |
and they're just not good at using them so they become
link |
mean uh but when you do with with grace it can tear down an
link |
argument and at the same time have like love and
link |
respect underneath it i mean it's a beautiful dance they have to be good at
link |
like you know people just can suck at communication and even
link |
uh like even a powerful weapon like a meme in the wrong hands
link |
just uh fires in a way that doesn't get anything done but this is like a war
link |
of humor and memes it's kind of fascinating exactly like you formulated
link |
that there's a symmetry of power so you have to
link |
have guerrilla warfare in this internet game especially when there's no leader
link |
like you said in a distributed culture i would say here that is um
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is really important i think is from a society standpoint
link |
we've become very soft and very kind of coddling and not in um
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not in a way that's like i think people take this argument like too far
link |
sometimes but what i mean by that is um it's almost like if you're the person
link |
who holds somebody accountable you become the bad person right if you're
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the person who um says hey you know that's wrong you're
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the bad person right and so in a world where i think in um
link |
this kind of influencery you know all positive if you have any negative
link |
you know feedback or constructive criticism like you're the bad person
link |
uh it's the ultimate echo chamber right and so i think that what the bitcoin
link |
world does in in some crazy crazy way to look
link |
at it is bitcoin is ultimately about truth
link |
not about narrative not about feelings or emotion it's math yeah
link |
you look at a blockchain and you can prove something
link |
or you can't and so naturally people who are attracted to that
link |
have a very similar approach in life yeah right they say hey
link |
you made x claim prove it and as you can imagine
link |
you know a great example is like the financial media meets bitcoiners
link |
and it's a bloodbath right in kind of the the arena of ideas because
link |
what do they do the financial media is used to the soft
link |
you know opinion pieces etc and bitcoiners show up and they're like
link |
uh here's data point a b and c here's example one two and three
link |
and you're wrong and then all they yell and scream about is like
link |
uh i'm wrong i'm wrong i'm wrong like you can't say i'm wrong and they're like
link |
nerd like disprove what i just said and so you get in this like very very weird
link |
it's fascinating it's a fascinating battlefield but
link |
i i do want to say it's i've been watching this
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it's kind of interesting i think that the pursuit of truth
link |
like tearing down bad ideas can be done with grace and to do it with
link |
grace requires a lot of skill like what people
link |
don't realize about disagreement they think that disagreement is easy
link |
like they they see the the the lies or the inaccuracies in the
link |
statement and and they just think they can say
link |
wrong uh yes you can say that but if you want
link |
to be effective it requires great skill like you look at
link |
i don't know um a beautiful uh verbal shit poster which is Christopher
link |
Hitchens right it requires a lot of skill
link |
through your words to tear down an argument
link |
to criticize and to take a step towards truth
link |
what i'm disheartened by internet culture like the negative side
link |
is people don't put a lot of effort in their tear downs
link |
like into your shit posting into your memes
link |
you should put effort and see it as a skill that you want to if you want to be
link |
a part of this culture you want to uh get good at it
link |
like any skill it's the 10 000 hours like get improve deliberate practice
link |
self criticism all of those things uh just because you're anonymous
link |
doesn't mean you won't get deep joy and actually have an impact on the world if
link |
you get good at shitposting but but i think this is really really
link |
important right because you're right in that
link |
uh it's all about intention versus action if your intention is to
link |
uh tell somebody that they are wrong in an effort to get them to
link |
see the truth yes that's very different than if your intention is to tell
link |
someone they're wrong and hurt their feelings yes
link |
right and so when you can unpack intention and action
link |
you really quickly can tell what somebody ultimately is trying to
link |
accomplish i also think that one of the craziest
link |
things that i've seen play out is uh memes when i use that term i'm not
link |
just talking about like a static photo right when i'm talking about these
link |
elaborate uh kind of edited videos and kind of
link |
all this stuff um when done right it is
link |
uh the most articulate way to deliver a blunt message and it's
link |
done in such a way that is humorous and entertaining
link |
yet really hammers the point home and so it's a skill set that many people don't
link |
have i don't make those i'm assuming you don't make them either
link |
right i see them i share the ones that i like right
link |
uh but it does take practice and you can tell
link |
look there's people who are fantastic meme lords right and there are
link |
people who absolutely suck at it and it's like anything it's just
link |
how good are you at communicating and uh i've heard the idea a bunch of times so
link |
i don't know who to kind of credit for it but uh whether it's emojis
link |
it's gifs it's memes whatever this is the extension and evolution of
link |
just hieroglyphics right yeah like like we have been doing
link |
this for literally centuries it's just that now we're doing it on
link |
the internet you can press a button and go to
link |
millions and millions of people immediately uh but speaking of memes
link |
what the heck do you think is up with elon musk talking about dogecoin a lot
link |
sort of uh from the cryptocurrency community i
link |
from i've been talking to a lot of sort of technologists i guess
link |
and reading papers on cryptocurrency it's like
link |
nobody really sees dogecoin as a revolutionary
link |
crypto technology a lot of people talk about it's security issues there's a
link |
bunch of issues it has nevertheless you did say that money is the
link |
kind of social construct right and uh elon musk's
link |
combination of humor and brilliant engineering in the various
link |
companies he runs combines to create a kind of value
link |
and excitement behind dogecoin it's like
link |
um what is it he says uh that the most amusing outcome is the most likely
link |
kind of idea which sounds silly but there could be like profound truth to it
link |
it's like what do you make of dogecoin philosophically or technically is is it
link |
possible that dogecoin will overtake bitcoin and run the
link |
run the entire world i can't even because it could happen
link |
it could happen but what uh if there's any serious way to answer that question
link |
well we have to start with uh techno king of tesla yeah and master of coin
link |
as they are so articulately called in the latest scc filing
link |
he officially changed his title techno king yes no king of tesla
link |
and the cfo's new uh title is a master of coin
link |
and so uh when you have a sense of humor yeah and frankly uh a level of uh
link |
self confidence and uh an element of uh an appreciation for irony in the world
link |
dogecoin is actually one of the least crazy things that you could talk about
link |
when you're willing to go to techno king of tesla master of coin
link |
uh and all this stuff and so i think that
link |
elon uh doesn't get enough credit frankly for his understanding of internet
link |
culture understanding of memes and understanding
link |
of frankly human psychology and marketing and so
link |
in some crazy way every time he talks about dogecoin
link |
it's a rallying cry for an entire generation of kids
link |
it's a rallying cry for an entire industry uh in terms of cryptocurrencies
link |
and digital technologies but this is the flag yeah
link |
and this is the thing that he can yell and scream about
link |
and tweet about without worry of punishment
link |
so he could be talking about bitcoin he could be talking about cryptocurrency
link |
but that's not going to be uh as beautifully
link |
humorous and whatever the hell internet culture is as dogecoin
link |
he's finding the right language he's speaking the language of the people
link |
of the of the in the digital age if you want to reach weird people
link |
yeah you can't be serious and most people are weird
link |
the masses are weird so he's speaking to the masses
link |
yeah and the techno king and even further than that i think is
link |
he essentially is um he's using dogecoin as a way to say
link |
i'm doing this because i can yeah he couldn't do it
link |
with securities he couldn't do it with certain types of other assets right
link |
like i almost look at it as like a venn diagram what's the thing that a bunch of
link |
people know about care about thinkers funny whatever and
link |
also overlay that with the things that like he
link |
could actually talk about they won't get in trouble for
link |
that's a big f you to the sec i could see the
link |
the people just freaking out i i mean i love it
link |
but um i i don't know if i would have the guts to do it myself
link |
but i i think he's an inspiration to a lot of us
link |
to be like well maybe you should grow the guts
link |
when you're the techno king you can do whatever you want right
link |
and i mean that's something to aspire to is to be the techno king in your own
link |
little world if you also think about it in the sense
link |
of uh when you're somebody on a mission to create interplanetary
link |
life yeah when you're trying to solve a or put a dent in the climate crisis
link |
or create electric vehicles and be the first american company and you know
link |
however long frankly the sec
link |
or other things in your life that just don't
link |
you don't ascribe that much importance to compared to those things
link |
they're almost uh nuisances and that's scary i think for shareholders
link |
of a company when the person that you're trusting to lead
link |
you to the promised land and create shareholder value
link |
doesn't put value on certain things but at the same time
link |
i always look at it as a tug of war how much of the actions of what he's doing
link |
and calling attention to actually change the way
link |
that regulators lawmakers politicians countries whatever act he may not be
link |
able to say do acts i'm the techno king and they go do it
link |
but with every step he makes he changes some of their behavior and so i
link |
think that it's um a really kind of game of like 3d chess
link |
that frankly i'm not privy to right i'm kind of watching from the sidelines and
link |
uh figuring out alongside everybody else but i also don't think that it's just
link |
elon uh bought a bunch of dogecoin and tweets about it because he thinks he's
link |
going to a dollar and he's gonna you know make money right like i don't think
link |
i don't think it's an economic argument as to why he's so
link |
interested in i think it's much more uh it's almost like meta message
link |
for a lot of other stuff yeah he's kind of
link |
trying to break apart internet communication from first principles like
link |
it does so many other problems it's kind of fascinating to watch i know he's been
link |
uh he's he's taught me quite a bit about communication
link |
and uh at least for me it's been liberating to not give a fuck
link |
about the old school way of things i've been always bothered by
link |
a place i deeply admire which is mit but there's
link |
problems the bureaucracies and hierarchies that hold back innovation
link |
brilliant minds and in that sense doge is a kind of fu to
link |
the system that's kind of positive but also
link |
uh kind of uh but it was also an fu so in that sense i think
link |
elon has a perspective on the world that's similar to bitcoin folks
link |
which i really like which is like thinking long term
link |
it's how visionaries think is like how will if i take these ideas
link |
what and the ideas hold true what will the world look like in 20 30
link |
50 years and think about everything in that way
link |
yeah i like uh bezos's view which is uh is essentially how do you minimize
link |
regret how do you accelerate your life mentally
link |
and go to 80 90 100 150 years whatever we end up
link |
being you know fortunate enough to live to and then look backwards
link |
yes and say this decision that i'm going to make i have two
link |
options which one is going to be the one that i least regret
link |
and if you continue to make decisions that way
link |
one you have that long term view kind of built in because you're working
link |
backwards uh two you are ultimately going to optimize
link |
for uh minimal regret but also three is
link |
even if you only look forward 10 years that's much much further than most
link |
people do and so it gives you a significant
link |
advantage and i think that um bitcoin has kind of this like um
link |
you know proxy for time as we talked about uh
link |
interplant uh planetary travel where there's multiple steps from creating a
link |
reusable rocket to landing it to you know all this stuff all the way
link |
to simple things just like if you're simply trying to figure out
link |
where the world's going to be 30 years from now
link |
you know bill gates says that we overestimate what we can do in one year
link |
underestimate what we can do in 10 well to me it's a um kind of degree of
link |
uh mistake if you will 10 years maybe you're off by 10 percent
link |
well if that line of progress continues 20 years you may be off by
link |
100 and 30 years you may be off by a thousand percent
link |
right like almost the further you go out the more inaccurate you become
link |
and so i think that people who want to iterate their way to success right
link |
that's a common thing in like the startup world
link |
end up actually following kind of the breadcrumbs to where the
link |
world is taking them but people like an elon musk a jeff
link |
bezos a jack dorsey all the way down the line all these
link |
innovators they actually say to themselves there is
link |
a point in time in the future where there's a world i want to
link |
construct and then they go and they construct it
link |
regardless of the short term iterations and incentives
link |
it is just they're driving towards that point and i think that it's this whole
link |
idea of having this like you know kind of set vision and this
link |
uh refusal to kind of move or budge off of that
link |
that's what makes them special one of the
link |
things that garnered a lot of excitement in the crypto
link |
community is nfts i i have no idea really the depths the
link |
fundamental technological philosophical depths of the second of this technology
link |
whether this is just like a little bit of a fad or there's some deep lessons to
link |
learn whether it's bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general about it
link |
do you have thoughts about like the long lasting fundamental aspects of nfts
link |
i think there's probably both things happening fad
link |
and things to learn right and um if we just start with like what is an
link |
nft it's a non fungible token meaning that um there's no fungibility
link |
and fungibility is a fancy word um i always describe it as
link |
if i took a hundred dollar bill and i put it on the table with a bunch of the
link |
hundred dollar bills and we mixed them up and i just grabbed a hundred dollar
link |
bill and left i'm no worse as long as they're all you
link |
know uh official hundred dollar bills because as long as i have a hundred
link |
dollars i have hundred dollars i don't need that exact same bill back
link |
so that means that those hundred dollar bills are fungible
link |
non fungible would be like art if i took a picasso and i put it down on the table
link |
and you brought three artists that no one's ever heard of before and we mixed
link |
them up and i just took any random piece of art
link |
it wasn't the picasso i lose because the picasso is really
link |
important there right so non fungibility is important in art
link |
what these non fungible tokens essentially are doing is they are uh
link |
creating scarcity and originality in a digital environment and what i mean by
link |
that is um take a music file if i had a music
link |
file and you wanted it you said send it to me
link |
i press send it essentially creates a copy and you get one music file i get
link |
another we don't care you can listen to music i
link |
can listen to music we're super happy if i instead though have a digital file
link |
that entire premise is based on scarcity and i hit send and you get a copy and i
link |
keep the original or you get the original i get a copy
link |
there's a problem and so ultimately what i think is playing out with nfts is
link |
it's a technology regardless of where it plays out from
link |
blockchains or uh what in communities or environments
link |
that just brings true digital scarcity to the internet and so naturally what
link |
people do they look at the legacy world and they
link |
say well what's scarce there that has value
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how do we bring that to the digital world so art is a perfect example right
link |
and you know frankly last year i started to
link |
look at this because it felt like this was going to be really really big
link |
and the conclusion i came to was just as bitcoin is going to be bigger
link |
than gold right the digital application of
link |
something is going to be bigger than the analog application
link |
the same thing's going to be true in art the digital art world is going to be
link |
bigger than the traditional art world people think that sounds crazy at first
link |
until you start to realize it's very very similar the art is more
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portable it can be divisible right it's got a
link |
larger demand market in terms of the internet rather than an auction right
link |
all this kind of stuff when you display it it can have motion
link |
and music and all of these aspects to it that are better than the traditional
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art what the traditional art market has that
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the digital art market has not had is the narrative narrative based world
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scarcity kind of in digital sense and so what i think the entire world is
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going through right now is an exploration of how do we use this
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technology to create new things frankly
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we're not going to be good at it for a while
link |
and so the only place i've really focused on is
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digital art itself and i've always been interested in art but i wasn't going to
link |
go buy a painting and hang it on the wall
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right in the sense of uh that's how i was going to store value
link |
what i find fascinating though is that i now can take
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that concept which most of the wealthiest people in the world
link |
have a significant portion some you know some people have 20 percent in terms of
link |
you know number of billionaires 20 percent of their wealth is in art
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and you can bring to this digital realm which is much more um
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kind of natural to a digital native and so the best way to describe the
link |
importance is imagine a serial number being placed on
link |
something take the eiffel tower the only eiffel
link |
tower that has value is the first one every replica of it regardless of size
link |
location you know who made it where they sent it
link |
they have no value eiffel tower 001 is the most important
link |
and so i think that's ultimately what we're starting to see here
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and what we're looking at is probably one percent of what it's going to grow
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into so you're you're bullish you're saying
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it could grow into something for one percent it could grow into something
link |
significant like all the kinds of different applications
link |
strip away all the applications right now and just think about
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is digital scarcity going to be important on the internet moving all the things
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that are scarce in the physical world into digital space
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us trying to figure out which things can be moved and not
link |
and also there's things in the digital space just like you're saying that
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don't exist in the physical world that might also
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benefit from gaining scarcity like you know people are i guess creating
link |
nfts out of like tweets or whatever so like you're you have you
link |
have a fun twitter account you know you could say like you
link |
could put value to a single tweet and then be
link |
able to invest in it and trade it and buy parts of it and all those kinds of
link |
things you know you can invest in people you
link |
can invest in you know art can be defined broadly as
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any kind of creation right and in some sense
link |
this whole idea of scarcity can overtake the entirety
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of the digital world it can like consume the
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all of the markets we see as financial markets and just turn
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everything into a market well so if i take you on like a i don't know
link |
10 year fast forward yeah and i paint a picture of uh something today that seems
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absolutely insane but there's early signs that people are
link |
building this and let's just give them the benefit of the doubt that
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some of the early iterations will work and some of or most of them won't
link |
there's a world where you and i are participating in a digital economy
link |
in a virtual world where uh whether it is a piece of art
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it is a digital sculpture it is a digital
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skin from a video game it is a digital good that we purchased somewhere online
link |
and we bring it and we display it in a digital museum or a virtual museum
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and so now all of a sudden you can charge people for entry
link |
you can consign digital goods it's the replication of what happens in the
link |
analog world now just in digital and when you do that
link |
what you do is you take the addressable markets
link |
of these assets or these mechanisms and they explode
link |
in the digital realm and so now all of a sudden
link |
how fast does the human race accelerate when it comes to human
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production intelligence learning all in the digital
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output it's just if i said to you 20 years ago i'm going to give you a
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global education that means i'm going to take you and i'm
link |
going to physically move you to geography after geography after
link |
geography it's going to take time it's going to
link |
take resources and ultimately it's going to take lots of effort
link |
if i now said to you hey i'm going to transport you
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in this virtual world to multiple geographies
link |
but you're going to experience it in this virtual
link |
world and you're going to have digital goods that you can take
link |
from economy to economy or from location to location
link |
all of a sudden you may get maybe you get 90 of the value you don't get 100
link |
of the same value we get 90 of the value but you can
link |
do it at a much faster pace and so in the six month period
link |
you've actually made three times the progress
link |
than you would have if you had to do in the physical world so that's where i
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think we're heading so there's digital art being displayed
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in the digital museum and people are being charged for access
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and perhaps we plug in our senses which means we start to operate more and more
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in a virtual reality augmented reality virtual reality way
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with this digital world and increasingly going to this world
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basically lived most of our productive and uh
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social lives in this digital world uh and increasingly essentially create a
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simulation where the biological basis is just there
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to say sustain the brain that's used to operate in the in the virtual world
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uh taking us back to the original when we started talking about war
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i wonder what conflict looks like in that world
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that uh the people who are born today maybe will be fighting wars
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in the space in in that museum world in that digital world remember what i said
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we're moving from a world of conflict surrounded
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and determined by bombs bullets and soldiers
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to a battlefield that is determined by war of information
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and cyber capabilities and so in that virtual world
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is it about death and destruction of human life in the physical analog world
link |
or will it become more important to attack or defend
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virtual property and virtual life and you know some level of virtual
link |
sovereignty in my opinion the latter is more likely
link |
and so what you start to understand is well
link |
what do you truly value in your life is it the physical analog materialistic
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consumptive goods or is it virtual
link |
and in many cases something as simple as the ability to connect
link |
with somebody it's really important and so one of the most disruptive
link |
combative violent things that a country may do to another country in the future
link |
simply take down the internet
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and put people in isolation yeah i don't need to physically harm you if i can
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psychologically harm you i don't need to it's terrifying yeah i
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don't need to uh actually convince you
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through a monopoly on violence on physical violence
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what if i can psychologically change the way you see the world
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through misinformation through all sorts of
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nefarious activities and i think that you know the united states has been
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struggling with this idea over the last couple of years in the political arena
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but what happens when it starts to come to other aspects of our life
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and i think it's very likely it's almost obviously likely that we're moving into
link |
the one of the features of the digital world
link |
is that artificial intelligence systems can operate with much more power in a
link |
in a frictionless way in that world currently as we understand it it's hard
link |
it's hard to build robots that operate at scale and do like
link |
arbitrary large amount of impact damage or positive
link |
in the physical world it's much easier to do in the digital world
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do you have do you ever think about ai systems
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just swimming about uh doing extraordinarily powerful destructive
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things in the digital world is that something of a concern to you
link |
or is this something into a very distant future
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i think a lot of artificial intelligence is
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uh in the name it's simply the replication of human intelligence
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at scale automated and program uh programmatic meaning
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that in the analog world you could go hire a
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thousand employees or in you know an amazon case hire
link |
millions of employees and set a mission or a goal and push
link |
them to go do that that requires recruiting retention
link |
training resources all that stuff in the virtual world or in this digital
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economy what if you can just program the resources
link |
and gain the same leverage and do it at scale and do it in a very
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programmatic way and then have them actually make decisions
link |
in a way that doesn't require you to have thought of every single
link |
potential scenario or edge case that's ultimately what we're talking about when
link |
we talk about artificial intelligence right
link |
and so when you look at that when technology is created
link |
everyone uses it for good or bad but both get used
link |
right and so whether we're talking about cell phones beepers the internet
link |
uh guns whatever it's always used for good and bad
link |
the big question is and i think that you know yourself and many other people have
link |
rightfully said this is the question really becomes
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is the negative and nefarious uses of this inadvertent potentially
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or does it actually come from a malicious person it's the intention
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malicious and to me that's what i i don't know
link |
enough you know much more about this and there's plenty of other people who do as
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well but i do think that there will be
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nefarious actors and malicious people but we're going to treat them the same
link |
way we've always treated people who use technology poorly right we're going to
link |
understand it we're going to identify it we're going to control it and then we're
link |
going to end up reversing it or preventing that from doing them it's the
link |
inadvertent things that i think are actually the most dangerous
link |
because when you have something that can think for itself
link |
and there is no way to leverage a monopoly on violence
link |
for control it's a very scary thing and it can i mean the the thing that's
link |
scary to me is this it can scale arbitrarily so it can outnumber humans
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very quickly even if it's dumber than humans and so
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i don't know if we're able to reason about a world
link |
like let's look at the physical analog where all of a sudden
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uh let's talk about something kind of like humans but dumber than humans like
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chimps okay imagine that all of a sudden chimps
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could multiply arbitrarily quickly and you could have
link |
like a trillion chimps the next day when you
link |
when you only had maybe a million the day before
link |
like how does that world look different where the fuck all these chimps come
link |
from and they like and then we can we can
link |
pretend to be like well let's hope the chimps like don't get violent because
link |
they don't seem to get violent when the resources aren't constrained
link |
but like we don't know and the problem is
link |
it all starts by building that first chip multiplier
link |
device and everyone's like okay yeah there's a lot of good applications you
link |
want you know uh you can make all kinds of
link |
arguments for why you have more chimps maybe they can help you out around the
link |
house or something like that in the physical space uh but
link |
ultimately it's the unintended consequences that you're referring to is
link |
you don't know what's going to happen i'm really worried about
link |
dumb ai agents uh like having impact when they're multiplied
link |
to a million to a billion and are allowed to operate in the digital space
link |
especially as we clearly are moving more and more
link |
of our lives into the digital space so it's kind of terrifying because we you
link |
know a lot of people are terrified or like concerned about super
link |
intelligence systems i think i'm definitely much more
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concerned about super dumb systems at scale that
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that's terrifying i always think about um the inadvertent
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but as you were talking what it made me think of is
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also the irreversible irreversible that's right so it's one thing if there's
link |
your inadvertent negative impact but we have
link |
reversibility built into a system and we can fix our mistakes yeah i think
link |
the really scary part is when you overlay inadvertent mistakes with the
link |
irreversible aspect of it and therefore humans have no control
link |
yeah if you if you have the trillion chimps you can't
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they're not gonna like it when you try to start killing them off
link |
uh all right but back to bitcoin those chimps in the bitcoin community
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anytime you bring up chimps some people say joe rogan entered the chat
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can i ask you about sort of learning about bitcoin books and resources you
link |
have an amazing podcast that's not just about
link |
bitcoin or cryptocurrency it's about everything including life but you do
link |
have a lot of really amazing conversations about this whole
link |
digital world but you obviously you also have a newsletter
link |
that's incredible on substack and and um
link |
but do you have recommendations maybe it would be great if you could talk about
link |
first of all your podcast and the newsletter but also other
link |
resources that you recommend people should check out in order to learn
link |
about bitcoin yeah so the podcast and uh email are like the two most selfish
link |
things i do because the podcast is a way for me to
link |
learn from other people so i get them to come on and tell me all
link |
the things they're thinking about and i could ask some questions what's it
link |
called by the way uh just the pomp podcast
link |
and so in doing that um it really is informative for me and i think that my
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whole goal is just like if i'm learning other people will be learning
link |
and then the email uh i read it every morning because it forces me to
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collect my thoughts and actually articulate them in somewhat of a
link |
coherent way and so it's just something that um is
link |
like a practice that i probably would do even if no one read it
link |
and then by being able to publish it uh what does it do it elicits you know
link |
both the good and bad responses and so people will let me know if they think
link |
i'm an idiot and they'll usually not respond if they think that
link |
it's something smart and so um those two things are really um
link |
educational for me and i think kind of forced me to uh to be able to
link |
articulate a lot of ideas but a lot of what i share or learn on
link |
those things come from these other resources
link |
so i'm definitely subscribing people should subscribe but
link |
what are bitcoin resources books that you recommend
link |
i think you got to start with bitcoin standard uh that one to me feels like
link |
uh it really lays out the picture nicely um
link |
there is uh bitcoin uh money you can't fuck with
link |
i was written by our friend jason williams uh as you can imagine it's
link |
basically what it talks about uh there's another book layered money
link |
um it's written by nick who uh who's done a great uh great job
link |
kind of laying it out um there's a book uh called bitcoin in black america
link |
written by a guy isaiah jackson and he basically lays out the argument for
link |
why the black community um can benefit in a
link |
asymmetric way from something like bitcoin um and there's a whole bunch
link |
more i'm gonna forget them all um there's the uh i think it's called the
link |
cost of tomorrow a guy jeff booth uh jeff booth wrote it
link |
um and just if you get on twitter basically you're gonna see all these
link |
books flying around um but i do have to say that uh from a
link |
psychological concept uh or philosophical
link |
concept the number one book that i've ever read uh that aligns with bitcoin
link |
ethos but doesn't say a word about bitcoin
link |
is a book called the dow of capital by mark spitznagel
link |
and so what he essentially does is he just reiterates over and over and over
link |
again long term thinking outliers disruption
link |
all the stuff and so he's a guy who he runs a fund
link |
uh that essentially they just do uh tail risk hedging
link |
and so in you know march or february of 2020
link |
they're up like four thousand percent right
link |
by the way they pretty much lose money you know
link |
for eight nine years then that happens and so
link |
uh but they're still one of the best performing funds if you look at it over
link |
you know years and years and so it's just this mindset of
link |
uh everyone is so short term focused and so i think it's just a great reminder
link |
to long term thinking uh and also i mean i've gotten quite a
link |
bit of value just reading the papers and that's perhaps more
link |
like for technical folks there's quite an active research community
link |
and also going back to the original white paper and just
link |
original documents old school old school is still
link |
what uh like what a few years ago still really interesting
link |
to think about to look at what people were thinking about
link |
because the the principles are carried through
link |
with uh other cryptocurrencies as well like it's it's all
link |
it's all there even in the early documents so
link |
that's kind of fascinating to see that whole history from if you're more
link |
like tech savvy and like you said twitter is actually an interesting place
link |
if you can look past all the shit coin talk
link |
it's a it's a fascinating place for news and resources
link |
is there books outside of all this cryptocurrency sort of
link |
technical fiction philosophical that impact on your life
link |
because you've you have interests that are all over the place is there
link |
something that um you would recommend to others so
link |
doubt capital is definitely probably my favorite book
link |
um books that have been impactful i read uh when i was 20 actually sitting in the
link |
desert of iraq um rich dad poor dad thinking grow rich
link |
and the richest man in babble on and i don't think i took a single thing
link |
and like implemented it from like an execution
link |
standpoint uh but it was a complete shift in mentality
link |
and understanding a relationship with money and um
link |
just kind of what i wanted to do with my life and stuff like that so i think
link |
those three books i read them in succession
link |
were really impactful um and then i think one of the best books probably
link |
ever written is uh i think it's called uh when breath becomes air
link |
um or air becomes breath i can't remember uh but it's basically a
link |
doctor or a medical professional who's dying
link |
and he essentially writes about the experience and thoughts and kind of all
link |
the stuff and i think that it's just uh one of these
link |
things where if you said to me you know what's the number one thing i took out
link |
of my experience in iraq that's a book like that also gives you is
link |
we're all gonna die right and you and i can want to be as
link |
immortal as we want but at some point we're gonna die
link |
and so it really does kind of focus you on
link |
time being that scarce asset and use it for
link |
enjoyment and happiness uh more so than anything else and i think that's part of
link |
your message and it's a great one do you think do you like literally
link |
meditate on your own mortality i necessarily think i uh meditate on it
link |
as much as um are you afraid of death were you afraid of
link |
death when you're in iraq i mean if you're coming face to face with it
link |
are you afraid of death today no i i think that it was just one of these
link |
things where like if you fixate on something and you
link |
worry about it then at least to me like you become
link |
uneasy about it and so after an experience like going to war
link |
i think that everything is just so not important compared to that
link |
right like when i came back i remember uh going back into
link |
the college environment and like things people worried about i was like
link |
listen let me explain to you you know what the real world is like right
link |
but i think even today right if you talk to people who know me really well
link |
i don't get worked up about a lot of stuff i don't get you know in either
link |
direction good or bad uh anything because ultimately it just
link |
comes down to if that's the final result
link |
let's enjoy it it's fascinating to ask you
link |
because this reformulation of money essentially buying time
link |
and uh you know there's the old question of does money buy happiness
link |
do you think money can buy happiness in the context of money being able to buy
link |
time or is happiness something else that is
link |
beyond all of this when people talk about this question i
link |
think that they really focus on money as a means to getting materialistic
link |
things so they want a big house they want a boat they want a fast car they
link |
want you know whatever they think that's the stuff that will
link |
make them happy what i think about it is if you have
link |
resources you can have time and if you have time and
link |
you spend it the way that you want to spend it then that's ultimately
link |
happiness so i always say to people if you think that money doesn't
link |
buy you happiness what if i told you that if you had more money you could
link |
spend more time with your family it reframes it yeah and now is all
link |
about i want to do certain things in life but
link |
there's a lot of people who spend their life
link |
not doing those things because they feel the need to pursue economic
link |
means as a way to provide a living or
link |
whatever and so i explain this listen in my opinion again it's my opinion it's
link |
what makes me happy if i can leverage financial resources to
link |
create more time to do the things i like i'm happier
link |
might not work for everybody but like that's what works for me and so there's
link |
this element of like i don't care what other people think if
link |
they like that or not because they're not me right like there's
link |
almost this element of like you gotta figure out what works for you and if it
link |
works for me then like no i think that resonate that that will
link |
resonate with a lot of people i think that's a brilliant reframing of it
link |
uh that said uh you kind of imply there's a
link |
there's a reason behind this whole existence of ours there's a meaning to it
link |
so let me ask what is the meaning of life
link |
anthony do you think about these ridiculous big questions
link |
that have no answer every once in a while or do you just enjoy the shit out
link |
of every day i answer it in a way that um isn't meant
link |
to be accurate it's meant to um
link |
be the right answer for me which is ultimately you know and i talk to a lot
link |
of people who always ask like what's the what are you doing why are you doing this
link |
i say it's to be happy and the reason why i think of it that
link |
way is i've got a friend jonathan galler who talks about uh
link |
you know enough being enough and recently he talked about it in the
link |
um context of bitcoin and so bitcoiners are have two things any
link |
bitcoiner if you talk to them they believe the same two things one
link |
they don't want the us dollar price to go up because they actually want to
link |
acquire more bitcoin right and then let it go once they feel like they've got
link |
enough but two is no matter how much they own they think that they don't own
link |
enough and they want to acquire more and so at some point you say to yourself
link |
what is enough and and i think that the whole meaning of life
link |
is to understand kind of what your level of satisfaction is and for
link |
some people that's a monetary thing some people that's a freedom of time thing
link |
for some people it's an impact thing whatever but just
link |
understanding that's important and then going and accomplishing it
link |
and what i've found is that the people who i know who have done this and been
link |
intentional about it they accomplish it on a much shorter
link |
timeline than people who don't right there's some people who start thinking
link |
about this when they're 60 naturally you're not going to accomplish
link |
before you're 60 if you just start thinking about it 60
link |
people who are thinking about it earlier can do it and so i think that's really
link |
it for me it's just like the meaning of life is to enjoy it
link |
the way i think about it that's because it's a really nice formulation i i
link |
almost like to sort of oscillate back and forth so
link |
majority of the time is spent at the moment of enough is enough
link |
of gratitude of basically being content with where you're at like deeply
link |
appreciative of every moment and all the bitcoin whatever bitcoin you
link |
have being deeply appreciative of it and that being enough and then some
link |
fraction of time perhaps it shrinks as you get older that's
link |
maybe there's an optimal trajectory there but
link |
some fraction of time is spent being yeah like deeply self critical
link |
and nothing is enough nothing you've ever done is worth anything it's the
link |
marvin minsky said like the secret to success
link |
is hating everything you've ever done so like that mode of just hating
link |
everything you've ever done and just like trying to improve trying to make
link |
stuff better nothing is enough it's never enough that
link |
kind of stuff and then oscillating back and forth like
link |
you don't have to have the same algorithm operating throughout the day
link |
you could just like oscillate back and forth
link |
and maybe reserve that gratitude part the chill part to when you're hanging
link |
out with family and friends and loved ones
link |
and then when you're like alone or maybe at work
link |
that's the madman comes out kind of thing i also think it's um
link |
kind of purpose driven in the sense of there's a lot of people who have the
link |
uh i need to do more but in a somewhat altruistic way
link |
so they're you know take elon as an example