Speaker 1: All right. Jeff Booth, the author of the Price of Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: a book that has oh Man really sent people into
Speaker 1: a different direction. Awesome book, Price of Tomorrow and ego
Speaker 1: death Capital. I don't know, maybe prolific tech investor entrepreneur
Speaker 1: will see anyway. Jeff, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Great to see you, my friend man so much to
Speaker 1: talk about. We were having fun catching up, just talking
Speaker 1: about fun personal stuff snowboarding and surfing and taking trips
Speaker 1: and things like that. But I think we're both also
Speaker 1: thinking that a lot of this bitcoin technology stuff is
Speaker 1: also fun as well. So I want to dive into
Speaker 1: that the technology is advancing so fast and sort of
Speaker 1: imagining where this goes in the world and how we're
Speaker 1: rebuilding and changing things, how lives can change, how humanity
Speaker 1: can flourish. That's the exciting part to me. I've often
Speaker 1: said that the price is sort of the least interesting thing,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about that for a minute. The Bitcoin
Speaker 1: ETF is the news. I mean, that is just dominating
Speaker 1: the news. I don't like that because it's mostly just
Speaker 1: about an investment kind of a viewpoint of it. The
Speaker 1: number go up technology, if you will. But you know,
Speaker 1: as a tech entrepreneur, you know, you have sort of
Speaker 1: this diffusion of innovation and there's a cas and that
Speaker 1: has to be crossed. Maybe we're doing that. What's your
Speaker 1: thoughts on the bitcoin and t F. Let's dig into
Speaker 1: that a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably similar to you. I think if you think
Speaker 2: about how many people understand bitcoin right now in the world,
Speaker 2: and you should say, say that's a one percent, and
Speaker 2: then how many people really understand what it means and
Speaker 2: how things are in a change to it. We can
Speaker 2: explore some of that through this podcast if you want,
Speaker 2: but that would be probably five percent of the one
Speaker 2: percent of so the how small a number of people
Speaker 2: actually understand what's happening here in this asset class. And
Speaker 2: then what's happening is the technology is being built on
Speaker 2: top of this asset class and what's going to happen
Speaker 2: what it does to the existing system such a tiny
Speaker 2: piece of the overall market that no wonder people are confused.
Speaker 2: And so now if you put in perspective with that,
Speaker 2: with what the ETF is doing, it is bringing more
Speaker 2: awareness to this asset class. And what ends up happening
Speaker 2: in this asset class is people start to see, wait,
Speaker 2: I'm living in a system with manipulated money, a manipulated ledger,
Speaker 2: and that's the reason why prices are going up. And
Speaker 2: then they learn a little bit about bitcoin, and maybe
Speaker 2: they learn about it because they think, Okay, that'll protect me,
Speaker 2: It'll give me a hedge against the system that's failing.
Speaker 2: Over time, and then some of those people, over time
Speaker 2: learn more and more about it and start shifting more
Speaker 2: and more of their attention into it as they understand
Speaker 2: it more. So if you just look through that lens
Speaker 2: of the ATF, you'd say it's great. It's just it's
Speaker 2: marketing that is going to bring a whole bunch more
Speaker 2: of awareness about what's happen happening to money and how
Speaker 2: you can protect yourself from money being debased. And people
Speaker 2: are going to protect themselves because of that. From there,
Speaker 2: the question is how many people remove to self custody
Speaker 2: and as well, and I think you have to look
Speaker 2: at some of the things that you see in the
Speaker 2: world today, is behind the scenes being coordinated and whether
Speaker 2: they are or not, I think it's worth thinking that way.
Speaker 2: And why I say that is is if you if
Speaker 2: you said human nature, if you could if you could
Speaker 2: get if you could steal the productivity that should flow
Speaker 2: to society in the form of lower prices. By controlling money.
Speaker 2: Human nature says that will always happen, right, Greed will
Speaker 2: make that happen no matter what, and we've always lived
Speaker 2: so all throughout.
Speaker 1: His will make prices drop.
Speaker 2: You're saying no, no, no, So this natural state of
Speaker 2: a free market is deflationary, so there is no inflation
Speaker 2: over a long enough time period because what we do
Speaker 2: we use things that give us more value. Why you're
Speaker 2: using riverside right now app to create this podcast is
Speaker 2: it gives you more value. And if something competed with
Speaker 2: riverside that didn't give you more value and it costs more,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't use You wouldn't use it. If something gave
Speaker 2: you more value and costs less, you would use it.
Speaker 2: So everything we use creates more use. It gives us
Speaker 2: more value, and that means the natural state has to
Speaker 2: be deflationary. Of a free market. The only reason things
Speaker 2: are inflationary short of short term cycles, right with the
Speaker 2: supply constraint or something. But then what ends up happening
Speaker 2: is the free mark. Because of the margins of that
Speaker 2: supply constraint, entrepreneurs attack it and create a different way
Speaker 2: of a model to great abundance. And so the natural
Speaker 2: state over a longer term is always of a free
Speaker 2: market is deflationary. We've always lived in the opposite, and
Speaker 2: we live in the opposite because effectively, if you could
Speaker 2: steal a small amount of money from everybody over time,
Speaker 2: you can aggregate a massive control for doing nothing. So
Speaker 2: human society it always has been wired. If you could
Speaker 2: game it, you would, right. That's why gold gets corrupted,
Speaker 2: That's why you fractionalize systems. That's why eventually you go
Speaker 2: back to you go to war, because it breaks world
Speaker 2: so much that then somebody says, I'm going to reset
Speaker 2: the system on a new standard, and then it goes
Speaker 2: through that again. So natural state is free. We've always
Speaker 2: lived in the opposite. That means every history book that
Speaker 2: anybody has ever written has this error code in it.
Speaker 2: It also has the error code because we've never had
Speaker 2: something decentral lives and secure that could be decentralized and
Speaker 2: secure throughout time, and the winners write the history books.
Speaker 2: So it means all of our previous history to this
Speaker 2: point before bitcoin was built with this aero code. And
Speaker 2: so it makes total sense that people are confused with
Speaker 2: what this new insight drives forward rather than looking through
Speaker 2: the past. It makes perfect sense. Now what are we
Speaker 2: up against? What does bitcoin up against? If you have
Speaker 2: a system that's ten thousand times bigger, that gains its
Speaker 2: power by stealing yours, by stealing money, then what is
Speaker 2: it up against. It's up against all human action doing that.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to get in specifically how that works.
Speaker 2: And it is also up against some coordination of you
Speaker 2: could say, the ETF. If the ETF and what Warren
Speaker 2: is doing at the same time to try to make
Speaker 2: self self custodial illegal, right, and the ETF can short
Speaker 2: and create fractionalized on top of bitcoin and then acquire
Speaker 2: more bitcoin, then you could say, and it's worth thinking
Speaker 2: that that could happen because then you're immune from it.
Speaker 2: But if that was coordinated, I'm not saying it is,
Speaker 2: but if that was coordinated, what would happen in that
Speaker 2: world is a whole bunch of people would trade their
Speaker 2: bitcoin or the paper bitcoin in is the ets acquired
Speaker 2: more and more bitcoin, and you could create that leverage
Speaker 2: to suppress bitcoin's price, just like just like gold has
Speaker 2: been suppressed, right, And you could create effectively unlimited leverage
Speaker 2: in that system over time and paper contracts to bitcoin.
Speaker 2: But for people that are aired of that, and I'm
Speaker 2: not saying some of that won't happen in the short
Speaker 2: term because an office action by a Warren making it
Speaker 2: will drive fear in the market. At the same time
Speaker 2: people could short it could drive price in the short
Speaker 2: term going down. But what would that then, Cause there's
Speaker 2: too many people in the world right now, and bitcoin
Speaker 2: is self custodial, and every year it gets more decentralized
Speaker 2: and secure. There's too many people in the world that
Speaker 2: have looked behind the curtain. And once they've looked behind
Speaker 2: the curtain and how money works, they're never going back.
Speaker 2: And so you probably run a node. I run a node.
Speaker 2: I'm not selling my bitcoin, and every time price falls
Speaker 2: we actually I buy it anyways. But there's more and
Speaker 2: more people bitcoiners that understand this that are going to
Speaker 2: take that into self custody. So the reaction to the
Speaker 2: system driving to financialize this creates more self self custody
Speaker 2: at certain prices, and as that happens, eventually, if it
Speaker 2: was coordinated, if there was something again not saying there is,
Speaker 2: but if it was and that was an attack factor
Speaker 2: for a bitcoin. What would it end up happening is
Speaker 2: it would cause the biggest short squeeze the world's ever
Speaker 2: seen eventually, and on that short squeeze would liquidate financial
Speaker 2: players that were not acting with integrity or honesty. Because
Speaker 2: bitcoin doesn't care. It's imposing fair rules on society rather
Speaker 2: than it could care less. It could care less about
Speaker 2: you and me everything else. It's just imposing that discipline.
Speaker 1: Wow, a lot to unpack right there. I was making
Speaker 1: some notes. We can come back to them. I asked
Speaker 1: you if to clarify something, and it wrong, but it
Speaker 1: got me thinking. I said, so, it's it's greed that
Speaker 1: drives prices down. You said no, But if you think
Speaker 1: about it, in a true free market, if we could
Speaker 1: stay free and not be co opted and gamed. So
Speaker 1: in a true free market, it almost would be greed
Speaker 1: that would drive prices down, because if I saw you
Speaker 1: were making a killing in a certain category, my greed
Speaker 1: would say, well, I want to step in in front
Speaker 1: of Jeff and I'll make a little bit less, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so go ahead and keep going.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's just you know, it's interesting when you kind
Speaker 1: of flip it on its head, and you have to
Speaker 1: kind of put that in sort of parentheses in a
Speaker 1: free market, because you know, what we're being told by
Speaker 1: the leaders is it's greed that's driving prices up. It's
Speaker 1: these greedy gas stations that drive prices, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: in a free market, greed would actually drive prices down.
Speaker 1: It'd be the opposite.
Speaker 2: We only get paid. We get paid. Entrepreneurs get paid
Speaker 2: when they create more value for others, period, right, And
Speaker 2: and that's a competitive process. And so they see and
Speaker 2: in a free market, that competitive process continues to attack.
Speaker 2: And where would an entrepreneur go. Would you go to
Speaker 2: create the next calculator app? Yeah, it's already free or
Speaker 2: would you or would you go create? Or would you
Speaker 2: go attack an industry that had high margins?
Speaker 1: Of course, agree, it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2: So the free market is constantly under attack. There is
Speaker 2: no monopoly in a free market, Yeah, there.
Speaker 1: Can't be so in in you know, in this diffusion
Speaker 1: of innovation, you know this bell curve, and you have
Speaker 1: sort of the innovators, the true believers, and then you
Speaker 1: sort of have this chasm. And the chasm is where
Speaker 1: something has to shift, you know, in the mindset of
Speaker 1: people to sort of bring that early majority in. And
Speaker 1: there's lots of things that could cause that shift to happen,
Speaker 1: that that chasm to be crossed, if you will. I
Speaker 1: think the ETF is a big piece of that. So
Speaker 1: all these people who think, well, it's just magic internet money.
Speaker 1: I don't trust it, it's a scam at the tulip
Speaker 1: it's whatever, it's too difficult, I don't you know, throw
Speaker 1: it fill in the blank. All of a sudden they're like, well, shoot,
Speaker 1: if my financial advisor tells me to buy it, if
Speaker 1: Blackrock has it, if you know whatever, And so that
Speaker 1: creates the chasm to be crossed. And also there's also
Speaker 1: another paradigm. And so I gave a presentation a big
Speaker 1: buck Boom and packpitcoin on you know, technological Revolutions. I
Speaker 1: talk about him quite quite often. And I got this
Speaker 1: from this book Technological Innovations and Financial Capital by Carlata Perez,
Speaker 1: and she talks about sort of this change and the
Speaker 1: reason the things that these technologies have to do in
Speaker 1: order to sort of have this revolution, and some of
Speaker 1: that is in the mindset and so sort of we
Speaker 1: have this normalcy bias, it's recentcy bias. Hey, money always
Speaker 1: has to go up. Hey, this is just how it goes,
Speaker 1: and so that has to change. But there's people that
Speaker 1: are entrenched in that that don't want that to happen,
Speaker 1: and so we have to sort of fight against that.
Speaker 1: That's sort of this orange pill movement, if you will.
Speaker 1: But you mentioned one more thing, and is that Ledwig
Speaker 1: Guan Misis called it the crackup boom. And then he said,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly the people realize that inflation is both
Speaker 1: permanent and intentional. Yeah, so all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe in the last ten years, inflation has been sort
Speaker 1: of thrown into the forefront of things. The Fed is
Speaker 1: sitting there saying, our goal is to get it back down.
Speaker 1: We only want two percent. Oh so it's intentional that
Speaker 1: you want to steal from me, and I think people
Speaker 1: are doing that. And so sort of bringing this together,
Speaker 1: that chasm not only being brought sort of legitimized by
Speaker 1: Wall Street jumping in, but then also the chasm being
Speaker 1: crossed where people are suddenly waking up to the fact
Speaker 1: that inflation is permanent, and you know, to the point
Speaker 1: that you that you've made I think everybody realizes I
Speaker 1: have to go protect my wealth and when you add
Speaker 1: those two things together, I mean it's a pretty big
Speaker 1: hopefully it'll be a pretty big shift to get people
Speaker 1: to sort of see that new world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so think about yourself and let's let's go why
Speaker 2: does this exist? And how much do you know about bitcoin?
Speaker 2: And how much of your time is in bitcoin? And
Speaker 2: then play that forward and how and just that say
Speaker 2: how much was it three or four or five years
Speaker 2: ago as you started to understand, and how much is
Speaker 2: it now? And how much will it be? And then
Speaker 2: let's walk through how this works and so how this works.
Speaker 2: So we've already we've already made a point. The free
Speaker 2: market is deflationary, right, The natural state of the free
Speaker 2: market is deflationary. So that means every single person that
Speaker 2: says yep and then goes on carries on their life
Speaker 2: in the other world, is making the other world stronger
Speaker 2: to their own to their own demise. Every single the
Speaker 2: amount of time that you're measuring from the other system,
Speaker 2: if you can say yes, and prices fall to the
Speaker 2: marginal cost of production over time, and technology is a
Speaker 2: lever on that, and it's an exponential lever that makes
Speaker 2: prices fall faster, then what you're doing by trying to
Speaker 2: capture wealth in the existing system. All all of the
Speaker 2: things in the existing system are making everything worse for you.
Speaker 2: And let me just show you how that works. So,
Speaker 2: so you know this mark that the magnificent seven the
Speaker 2: tech companies. Without the return of the tech companies, SMP
Speaker 2: would be negative, right, Okay, So what everybody does? Everybody
Speaker 2: you do. I'm not saying you do, but many people
Speaker 2: listening to this call will store their wealth in the
Speaker 2: tech tech companies, and then they'll use the tech companies
Speaker 2: that are using AI to reduce the labor because they
Speaker 2: use the tech companies because if they don't use the
Speaker 2: tech companies, they don't get the same value. And so
Speaker 2: the tech companies are creating this artificial and general intelligence
Speaker 2: the magni that is reducing the labor. And you should
Speaker 2: have a normal market, you would probably have about five
Speaker 2: percent deflation per year compound and getting more and more.
Speaker 2: So even at that, if you were at zero percent inflation,
Speaker 2: you'd be getting five percent stolen from you a year.
Speaker 2: And you go and spend more of your own money
Speaker 2: trying to protect your money from losing value by putting
Speaker 2: it in a tech company, and they use that at
Speaker 2: creating the monopoly and reducing more and more labor to
Speaker 2: make to drive that faster to give you more value
Speaker 2: fair And so then you say, well, how is this
Speaker 2: monopoly doing this? But if they increase their labor rate
Speaker 2: and much more or much more labor, you wouldn't use
Speaker 2: their service anymore. Somebody else would beat them. So and
Speaker 2: then the pension funds that holds your retirement are all
Speaker 2: indexed to the same thing. So they're driving more and
Speaker 2: more money into the thing that's driving for faster and
Speaker 2: faster deflation, and you're part of your Every single person
Speaker 2: in the world is trying to store their wealth in
Speaker 2: those things because if they don't, they'll lose more money faster.
Speaker 2: Now let's look at the same thing on bitcoin. Bitcoin.
Speaker 2: All of those companies priced in bitcoin are losing value,
Speaker 2: every one of them. All your houses, all your real
Speaker 2: estate is losing value against bitcoin, all of it. But
Speaker 2: most people are storing their wealth within the system that's debasing,
Speaker 2: making it stronger, thinking they're winning on a losing game
Speaker 2: and bitcoin could care less. It's so this system is
Speaker 2: based on a manipulated ledger, and it's manipulating currency units,
Speaker 2: and everybody and your voting in that system to who
Speaker 2: should win, who should get more of the manipulated currency
Speaker 2: units to put to their group or the other group,
Speaker 2: And society is breaking everywhere because of this. But every
Speaker 2: single person, in fact, many of the podcast you listen to,
Speaker 2: are yelling at the same system, and they don't know
Speaker 2: they're making it stronger by yelling at it. Right, all
Speaker 2: of their actions are making it stronger. And so why
Speaker 2: we've created ego death and why I just just tired
Speaker 2: of it. I just said it's nonsense. I wanted to
Speaker 2: spend instead of ninety percent of my time in the
Speaker 2: system that was creating this, I wanted to spend ninety
Speaker 2: five hundred percent of my time in the system that
Speaker 2: was repricing it.
Speaker 1: But if we so let's let's take that, we'll transition
Speaker 1: to ego death. What ego death is a fund that
Speaker 1: you're in that invests into bitcoin companies that are building
Speaker 1: this new world. But let's just take that previous example.
Speaker 1: I had a good conversation with a good friend, mutual friend,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Song, many conversations. We ended up at a lot
Speaker 1: of places at the same time, but in la PEC
Speaker 1: Bitcoin and we were talking about this specifically, and you know,
Speaker 1: he's such a bitcoin purist, Maximus that you should just
Speaker 1: buy bitcoin and not invest in anything. But I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, who's going to go build this thing? Right,
Speaker 1: we have we have to invest our money. But back
Speaker 1: to kind of the point that you just made, right,
Speaker 1: So we're investing into Facebook to make our lives better, Right,
Speaker 1: We're getting value from that. It makes my communication cheaper, easier, faster,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So I have more value there. But I'm
Speaker 1: putting my money into that system that's causing I'm perpetuating
Speaker 1: that system that's actually causing me to have this inflation
Speaker 1: of force.
Speaker 2: And then I yell at other Then I yell at
Speaker 2: other people because it's their fault.
Speaker 1: Right, But but I do it. But if I'm putting
Speaker 1: my if I'm investing my money into Facebook in order
Speaker 1: to protect my value, I'm hoping that Facebook is going
Speaker 1: to go look faster than the inflation that is debasing
Speaker 1: my value at the same time, right.
Speaker 2: And it's not it's it's it's not it's going up
Speaker 2: at the same rate. So if you look at the monitor,
Speaker 2: if you look at the monetary easing of about the
Speaker 2: liquidity about eight and a half percent per year compounded
Speaker 2: and then so it or maybe some of those companies
Speaker 2: beat it for a fair a short period of time,
Speaker 2: but over the long term, you're just matching your same
Speaker 2: as housing, right, so exactly the same as housing.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, the S and P five hundred is
Speaker 1: like a perfect proxy for inflation. I think, I think
Speaker 1: what we're saying, and the media and US real estate
Speaker 1: is as well totally. However, there are scarce assets that
Speaker 1: then outperform inflation. So for example, the median US real
Speaker 1: estate went up about forty percent, Austin, the fastest growing
Speaker 1: city of the United States for the last twenty years,
Speaker 1: went up about forty percent, but homes on the lake
Speaker 1: Lakefront Lake Lakefront on Lake Travis went up one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty percent. Yeah, right, So sort of the S
Speaker 1: and P five hundred, which the manuf is the seven
Speaker 1: sort of make up and drive that have kept up
Speaker 1: with inflation. A few will outperform it for certain periods
Speaker 1: of time if you're a really good exactly right, exactly okay,
Speaker 1: But then contrast that too, Okay. So I am an
Speaker 1: investor or I'm just a regular person. I'm a doctor
Speaker 1: or whatever. I'm making money I have savings. I want
Speaker 1: to protect that savings from BE and D based and
Speaker 1: so I can put it into Nvidia Book et cetera,
Speaker 1: and hopefully that will at least keep up with it,
Speaker 1: potentially beat it. Or I could put it into x
Speaker 1: y Z bitcoin company, which is also a tech company,
Speaker 1: which is also hopefully going to beat it. I mean,
Speaker 1: so what's the million?
Speaker 2: So what's different here is the nine hundred trillion dollars
Speaker 2: of global wealth. Imagine you have a percentage of that ledger, right,
Speaker 2: and you could say, if Mark Moss has a million dollars,
Speaker 2: you could just calculate exactly what percent you have of
Speaker 2: that ledger If that ledger is one point five quadrillion tomorrow,
Speaker 2: because there's a whole bunch more manipulation of money and
Speaker 2: you're part of that ledger doesn't go up by that
Speaker 2: mount you lost money, but you didn't know you lost money.
Speaker 2: That's what That's what you're living in, and that's what
Speaker 2: everyone is pricing their is en And when they naturally
Speaker 2: say what is bitcoin price in this ledger, they're making
Speaker 2: that calculation error. When I say it's saying decentralized and
Speaker 2: secure on the on the base ledge, then it is inevitable.
Speaker 2: If it stay is decentralized and secure, it reprices everything
Speaker 2: in the nine hundred trillion. So you could say, how
Speaker 2: much of a percentage of twenty one million do I
Speaker 2: have for all of time? And compare and contrast how
Speaker 2: much do you need for your living lifestyle? If you
Speaker 2: can hold it decentralized and secure, it will reprice everything else.
Speaker 2: So then then your next question, I think, is why
Speaker 2: would I invest if I can invest in that asset? Essentially,
Speaker 2: if I can own a new if I can own
Speaker 2: the new Internet, not just the value on top of it,
Speaker 2: but I can own a piece of the new Internet,
Speaker 2: and all future value accrues to me. Or is said
Speaker 2: another way that I like to say it is if
Speaker 2: prices should fall to the marginal cost of production, if
Speaker 2: the free market is is deflationary, then the anything that
Speaker 2: can measure it as a fixed currency, So in other words,
Speaker 2: all things forever if you measure in bitcoin will fall
Speaker 2: in price at the same rate they should fall in.
Speaker 1: Price as long as it stays.
Speaker 2: And so so now, and the only reason I say,
Speaker 2: if it stays decentralized and secure, I think it's almost inevitable,
Speaker 2: or points something one probability that something could break it.
Speaker 2: Why I say if it stays decentralized and secure is
Speaker 2: so people do their own homework on why that's inevitable.
Speaker 2: So so because they need to understand this asset class
Speaker 2: is different than anything they've ever seen, and they're through
Speaker 2: the through it the Fiat machine of manipulating money, they
Speaker 2: won't see what's unique. They have to do the work
Speaker 2: because all of the all of the information that is
Speaker 2: in the Fiat machine would try to stop this from
Speaker 2: from working.
Speaker 1: So then, first of all, for the listeners, of course,
Speaker 1: Jeff and I agree on this. I've been an advisor
Speaker 1: for Trambill Venture Partners for about two years, so I
Speaker 1: look at all the bitcoin only VC stuff, and I'm
Speaker 1: a partner with a Bitcoin Opportunity fund with our mutual
Speaker 1: friends James and David and Larry and all those guys.
Speaker 1: So we're also investing in the bitcoin space as well.
Speaker 1: But just to kind of understand this point for everybody
Speaker 1: who's listening, and even for myself, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: so we go back to sort of investing into nvidiaoir
Speaker 1: Facebook and hoping to beat inflation. But I'm perpetuating the
Speaker 1: same system if you will so whatever, or I could
Speaker 1: invest into X y z bitcoin company anchor watch, I
Speaker 1: mean whatever, you name it, right, you got on the line.
Speaker 1: The mechanism is the same. I'm still investing my money,
Speaker 1: whether that be dollars or bitcoin into a company hoping
Speaker 1: to beat inflation. I'm guessing what you're saying is the
Speaker 1: difference is how I'm measuring that money. Am I measuring
Speaker 1: in US dollars or am measuring my return in bitcoin?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So in Vidia they're free cash flows or in
Speaker 2: the dollars that are being deluded, And so your your
Speaker 2: your entire investment is in the debasing currency, and in
Speaker 2: this it is not so if you can if you're
Speaker 2: creating So so what I think is happening in our
Speaker 2: companies and some of the companies if you see that
Speaker 2: they and by the way, and this isn't just our
Speaker 2: fund Let's say there's lots of funds in this space,
Speaker 2: at least the bitcoin only funds that understand this your venture.
Speaker 2: You can actually get venture returns on top of a
Speaker 2: venture asset.
Speaker 1: So you're getting bitcoin returns as opposed.
Speaker 2: To exactly so our company, our companies are are by
Speaker 2: creating the enabling foundations of the things that just similar
Speaker 2: to the like the Internet. But if if you owned
Speaker 2: a piece of the Internet and then and then there
Speaker 2: returns and we're collect more bitcoin because of the value
Speaker 2: that they were creating. And if you see some of
Speaker 2: the rates of the growth of the companies measure in
Speaker 2: their balance, sheees moving up by acquiring more bitcoin because
Speaker 2: there because it's denominated in that and their transactions are
Speaker 2: based in it. You you have an underlying asset that
Speaker 2: I like to look at it as it's not going
Speaker 2: up forever. All prices are falling against it forever. But
Speaker 2: now you're collecting more of that underlying asset, so you
Speaker 2: can by by having successful companies, so you I believe
Speaker 2: we're going to have venture returns on top of a
Speaker 2: venture type asset.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's like so when I think about that, I think,
Speaker 2: and I can't believe everybody is not here. I can't
Speaker 2: believe there's not more people understanding this because because I
Speaker 2: can prove what I just said, because it's repriced every
Speaker 2: other asset class over the less the credit.
Speaker 1: The critic could say over what time frame, Right, obviously
Speaker 1: over the over the last fifteen years. It certainly has
Speaker 1: over the last two years, it hasn't, right, So.
Speaker 2: But any four year any four year cycle, it has, right.
Speaker 1: And obviously as a venture investor, like we're thinking long
Speaker 1: term seven to ten years typically at a minimum, right,
Speaker 1: So to your point, every four years it has. And
Speaker 1: so if you're thinking, and I say all the time,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if you're if you're marketing your
Speaker 1: portfolio market on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis, like,
Speaker 1: you're never going to make it. Like Charlie Munger said,
Speaker 1: the big money is made not in the buying and
Speaker 1: the selling, but in the waiting, right, So waiting for
Speaker 1: that to develop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and keep and play and play that forward. But
Speaker 2: we have a we have a system that you're in
Speaker 2: measuring your returns every every day in the other system
Speaker 2: because it forces you to do so, because it's debasing.
Speaker 2: So people are trying to store their wealth and most
Speaker 2: of their wealth is stored in the system that's debasing.
Speaker 2: It's it's insane, right. And I think when I think
Speaker 2: about risk return, I think even Sam is an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: I think the best entrepreneurs are actually aren't risk takers
Speaker 2: like people think they are. I think they're really great
Speaker 2: risk allicators, and the difference is they look at the
Speaker 2: risk of where they are now versus the new and
Speaker 2: what they're going to do. And so today when people
Speaker 2: are looking at bitcoin, they're looking at the risk of
Speaker 2: the new and they haven't done the work to understand it,
Speaker 2: and they think their own system has no risk when
Speaker 2: all of the risk is in the existing system. So
Speaker 2: what you're having is terrible risk gllicators. And then as
Speaker 2: they get more as a system paralyzes them through more
Speaker 2: fear right, and you hear the WF and they yell
Speaker 2: at it all the time, and all of these things
Speaker 2: are capturing their attention, making them even worse risk galicators
Speaker 2: because they're trying to protect their money in the exact
Speaker 2: same that's thing that's staying being debased.
Speaker 1: Right, So bitcoin is repricing everything. I can go back
Speaker 1: another quote from Letwoo Bonemesis, and I believe he said
Speaker 1: that in economics, there's no such thing as a constant,
Speaker 1: and so we always had like this commodity money, and
Speaker 1: so whether we're measuring things in oil or gold, there's
Speaker 1: no constant there, like the supply, the demand, the technology
Speaker 1: changes that all constantly. But now we have it right
Speaker 1: now Bitcoin has a fixed, limited supply, So for the
Speaker 1: first time we have a neutral asset that does have
Speaker 1: a fixed supply. So he was right at the time.
Speaker 1: Now it's different. And so to your point that you're making,
Speaker 1: it's starting to reprice everything. And if you have a
Speaker 1: long enough vision and you think at least in four
Speaker 1: year cycles, if not longer, it is it has been
Speaker 1: historically been repricing things, you feel strong that it will
Speaker 1: as do I. It looks like even Larry Fink thinks
Speaker 1: it will as well, which is pretty interesting. But there's
Speaker 1: one thing that you keep saying, nothing's guaranteed in this life,
Speaker 1: and you keep saying, if it stays decentralized and secure.
Speaker 1: I listen to you sort of debate this out with
Speaker 1: George Gammon, another friend of mine, and he has a
Speaker 1: little bit hard time sort of wrapping his head around
Speaker 1: that part, I think. But you had to keep saying
Speaker 1: over and over and over that decentralized and insecure, So
Speaker 1: that seems to be the risk factor in your mind.
Speaker 1: So purpose this is almost certain as long as those
Speaker 1: two things stay true. Ye.
Speaker 2: So and if you say what George would say, and
Speaker 2: George is fantastic, and I think, really really sharp on
Speaker 2: how the existing system works and sharp on history as
Speaker 2: well of how these things got co opted. And he
Speaker 2: would he would use, well, human nature won't let it.
Speaker 2: It will centralize it. And the question I have is how.
Speaker 1: How?
Speaker 2: Because because as more people understand this, and remember this
Speaker 2: is a different this is different than gold. It can't
Speaker 2: get centralized gold is so you can self custody this
Speaker 2: asset yourself, and you can run your own node. And
Speaker 2: so what he says is, well, governments will, we will
Speaker 2: take it over. And the question you ask is how into.
Speaker 1: To what end?
Speaker 2: Because because let's let's just imagine this place forward as
Speaker 2: it's plain, because you really have to think about if
Speaker 2: that's true, what would specifically happen to be able to
Speaker 2: break that. And so the governments, let's say they're going
Speaker 2: to print more money to be able to make their currency,
Speaker 2: and they're going to lock the doors and they're going
Speaker 2: to Janet Yellen and Warren and everything else, and they're
Speaker 2: going to conspire and make bitcoin self custody illegal in
Speaker 2: the US. So if that happened, and it happened all
Speaker 2: over the world at the same time, yes, then that
Speaker 2: would slow It would for a time that price would
Speaker 2: fall a bitcoin. But what it would signal to the
Speaker 2: world everyone is you better move faster on bitcoin, and
Speaker 2: as price fell, more and more people would self custody.
Speaker 2: And I think it would be just like in other
Speaker 2: regions where you lock down a currency and you say
Speaker 2: there's capital controls on my currency. The currency goes underground
Speaker 2: and there's a black market currency that actually moves faster
Speaker 2: and it is the real price. The free market is
Speaker 2: the real price, and you have a ponzie. So every
Speaker 2: single one of these things can't actually happen by the
Speaker 2: free market unless everyone in the world says, yep, I
Speaker 2: want to live in a cage. Right, nobody would do that.
Speaker 2: It just wouldn't happen. So and then, so now let's
Speaker 2: say that what does it look like to George's point
Speaker 2: or to other people who question, so, what that would
Speaker 2: mean is as the currency units inflate faster, Bitcoin is
Speaker 2: still re pricing the world. Right and then and then
Speaker 2: what ends up happening is every every country competes for
Speaker 2: labor and capital, the best people in investment, and so
Speaker 2: as it starts to happen around the world, why would
Speaker 2: it look any different in the future than it's always
Speaker 2: looked competing for labor and capital. It's just more of
Speaker 2: the bitcoiners will have the capital, yeah, and more of
Speaker 2: the great talent will be on the bitcoin layer, building
Speaker 2: kind of abundance for the future on an on at sledger,
Speaker 2: which would be high demand in regions that say we're
Speaker 2: going to we're going to build a free market here.
Speaker 1: The game theory, right, and that the chance, the odds,
Speaker 1: the probability of all the governments of the world all
Speaker 1: coopting and deside at the same time is very slim.
Speaker 1: I thought it would be actually impossible. Obviously, seeing what
Speaker 1: happened during the COVID pandemic lockdown made me unfortunately think
Speaker 1: a little bit. Otherwise, it was pretty well coordinated across
Speaker 1: the world simultaneously, so that that was a that was
Speaker 1: that was a shock to my thinking. So I have
Speaker 1: to kind of keep that in mind. But game theory
Speaker 1: is there. And so to your point, and if they
Speaker 1: did it in the West, if you will Canada, the US,
Speaker 1: you know, UK, et cetera, you still might have El
Speaker 1: Salvador or you know, Argentina now at this point or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then they're going to attract the best and the
Speaker 1: brightest kind of to the point that you're making so
Speaker 1: you sort of have that, but maybe some of the
Speaker 1: other risk factors if we just kind of want to
Speaker 1: play this out a little bit, because again trying to
Speaker 1: think it, will it stay decentralized and secure? You know,
Speaker 1: potentially you know, Blackrock taking over Bitcoin Core developers putting
Speaker 1: you know, bad malicious code in something like that. Now
Speaker 1: we run notes, so we don't have to accept those updates, right,
Speaker 1: so so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so so, but again I think all of these
Speaker 2: things like that there were used to thinking these giant
Speaker 2: organizations that control us, and they're going to control us,
Speaker 2: and you make them stronger with your own thinking by
Speaker 2: allowing that to happen. And the people that are moving
Speaker 2: to Bitlin and spending their time in this and by
Speaker 2: the way, I'm not even talking about what's being built
Speaker 2: on top. If you were some of those people trying
Speaker 2: to do this, you have no idea what's coming, no
Speaker 2: idea how fast this is exploding. If you think about
Speaker 2: fetiment and some of this stuff, the regulation is chasing
Speaker 2: where this might have been four or five, six, eight
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they can't keep up, not where it is today.
Speaker 2: And what's happening and is the more and more people
Speaker 2: who understand why freedom matters start to vote with their
Speaker 2: time and money and energy for freedom instead of saying
Speaker 2: I can't do anything because those other people are going
Speaker 2: to control me. They take the power from those people.
Speaker 2: That's the repricing event that is happening. So Blackrock looks
Speaker 2: so big because because our pension funds hold their money
Speaker 2: into black Rock, because Blackrock has inside ball on the
Speaker 2: financial system and it's the only way they can have
Speaker 2: a return because of the inside ball. And without inside
Speaker 2: ball and the financial system, black Rock gets smaller. And
Speaker 2: where does the money go to. It goes to you.
Speaker 2: It goes to Bitcoin holders that are repricing black Rock too.
Speaker 2: And so, for the life of me, I can't understand
Speaker 2: people that say I can't do this and I'm going
Speaker 2: to spend all my time for fear. Well, they make
Speaker 2: the thing that they want to happen they don't want
Speaker 2: to happen happen faster to them. It's ludicrous where they
Speaker 2: are a node in the network. They're a node in
Speaker 2: this network, and good luck convincing me otherwise.
Speaker 1: And they're literally giving money to a company that's working
Speaker 1: against their own best interess.
Speaker 2: We're working. And I'm not talking about in the ETF,
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about anything else, but through the pension fund,
Speaker 2: through all of their actions and everything else they're there.
Speaker 2: All of the people at w UF right now right
Speaker 2: are funded by this extraction of wealth from the same
Speaker 2: people that are yelling at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, think about it. Yeah, to your point, all
Speaker 1: the people that are online screaming, to your point that
Speaker 1: you're making, screaming about how bad this is, they want
Speaker 1: to take away our rights all these things. Well, why
Speaker 1: are you giving them your money? Your money is sitting
Speaker 1: in there in their pension fund, in their account, and
Speaker 1: that's what they're using to go to fly to Davos
Speaker 1: to make these types of regulations.
Speaker 2: In your in your housing that you're trying to do that,
Speaker 2: in all of these instruments that you're trying to do that,
Speaker 2: you're making it stronger, and then yelling at them saying saying,
Speaker 2: well you are so it's not there is no day,
Speaker 2: it's us and if you take your time and move
Speaker 2: it to the system, it's going to happen. Anyways, This
Speaker 2: new system is expanding because once this insight is has
Speaker 2: found as free, people want to build into a free market.
Speaker 2: And allow what the free market should look like. It's
Speaker 2: going to impose that because there's a wall of people
Speaker 2: moving into that, spending their time and energy. And that's
Speaker 2: why I just cannot believe I get to do this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I get to the smartest people I've ever met.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think a couple of things. Just so
Speaker 1: back to the decentralized and secure. Some of it really
Speaker 1: comes down to, I don't know, I guess to your point,
Speaker 1: the education or the desire for freedom. Right. So if
Speaker 1: we look at it from the standpoint, the war on
Speaker 1: drugs has been a pretty big failure. I mean, since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, they've spent you know, over three trillion
Speaker 1: dollars and drugs is the number one killer in America
Speaker 1: right today, right, And so the war on drugs has
Speaker 1: done nothing. And that's like a physical product that's been
Speaker 1: you know, grown, cultivated, package, ship, process, distribute, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Big one is decentralized more importantly digital, so it can't
Speaker 1: be technically seen or you don't have to carry it,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But the point more in the incentive mechanism.
Speaker 1: When they don't tell you not to do heroin, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make you want to do heroin. But when they
Speaker 1: tell you that you don't have a right to store
Speaker 1: your wealth in a way they can't steal from you,
Speaker 1: it sort of makes you want to do that. Right.
Speaker 1: That's why in America, when they start talking about gun
Speaker 1: control laws, gun sales go through the roof, right, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're going to take away my freedom, Well, then I'm
Speaker 1: going to go act right now. So they're only really
Speaker 1: speeding that mechanism up. And so you know, I would
Speaker 1: say I was thinking as you were talking, so really
Speaker 1: what we need is more education to educate people about this.
Speaker 1: But the reality is is that we are driven by
Speaker 1: self action and self determination. And so when I have
Speaker 1: a problem, I go look for a solution. And so
Speaker 1: when I see my freedom as under attack, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go find the solution to preserving myself from that freedom.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, I suppose sure education to continue
Speaker 1: to kind of keep that in the forefront. But as
Speaker 1: and this is what I tell people all the time,
Speaker 1: do you think governments print more or less money in
Speaker 1: the future, And of course answer is more. And do
Speaker 1: you think governments become more authoritarian or less in the future?
Speaker 1: And I think the answer is of course more authoritarian
Speaker 1: until they can't be anymore. And so I think those
Speaker 1: things are driving it. And as long as we can
Speaker 1: keep those answers in front of people, they're naturally going
Speaker 1: to be incentivized to go find those I want to
Speaker 1: jump into ego death. So you said, if people only
Speaker 1: knew what was being built, and they would realize that
Speaker 1: the government's years behind where you know these builders are going.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about that. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: ego death. You just announced that you're starting a fun
Speaker 1: number two, one hundred million dollars, big number. So one,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that there's massive appetite for that that you're
Speaker 1: seeing that, So tell me about the appetite. Two, there's
Speaker 1: massive opportunity. So there's more opportunities that you want to
Speaker 1: get into. And then maybe three you can tell us
Speaker 1: about some of these and you don't have to name specifics,
Speaker 1: but what are some of these things that maybe are
Speaker 1: running light years in front of where these regulators are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so one, the thesis of the First Fund,
Speaker 2: like many of the other bitcoin only ventures, but the
Speaker 2: thesis of the First Fund was I thought there was
Speaker 2: this massive asymmetry of knowledge that bitcoin was this decentralized
Speaker 2: and secure bedrock that couldn't scale for a long time,
Speaker 2: and that is what made the value. So all you
Speaker 2: had to do is hold on to it, and it
Speaker 2: created and you were creating value. So obviously in a
Speaker 2: free market that if that's all it was decentral utralized
Speaker 2: and secure and you couldn't scale it, and everyone was
Speaker 2: getting rich by holding bitcoin, everyone else would naturally create
Speaker 2: other coins, saying using bitcoin's growth to say my coin
Speaker 2: is better than that coin because it does x, it's
Speaker 2: a totlet natural that would be what the market would
Speaker 2: look like it's playing out, and again it still probably
Speaker 2: looks like that today. So the thesis at the time
Speaker 2: was people haven't done the work on bitcoin and why
Speaker 2: it's a different asset class completely and it's repricing everything else,
Speaker 2: and until they do that work, they're at a massive
Speaker 2: disadvantage and they're going to invest in all of this
Speaker 2: coins and nonsense, and all of those things over time
Speaker 2: will go to zero. Every other thing other than Bitcoin
Speaker 2: will go to zero because you would never use a blockchain,
Speaker 2: essentially a high cost database, if it wasn't decentralized and secure,
Speaker 2: you'd just use a database, right, So you'd never do that.
Speaker 2: And then at the same.
Speaker 1: Time, because a blockchain is a slow, inefficient database, and
Speaker 1: exactly why the.
Speaker 2: Only the only thing, the only thing, the only use
Speaker 2: case is the decentralized insecurity, essentially the ledger of money
Speaker 2: and is the biggest use case on the planet because
Speaker 2: money is manipulated. It's the biggest thing. They say. So
Speaker 2: when people say it doesn't have a use case, have
Speaker 2: you looked at how big and bloated governments are. Have
Speaker 2: you look at regulation, If you looked at all of
Speaker 2: the things that extract wealth from you, that's what it
Speaker 2: gives back to you. It's the biggest use case that
Speaker 2: every world has ever seen, and you can't see it
Speaker 2: right before her eyes.
Speaker 1: Jamie Diamond at Davos, he said, you know, bitcoin has
Speaker 1: no use case. I'm tired of talking about blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: He said, it's only used for basically crime, right, he said,
Speaker 1: it's avoiding sanctions, a M l K y C. Stuff.
Speaker 1: I think, he said, you know, sex, trafficking, fraud, and
Speaker 1: it's just a bunch of people trading between themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly that's exactly right. It's the work outside of
Speaker 1: the sanctioned. You know, basically everything is sanctioned at this point,
Speaker 1: and yes, so we can trade between ourselves exactly.
Speaker 2: So I suspect Jamie Diamond is just a highly paid actor,
Speaker 2: and he's highly paid from the money that he skims
Speaker 2: off the top from that should be in your pockets.
Speaker 2: That's what ends up happening because he sits at the
Speaker 2: top of a system that must steal productivity that should
Speaker 2: flow to society in the form of lower prices right
Speaker 2: by his space and the system. So what would a
Speaker 2: highly paid actor in that system say about a system
Speaker 2: that gives you back your freedom and power, right because
Speaker 2: it takes it so of course.
Speaker 1: But my point is is he was basically saying the
Speaker 1: only use case for bitcoin would be so you could
Speaker 1: have freedom and power that the state couldn't have. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was making the case for it inadvertency, right, But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm taking you sort of off your thesis for for
Speaker 1: ego death and going the first.
Speaker 2: But again, that's that's what you're up against, and that's
Speaker 2: what the world is looking at with all of that.
Speaker 2: And it's not just Jamie Dinmond, it's all of the
Speaker 2: system that So if you think about regulation if you think,
Speaker 2: if you think about regulation today, I've said this many times,
Speaker 2: but you have regulation to protect your money on top
Speaker 2: of a system designed to steal your money. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: what would that look like? Right? Just be let's be
Speaker 2: really honest, Like the free market is deflationary, and that's
Speaker 2: a big topic. The natural state of free market is
Speaker 2: deflation It's so big it breaks your brain. So if
Speaker 2: you can say that and understand that, and then go
Speaker 2: back and say, but I'm going to live in this
Speaker 2: other world in price from that other world, then it's
Speaker 2: your own fault that the world looks.
Speaker 1: Like it is from that. I mean, the regulation doesn't
Speaker 1: protect your money from a system trying to steal it.
Speaker 1: The regulation actually protects them to be able to continue
Speaker 1: to steal your money. Because why forces me to keep
Speaker 1: us my money in a system that's rent seekers in
Speaker 1: every area as opposed to letting me use it freely?
Speaker 1: Do you think?
Speaker 2: Why do you think big tech is trying so hard
Speaker 2: to regulate AI? Why do you think why do you
Speaker 2: think why do you think drug companies look like they do?
Speaker 2: Why do you think food companies look like the big agriculture?
Speaker 2: Why do you think it's been co opted? By regulation,
Speaker 2: because regulation protects the monopoly, it doesn't protect you. Why
Speaker 2: do you think regulation is on top of money, Because
Speaker 2: it protects a monopoly of money, not you. The entire
Speaker 2: system is and just look at the evidence. Every single
Speaker 2: industry has been driven this way. Why because prices fall
Speaker 2: to the marginal cost of production and free in a
Speaker 2: free market. What is the what is the marginal cost
Speaker 2: of production of a line of code zero? What's the
Speaker 2: marginal cost of production of a line of code created
Speaker 2: by other code? Lines of code? Where AI is going zero,
Speaker 2: The only way they can drive the prices up and
Speaker 2: create the monopoly is through regulation, scaring you that they
Speaker 2: will protect you from the very same thing that steals
Speaker 2: the thing becoming free for you. So that is the
Speaker 2: free market, That's what it looks like. And the regulation
Speaker 2: on top of it makes it not a free market.
Speaker 2: And that whole thing is getting worse and worse and worse,
Speaker 2: and people are stuck in that fear loop making it worse.
Speaker 2: The only thing that can stop it is something that
Speaker 2: has no counterparty risk to the existing system outside decentralized
Speaker 2: and secure. So that was our take. People were so
Speaker 2: misunderstanding this asset class. They hadn't done the work. They
Speaker 2: hadn't understand how this is the first time in history
Speaker 2: that this is something like this has existed, and we
Speaker 2: felt sure that it would become more decentralized and more
Speaker 2: secure over time, which it is. And then we said,
Speaker 2: now there's with lightning and other things emerging on top.
Speaker 2: You can scale in layers like protocol, like the like
Speaker 2: the Internet scaled and layers, and there is going to
Speaker 2: be more and more ability to be built on top,
Speaker 2: and that's going to turn into that overtime is going
Speaker 2: to turn into a peer to peer internet bounded by
Speaker 2: energy that creates an entirely a new world. And so
Speaker 2: I selfishly I wanted to be involved in that. When
Speaker 2: I think about I wanted to. I knew that bitcoin
Speaker 2: was repricing everything else, but so at first I had
Speaker 2: a hedge in bitcoin, and I was spending most of
Speaker 2: my time in what we just described, and I thought,
Speaker 2: I'm a hypocrite, right, yeah, I'll be protected, but I'm
Speaker 2: spending my time and energy on a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: company boards in the existing space, and every time a
Speaker 2: company wins there money has to be manipulated faster to
Speaker 2: be able to drive up prices, and so I thought,
Speaker 2: if I know this and I can see it coming,
Speaker 2: and I can see similar to what I saw in
Speaker 2: the Internet, it's kind of the best and the brightest
Speaker 2: we're moving in this space. What am I doing spending
Speaker 2: ninety percent of my time in the FIAT world. I'm
Speaker 2: going to spend it all in this And I'll tell
Speaker 2: you it's been. It's been remarkable because you get to
Speaker 2: see that it's I didn't think i'd have another chance
Speaker 2: to do this. Like in the early days of the Internet,
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, Wow, people don't see this, people don't
Speaker 2: see what's coming, and and the type of talent that
Speaker 2: existed there, it was just it was your brain was
Speaker 2: on fire all the time because it was just you're
Speaker 2: learning at such a rate from some of the really
Speaker 2: some super smart and dedicated entrepreneurs and such and capital.
Speaker 2: This is bigger. This is this is way bigger because
Speaker 2: because it's the same as the Internet, but the best prayers,
Speaker 2: but it's aligned with where humans are going and so
Speaker 2: it's more meaningful. And so the type of people, the
Speaker 2: type of integrity that is built into the space, the
Speaker 2: type of people that actually understand this and are building
Speaker 2: it's so much more powerful than than than the Internet was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, would agree. You know, I talk about it
Speaker 1: all the time, and you see it if you go
Speaker 1: to a bitcoin conference. You know, the mainstreams to tell
Speaker 1: us that we align on identities, you know, black, women, male, straight, gay,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, but we align on values. And
Speaker 1: there's some values that I think are more important than others,
Speaker 1: like freedom and human flourishment, for example. And so to
Speaker 1: the point that you're making sort of bitcoin has attracted
Speaker 1: the people that care about those types of topics. And
Speaker 1: when you're in some of these bitcoin events, I mean
Speaker 1: you can just feel it. You can just feel the vibration,
Speaker 1: you can feel the energy in the room, so to speak.
Speaker 1: And so to your point, you know, it's attracted the
Speaker 1: best and the brightest, and really maybe crypto has almost
Speaker 1: sort of helped that right as this great filtering mechanism,
Speaker 1: because if you only care about the money, you're going
Speaker 1: to go to the crypto side, and if you go
Speaker 1: to the bitcoin side, you're basically admitting to take less
Speaker 1: money and to go the long, hard way. And so only.
Speaker 2: There isn't an entrepreneur in our portfolio, or I don't
Speaker 2: think in the bitcoin space that would take money from
Speaker 2: vcs that were crypto vcs because you don't want to.
Speaker 2: You don't want a shareholder that's misaligned with your at
Speaker 2: that level, at an integrity level, or or that you
Speaker 2: have to teach about a protocol that's so different. Can
Speaker 2: you imagine trying to take money from somebody who had
Speaker 2: no clue about what we're talking about right now? Your
Speaker 2: values aren't aligned and so so why this is expanding
Speaker 2: and why it's just such a beautiful space. And if
Speaker 2: you just look at thefolio, the portfolio of success and
Speaker 2: what's happening in the companies that we funded already, Like,
Speaker 2: I literally can't believe I get to do it. I
Speaker 2: can't believe I get to work with these brilliant people
Speaker 2: creating this value for other people, and they and they're
Speaker 2: creating value for themselves in the companies out of creating
Speaker 2: staggering value for other people and bringing on billions of
Speaker 2: people to this asset loss. That's what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I in this presentation, I gave as I
Speaker 1: said it, a bit block boom in and Packpitcoin. I
Speaker 1: was sort of at Packpitcoin. I put a slide in
Speaker 1: where I had said sort of I showed oil like
Speaker 1: a cann of oil or barrel of oil, and so
Speaker 1: you have oil like an asset, but then you have
Speaker 1: the oil industry, so like who made the sonar for
Speaker 1: the oil tanker to sell across the ocean, or who
Speaker 1: made the satellite tracking to track you know, or who
Speaker 1: made the new drill head to go horizontal or whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. Right, so you have the asset bitcoin,
Speaker 1: but you have this whole industry of all these things
Speaker 1: that have to be built. And if we don't invest
Speaker 1: into that, basically we have a model t in our
Speaker 1: front yard sitting on blocks because we have no tire
Speaker 1: shops and no gas stations and no roads to drive
Speaker 1: it on. And so the sort of the challenge was
Speaker 1: to the bitcoiners in that in that presentation, was that cool,
Speaker 1: you bought your bitcoin, you're hoddling on a hill, but
Speaker 1: just like your modeltes on blocks, But if you don't
Speaker 1: go and help build out this ecosystem, then you don't
Speaker 1: have roads to drive it on. And so there's this
Speaker 1: entire ecosystem that needs to be built. And so that's
Speaker 1: obviously we're hoping to return better capital, but it's also
Speaker 1: potentially like hey, we just need to build this world
Speaker 1: that we believe in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but and just building on that. I just think,
Speaker 2: So there's an asymmetry and knowledge just on the asset layer, right,
Speaker 2: So probably less than one percent I really understand the
Speaker 2: asset layer really a lot less than one present. Even
Speaker 2: people that hold it don't really understand how it's reprising
Speaker 2: everything else. Now, there's a massive asymmetry of knowledge in
Speaker 2: what you can build on top. And then you look
Speaker 2: at this world and you say, there's all these problems. Right,
Speaker 2: What entrepreneurs do is they race for the hardest to
Speaker 2: solve problem because that's where the return is is by
Speaker 2: solving it, they'd solve it for millions or billions of
Speaker 2: others and they create something really magical. That's what. So
Speaker 2: every time you hear a problem, I just go, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's screaming at me. Here's how how would you? How
Speaker 2: would you solve that? So when you think about this
Speaker 2: kind of the the today you could call it. Bitcoin
Speaker 2: might not, but on top of bitcoin, it might look
Speaker 2: like a backcountry roads, gravel roads. The super highways are coming, right,
Speaker 2: and all of the stuff that's being built on on
Speaker 2: top of, on top of this is coming and it's
Speaker 2: going to provide incredible value to those entrepreneurs and society
Speaker 2: by by solving those problems. So I when I when
Speaker 2: I see a big, hairy problem like that, I think
Speaker 2: that's where I want to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. I love it. So and you're
Speaker 1: doing it. You're building the world that you want, and
Speaker 1: you're helping other people do the same. So ego death Bitcoin,
Speaker 1: Ego death. Fun number two open and ready for business,
Speaker 1: and just maybe this last question will just transition out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think it's already sort of
Speaker 1: self explanatory. But this is obviously a much bigger fund
Speaker 1: number two, and so it's not just the demand to
Speaker 1: get into this from the investor side, but you're also
Speaker 1: seeing an explosion of opportunities that need funding to grow
Speaker 1: as well. So I mean, we've seen it on both sides. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that so that's why So we actually our first
Speaker 2: fund we kept small, specifically because the ecosystem was small,
Speaker 2: and that would allow us way more time to be
Speaker 2: really kind of helping the entrepreneurs and spend more time
Speaker 2: inside some of those companies that would be enablers of
Speaker 2: what would come. Now those enablers are growing, some of
Speaker 2: them are growing extraordinarily fast, like blow me away completely,
Speaker 2: like the crazy fast and you and now in those
Speaker 2: you think about the next step their Series A or
Speaker 2: Series BE and everything else and now. But there aren't
Speaker 2: a lot of Series A funds and bitcoin only their
Speaker 2: Series A funds broadly and everything else. And those entrepreneurs
Speaker 2: don't want to go to somebody who doesn't understand bitcoin
Speaker 2: for capital because that means teaching about bitcoin and everything
Speaker 2: else and their business. So that's why the bigger fund.
Speaker 2: The entire ecosystem is maturing as you would expect it
Speaker 2: would mature, and not just in our portfolio companies. You
Speaker 2: know this from broadly in the industry. There's a bunch
Speaker 2: of things that are starting to catch fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well, it's an exciting time to be in
Speaker 1: the space. I agree. We have lots of fireworks. The
Speaker 1: ETF catalyst obviously the having cycle that's coming back around
Speaker 1: as well, But more importantly, it's the explosion of this
Speaker 1: technology is going to perpetuate and really more importantly help
Speaker 1: foster a new era of human advancement, human flourishment, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and freedom. Hopefully, I think with that will go ahead
Speaker 1: and sign it off unless there's anything else that you
Speaker 1: want to add or we missed.
Speaker 2: No, no, just awesome catching up with your markets again.
Speaker 2: Our friendship has come from the exact same same thing
Speaker 2: that you see in this, in this ecosystem, and we'd say,
Speaker 2: looking outside in it'd say, okay, there's there's these fights
Speaker 2: in bitcoin and everything else, and you don't have to
Speaker 2: agree with everybody, but but I and and that's and
Speaker 2: I think a free market makes it stronger by the
Speaker 2: debates and everything else. And so so it's okay to
Speaker 2: be different, different and have different views on this. But
Speaker 2: what but what you see in this is the really
Speaker 2: important things are aligned. And that's why, why why Again,
Speaker 2: you can create a type of people that you meet
Speaker 2: in this you just you know they're going to be
Speaker 2: lifelong friends.
Speaker 1: Jeff, so good, So good. I love that, look forward
Speaker 1: to catching up with you sometime soon. But that was
Speaker 1: signed off. I'm gonna put in the show notes down below.
Speaker 1: Of course, we'll link to Ego Death, your book as
Speaker 1: well anything else that people should be paying attention to.
Speaker 2: One quick thing, Jeff Booth dot ca is my website.
Speaker 2: And the only reason I say that is if you're
Speaker 2: going to follow me on social media. Make sure the
Speaker 2: social media that I'm on is on that website, because
Speaker 2: there's just too many fake accounts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, all right, Jeff, thanks so much, Thanks buddy,