Speaker 1: CBDCs will be irrelevant and they're nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: At least, that's what my guest CK has to say
Speaker 1: as we get into this discussion talking about the weaponization
Speaker 1: of the United States, the Treasury, the DOJ, the FDICE,
Speaker 1: how they're cracking down on crypto staking regulations, and what's
Speaker 1: happening even bigger outside the United States with the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. He says that CBDCs won't ship and
Speaker 1: they're nothing to worry about. So let's dig into this
Speaker 1: conversation with CK. We're gonna talk about bihoin, We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about crypto, We're gonna talk about the staking, We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about the US government crackdown. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about the rest of the world's demand where this is
Speaker 1: going way into the future. We get into that conversation,
Speaker 1: lots of fun, amazing conversation with c K. Let's go ahead,
Speaker 1: just jump right into it, all right, c K, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me today. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of questions. I've been working on some new big YouTube
Speaker 1: videos and doing some research into some of these topics,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty excited to talk to you about them today.
Speaker 1: So anyway, thanks for joining me. Yeah. Mark, super honored
Speaker 1: to be here. Thank you so much for the invite,
Speaker 1: and to the listeners. I know you're all big Marks,
Speaker 1: big Mark Moss fans. I am as well. It's been
Speaker 1: an honor to get to know you over these years
Speaker 1: being in bitcoin. Thanks thanks, K appreciate that. So a
Speaker 1: couple of things I want to talk about is the
Speaker 1: big bad government and kind of this this choke point
Speaker 1: two point zero that seems to be kind of coming
Speaker 1: back around. Wilde seems to have in my opinion, I
Speaker 1: think it's crashed the cryptocurrency markets back in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: It seems to be coming back again. And then there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff going on in the cryptocurrency markets
Speaker 1: against staking, against stable coins, things like that. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk about those things, this potential choke point
Speaker 1: two point zero that seems to be back, and some
Speaker 1: other questions. So, you know, the first thing is I
Speaker 1: like to say, just super simply, markets stopped going up
Speaker 1: when there's no more buyers, which is why we have
Speaker 1: blow off tops, because you suck in all the buyers
Speaker 1: for that cycle, and then then it crashes back down
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen. Well even Previous to that, twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: fifteen sixteen, the Obama administration had been implementing something called
Speaker 1: Operation Choke Point, where they were basically cutting off funding
Speaker 1: to lots of different organizations that were legal, legal organizations
Speaker 1: like paid a lending, you know, AMMO guns, but legal
Speaker 1: things where they're cutting off And then we saw at
Speaker 1: the end of twenty seventeen they cut off access to
Speaker 1: get into cryptocurrency, so cut off credit cards, banking, you
Speaker 1: couldn't wire money to coin base to buy bitcoin anymore,
Speaker 1: kind of a thing like that, And we're not going
Speaker 1: to say it caused the crash, but it certainly didn't
Speaker 1: help when no one could get into the market. Now
Speaker 1: we're kind of at this point where maybe with Gary Gensler,
Speaker 1: the SEC looks completely horrible. They should shut down and disgrace.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, over FT fiasco, they didn't where they
Speaker 1: weren't able to protect anybody. But now it seems like
Speaker 1: they're coming after like innocent people maybe and really coming
Speaker 1: hard after staking and stable coins. So let's dig into
Speaker 1: that for a minute. Let's start with the Let's start
Speaker 1: with the stable coin issue. Now, anyway, let's start with that.
Speaker 1: What's your take on them coming after these stable coins,
Speaker 1: Like they're cracking down on Paxos, which is a a
Speaker 1: regulated exchange in New York, no less, which is the
Speaker 1: harshest state to be regulated in, and they're saying that
Speaker 1: a stable coin is a security. I mean, I wish
Speaker 1: that I was more of an expert insecurities, but I
Speaker 1: can tell you this. You know, the crackdowns on stable coins,
Speaker 1: the crackdowns on staking, these are things that bitcoiners have
Speaker 1: been kind of forecasting for a long time. There are
Speaker 1: deaf only trade offs, you know, only focusing on Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: But there's a reason for that, and that is that
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is actually separate from the system. Bitcoin is not
Speaker 1: a security, that's been said by the CFTC, the SEC
Speaker 1: And if you just kind of like look at what
Speaker 1: a security is offering is on paper, Bitcoin doesn't, you know,
Speaker 1: fails that test. So it's really the only thing that's
Speaker 1: fully kind of outside of the existing regulatory arm. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to stable coins, when it comes to
Speaker 1: staking and this kind of stuff, it's all part of
Speaker 1: the fiat system. So at some point it has to
Speaker 1: conform to whatever the rules or whatever the expectations are
Speaker 1: of it, whether that those rules or expectations are effective
Speaker 1: or just or whatever. So you know, it's it's becoming
Speaker 1: like the writing is on the wall. If you're holding
Speaker 1: significant value and quote unquote stable coins, Uh, you know
Speaker 1: those are not safe by any means, and they're not
Speaker 1: they're not separate from or or or different than any
Speaker 1: other uh you know, illegal financial or legal or illegal
Speaker 1: financial instrument. Yeah. I just to kind of clarify what
Speaker 1: you said. You said that bitcoin is the only one
Speaker 1: that's kind of outside of the financial system or the
Speaker 1: regulatory system. It's not that it's outside of it, it's
Speaker 1: that the previous head of the SEC J. Clayton and
Speaker 1: Gary Ginsler both said that bitcoin is a commodity, and
Speaker 1: Gary Ginzler reiterated that it's the only one I'm willing
Speaker 1: to say that about. So, um, they're out of the
Speaker 1: out of the crosshairs of the security crackdown. I think
Speaker 1: it's probably what you're meaning. Yeah, I mean bitcoin is
Speaker 1: its own thing, and bitcoin is not reliant on any
Speaker 1: entity outside of itself and its incentives to persist. So
Speaker 1: when it comes to these stable coins, they're all reliant
Speaker 1: on bank accounts and dollar equivalent assets and traditional banking,
Speaker 1: and they're all trying to serve a legacy product. They're
Speaker 1: trying to serve a dollar in a method that works
Speaker 1: for different kinds of users. There's immense amount of demand
Speaker 1: for that. Our CEO, David Bailey was recently in Turkey
Speaker 1: right after the horrific earthquake there and the place is
Speaker 1: completely taken over by tether, stable coin, and bitcoin because
Speaker 1: the lira has failed and people are trying to get
Speaker 1: into dollars. And that's the only thing that you know,
Speaker 1: has really had significant market penetration because it is slightly permissionless,
Speaker 1: but it's still part of the dollar system, and that
Speaker 1: is you know, that is going to put it within
Speaker 1: the purview of US regulators and ultimately, you know, hold
Speaker 1: those instruments back, especially if they don't kind of bend
Speaker 1: the knee to what is meeting dollars from getting into
Speaker 1: Turkey and other places like that in the first place. Right,
Speaker 1: they have to conform because they're tied to the existing system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they certainly don't want to give up control over that.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. So he was in Turkey after that and
Speaker 1: he's seeing a massive amount of adoption going on there.
Speaker 1: That's what he's that's what's reporting back. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the lira is in complete, is in complete, shabbles
Speaker 1: and yeah he was, he was posting pictures within our slack,
Speaker 1: our internal slack. And it's just like one money changer
Speaker 1: after another. Everyone is using tether. Um. You know, you
Speaker 1: get into a cab and you know their preferred their
Speaker 1: preferred money is tether. Yeah, now what do you think
Speaker 1: about um? So, so just for everybody listening, I mean
Speaker 1: I agree with everything that you're saying there. Um. We
Speaker 1: we're kind of stuck though, in this kind of like
Speaker 1: transitional period though, right where we're kind of moving from
Speaker 1: one legacy system as you called it, as I call
Speaker 1: it um dying and another system UM. And it seems
Speaker 1: like these stable coins have some sort of a use
Speaker 1: case in this interim process and in emerging markets, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, people need something to transact with. I think
Speaker 1: you would probably agree, correct me if I'm wrong. But
Speaker 1: you know, Bitcoin may not be the best form of
Speaker 1: money for your daily and weekly spending because of the
Speaker 1: volatility going up and down. And so maybe these stable
Speaker 1: coins kind of work as this medium exchange and bitcoin
Speaker 1: kind of more of a store of value maybe working together,
Speaker 1: and so maybe they're they're important in this kind of
Speaker 1: like interim step. They're totally important. Here's the reality is
Speaker 1: money is a medium exchange, a store of value, and
Speaker 1: a unit of account. The unit of account part is
Speaker 1: literally a mental operating system. Right, So the world is
Speaker 1: running on the dollar as the unit of account. Right.
Speaker 1: That means we have to get ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: the population to change how they measure value on paper
Speaker 1: in contracts in their head to something different. And until
Speaker 1: that happens, until everyone changes their programming to bitcoin. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, something that's like a a permissionless dollar cash
Speaker 1: token is going to be super useful because it kind
Speaker 1: of falls in the middle, but it definitely has issues. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why Stoshi, you know, he chose fixed
Speaker 1: supply and not fixed value because that's something that you
Speaker 1: could do in a desentualized market base, whereas like something
Speaker 1: that's based off of another fiat, like it's inherently always
Speaker 1: going to be tied to h you know that system.
Speaker 1: So I think sable coins are super helpful, right, but
Speaker 1: if you zoom out, like why are they helpful is
Speaker 1: because US dollar banking is permissioned and they purposely marginalize
Speaker 1: populations that's part of the system. So it's like, who
Speaker 1: makes the unbanked, Well, it's the bankers, right, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not like cash is not helping them. It's not
Speaker 1: like there isn't financial instruments that are emerging in the
Speaker 1: markets that have permissionlessly served people across the planet. It's
Speaker 1: literally banks and permission that it's part of the system.
Speaker 1: So you know, the stable for oins have kind of
Speaker 1: found this niche where you can use a permission a
Speaker 1: semi permissionless blockchain, you can use tokens that resemble a
Speaker 1: dollar and generally hold value against a dollar. And that's
Speaker 1: something that people who have been cut out of banking systems,
Speaker 1: whether it's the lira or I forget what the Lebanese
Speaker 1: currency is called, where you know the currency is being devalued,
Speaker 1: banks are shutting down, they're losing their accounts and they
Speaker 1: need to turn to something else, or whether it's like
Speaker 1: in Africa where there's there's no access to bank accounts
Speaker 1: in the first place, they need something else. So you know,
Speaker 1: the culprit here is banking, it's government, it's kyc that
Speaker 1: unbanked people that create this need for people to get
Speaker 1: financial instruments on the Internet that are permissionless, and we're
Speaker 1: living in a dollar world still, so of course a
Speaker 1: permission US dollar token is going to have a lot
Speaker 1: of utility. Yeah, that's such a good point that you
Speaker 1: bring up. I mean, you know, I believe that the
Speaker 1: unbanked has been coming down. I think in like twentyeen
Speaker 1: it was like close to two billion adults, and it's
Speaker 1: it's been dwindling down a little bit, but still we
Speaker 1: have over a billion people without access to banking. And
Speaker 1: to your point, it's because they don't have permission to join.
Speaker 1: It's a banking and government failure. Like before, before electronic banking,
Speaker 1: before permission banking, no one didn't have access to cash
Speaker 1: or precious metals or whatever. Those things always had a
Speaker 1: market rate and we're you know, the they were you know,
Speaker 1: a bear instrument, if you will. So once you got
Speaker 1: into that permissioned internet banking world, that's where the marginalization started.
Speaker 1: That's where the unbanked happened. Right, It's a failure to
Speaker 1: to serve those people, either purposefully or or or you know,
Speaker 1: just based on incompetence or unwillingness to do something whatever.
Speaker 1: But it's it's actually a a failure from the banking
Speaker 1: and government sector why people are unbanked in the first place. Yeah, certainly,
Speaker 1: I mean with the permission aspect, and so if you're
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old kid growing up in Iran, sorry,
Speaker 1: you don't get access to the bank. There's also or
Speaker 1: in the US. Yeah, I mean it's it's ages too,
Speaker 1: So I'm bullish on bitcoin unlocking the potential within our
Speaker 1: youth as well. Yeah, that's true, you know, but also
Speaker 1: then you have like an El Salvador. It's just not
Speaker 1: economical for people to have bank accounts, right, So it's
Speaker 1: like it's twenty five bucks a month to have a
Speaker 1: bank account. I can't afford twenty five bucks a month,
Speaker 1: so I don't have a bank account either. Or it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's I'm so rural for me to get
Speaker 1: on a bus and ride five hours to a bank
Speaker 1: and then I don't even have the documentation. But I
Speaker 1: guess that goes back to the permission aspect of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but government's marginalizing people. That's why most people are unbanked.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean it goes to say, like if
Speaker 1: most people can't afford bank accounts, you know, it makes
Speaker 1: you think, like who's paying the bank like where Like
Speaker 1: clearly they're not making their money by serving customers, so
Speaker 1: they're making the money somewhere else. Yeah, and that's a
Speaker 1: good point, you know. I think it's important for everyone
Speaker 1: listening to pay attention because what happens is we apply
Speaker 1: our own biases to these things typically, and so typically
Speaker 1: what I hear is everyone looking from this very US
Speaker 1: centric viewpoint of like, what's wrong with our money? What's
Speaker 1: wrong with the banking system? It seems to work pretty
Speaker 1: good for me, without taking into consideration the rest of
Speaker 1: the world that is, to your point, being marginalized because
Speaker 1: of this, and it seems like jumping into another form
Speaker 1: of digital money. We have these now CBDCs that they
Speaker 1: want to shove down our throat, and a lot of
Speaker 1: these governments, you know, you got the IMF or the ECB,
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, what people want is they want
Speaker 1: digital money. That's the problem we need to give them. Look,
Speaker 1: Bitcoin just shows that they want digital money, So let's
Speaker 1: just give them digital money and then that will solve everything.
Speaker 1: They think without taking the consideration it's not the digital money,
Speaker 1: it's the access and permission that people want. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I personally, I'm a CBDC respect and I personally do
Speaker 1: not think that they will ever ship. They will never
Speaker 1: actually make any real market impact. I know that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are in the United States
Speaker 1: or globally period A lot of people are fearful of CBDCs.
Speaker 1: They will never ship, and when they do ship, they're
Speaker 1: gonna have a difficult time with adoption. And where will
Speaker 1: bitcoin be? I think that's the key here is. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at the Bank of England. They're saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna ship the britcoin in twenty thirty. Well, where's
Speaker 1: bitcoin going to be in twenty thirty, right? Bitcoin is
Speaker 1: out in the wild in production, right, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the ECB Central Bank digital currency. You know, also similar
Speaker 1: forecast twenty twenty five to twenty thirty, still in you know, beta,
Speaker 1: still testing, still doing all this stuff. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: the longer that these entities don't ship. And again I
Speaker 1: don't think that you know, many people even within these
Speaker 1: different governments, are saying CBDC is a solution looking for
Speaker 1: a problem. You know, I really don't think. I'm not
Speaker 1: fear full of them. I don't think that they're gonna ship,
Speaker 1: and I'm you know, honestly, I'm not very confident and
Speaker 1: really any government's ability to compete against bitcoin as digital
Speaker 1: money in the long run, well, I think they're gonna ship.
Speaker 1: I would agree with the second part, though, I don't
Speaker 1: think it can compete. And we can see this in
Speaker 1: real time. So obviously China's shipped. There's in Nigeria, they've
Speaker 1: shipped the Niara, that e Niara, But the problem is
Speaker 1: they can't get anybody to use it. They can't get
Speaker 1: anybody to adopt it, and so they tried first the carrot,
Speaker 1: which was like, hey, if you use this, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll give you discounts off your taxi, cabs, etc. Nobody
Speaker 1: wanted that. That was the carrot. So then came the stick,
Speaker 1: which is like, well then we're gonna limit all cash
Speaker 1: withdraws and force you to use it. But the people,
Speaker 1: you know, are like, wait a minute, we didn't want
Speaker 1: It's not that we didn't want it because it wasn't digital.
Speaker 1: It's because the Niara continues to lose value, you continue
Speaker 1: to evase it. That's why we don't want to And
Speaker 1: the e Nira is the exact same thing. So we
Speaker 1: already got bitcoin like we're good, Like we're rejecting that,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, yeah, bitcoin is here and bitcoin
Speaker 1: is still nascent, So where's bitcoin gonna be twenty thirty, right,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's another seven years from now. I'm
Speaker 1: calling for hyper big cooinization. Mark. I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think brickcoin is going to be
Speaker 1: quite the joke if they're trying to ship in twenty thirty.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I'm the thing I'm slightly bullish on,
Speaker 1: or maybe not slightly, maybe heavily bullish on, is the
Speaker 1: incompetence of the government. And so I mean I was
Speaker 1: looking at some things. I'm sure everybody remembers the famous
Speaker 1: Obamacare website rollout where they spent like billions of dollars
Speaker 1: to build a website that just helps you shop insurance plans,
Speaker 1: Like we don't have like a million of those, and
Speaker 1: they weren't billion dollars and they couldn't even get that working.
Speaker 1: We have the IRS. The IRS has been trying to
Speaker 1: overhaul the computer system for decades. They every year send
Speaker 1: out millions of tax returns that are wrong because the
Speaker 1: software is no good. Last year they said Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: we give up. We're not going to overhaul the software.
Speaker 1: We're just going to fix the core things, and we
Speaker 1: hope to have it done by twenty thirty. Like, but
Speaker 1: the court things by twenty thirty. What where's bitcoin gonna be? Mark? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So every time they say that something where's bitcoin going
Speaker 1: to be? Bitcoin is innovating faster than you can imagine
Speaker 1: in a compounding manner. So good luck. Now what's interesting
Speaker 1: I think too, back to kind of having this US
Speaker 1: centric viewpoint right where it's like if we look at
Speaker 1: it just from a developed world or a US centric world, like,
Speaker 1: it's it's one one view. But one thing that I
Speaker 1: keep in mind, I mean back to kind of your
Speaker 1: point bringing up Turkey emerging markets is where they really
Speaker 1: have the use case, where they have the need. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're in North Korea, you don't have to convince
Speaker 1: somebody why that money is no good, or in Turkey
Speaker 1: or you know, Argentina or whatever. And so one thing
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about is like, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: Internet grew really fast in the United States because we
Speaker 1: had phone lines everywhere, but we saw like in Africa
Speaker 1: they leap frog past that and went straight to wireless.
Speaker 1: So now the dollar, if you look at the dollar
Speaker 1: above everything, the dollars like a payment network. It's like
Speaker 1: a wired network right with a correspondent banks and the
Speaker 1: Swift system, and so that system and a lot of
Speaker 1: dollar bowls will tell you, Like even I had Nick
Speaker 1: Bodion and he was talking about how the dollar can't
Speaker 1: be replaced because of this network that's there, just like
Speaker 1: the phone lines were there for the Internet, but then
Speaker 1: it leap frog past that and went straight to a
Speaker 1: new network, a wireless network. And I think we're seeing
Speaker 1: that happen with bitcoin, where we're seeing this adoption really
Speaker 1: happening in Africa, in Turkey, in South America, etc. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I say it simply. Bitcoin is money that works.
Speaker 1: That's it like, And as long as it continues to work,
Speaker 1: it will continue to be adopted. And it always wins
Speaker 1: on the margins, so it wins in the most marginalized places.
Speaker 1: And really where we see this idea of hyper bitcoinization
Speaker 1: is when the margin or the mark I guess like
Speaker 1: the overall size of the bitcoin market reaches parody or
Speaker 1: close to parody with the size of the traditional market.
Speaker 1: And then and then I think that's where you know,
Speaker 1: the the S curve kind of goes vertical, So bitcoin
Speaker 1: wins at the margins. It wins in the areas that
Speaker 1: are being purposely unbanked, debased, shut out, sanctioned, whatever. That's
Speaker 1: where bitcoin will will win. Bitcoin's going to just take
Speaker 1: all the low hanging fruit and continue to get bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger. And you know, I agree that, like, people
Speaker 1: who have very very bad money are obviously going to
Speaker 1: turn to bitcoin and other alternatives more readily, especially because
Speaker 1: they've felt the pain. But I don't think that the
Speaker 1: first world doesn't need it per se. Actually think that
Speaker 1: the first world has been held back very much by
Speaker 1: their exorbitant privilege and by the dollar. And there is
Speaker 1: no way for us in retrospect to calculate or try
Speaker 1: to make make, you know, try to like evaluate what
Speaker 1: was lost because of inflation, what was lost because of
Speaker 1: the poor incentives from the Federal Reserve and from dollar
Speaker 1: printing and from the cantle On effect. It's going to
Speaker 1: be impossible to evaluate that. But I can guarantee you
Speaker 1: that using bitcoin, a perfect monetary system with a clear
Speaker 1: and fair mechanism for distributing coins and managing a monetary
Speaker 1: policy that an economy will will be superior on that
Speaker 1: kind of a foundation. So I'm very excited for a
Speaker 1: world on a bitcoin standard, and I'm very excited for
Speaker 1: the West to embrace bitcoin. Finally it might get leap frogged.
Speaker 1: It's most likely going to hit critical mass in the
Speaker 1: Global South and in the Middle East, in other places
Speaker 1: that are really on the losing end of the dollar.
Speaker 1: But everyone is a loser from the dollar. No one
Speaker 1: is a winner. Yeah, I certainly agree with that. I
Speaker 1: guess I wasn't saying that we don't we don't need it.
Speaker 1: Certainly we need it. I think it's just that humans,
Speaker 1: we typically only move when the pain gets high enough,
Speaker 1: and a lot of us have different pain thresholds. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like that junkie, right, They're only going to
Speaker 1: seek rehab or seek change when they hit rock bottom.
Speaker 1: And so everybody's going to be forced to move at
Speaker 1: some point. It just depends on how early or how
Speaker 1: much pain you have or something like that. And so
Speaker 1: if you're in Argentina or Venezuela or North Korea or Turkey,
Speaker 1: like you have a really big need to do something asap,
Speaker 1: whereas in the United States, like we're bleeding slowly, you know,
Speaker 1: so like we can kind of especially relative. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going to I was gonna say, I'm going to Argentina
Speaker 1: next month, and you know, everything I prepaid for as
Speaker 1: all of a sudden gotten a lot cheaper. So I
Speaker 1: should have just waited as hyperinflation ripped. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's definitely cushy being the beneficiary of receiving dollars directly
Speaker 1: and being in the United States. But you know, as
Speaker 1: you look at the map, the rest of the world
Speaker 1: is hurt. And I think here, here's one of the
Speaker 1: most insidious things about the dollar system, mark, is that
Speaker 1: the dollar system is a global system. The dollar system
Speaker 1: marginalizes in de banks people, and the dollar system requires
Speaker 1: that the dollar system actually can't support one hundred percent
Speaker 1: of the planet on a fair system. The dollar system
Speaker 1: requires that seventy percent of the planet is either enslaved
Speaker 1: or debanked or destitute in order to support a lifestyle
Speaker 1: for a smaller and smaller percentage of wealthy elites. Why
Speaker 1: why does it require that the seventy percent of the
Speaker 1: people are unbanked? I mean, how do you get your
Speaker 1: products without slavery in Africa? Mining? That cobaal right, like,
Speaker 1: how how does how do the French deal with keeping
Speaker 1: costs down in France without the CFA frank and without
Speaker 1: being able to extort everyone who is inside of that
Speaker 1: system in Africa? It can't. These systems require extortion. They
Speaker 1: require then, they couldn't without they couldn't without massive inflation.
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, but you know that these systems are systems
Speaker 1: of control, their system of colonialization, and their whole purpose
Speaker 1: is to extract resources. Alex glad Scene's done an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of incredible work around this, around the IMF, around
Speaker 1: the World Bank, around the CFA Franc, around the Petro
Speaker 1: dollar system. All of these systems are around extracting resources
Speaker 1: from the global South and putting them into the West.
Speaker 1: It's all about getting cheap labor from elsewhere and shipping
Speaker 1: those products to the US for so they can be consumers.
Speaker 1: And that's it's part of the design. They don't function otherwise,
Speaker 1: they don't give benefit to the West otherwise. Yeah, shout
Speaker 1: out to shout out to glad Seam for doing all
Speaker 1: that work on that. He wrote a check your financial privilege,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of breaking this down and really kind
Speaker 1: of put this whole CFA Franc issue into my radar.
Speaker 1: Right lately we saw the new PM of Italy. Maloney
Speaker 1: was thrown it in Macrone's face saying, you're still you know,
Speaker 1: you're still doing this colonialism with your CFA franc. And
Speaker 1: so for those listening that don't really understand what that means,
Speaker 1: basically colonialism is where you know, the colonial powers France, England, Spain,
Speaker 1: et cetera, would go and basically take over areas, islands, whatever.
Speaker 1: But then what's happened is France forces these areas of
Speaker 1: Africa to use France's money, this CFA franc, but France
Speaker 1: itself doesn't even use it. France uses the Euro. So
Speaker 1: like they're forcing these African countries to use a currency
Speaker 1: that they don't even use themselves. And the reason to
Speaker 1: see case point is what they do is they continue
Speaker 1: to inflate that currency to make the goods they're buying
Speaker 1: cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, basically stealing from the people.
Speaker 1: And so they're doing that, They're using this control with
Speaker 1: the currency that they don't even use themselves. Again, Mark,
Speaker 1: the only way these systems work is by exploitation. If
Speaker 1: they were one hundred percent fair, then there'd be no
Speaker 1: reason to maintain them, right that we go back to
Speaker 1: old so like again the whole purpose, like the dollar
Speaker 1: requires seventy percent of the world to be unbanked, destitute,
Speaker 1: and slaved like that is the dollar requires that. Otherwise
Speaker 1: they would have probably solved it by now. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was it really put that That Joe Rogan interview
Speaker 1: where he talked about the kids, you know, bringing the
Speaker 1: lithium or whatever, the cobalt out of the minds really
Speaker 1: kind of put it front and center to everybody, and
Speaker 1: you can see just kind of how that's that's affecting
Speaker 1: people down there. I think, you know, moving on past
Speaker 1: the monetary system, now they're using the energy system for that, right,
Speaker 1: So now they're trying to restrict these countries from getting
Speaker 1: in any energy, and the energy is what would also
Speaker 1: help bring these people out of um you know, bondage,
Speaker 1: of of of being broke basically and could bring prosperity
Speaker 1: to those countries. And I guess maybe that fits in
Speaker 1: with kind of the point that you're making, which is
Speaker 1: maybe that's just another way to keep them down so
Speaker 1: they continue to bring that slave labor to market. We
Speaker 1: need to keep our carbon down so that the upper
Speaker 1: thirty percent can consume an exorbitant amount in the bottom
Speaker 1: sent you know, can can maintain the floor, right, So
Speaker 1: use these systems of control are systems of control, and
Speaker 1: they're about improving the lives of the elite and subjecting
Speaker 1: everyone else to destitution. So Bitcoin is the opposite. Bitcoin's
Speaker 1: about bringing the world online. Bitcoin's about bringing energy resources online.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin's about creating P to P networks and creating P
Speaker 1: to P infrastructure across the globe. So that's why you
Speaker 1: see Bitcoin is blowing up at the margins, the areas
Speaker 1: that have been marginalized. So this is why bitcoin, This
Speaker 1: is why I work at Bitcoin Magazine, This is why
Speaker 1: we put on the Bitcoin conference, is why we educate
Speaker 1: the world about bitcoin. And I think this is you know,
Speaker 1: why you do what you do at Market Structures. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: if anybody's doubting what CK is saying right there, there
Speaker 1: was a video clip of good old Bill Gates going
Speaker 1: around the other day and they said, don't you think
Speaker 1: you're a hypocrite talking about you know, all this CO
Speaker 1: two emission, but you're flying around all in your private
Speaker 1: jet And he said, no, not at all, because I donate,
Speaker 1: I spend billions of dollars to offset that by buying
Speaker 1: carbon credits. So what he's basically saying is you're broke,
Speaker 1: You're a peasant. You can't afford to pay or buy
Speaker 1: these fake things to offer your energy, so you just
Speaker 1: need to stay in place. But because he's rich and
Speaker 1: he's privileged, he has the money and he can pay
Speaker 1: for that. So if you doubt it, think about that now.
Speaker 1: M c k. You are the general manager, very general
Speaker 1: the general manager at Bitcoin Magazine, and Bitcoin Magazine has
Speaker 1: been putting on the largest largest bitcoin conference in the
Speaker 1: world for a number of years. I think twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: might have been the first year. ACRAC I don't know
Speaker 1: if he's it's twenteen first. Yeah, and it has gotten big,
Speaker 1: I mean from that first one in twenty nineteen, I
Speaker 1: don't know, a few thousand people maybe too. I believe
Speaker 1: last year was like thirty five thousand people, and so, like,
Speaker 1: what do you see with like the growth of that,
Speaker 1: with the demand and with the space kind of evolving overall? Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely wild and it's been amazing having you a
Speaker 1: part of every single one of those. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much for you know, speaking and supporting and attending
Speaker 1: all of our events mark. But yeah, Bitcoin twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred people. Bitcoin twenty twenty was on track for
Speaker 1: four thousand, got canceled due to COVID. Bitcoin twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one twelve thousand people. Bitcoin twenty twenty two upwards of
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand people, not quite thirty five thousand, but
Speaker 1: we'll hit that mark soon. And it's been wild seeing
Speaker 1: it go from, you know, an enthusiast led conference to
Speaker 1: one of the biggest fintech events in the world, right so,
Speaker 1: and I really do feel like the event is a
Speaker 1: physical instantiation of the bitcoin ecosystem. So like in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: at that point, there was only so many people and
Speaker 1: so many businesses willing to come together to celebrate bitcoin.
Speaker 1: And then fast forward three years, you know, we've we've
Speaker 1: effectively ten x that, right, and we have the biggest
Speaker 1: companies in the world participating and all of the major
Speaker 1: financial players, governors, mayors, presidents attending speaking wanting to do
Speaker 1: what they can to get in front of and show
Speaker 1: leadership in bitcoin. And that's why I say, where's bitcoin
Speaker 1: going to be in twenty thirty when bitcoin tries to
Speaker 1: ship is because I've seen the bitcoin ecosystem in person
Speaker 1: expand exponentially, so you know, but you know, what's Bitcoin
Speaker 1: twenty thirty You're going to look like, you know, our
Speaker 1: impression is it's going to be one of the biggest
Speaker 1: events on the planet period. It's gonna be like the
Speaker 1: pilgrimage of bitcoiners and of this movement. And it's going
Speaker 1: to be an energy conference, it's going to be a
Speaker 1: markets conference, it's going to be a personal help conference,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a culture conference. Know, it's gonna try
Speaker 1: to encampsulate all of these elements that make bitcoin a multifaceted,
Speaker 1: in very fascinating ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is
Speaker 1: definitely shows the growth of that, and it's like a
Speaker 1: perfect proxy to show the growth of that. And I mean, man,
Speaker 1: from whatever nineteen hundred to twenty five thousand people. I'm
Speaker 1: curious though, Um, I mean last year, I guess we
Speaker 1: were already kind of in that downward decline, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm curious that now we're kind of maybe in the
Speaker 1: depths of the bearer market, if you will, in bitcoin price,
Speaker 1: crypto overall is completely soured with you know, FTX and
Speaker 1: the crack down there of crypto ascids are down on
Speaker 1: the gutter, but bitcoin bitcoin prices down as well. I'm curious,
Speaker 1: do you think that's going to affect the event at
Speaker 1: all or or have you seen it as I mean,
Speaker 1: great question. So you know, last Bitcoin twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: the bitcoin price was about forty five thousand dollars, so
Speaker 1: we've come down more than fifty percent from there, but
Speaker 1: the ticket sales have not slowed down at all. Um.
Speaker 1: It's actually been absolutely incredible seeing how resilient the ticket
Speaker 1: sales element are. From a sponsor perspective, they're in a
Speaker 1: very different position. Sponsors are hurting. Companies in the space
Speaker 1: are hurting. Usually, companies are a lot more over leverage
Speaker 1: than individuals, and we can definitely see that in both
Speaker 1: their appetites as well as their marketing budgets and even
Speaker 1: you know kind of like looking down the line of
Speaker 1: rosters of sponsors from last year, you know some of
Speaker 1: them aren't even with us anymore, which is it's sad
Speaker 1: to see, but you know, that's one of the beauties
Speaker 1: of bitcoin is that you know you're not too big
Speaker 1: to fail, and that you know there there's kind of
Speaker 1: like this market cleansing that happens every few sites, every
Speaker 1: few years. But with that being said, you know, sure
Speaker 1: the crypto ecosystem is taking hits, the bitcoin eCos the
Speaker 1: bitcoin native ecosystems taking hits from a sponsor perspective, But
Speaker 1: now we're getting interest from energy companies. Now we're getting
Speaker 1: in trist from other entities, from real from real finance
Speaker 1: companies who are eagerly looking forward to how do we
Speaker 1: start to make moves in bitcoin. So, you know, despite
Speaker 1: the market, the price of bitcoin going down, despite bitcoin
Speaker 1: native companies and crypto native companies, um hurting, um, We're
Speaker 1: we're still seeing a lot of optimism just because bitcoin
Speaker 1: is getting more serious and bitcoin is integrating into energy
Speaker 1: and finance in a much more real and much more
Speaker 1: tangible way than ever before. Yeah, speaking of I see
Speaker 1: a Shell oil icon on your list of sponsors. What's
Speaker 1: up with that? Yeah, they came inbound. They were like, hey,
Speaker 1: we were at bitcoin right, Like, yeah, yeah, the big one,
Speaker 1: the one that you that that always has way too
Speaker 1: expensive gas at the pump. It's always like twenty percent
Speaker 1: more than than the next one. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that's quality. I really don't know how to
Speaker 1: evaluate what oil is better than others. But Shell is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest energy companies in the world, and
Speaker 1: they attended our event last year and they wanted to
Speaker 1: be a part of this event this year. There. You know,
Speaker 1: my mental model for bitcoin mining is that bitcoin mining
Speaker 1: is necessary for energy companies and energy producers to be
Speaker 1: competitive into the future. Bitcoin mining introduces an immense amount
Speaker 1: of efficiency within the energy markets, especially as a producer,
Speaker 1: and because of that, every energy company will be a
Speaker 1: part of the bitcoin industry, and every energy company will
Speaker 1: want to be a part of the Bitcoin conference. So
Speaker 1: Shell is the first, They're definitely not the last. Our Inbound,
Speaker 1: as I've been bragging about on Twitter, has been absolutely
Speaker 1: wild with the amount of B to B interest that's
Speaker 1: coming in. And there are other companies that we're speaking
Speaker 1: to and that are interested in this event that you know,
Speaker 1: I can't speak about now because things aren't efficient quite yet.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I don't think that Shell is
Speaker 1: going to be the last. Yeah, wow, I mean what
Speaker 1: I can say. So, first of off, Bitcoin Miami again
Speaker 1: this year May eighteenth through twentieth of this year in Miami.
Speaker 1: Check it out b dot TC Slash conference. Man. It
Speaker 1: started in California, and then because of the COVID pandemic
Speaker 1: got kicked to the East coast and now it's over there,
Speaker 1: so I gotta travel. But it's a good place to
Speaker 1: go to. So check that out b dot TC slash
Speaker 1: conference and check out. I'll be there speaking. You should
Speaker 1: come hang out. I want to shift gears a little bit. Well,
Speaker 1: I want what I do want to say just real
Speaker 1: quick for anybody listening that's somewhat interested in this, is
Speaker 1: that you know, the world changed a lot of the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, and everything's become super polarized, and
Speaker 1: everybody's at each other's throats, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: who maybe used to be really good friends with maybe
Speaker 1: you're not that good of friends with, and maybe where
Speaker 1: you live, like where I live, I don't have really
Speaker 1: good deep conversations with people around me. And so now
Speaker 1: it's required that I travel a lot to go find
Speaker 1: that community, build that community with people that I vibe
Speaker 1: with right the vibe, And what I would say is
Speaker 1: that at the Bitcoin conference, it's almost like this electricity
Speaker 1: in the air where you feel like this vibration, this
Speaker 1: high vibration where and I believe it's it comes from
Speaker 1: that many people coming together that share values. Like the media,
Speaker 1: I want to tell us that we align on race
Speaker 1: or sex or gender preference, whatever it is, but we
Speaker 1: align on values. And then the higher those values are,
Speaker 1: the more that we're attracted together, the more that we align.
Speaker 1: And so I think bitcoin it for me represents freedom
Speaker 1: for me, mostly for other people, it represents opportunity, represents
Speaker 1: a lot of different things. But when you bring those
Speaker 1: people together with those shared values, I mean, the vibe
Speaker 1: is high. This is your tribe. This is where the
Speaker 1: good conversations come. And so you can't get the same
Speaker 1: from watching the YouTube videos. You can't get it. It's
Speaker 1: kind of it's it's like watching you know, it's like
Speaker 1: listening to a CD and then going to a live
Speaker 1: concert right emily completely different. So anyway, I'd recommend checking
Speaker 1: that out. Be dot tc slash conference. Yeah, and Mark,
Speaker 1: if I could just say one last thing, it's I
Speaker 1: really do think that the twenty twenty one event was
Speaker 1: really really special because it highlighted how different and how
Speaker 1: individual and how freedom focused and liberty focused the bitcoin
Speaker 1: community in particular is compared to the entire rest of
Speaker 1: the world. I truly believe that bitcoiners are at They're
Speaker 1: at the bleeding edge of freedom right and because of that,
Speaker 1: they were capable and willing to come twenty five thousand strong,
Speaker 1: or sorry, come twelve thousand strong together at the depth
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, at the peak fear, before the vac's
Speaker 1: mandates or any of this stuff started rolling out, Bitcoiners
Speaker 1: were gathering, and I believe on Event break in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, we were like the second biggest event in
Speaker 1: the entire world on their platform just because we are
Speaker 1: the We're literally the only ones gathering. So, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to come together with people who are not scared,
Speaker 1: people who are hopeful, people who care about freedom and liberty,
Speaker 1: and people who really have very little bias outside of
Speaker 1: you know, do we agree on those high level values.
Speaker 1: It's intoxicating. So I'm so proud to be able to
Speaker 1: put this on. I'm so proud to be able to
Speaker 1: work every single year to create this environment and create
Speaker 1: this this pilgrimage for freedom fighters and freedom lovers. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I couldn't recommend it more so, Uh Yeah,
Speaker 1: go to bettc May eighteenth through the twentieth in Miami Beach.
Speaker 1: It's going to be an amazing show. Just just to
Speaker 1: kind of comment on what he said, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: not hyperbole when we talk about the freedom aspect, because
Speaker 1: without the freedom to transact, there is no freedom at all.
Speaker 1: And so what we're seeing what I kind of started
Speaker 1: the interview with was talking about this operation choke point
Speaker 1: and to choke point two point no, where basically you
Speaker 1: have the government, the Treasury, the FDIC, the DOJ, etc.
Speaker 1: Basically taking away freedoms not by law or legislation, but
Speaker 1: by cutting off access to payments. And so if I'm
Speaker 1: guaranteed by my constitution the right to assemble, but I
Speaker 1: can't put gas in my truck to drive to the assembly,
Speaker 1: I don't have freedom. And so it always starts with
Speaker 1: the freedom to transact. Everything starts there, and so that's
Speaker 1: why all freedom springs from the ability to hold my
Speaker 1: money and transact. That absolutely I want to I want
Speaker 1: to just jump to another topic that seems to be
Speaker 1: hot right now, and that is that you know, I've
Speaker 1: talked about bitcoin as being like this sixth technological revolution,
Speaker 1: and how technological revolutions are are bigger than most people realize.
Speaker 1: They're not new technologies, they're revolutions and they change the
Speaker 1: course of humanity. And one of the things with technological
Speaker 1: revolutions is they give us a new building block that
Speaker 1: allows us to build new things. If I had a
Speaker 1: deck of cards, I could build like a TP. If
Speaker 1: I have legos, I could build something more complex. So
Speaker 1: it's a different building block. Steel allowed us to build
Speaker 1: skyscrapers and bridges. But also one day we made a
Speaker 1: space shuttle out of it, right, and so it's like
Speaker 1: new building blocks. And I'm just curious, you know, these
Speaker 1: new technological revolutions they have like a first killer application,
Speaker 1: so electricity, which was I think the third technological revolution.
Speaker 1: The first application was a light bulb like a digital candle,
Speaker 1: but that's not what all one electricity was. It was
Speaker 1: the first killer application. And I'm just curious with your
Speaker 1: thoughts on this because the Bitcoin time chain, not the blockchain,
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin time chain gives us a new set of
Speaker 1: building blocks. And so it's a immutable, censorship resistant, decentralized ledger,
Speaker 1: and like what can we do with that? It's like
Speaker 1: a new set of building blocks, right, And so obviously
Speaker 1: the first killer application is money, and Sotoshi in the
Speaker 1: white paper call all that a peer to peer cash network.
Speaker 1: But we're starting to see this new building block being
Speaker 1: used for other things that maybe we weren't thinking about.
Speaker 1: So Jack Dorsey launched this um um you know, he's
Speaker 1: calling it Web five, which is the decentralized identifiers where
Speaker 1: I can control my ID and that needs to be
Speaker 1: in a censorship resistant location so no one could take
Speaker 1: it offline, and so they're using the Bitcoin time chain
Speaker 1: for that. It would be like an example, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then and then now we have like these ordinals that
Speaker 1: just popped up, and so that's what I kind of
Speaker 1: want to talk about. Now we have these ordinals now
Speaker 1: right now people are stuffing you know, NFTs and JPEGs
Speaker 1: in that, and we'll talk get your opinion on that.
Speaker 1: But there's other use cases for that that we could use,
Speaker 1: like for example, putting um, you know, uh, three D
Speaker 1: gun schematics in there that could be censorship resistant and
Speaker 1: we could transfer that across space right potentially. So I'm
Speaker 1: curious what your thoughts are about this this new building
Speaker 1: block and could it be used for more than money,
Speaker 1: like the IDs or ordinals. You know, what's your viewpoint
Speaker 1: on that? Percent agree with you in terms of the
Speaker 1: framing of another technological advancement. I'm sure you know this.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of the book The Sovereign Individual.
Speaker 1: The way that they frame this is that there's certain
Speaker 1: technology that changes the logic of violence, and because of that,
Speaker 1: that changes how control is able to be enforced. And
Speaker 1: one of the key kind of just immediate benefits of
Speaker 1: bitcoin is that it turns money into information, which reduces
Speaker 1: the custody costs to zero and the carrying costs and
Speaker 1: transportation costs to zero. And because of that, now an
Speaker 1: individual has the ability to secure their wealth independently, and
Speaker 1: that changes the logical violence. But beyond that, just talking
Speaker 1: about what does the technology bring other than you know,
Speaker 1: enabling human freedom and our ability to free, you know
Speaker 1: more freely move around the plan and make governments compete,
Speaker 1: is you know, it creates a new, uh like a
Speaker 1: new layer of trust in a new layer of security
Speaker 1: that we can all reference. So I think that this
Speaker 1: is really important because when it comes to some form
Speaker 1: of file sharing, when it comes to some form of
Speaker 1: expressing yourself, there's going to be censorship, there's going to
Speaker 1: be people that are going to try to get in
Speaker 1: the way. But the reality is with bitcoin, if you
Speaker 1: can if it's worth the cost to transact on the
Speaker 1: blockchain itself. There is no one who can get in
Speaker 1: your way from making that data available, putting your signature
Speaker 1: on the blockchain. Whatever it is, whether it's an NFT,
Speaker 1: whether it's three D gun schematics, whether it's saying that
Speaker 1: this isn't this video is not a deep fake, this
Speaker 1: is actually me. So I think what bitcoin is is
Speaker 1: the time chain, the blockchain, the distributed physical network of
Speaker 1: computing hardware that is enforcing this network. It creates a
Speaker 1: beacon of truth in a world of you know, effectively
Speaker 1: endless AI generated lies that humans just have a very
Speaker 1: difficult time making making you know, making making ends of it, right,
Speaker 1: like trying to you know, evaluate what's happening. So with
Speaker 1: this barrage of this dedas of kind of fake information
Speaker 1: and psy ops and all that stuff, Really, what the
Speaker 1: time chain is is a beacon of truth that's economically
Speaker 1: incentivized to only showed truth rather than you know, the
Speaker 1: you know, effectively what can be just autogenerated using computing hardware.
Speaker 1: Elsewhere do you think you started out by saying the
Speaker 1: ability to store and transact wealth, and so then like
Speaker 1: what is wealth? Right, I think of wealth as my assets,
Speaker 1: and so my assets could be everything from this collectible
Speaker 1: baseball card I got when I was a kid, to
Speaker 1: my goal to my realist stay, to my bitcoin to
Speaker 1: my cat, Like those are my assets. That's like my wealth,
Speaker 1: and so like maybe the way that we think of
Speaker 1: money or wealth or value changes over time, and so, um,
Speaker 1: my ip could certainly be my wealth. Right, that's my
Speaker 1: my property, my private property that's worth money, that's value
Speaker 1: to me. So I guess maybe do you think that
Speaker 1: we kind of continue to expand the way that we
Speaker 1: think of that, and so then that wealth, that value
Speaker 1: can then be in this time change and can be
Speaker 1: transacted I mean, or is that stretching too much? This
Speaker 1: is a pretty like big philosophical conversation, and the reality
Speaker 1: is that very few of us are intelligent enough to
Speaker 1: like forecast into the future. Yeah accurately, you know, Like
Speaker 1: the way I like to frame how stupid all of
Speaker 1: us are at forecasting is pre electricity. There's probably only
Speaker 1: one person on record that was actually like even directly
Speaker 1: correct on like what was going to do the world.
Speaker 1: That was Nicola Tesla. So um, you know, no, very
Speaker 1: very few people, right, Like bitcoin is equivalent in terms
Speaker 1: of the technological innovation that next love. You know that
Speaker 1: that technological revolution, you know, it's it's a technical, logical evolution,
Speaker 1: just like electricity. So it's very difficult for us, you know,
Speaker 1: plebeians living here in the Dark Ages, to forecast like
Speaker 1: what that future looks like. My mental model though, is
Speaker 1: that value gets standardized to bitcoin. So I really do
Speaker 1: think like collectibles, real estate, all these other ways to
Speaker 1: store value while we're living in kind of like this
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages of value storage, it's going to get
Speaker 1: standardized to bitcoin, and that's going to change how resources
Speaker 1: are allocated across the globe. That's going to change how
Speaker 1: we manage our time. That's going to change how we
Speaker 1: make every single decision, make decision we make, because uh,
Speaker 1: you know, our mental operating system for wealth and value
Speaker 1: is going to change and I think become a lot
Speaker 1: more efficient. Yeah, yeah, to your point, I agree. I mean,
Speaker 1: humans are no good to imagine in the future. All
Speaker 1: we can do is imagine better versions of what we
Speaker 1: have today. And because we don't have those other building
Speaker 1: blocks to build those new things, we can't imagine that.
Speaker 1: Going back to just the question of the ordinals, because
Speaker 1: that seems to be the big topic right now. Do
Speaker 1: you think this is like wait in the sea, let
Speaker 1: the free markets figure it out, or do you look
Speaker 1: at this as like this is a massive problem spam attack,
Speaker 1: and we should probably try and do something about it.
Speaker 1: I think it's a wait and see and if anything,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty convinced that that everything that happens within the
Speaker 1: Bitcoin consensus rules aren't good for bitcoin. You know, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people maybe think otherwise. But what
Speaker 1: happened with ordinals is someone without changing the code whatsoever,
Speaker 1: this guy named Casey Rhodemore came up with one a
Speaker 1: way to index and look at the bitcoin block chain,
Speaker 1: and then two came up with a way to put
Speaker 1: data into the witness data element of bitcoin. So that's
Speaker 1: turned that That's created a lot of debate within the
Speaker 1: technical community. That's created a lot of excitement within the
Speaker 1: greater crypto community, people who are NFT fans, because the
Speaker 1: easiest thing you can do with that new structure is
Speaker 1: put an NFT on the blockchain, which actually, these NFTs,
Speaker 1: these inscriptions on the bitcoin blockchain have a lot of
Speaker 1: properties that make them better than other, you know, forms
Speaker 1: of NFTs on other blockchains. But ultimately my heuristic here
Speaker 1: is Bitcoin is permissionless, Bitcoin's censorship resistant, and Bitcoin's economic
Speaker 1: incentives work. So this is a permissionless innovation. People are
Speaker 1: using it in a way that maybe someone wants to
Speaker 1: sensor them, but you know, they they want to do it,
Speaker 1: and it's allowing it, and it is affecting Bitcoin's incentive
Speaker 1: in a positive way. Fees are going up, more people
Speaker 1: are are downloading full copies of the time chain, They're
Speaker 1: running full nodes on their computers in order to actually
Speaker 1: leverage this new system. And then on top of that,
Speaker 1: people are starting to do things that I actually do
Speaker 1: think are super interesting with this technology. So it started
Speaker 1: off with JPEGs, It started off with all this kind
Speaker 1: of like clownery, but that's how the Internet started as well,
Speaker 1: and I think it's very quickly moving into a very
Speaker 1: serious woe. So as long as Bitcoin's incentives work, as
Speaker 1: long as Bitcoin remains permission list in censorship resistant, I'm bullish.
Speaker 1: So this fits within my mental model for bitcoin one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. Yeah great, Yeah, I was at first going, dang,
Speaker 1: I guess this is why we shouldn't be messing with it,
Speaker 1: why they have to activate tap root, which you know
Speaker 1: we should still consider moving forward, like do we want
Speaker 1: to keep changing? It's because of the lava and intomic consequences,
Speaker 1: And that's a great I think that's a great discussion, right.
Speaker 1: I think bitcoiners are learning about bitcoin in real time,
Speaker 1: so maybe we will be much much more adversarial thinking
Speaker 1: before putting in a change. But with that being said,
Speaker 1: all of us here sitting here thinking about what bitcoin
Speaker 1: can do today, we have no idea what bitcoin can
Speaker 1: do tomorrow. And Mark, I'm convinced of this. The best
Speaker 1: bitcoin developers have yet to be born yet, and the
Speaker 1: best Bitcoin innovations in UK use cases have yet to
Speaker 1: be invented yet. So who are we to say what
Speaker 1: bitcoin can or cannot do? And that kind of goes
Speaker 1: back to the steel steel. Oh we can, we're going
Speaker 1: to design new bridges and whatever, But we didn't know
Speaker 1: that someone's going to design a spaceship or space shuttle
Speaker 1: at some point, right, so yeah, totally. Hey, you know
Speaker 1: what if someone said, hey, steel was never intended for flight,
Speaker 1: screw space travel, right, like I forbid it? Like no,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, we don't know, we don't know, so therefore
Speaker 1: he just got it like bitcoin requires a little bit
Speaker 1: of faith. It requires the faith that the systems incentive work,
Speaker 1: and if you look back historically, they have always worked.
Speaker 1: So i'm i'm I feel pretty steadfast that bitcoins incentives
Speaker 1: will continue to work. And I personally think bitcoin's binary.
Speaker 1: Either the incentives work or they don't. If they don't,
Speaker 1: I hope you have your guns and bullion. If they do,
Speaker 1: it's taking over the world. Yeah. Nice, I think that's
Speaker 1: a perfect point place to end it. We're gonna end
Speaker 1: it right there. C K from Bitcoin Magazine. You can
Speaker 1: find them on Twitter at CK Underscore Snarks will link
Speaker 1: to it in the show notes down below. General manager
Speaker 1: at Bitcoin Magazine, which of course is doing the largest
Speaker 1: bitcoin conference in the world May eighteenth through twentieth in
Speaker 1: Miami Beach. I'm going to be there. CK is going
Speaker 1: to be there, and we hope that you'll be there
Speaker 1: as well. So check that out. B dot tc is
Speaker 1: the website. Anything else you want to throw out, CK,
Speaker 1: come to the Bitcoin Conference. It's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1: Can't wait to see you there. Mark, give you, give
Speaker 1: you a hug, chat on the news desk, and go
Speaker 1: buy the new Bitcoin Magazine. It's the broke issue we
Speaker 1: have Sam Bankman for aud on the cover and we're
Speaker 1: calling out the media. So we were building bitcoin culture
Speaker 1: and that's what we do. A bitcoin magazine when with
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin conference and you can be a part of it.
Speaker 1: Where can they buy the magazine. It's stored on bitcoin
Speaker 1: magazine dot com. Okay, on the website. Got it? Yep?
Speaker 1: All right, we now we're going to sign it up.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, so kay, thank you so much. Mark Piece,