Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of The Mark Moss
Speaker 1: Show where we're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about bitcoin,
Speaker 1: We're talking about the decentralized revolution. Each and every week
Speaker 1: it's the most important, most profitable part of your week,
Speaker 1: trying to understand what's going on. Of course, each and
Speaker 1: every week I bring to you some education to help
Speaker 1: you build that foundation. I bring you the latest breaking
Speaker 1: news and headlines, and then I try to bring you
Speaker 1: some of the best and brightest people in the industry
Speaker 1: to give you some some different insights into what's going on.
Speaker 1: And um today I'm in the studio with a with
Speaker 1: a good friend, Brandon quit Um. You can find him
Speaker 1: on Twitter at b quit Um. That's q U I
Speaker 1: T t e m at b quit Um. He uh.
Speaker 1: He works with Swan Bitcoin and company that I work
Speaker 1: with as well, and um man, he has just some
Speaker 1: great insights. I always love talking to him. So Brandon,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining. Hey, Mark, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Good to see you as always. Yeah, you know, I know,
Speaker 1: um shoot, I think it was like a month ago.
Speaker 1: Maybe we were both in Miami. Um, we both we
Speaker 1: both did kind of shows with Peter mccorm podcast, which
Speaker 1: was which was cool, and then we got to go
Speaker 1: have have some dinner. And UM, I always love having
Speaker 1: conversations with you, and I wanted to talk about that.
Speaker 1: We were both kind of laying out different thesis is UM,
Speaker 1: but they also overlap at the same time. And I
Speaker 1: think there's some some some good stuff in there. And UM,
Speaker 1: I think the big thing is like, Uh, you've been
Speaker 1: talking a lot about, you know, an eighty year cycle
Speaker 1: that's based off of a book, UM, the Fourth Turning,
Speaker 1: And UM, well, I think the Fourth Turning is interesting.
Speaker 1: It's it's bigger than that. UM. But it's kind of
Speaker 1: like this eighty year cycle. And UM, while I've been
Speaker 1: saying that, a lot of what's going on today as
Speaker 1: far as like UM, tensions are high, people alread each
Speaker 1: other's throats. There's people all over the world that are
Speaker 1: protesting in the streets, and a lot of people think
Speaker 1: it's random, right, like, uh, it's a black Swan event.
Speaker 1: Like who would have ever predicted that a virus would
Speaker 1: come and do this? Right, It's it's random. Um. History
Speaker 1: actually tells us it's not random. History actually tells us that, no,
Speaker 1: this is you can call it the virus if you will,
Speaker 1: but it's not random. Would you agree with that, and
Speaker 1: if so, maybe set that up for us a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point. I definitely do not
Speaker 1: think that what we're seeing today is random. Um. Obviously
Speaker 1: the world is complex. However, in in the individuals that
Speaker 1: we all are acting in our own local environment, UM,
Speaker 1: there appears to be patterns that emerge from this individual
Speaker 1: actor level. And one thing that humans struggle with related
Speaker 1: to this is that we always think linearly what I
Speaker 1: do yesterday? What am I doing tomorrow? And that that
Speaker 1: works in some instances, but it also leads us astray
Speaker 1: when looking at the grand picture, the bigger picture of history.
Speaker 1: And so I would I would turn people to cycles,
Speaker 1: and I would like people to accept the fact that
Speaker 1: cycles exist. Right. We measure our days and our years
Speaker 1: based on cycles in um, the sun and the moon
Speaker 1: for example. UM. If you look through history, their cycles
Speaker 1: between is labor strong? Is capital strong? The individual? The collective?
Speaker 1: Are we religious? Not? Right? There's all these different cycles.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I do think we're at the end of
Speaker 1: a long cycle, both from a Ray Dalio debt perspective,
Speaker 1: but also through the fourth turning lens, which just looks
Speaker 1: at individuals and the generations that they make up. And
Speaker 1: the thesis is essentially that we're all born in the
Speaker 1: same time period. Let's say we're millennials were born at
Speaker 1: the same time, so the conditions upon which we're raised
Speaker 1: are all the same, and so that sort of imprints
Speaker 1: us with a certain mode, and we sort of respond
Speaker 1: in predictive ways as a group, and then that group
Speaker 1: sort of grows up and then they start to push
Speaker 1: back on history and in somewhat predictable ways. So the
Speaker 1: individual is unpredictable, but the demographics or the generational segment
Speaker 1: is a little bit more predictable. And you mentioned one
Speaker 1: thing about what we're seeing in the world, like is
Speaker 1: the cancel culture consistent or is that new right? And
Speaker 1: I think what most people notice right now is no
Speaker 1: one can trust the institutions. And that's very common at
Speaker 1: the end of the cycle, where essentially we look around
Speaker 1: and we see healthcare, we see politics, we see government,
Speaker 1: we see economics, and none of these institutions work for us.
Speaker 1: And so that eroding trust sort of causes us to
Speaker 1: civilization to respond in a way where it's time to
Speaker 1: collectivize and it's time to make change, and that's sort
Speaker 1: of the stress we feel right now. It's also at
Speaker 1: the valley of the religious cycle. And so this is
Speaker 1: the lowest point of religion the last eight years. And
Speaker 1: so instead of turning to higher powers like traditional religions,
Speaker 1: we choose politics as our religion. And that's why you
Speaker 1: see so much in fighting right now. Who There's a
Speaker 1: lot of things in there. I should have been I
Speaker 1: should have been writing more of them down. UM. I
Speaker 1: think about one the loss of trust institutions, as you said, UM,
Speaker 1: and then I think about the low point of religion,
Speaker 1: and and those are a little bit different. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the religion one for a minute, because is I
Speaker 1: think what we have is that um, and and you
Speaker 1: tell me where this fits in. But like what we
Speaker 1: have is that the media is trying to tell us
Speaker 1: today that we organize based off of sex or preference
Speaker 1: or race or gender or whatever it may be. UM,
Speaker 1: But really we we we organize or group on values.
Speaker 1: So like at the Bitcoin conference, for example, would be
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand people, all different races and genders and
Speaker 1: sexual preference, whatever, but we're all they're based off of
Speaker 1: shared values. And UM, it seems like morality or if
Speaker 1: you want to call it religion has a and whatever
Speaker 1: religion you want to, you know, subscribe to UM. They
Speaker 1: have the shared sense of values of morality. And the
Speaker 1: United States also used to have a shared set of values, right,
Speaker 1: hard work and freedom and things like that, and it
Speaker 1: seems like it's been completely destroyed. Not just all religion
Speaker 1: has been driven out, but all sense of values. I mean,
Speaker 1: would you group kind of morality together like that? And
Speaker 1: is that kind of how you see it? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's right. I think religion is one source of
Speaker 1: morality that people have drawn. Another one would be traditional
Speaker 1: American values, like you said, which is power to the individual,
Speaker 1: decentralization of central control from our government standpoint right. Essentially,
Speaker 1: everyone has a chance, everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.
Speaker 1: And what it seems like now is that the state
Speaker 1: has increasingly grown in size and power. And what that's
Speaker 1: led to is UM individuals essentially outsourcing our higher power
Speaker 1: or our morality to the big government. And so it
Speaker 1: sort of feels like a surrogate parent or a surrogate
Speaker 1: god in a sense. And so what that's led to
Speaker 1: is a sort of a decline in what we would
Speaker 1: consider traditional values. UM A decline from classical liberal values
Speaker 1: and instead sort of a more of a collectivist mindset.
Speaker 1: And UM, during chaotic periods like this, right, we're going
Speaker 1: through a lot of volatility. I think everyone would agree
Speaker 1: with that. During that period, it is natural to try
Speaker 1: to collectivize a little bit because as we see this
Speaker 1: grand challenge and it feels like the right thing to
Speaker 1: do is come together and make the change. But that
Speaker 1: also has some dark consequences. Right. For example, we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of cancel culture, and that is that feels
Speaker 1: to me like an impulse from society to say, hey,
Speaker 1: there's big problems, we have to work together to get
Speaker 1: through them. And if you're not with us, you're against us. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the phrase that I always come back to you.
Speaker 1: And so what it leads to as individuals essentially eating
Speaker 1: their own um. And so I call I call cancel
Speaker 1: culture friendly fire and UM. It feels like the right
Speaker 1: thing to do, but it actually undermines what we need,
Speaker 1: which is to push decision making back out to the individual. Um.
Speaker 1: That's how society is strongest, That's where prosperity is built
Speaker 1: by individuals working hard and creating value rather than giving
Speaker 1: up control to the centralized planners who, despite their best intentions, Uh,
Speaker 1: central planning is not an appropriate way to steer an economy.
Speaker 1: It's just not fundamentally possible to a lurp up all
Speaker 1: the data that a market economy produces. And so we're
Speaker 1: sort of, in my view, we're sort of shooting ourselves
Speaker 1: in the foot by over collectivizing here. Um. And if
Speaker 1: we want to tie one more thing back to these cycles,
Speaker 1: about eighty years ago, we're on the tail end of
Speaker 1: World War two or sorry that the beginning of World
Speaker 1: War two and the end of the Great Depression, and
Speaker 1: we saw a similar impulse where a lot of collectivism
Speaker 1: came together, and that might have been needed during World
Speaker 1: War two. But I do not see a reason for
Speaker 1: us to overly collectivized or overly spend money now, as
Speaker 1: if we're in wartime conditions. There's a lot of things
Speaker 1: to dig in on that, um good places. I was
Speaker 1: um talking to another big investor, kind of macro guy yesterday,
Speaker 1: UM Chris Martinson, and he said, UM, I feel like
Speaker 1: the world is in a blowoff top right now. So
Speaker 1: in economics or in bitcoin, if you look at like
Speaker 1: we had, there's this huge pair of allah run and
Speaker 1: then you have the blowoff top and he said he
Speaker 1: thinks the world is gonna blow blow off top. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna explain what that means in a second. Um, if
Speaker 1: you're listening to the markma Show, we're talking about bitcoin.
Speaker 1: We're talking about cryptocurrencies and this decentralized revolution. We're talking
Speaker 1: about it from a bigger lens today with Brandon quit
Speaker 1: Hum from Swan Bitcoin. He's in the studio with me
Speaker 1: at b quit Um on Twitter. Give him a shout
Speaker 1: out and say hi, check out Swan Bitcoin. UM, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk more about how bitcoin fix into this
Speaker 1: long lens of cycles. Don't go away and be right back,
Speaker 1: all right, welcome back. You are listening to the Mark
Speaker 1: Moa Show and we're talking about bitcoin and and the
Speaker 1: decentralized revolution that's happening. And I'm joined in the studio
Speaker 1: to day by my friend that Brandon quit Um from
Speaker 1: Swan Bitcoin. You can find him on Twitter at b
Speaker 1: quit Um q U I T T E M. And
Speaker 1: we're talking about of course bitcoin. Um, we're talking about
Speaker 1: it from a much longer lens. UM looking at really
Speaker 1: an eighty year time frame. I like to look back
Speaker 1: at two U fifty years and five hundred years, but
Speaker 1: but we're looking at eighty years. Some of it is
Speaker 1: based off of a book called The Fourth Turning, which
Speaker 1: talks about four twenty year cycles, um, and then some
Speaker 1: of it is just some other stuff that we have.
Speaker 1: But UM Brandon, before the break, I was telling you
Speaker 1: I was talking to this other a macro investor yesterday, UM,
Speaker 1: Chris Martinson, and he was talking about how he thinks
Speaker 1: the world is going into a blowoff top and so
Speaker 1: in in in financial markets, a blow off top is
Speaker 1: when you start going to this parabolic phase. And what
Speaker 1: happens is humans were very basic. We're motivated by two things.
Speaker 1: We want to rush towards pleasure and run from pain.
Speaker 1: And so when the prices of things start going higher, higher, higher,
Speaker 1: it starts sucking everybody in. They want pleasure and they
Speaker 1: bye bye bye bye bye, which then only pushes things
Speaker 1: up even higher. And then when it blows off, then
Speaker 1: people want to run from pain, so they cell Celles
Speaker 1: cell And what he was saying is he thinks the
Speaker 1: world is heading into a blow off top of socialism.
Speaker 1: And so you had just said that we're starting to
Speaker 1: push more and more stuff onto the state and that's
Speaker 1: basically the same thing he said. And so you think
Speaker 1: about socialism dying, Um, you know maybe with the fall
Speaker 1: of the Berlin Wall in Russia, etcetera. But it but
Speaker 1: it didn't. And really, you know, even in the United States,
Speaker 1: we've seen it really increase since, not decreased. And he
Speaker 1: kind of made the same point that we're continuing to
Speaker 1: put more and more stuff on the state. So like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to deal with my healthcare, you just
Speaker 1: handle healthcare. I don't want to day with my kids,
Speaker 1: you just handle education, right and and all throughout the
Speaker 1: world we've done that, and that's socialism, um. And the
Speaker 1: nanny state has grown and it's starting to just suck
Speaker 1: in everything. And he said, I think it's going up.
Speaker 1: It's sucking everything, and we're in this parabala and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna have this socialism blow off top. Does that
Speaker 1: sound like maybe it makes some sense? Yeah, I hate
Speaker 1: to say that. That does sound like it does make sense. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that would be again a huge mistake. And
Speaker 1: it might feel nice in the short term for individuals
Speaker 1: to give up autonomy or our agency to the state. Um. However,
Speaker 1: it brings back that problem again, which is that the
Speaker 1: world is more complex than we think. And it certainly
Speaker 1: more complex than a group of central planners. No matter
Speaker 1: how many equations they have, no matter how much data
Speaker 1: they think they can collect, the reality is civilization is
Speaker 1: far more complex, and so UM. I would like to
Speaker 1: see a world where we rebuild with market based economies,
Speaker 1: which have proven to be more successful. UM. But what
Speaker 1: I what I attribute this resurgence to is one economic
Speaker 1: inequality is at a I think it's about an eighty
Speaker 1: year high for that as well. And in that type
Speaker 1: of situation, people do get desperate and they do look
Speaker 1: for someone to bail them out. UM. However, that that's
Speaker 1: not the way forward. I just can't. I just can't
Speaker 1: handle that sort of a future. And I think what
Speaker 1: the state wants to do here is use better technology
Speaker 1: to upgrade the state's capacity. And so we're seeing um
Speaker 1: mass surveillance, both on the social layer but also on
Speaker 1: the financial layer. And I think most people just sort
Speaker 1: of accept that everything that they do is being spied on, UM,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit scary. But the state assumes
Speaker 1: they can just spy on everything and then make better
Speaker 1: decisions on our behalf. And I don't think that that's
Speaker 1: morally right. I think I would rather be in charge
Speaker 1: of my own life. Um. And simultaneously, it's just not
Speaker 1: it's just not practically the best way to make decisions
Speaker 1: because again, you can't make decisions from a central point.
Speaker 1: Too much data, the world's too complex. Yeah, today I
Speaker 1: saw Russia, the Bank of Russia, so that it's not official,
Speaker 1: but the Bank of Russia calls for full ban on crypto.
Speaker 1: Russia central Bank suggests making crypto trading, mining, and usage illegal.
Speaker 1: Owning crypto would be allowed, so you can own it,
Speaker 1: but you can't trade it or minded or use it.
Speaker 1: I don't get that part. But but they said here,
Speaker 1: I love this part right here. Um, by offering an
Speaker 1: outlet for people to take their money out of the
Speaker 1: national economy, they risk undermining it and making the regulator's
Speaker 1: job of maintaining optimal monetary policies order. So by offering
Speaker 1: an outlet, if if there's an anilet of people take
Speaker 1: their money out, they risk undermine it and make the
Speaker 1: regular job of maintaining this control the central planning maintain
Speaker 1: optimal monetary policies harder. But but what's optimal, right? Optimal
Speaker 1: for me isn't optimal for you, And that kind of
Speaker 1: goes back to this central planner, like, how does somebody
Speaker 1: in Washington know what's best for me in southern California?
Speaker 1: How does one person know what's best for million people
Speaker 1: in the United States or you know whatever? Um, and
Speaker 1: this is this is in Russia obviously, but I think
Speaker 1: that kind of goes to your point, like these central planners,
Speaker 1: how do they know what's best for everybody? And and
Speaker 1: is there one single best for everybody? These are good questions,
Speaker 1: and um, you know my answer already. Of course they
Speaker 1: can't know what's best for everyone, even though they'll pretend
Speaker 1: to be the moral voice in the room. And of
Speaker 1: course they make they make their They essentially build up
Speaker 1: the problem upon which they're willing to solve or they're
Speaker 1: the only ones capable of solving it. But the reality
Speaker 1: is the solution a k A. State intervention in markets.
Speaker 1: That solution actually is the problem, because by intervening with
Speaker 1: free market activity, you create all these unintended consequences. And
Speaker 1: so um, not surprising coming from Russia, Um, not surprising
Speaker 1: coming from China. Right. Bitcoin is a freedom enabling technology.
Speaker 1: It empowers the individual at the expense of the state
Speaker 1: or any power structure who wants to coerce the individual.
Speaker 1: And so I like to say that bitcoin is incongruent
Speaker 1: with authoritarianism. And so it's not surprising that we see
Speaker 1: these autocratic states push bitcoin out. Why because it undermines
Speaker 1: the central planners and so, um, what I see here
Speaker 1: as an opportunity is as China and Russia start to
Speaker 1: push out this this freedom technology, this is an opportunity
Speaker 1: for the u US to embrace this technology. China and
Speaker 1: Russia are obviously are diametrically opposed global enemies to use
Speaker 1: some colorful language, but if that is true, this is
Speaker 1: our turn to lean in because bitcoin is fundamentally of
Speaker 1: American values. Bitcoin accepts the centralization of powered, empowers the individual. Um,
Speaker 1: it is a freedom based technology. That's what made America
Speaker 1: a strong country, and that that's why America is still
Speaker 1: a strong country after several hundred years today. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, without playing deep into the politics side, I
Speaker 1: mean to your point, right, I mean, you said Russia
Speaker 1: and China are kind of diametrically opposed, but like the
Speaker 1: US is even more so. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: this enemy of my enemy is my friend. Kind of
Speaker 1: a thing, and you know, uh, maybe there you see
Speaker 1: a lot of China and Russia doing a lot of
Speaker 1: the same things until we'rekin on the opposite side. And
Speaker 1: I would hope I would like to see that the
Speaker 1: US would go, we'll shoot and and maybe with this
Speaker 1: kind of Cold war re escalating kind of a thing
Speaker 1: with Ukraine, they would the US would be like, well, shoot,
Speaker 1: tensions are high with China and Russia right now, so
Speaker 1: we should take the opposite side of the bet. If
Speaker 1: they want to push bitcoin out, we should you know,
Speaker 1: use it. And we have this huge economic advantage to
Speaker 1: do so. We've taken over the big majority of the
Speaker 1: mining because bitcoin. China shot themselves in the foot with that.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately I'm seeing that may not be the case.
Speaker 1: And so today, at the time of this recording, UM
Speaker 1: there was also a big conversation going on um in
Speaker 1: among all the lawmakers in the United States talking about
Speaker 1: what they should do in regards to proof of work
Speaker 1: versus proof of steak. Should they do something about that?
Speaker 1: Brian Brooks, formerly of of a coin Base and then
Speaker 1: of the o c C. He said, quote, it's not
Speaker 1: up to the government to decide if bitcoin is important
Speaker 1: to the country's future. That's the market end quote. But
Speaker 1: that's not what they think. I want to dig in
Speaker 1: more to that when we come back. I mean the
Speaker 1: studio we're talking about bitcoin and decentral cryptocurrency. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the Bitcoin revolution. I'm innistry with Brandon Quidum. We're
Speaker 1: gonna come back and talk more about what's going on
Speaker 1: in this cycle and what they're talking about today. Don't
Speaker 1: miss it, don't go away, all right, welcome back. You're
Speaker 1: listening to the Mark Moa Show, and we're talking about bitcoin.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the decentralized revolution, and uh, today we're
Speaker 1: talking a little bit more specifically. Um. I got Brandon
Speaker 1: Quitum in the studio with me, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: kind of this eighty year lens kind of zooming out,
Speaker 1: trying to get a little clarity how what we're seeing
Speaker 1: in the world today isn't random, it's actually repeated, repeated
Speaker 1: throughout history. I mean, we're talking about kind of where
Speaker 1: some of this fits into bitcoin today, and we're just
Speaker 1: talking about how you see countries like China and Russia
Speaker 1: really trying to get uh, you know, push bitcoin out
Speaker 1: because it's opposite of what they want, which is freedom.
Speaker 1: They want to essentially plan a control app in the
Speaker 1: United States. Is the land of the free the United States.
Speaker 1: I grew up in anyway with the land of the free.
Speaker 1: UM and and I was reading a quote here. So today,
Speaker 1: at the time of this recording, we had lawmakers talking
Speaker 1: about bitcoin and mining and cryptocurrencies and proof of work
Speaker 1: versus proof ofstaken and UH CEO Brian Brooks bit furious
Speaker 1: CEO said it's not up to the government to decide
Speaker 1: if bitcoin is important to the country's future. That's the markets,
Speaker 1: that's what he's saying. But we're kind of seeing the opposite. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course, good old Senator Elizabeth Warren, everybody's a favorite
Speaker 1: champion of the free markets. She said, quote the extraordinarily
Speaker 1: high energy usage and carbon emissions associated with bitcoin mining
Speaker 1: could undo much of our work to tackle the climate,
Speaker 1: not to mention the harmful impacts of crypto mining has
Speaker 1: on local governments and electricity prices. And here's the best part.
Speaker 1: It's time for Congress and federal regulators to step up
Speaker 1: and address the serious risk that crypto poses to our
Speaker 1: economy and our environment. So that part she's been saying
Speaker 1: this on and on, this is not the first time
Speaker 1: she said this the risk that cryptocurrency poses to our economy. Again,
Speaker 1: if people same thing that Russia said, if people have
Speaker 1: an outlet, it undermines our ability to manage the optimal economy.
Speaker 1: She's basically saying the same thing that Russia saying. It
Speaker 1: sounds like to me, I don't know, what do you think? Yeah, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's not surprising comments coming from Elizabeth Warren. Um. What
Speaker 1: really frustrates me here is that she claims to be
Speaker 1: one of the people, and she always fights for individual
Speaker 1: rights and individual financial freedoms especially, and she's very anti banks.
Speaker 1: When she fight for the individual's rights, or does she
Speaker 1: fight for a collective group of less empowered people. I
Speaker 1: think that's maybe a difference, right, She's trying to lump
Speaker 1: all everyone like kind of like kind of like Marxism
Speaker 1: lumps the proletarians and the bourgeoisie together. So it's almost like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if she's fine for the individual or
Speaker 1: the collective group of these disempowered groups. Maybe Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I think you're right, that is more accurate. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess the point I was trying to make is
Speaker 1: her what she wants to be perceived as is in
Speaker 1: anti banks. And yet what she's arguing here is that
Speaker 1: individuals should not be able to be their own bank,
Speaker 1: as it were, by owning bitcoin. She's arguing that the
Speaker 1: existing financial system should be in charge of all economic
Speaker 1: issues in the US. And to me, that sounds a
Speaker 1: lot like empowering the existing system, which doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be working for quite a few individuals, and so I
Speaker 1: find that to be extremely um, a lot of hypocrisy,
Speaker 1: will say in her in your comments there, Yeah, so um,
Speaker 1: you had said in when you first opened up, you
Speaker 1: were saying that like these institutions, we've seen the rise
Speaker 1: or the growth of these institutions, you know, the continuing centralization,
Speaker 1: the continuing growth of these things getting bigger. And then
Speaker 1: you had said that if they're not working for people anymore,
Speaker 1: and so there's a loss of trust in these institutions
Speaker 1: because they're not working for us anymore. And so if
Speaker 1: we kind of go back to that in light of
Speaker 1: what we talked about, right, um, where we have politicians
Speaker 1: like Elizabeth Warren trying to kind of grow o these
Speaker 1: institutions even bigger, to take more power away, but we're
Speaker 1: not trusting them. Uh, they're not working for us. And then,
Speaker 1: in light of this eighty year cycle, where do you
Speaker 1: think things go from here? Or or maybe better yet,
Speaker 1: where does history tell us things go from here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good question, And this is the most common
Speaker 1: question I get when discussing the fourth turning is Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I feel you on the thesis. But where do we go?
Speaker 1: And history says that we're right around the late nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties if we would look to the previous fourth turning cycle,
Speaker 1: and so if you think about that time tail end
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression, UM FDR new Deal, we're just trying,
Speaker 1: we're building social security f D. I see a lot
Speaker 1: of changes, but what we haven't had yet is the
Speaker 1: beginning of World War Two. And historically in fourth turnings
Speaker 1: there's always a crisis period which is sort of the
Speaker 1: peak the crescendo of this this part of the cycle.
Speaker 1: And it's my belief that we have not hit the
Speaker 1: crescendo yet. And I know that probably makes people a
Speaker 1: little bit nervous. Hey, the last for you have been
Speaker 1: kind of scary. How could it get worse? And I
Speaker 1: don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but
Speaker 1: if I had to look to history, I would say
Speaker 1: that it's going to get worse, and so what does
Speaker 1: that mean for the individual? UM? That means prepare. It
Speaker 1: means think about what what what your future is? Make
Speaker 1: yourself um anti fragile right, Maybe get a second passport,
Speaker 1: maybe own some bitcoin that no one can take from you,
Speaker 1: and just start to think what if things got worse?
Speaker 1: What if I lost my income? Um? Are you prepared
Speaker 1: for volatility? And hopefully that that time never comes? But
Speaker 1: I think it's prudent to prepare at this point. I
Speaker 1: wonder I did Two weeks ago, I did a show
Speaker 1: I had just go on on. We were talking about
Speaker 1: this mass formation psychosis, which is uh got a lot
Speaker 1: of got a press and publicitly lately since Dr Malone
Speaker 1: was on Joe Rogan UM and I was talking about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, have you have you heard any of
Speaker 1: that about the mass formation psychosis? Okay, so you've you've
Speaker 1: heard some of that. And what was interesting and I
Speaker 1: had actually heard was his name Dr Dmitri Uh. I
Speaker 1: heard him talk about it like four or five months
Speaker 1: ago on Aubrey Marcus podcast. UM. But he was talking
Speaker 1: about how how do we how do we get into it?
Speaker 1: Which was people are disconnected, um, which I think is
Speaker 1: a breakdown in society, a breakdown of religion, a breakdown
Speaker 1: a morality, a breakdown of the family unit. Right, those
Speaker 1: things keep people connected. So you break those things. To
Speaker 1: the point you were making earlier, you break those things down.
Speaker 1: People are disconnected. Um. Each one is like a sort
Speaker 1: of downstream. Then you have no, um, no sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: So if you're not connected, there's no sense of purpose
Speaker 1: that that makes sense. And then they have this this
Speaker 1: uh untethered anxiety. And then somebody comes along and says,
Speaker 1: this is the reason why I come with me. But
Speaker 1: more importantly I was thinking, um. He then said, the
Speaker 1: solution to come out of that is then we need
Speaker 1: to bring people. We need to connect people again. Um.
Speaker 1: If we connect people again, um, and then we want
Speaker 1: to show them a better way. We can't say no, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't go over there, stay where you're at, because they're
Speaker 1: not happy with where they're at. We need to show
Speaker 1: them no, don't go that way, actually go this way.
Speaker 1: This is a better way. UM. And so I thought
Speaker 1: that was really cool. It made me think about bitcoin,
Speaker 1: because this the central bank that the money printer has
Speaker 1: distorted all these areas of life that they're unhappy with,
Speaker 1: and if we can take them to a new sound
Speaker 1: money system, maybe that's somewhere that they want to go.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious how that may or may not fit
Speaker 1: into this fourth turning where you kind of have this
Speaker 1: fourth generation where they want to kind of recreate a
Speaker 1: new world. Does that fit in somehow? Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: think it does. And just to touch on the mass
Speaker 1: formation psychosis really quickly, and then I'll connect it back
Speaker 1: to the bigger question you post two minutes. If we're going, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna um, if we're going to get people
Speaker 1: out of this, assuming there is some sort of mass
Speaker 1: formation psychosis, turn off the news, find real friends locally, right,
Speaker 1: adopt bitcoin, just totally diverge yourself and and find other
Speaker 1: friends who are willing to do such a thing. And
Speaker 1: if we tie it back to the big picture here,
Speaker 1: I think what bitcoin represents right now actually is the
Speaker 1: solution to our our Frain institutions, because bitcoin itself actually
Speaker 1: serves as an institution. It is sort of like a
Speaker 1: a property rights government, judge, jury executioner all in one,
Speaker 1: and so it provides the order that society needs today.
Speaker 1: And so I think this both fits in at the
Speaker 1: long term death cycle, right, we need to redo the
Speaker 1: financial system. Okay, here's this bitcoin thing. And also it
Speaker 1: serves the social need where people are crying out for order.
Speaker 1: We're crying out for that one leader to give us
Speaker 1: that one solution. And it's my belief that bitcoin is
Speaker 1: best for the individual and also best for our planet
Speaker 1: as we go through this major transition at the end
Speaker 1: of another fourth turning. Yeah, it's just interesting. I know,
Speaker 1: you know, each one of these cycles is different. And
Speaker 1: the fourth turning it's popularized, was the you know, hard times,
Speaker 1: great strong man, strong man, great great times, great times,
Speaker 1: week and week been bad times. I think about it
Speaker 1: like an eighty year cycle. You look at um Germany
Speaker 1: coming out of World War two. Country was destroyed, worse,
Speaker 1: hyper inflation. Ever, the people had to rebuild their country
Speaker 1: from their bare hands. Hard times created strong men. Germany
Speaker 1: became the economic powerhouse of all of Europe. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've been the economic engine of Europe and here we
Speaker 1: are eighty years later. They only worked twenty eight hour weeks,
Speaker 1: their taxes are the highest, and the nation they've shut
Speaker 1: down all their energy and they're having extremely hard times
Speaker 1: right now, just eighty years later, which is amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: you're listening to the Markma Show. We're talking about bitcoin
Speaker 1: from a long lens of history. I'm in the studio
Speaker 1: with Brandon quithum Um from Swan Bitcoin talking about kind
Speaker 1: of this fourth turning and how bitcoin fits into it. Uh,
Speaker 1: don't go away back with more, everyone, welcome back. You
Speaker 1: are listening to the Markma Show and we're discussing bitcoin
Speaker 1: each and every week, of course, and this decentralized revolution
Speaker 1: that's going on and there's so many ways to look
Speaker 1: at this and one thing that I always loved and
Speaker 1: if you if you've been watching my YouTube channel for
Speaker 1: a long time, then you know I love to bring
Speaker 1: history in the one subject that I liked in school. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you're not watching my YouTube channel then you should,
Speaker 1: so just check me out Mark Moss on YouTube. But
Speaker 1: we're talking. I'm in the studio with Brandon quit Um
Speaker 1: from Swan Bitcoin. You can find him at b quit
Speaker 1: Um on Twitter, and we're kind of talking about this
Speaker 1: uh eighty year cycle, this fourth turning generational theory kind
Speaker 1: of thing and how it fits into bitcoin and we're
Speaker 1: just kind of talking about this uh, mass formation psychosis.
Speaker 1: That's and how that maybe fits in. Um. You know
Speaker 1: one thing, Brandon is uh, you'd you'd said, you know,
Speaker 1: the one question everybody wants to ask is like what
Speaker 1: comes next? And you said, well, maybe if we go
Speaker 1: back to UM, we kind of see that. Um. I
Speaker 1: was kind of looking at UM and I know this
Speaker 1: isn't something that you've maybe studied a lot, but if
Speaker 1: you zoom out, well, in the eighty year cycle, there's
Speaker 1: also what's known as like a pendulum. And there's a
Speaker 1: book actually written called the Pendulum, and every eighty years
Speaker 1: goes between a me and a we cycle, so me
Speaker 1: being individualism and we being collectivism, and so it kind
Speaker 1: of swings back and forth over an eighty year cycle.
Speaker 1: And UM, right now we're peeking out at centralization. That's
Speaker 1: where the pendulum is maxing out at. And the pendulum
Speaker 1: is going to swing back per you know this theory
Speaker 1: which they've been able to trace it back for thousands
Speaker 1: of years, UM, at least a thousand years maybe UM,
Speaker 1: And uh, we're you know, the peak centralization is maxing out,
Speaker 1: will swing back to decentralization. So maybe I guess that's
Speaker 1: the direction that we go what's interesting is if you
Speaker 1: look at like a K wave chundurative wave theory, or
Speaker 1: you know, technological revolutions, they happen on in between a
Speaker 1: forty to sixty year time frame, about fifty years UM
Speaker 1: and so at a time when the world is maxing
Speaker 1: out on centralization and it's about to start swinging back
Speaker 1: to decentralization, we have a technological revolution, a K wave
Speaker 1: that's starting with a new technology, the Bitcoin, that gives
Speaker 1: us exactly what we need, which is decentralization. Is pretty interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the way have a lot of good points there,
Speaker 1: and I think there's some really nice parallels starting to
Speaker 1: form as we move from a centralized world to a
Speaker 1: primarily decentralized world. And you mentioned that the tech cycle
Speaker 1: right where it's very clear that we're in the information age.
Speaker 1: On the information age gave us the Internet, it gave
Speaker 1: us remote work, it gave us a centralization of communication,
Speaker 1: all these wonderful things. And I do see the very
Speaker 1: very beginning of a new growth right in the in
Speaker 1: the in the individual world. And so some parallels would be, um,
Speaker 1: let's say mass media, right, the large media institutions, the CNN,
Speaker 1: the New York times, shifting over to social media, which
Speaker 1: now feels to be absorbed by the state into now
Speaker 1: what we would maybe call independent media, things like Mark Moss,
Speaker 1: things like Joe Rogan having more viewership than CNN, and
Speaker 1: all the things combined. UM. I think we're going to
Speaker 1: see a shift from centralized monetary systems like a dollar
Speaker 1: or any other feed of currency, towards a decentralized monetary
Speaker 1: system such as bitcoin. UM. I think we're starting to
Speaker 1: see a pushback from industrial education or what we would
Speaker 1: consider mainstream education, and we're seeing homeschool homeschooling on the rise,
Speaker 1: growing exponentially, all these alternative online school type things. UM.
Speaker 1: We're also seeing the death of the wage earner and
Speaker 1: the rise of the creative economy right where young people
Speaker 1: aren't loyal to their employers, nor should they be. Um,
Speaker 1: it's more of an information economy where individuals go out
Speaker 1: there and solve problems and interact with the world. And
Speaker 1: and now all of a sudden, capital goes from physical
Speaker 1: goods machinery into ideas. Right. Um, we also have the
Speaker 1: nine to five where you go into the office. Now
Speaker 1: you can work remotely, and so you sort of add
Speaker 1: all these things up and what do you get? You
Speaker 1: get a very different world. And I think we can
Speaker 1: also draw a thesis from another book I know you
Speaker 1: and I have talked about, which is a sovereign individual,
Speaker 1: which is that as we transition into the information age,
Speaker 1: we're going to see a separation from large nation states
Speaker 1: into smaller ones, sort of a Balkanization. And why does
Speaker 1: this occur? While in an information economy there's actually diseconomies
Speaker 1: of scale where the largest um or the largest country
Speaker 1: is the one or the most powerful country is one
Speaker 1: of the largest military. Now it's the one with the
Speaker 1: most creative output or the most intangible capital. And so
Speaker 1: I see instead of maybe two or three hundred countries,
Speaker 1: I see maybe two thousand or three thousand countries, let's say,
Speaker 1: over the next fifty years. And that's simply due to
Speaker 1: the fact that smaller, more nimble countries, let's say Singapore
Speaker 1: for example, in recent times, um they actually have an
Speaker 1: ability to take what we've learned from the previous age
Speaker 1: and upgrade our governments into more of an information age style.
Speaker 1: And I think that empowers the individual in all those
Speaker 1: ways we mentioned. Very optimistic. Yeah, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: great take. I mean if you go back two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty years, UM, we had the start of the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: and the industrial revolution started centralizing and so um that
Speaker 1: was the start of the factory, which was the start
Speaker 1: of the cities, and then the giant factories and workers
Speaker 1: and assembly lines and things like that. And so for
Speaker 1: the last two and or fifty years we've been on
Speaker 1: this central as centralizing scale, or or pendulum, if you will.
Speaker 1: And now that's starting to swing back the other way,
Speaker 1: and now it's going to start decentralizing. So the centralization
Speaker 1: not only centralized people from the farms in the fields
Speaker 1: into cities and factories, but it also centralized economic activity
Speaker 1: into a country. So if you want to be successful,
Speaker 1: you had to be in America basically, So people left
Speaker 1: from all over the world to come to America. And
Speaker 1: then if you want to be successful America, you had
Speaker 1: to move to the big city because that's where the
Speaker 1: jobs were. Um. But today, especially sped up by the pandemic,
Speaker 1: to your point, people are moving everywhere. So we see
Speaker 1: real estate blowing up in Wyoming and and uh, Montana
Speaker 1: and Idaho or whatever. People can finally go live where
Speaker 1: they want and still work. And then not even just that,
Speaker 1: but also they can move to Central America or or
Speaker 1: Mexico or whatever. I was. I drove from southern California
Speaker 1: in northern California like two weeks ago, go snowboarding and
Speaker 1: um driving from Orange County up to Mammoth Mountain. It's
Speaker 1: about a six or seven hour drive with traffic, and
Speaker 1: for probably four of those hours you don't see anything
Speaker 1: like in California, Like you drive for like four hours
Speaker 1: of nothing. And I was just thinking about I was
Speaker 1: talking with my daughter and I was just like, you know, everything,
Speaker 1: Like people that think the world's overcrowded haven't really traveled,
Speaker 1: they haven't flown in an airplane or whatever, because it's
Speaker 1: just people are super compacted in the cities. But that's
Speaker 1: because of the industrialization of the world. But I think
Speaker 1: things will really over the next fifty years, as you said,
Speaker 1: or even hundred years, things will really start spreading out
Speaker 1: more evenly throughout the country and throughout the world. It
Speaker 1: would be pretty amazing. I think, Yeah, I think you're
Speaker 1: right about that. And I guess the last piece I
Speaker 1: would add to that is that the in it has
Speaker 1: allowed us to do that and even move to Central
Speaker 1: America or Mexico. But the money states centralized, they could
Speaker 1: still squeeze the money, and that is the missing piece.
Speaker 1: I think that really unlocks it. Yeah, that's a really
Speaker 1: good point. Right, we could we could move, let's say
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, you could work remotely and travel
Speaker 1: around and make a living online. However you're still hamstring
Speaker 1: by the money, which is such a foundational element. And
Speaker 1: so yes, bitcoin does represent money for everyone. It's a
Speaker 1: single economic language that the entire globe can can on
Speaker 1: board too. And people might be wondering in the West, well,
Speaker 1: we already have the dollar. The dollar works pretty well,
Speaker 1: which is true, right, Relatively, the dollar is strong. We
Speaker 1: have modern financial systems, but at least one billion, probably
Speaker 1: more like two billion people don't have any financial services.
Speaker 1: They can't raise money, they can't open a bank account,
Speaker 1: they can't take out a mortgage, and so things we
Speaker 1: take for granted here in the West, um, are are
Speaker 1: things that bitcoin can solve globally. And you touched on
Speaker 1: another point which I would like to highlight, which is federalism. Right,
Speaker 1: states have their own ability to make their own laws,
Speaker 1: and our founding fathers made this a really big deal
Speaker 1: during the formation of the country for a couple of reasons. One,
Speaker 1: it allows individuals in their local environment to choose the
Speaker 1: rules that best represent the people that are going to
Speaker 1: have to abide by those rules, So it's better for people.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, it offers a laboratory to experiment.
Speaker 1: If you want to live in New York and have
Speaker 1: those rules, fine, move there, do what you do, and
Speaker 1: we'll watch and see the results. And if you want
Speaker 1: to move to Texas and have different rules, okay, we'll
Speaker 1: see the competition and we'll let the best, the best
Speaker 1: ideas rise to the top and then they can be distributed.
Speaker 1: So practical and moral, yeah, that's the best. Vote with
Speaker 1: your feet, vote with your money. But it only works
Speaker 1: if you can actually move and vote in different areas.
Speaker 1: When you federalize it or centralize it all doesn't work
Speaker 1: as as well. That's why I believe the world shifts
Speaker 1: is actually through competition, not through war. Let's into the
Speaker 1: Markmas Show. We're talking about bitcoin and the decentralized revolution.
Speaker 1: I'm in the studio with Brandon Quitum from swan Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Check them out swan Bitcoin, check out b quit Um
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Um and that's it. Thanks for listening.