Jack Mallers delves into Bitcoin's potential to protect individuals' time and energy from fiat currency debasement and envisions a future where Bitcoin facilitates the rebirth of the middle class
In this episode of Real Talk With Zuby, Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of Strike, discusses the profound implications of Bitcoin adoption by nation-states, sharing his personal journey with Bitcoin that began a decade ago. He highlights the cultural and financial influences of his Chicago upbringing and the early adoption of Bitcoin by Chicago's finance scene due to its principled trading roots. The conversation emphasizes the role of encouragement in nurturing potential, leading Mallers to become an entrepreneur in the Bitcoin space. He provides a deep analysis of Bitcoin's value proposition against traditional currencies, arguing that Bitcoin protects individuals' time and energy from fiat currency debasement and envisions Bitcoin facilitating the rebirth of the middle class through a fair financial system based on earned wealth.
Jack Mallers explores Bitcoin's potential as a transformative financial technology and personal journey of growth and discovery, emphasizing the power of sound money. Mallers provides insights into how Bitcoin can address economic disparities and foster a true middle class, presenting Bitcoin as a beacon of hope against fiat currency debasement. His reflections suggest Bitcoin could preserve value, promote earned wealth, and help societies rebuild financial practices, making a compelling case for Bitcoin as key to a more prosperous world.
00:00 Introduction
02:47 Jack’s backstory
07:43 Jack’s introduction to Bitcoin
09:45 Chicago’s welcoming of Bitcoin
11:14 Jack’s Father introduces him to BTC
14:12 Coding bootcamp
22:58 Supportive relationships
24:21 Bitcoin’s appeal
26:09 Bitcoin’s value-prop
41:00 Money, time & energy
48:51 Wealth inequality
58:53 Predictions
1:14:01 Outro
Transcript:
(00:00) it was a nation state adopting Bitcoin the next is a nation state that has their own currency adopting Bitcoin yes the nation state that prints their own currency to buy Bitcoin is going to be a huge deal what's up ladies and gentlemen boys and girls around the world I would like to welcome you back to the real talk with zubie podcast coming to you once again from elante in El Salvador we are live in studio and on today's episode it is an honor and a pleasure to be talking to the founder and CEO of strike this is Jack welcome to the show
(00:31) man what's going on brother it's an honor to be here I'm a fan so thanks for having me I appreciate it man thank you well Jack I know who you are but for my listeners who are not familiar with you please introduce yourself oh man um the biggest question I've ever been asked in an interview no uh my name is Jack I'm probably known as the Bitcoin guy founder of strike but strike's a baby uh strike's four years old uh I've been in Bitcoin for over a decade so my entire adult life I've been in Bitcoin I live
(00:59) it and breathe it and that's probably uh what I'm most known for is uh my contributions to bitcoin and uh the conviction I have in Bitcoin and it's hard to survive anything for over a decade so just the fact that uh I've been around okay man and there's a lot to talk about here because you're you're a young guy how old are you I just turned 30 just turned 30 awesome man welcome to the 30 Club thank you bu how does it feel uh the same yeah chilling chilling 30s are better than 20s if you
(01:25) do your 20s well then your 30s are better because you are still very much a young man but you have that decade of experience and expertise and success and you're still in great health and phys physical fitness and all that so you kind of have all the youth and energy of your 20s but you're just a lot more accomplished and have a lot more knowledge so I've personally found like my 30s to be I enjoyed my 20s but my 30s have been way better because it's just like you're you're the same version of
(02:02) yourself but just like up you're just like upgraded sure you're you but you're upgraded you're not at the age where okay your body is starting to get those aches and pains and you know you're physically not able to do the things you could and you're lacking the energy that can happen as you eventually get sure older as I understand it but yeah it's going to be awesome yeah I definitely feel older spiritually not physically if that's what you mean yeah exactly yeah for sure I couldn't tell that was cuz I
(02:25) was 30 or cuz I decided to be an entrepreneur yeah that also ages you pretty quick but yeah totally man I feel good awesome man well Jack I've I've heard you on I've heard you speak on stages I've heard you speak on a lot of different podcasts I've heard you talk a lot about Bitcoin and I love your passion for it but I was just saying before we started rolling that strangely enough I feel like I don't know that much about you and your story so where are you from tell me about the Jack
(02:50) Maller story yeah no one's ever asked me everyone's like what's the Bitcoin price going to be next year and no one's like hey man how you doing what's your hobbies no I'm just kidding um I grew up in Evanston Illinois it's a suburb outside of Chicago um my the the way I got into Bitcoin is through my dad um a very close relationship to my father U my grandfather was the chairman of the Chicago Board of Trade once upon a time which I think the internet mistakens for this like luxurious like he's in the CIA
(03:21) I mean he died broke um but he was a Pioneer in what is now the derivatives market futures Market agriculture commodity RIS transfer markets and my dad founded uh discount Futures brokerage with him and so very intimate in Chicago Finance which is distinctly different than New York and so I grew up very close with my father and uh I'm trying to think of how to describe Chicago Finance and Chicago in general is you know Brick by Brick very morals ethics principles you know when I played sport is never resume play
(04:00) without helping your teammates up type of attitude um and so that was a lot of my upbringing as being raised by Traders Hustlers um salt of the earth passionate ethical moral guys awesome and uh they ended up getting me into into Bitcoin so yeah I mean I could tell you whatever you want to know open book I dropped out College uh whatever you want to know we all know that in today's fast-paced world it's harder than ever to live a healthy lifestyle just about everyone is struggling with gut issues stress
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(05:26) com zubi one more time that's optimal human.com w/ zuie go check it out so you went to college what did you go to study chess chess so not actually but um I went to St John's I had a little bit of scholarship money to go so I grew up a chess player I have a state championship um at the time for my age group I have two in Illinois uh I was nationally ranked growing up for my age class played on uh the chess team in high school it was funny it was uh the only guy that was on the basketball team and the chess team uh and uh so I wanted to
(06:01) my dad was like listen you're almost 18 you got to like be an adult and do real things and I was like well gosh I'm not ready to do that like well what do you want to do with yourself I said I want to play chess he said well then figure it out and so I found a university in New York which at the time arguably still is is the chess capital of the world at now it's either New York or St Louis okay but at the time it was New York and I went with some scholarship money to go pursue chess unfortunately I
(06:31) pursued it a little too much I skipped every class and I would play in Central Park so I would ditch class I would play in the park um for cash and I would train there and back and so I didn't even last a semester what was your major that you were supposed to be do Jesus can't remember yeah business I mean there's a i famously remember I've told this story a few times sitting in um French literature class and I texted my dad and this is just the relationship that we have so close I was like dude
(07:00) what am I doing here man French literature uh I'm trying to play chess yeah and uh So eventually I dropped out I dropped out before Thanksgiving break so I mean for those that are unfamiliar with us schooling that's you en enroll a month before Thanksgiving break Thanksgiving break is usually when a freshman would say oh man I haven't seen my parents in a month I can't wait to sleep in my own bed I just never went back yeah so uh didn't last long but uh I was trying to pursue a passion thankfully uh I fell into Bitcoin on the
(07:32) back half of that but yeah chess player um that got lost in New York City cuz I was forced to try and figure out this whole university thing that ended up being a waste of time okay so you said you discovered Bitcoin through your father M so how did your dad get into the Bitcoin world it's a good question he read a Blog so shout out Mike creger uh he writes uh a Blog so my dad went to Duke University so did Mike he followed his blog it was just on overall market trends and Mike wrote about Bitcoin and my dad picked up on it you know Chicago
(08:05) as a whole got Bitcoin a lot earlier than the rest of the world but especially New York we're just now seeing New York adopt things like the Bitcoin ETF and be a bit open more open to bitcoin Chicago is very different I guess the distinct difference between New York and Chicago Chicago's markets were built on agriculture com uh commodity risk transfer so I'm talking about the corn farmer wheat soybeans these are agriculture Commodities so these are Commodities that aren't gold and silver these are Commodities that we
(08:37) consume right and they wanted to build a risk transfer market because if the corn farmer is worried about if it's going to rain or not and he isn't sure about the future of his crop he's going to farm really bad corn it's going to make us all have diarrhea and be sick and so what we want is the corn farmer to sell a future and focus really hard on building or farming the best corn he can farm and let a free market transfer that risk and that was Chicago's core focus and upbringing and unique value
(09:05) proposition in financial markets which is very different then hey I want to take an equity public um take me to the fancy NASDAQ or the nisy insider trading Wall Street Chicago doesn't have any of that and so Chicago got Bitcoin very early because the Bitcoin miner is very much like the corn farmer it was a lot more free market some libertarian leaning type of of principles and so he as soon as he read the blog he got it but so did a lot of this is allaha 20 late 2012 early 2013 mhm that's when the all of Chicago got it like every
(09:38) everyone in finance was aware of Bitcoin and thought openly about it and so he got into it then and that was right when I dropped out of school that's so interesting I had no idea that Chicago was early on bitcoin yeah well you've got Cumberland so drw's one of the biggest prop firms in the world I would say Don Ronald Wilson and he founded Cumberland around then uh you've got jump trading that's Chicago they're huge in in crypto but Bitcoin as well um so a lot of the Chicago trading scene was pretty early to bitcoin I
(10:15) would just say that the the attitude and the approach allowed them to be so again you know I have harsh feelings and words for New York in the trading scene yes but you know there's a lot of cornering of markets there's a lot of of insider trading there's a lot of big Banking and there's not in Chicago Chicago if you think about the markets that they built there is very ethical principled markets they wanted to help the corn farmer and ensure that the corn farmer could focus on farming corn and that's a really
(10:45) principle moral thing to do and that market actually serves a real purpose versus you know penny stock trading Wolf of Wall Street type stuff and so yeah Chicago has a culture that bleeds all the way down to you know how I was raised um and I think it allowed them to be you know Bitcoin requires you to be open in your thinking and approach and um Chicago has a little bit more of an open Innovative mindset than I think New York is closing competitive that's interesting so how did that first introduction with your dad go did he
(11:19) just say hey son I've read this interesting article there's this thing called Bitcoin you might want to look into it how how did that convo go um I got the best dad in the world and I think he's a genius no he very much understood you know the worst way to get someone to adopt something you're interested in is to be forceful on them and criticize them right like hey you're an idiot be a pay attention to bitcoin thanks for dropping out of school I Wast a lot of money now read this book it was
(11:48) the opposite approach he got my stepmother and I into it he registered the handle Bitcoin mom in hindsight was genius at the time he was like Hey I'm into this weird Corky thing that everyone thinks is only for drug dealers it needs a motherly presence you know moms are love moms are caring moms are inviting and there needs to be a Bitcoin mom you know I'm taking my kid to soccer practice and I'm interested in this Bitcoin thing and he registered that handle and he also found a way to get me into a coding school okay he would he so
(12:19) I'll never forget he would drag me out of the basement I mean I was depressed man I mean you're 18 years old all your friends are off making making new buddies and meeting women and stuff and I was sitting alone in my basement I had no idea what was going on and he would every morning drag me out of the basement take me to boxing okay and so it was it was both helpful physically to exercise and see the Sun and meet other humans but also I mean I was literally like fighting and that's what it felt
(12:48) like at the time in my life and through boxing he found a a friend of his that would get me into a coating boot camp so he's never admitted it I thought it was long con of way of getting me into Bitcoin was turning me into an engineer but it was through that where he I I was I applied U ofi Iowa Michigan I mean these are Midwest schools where all my friends were I drifted off to New York clearly made a mistake I was going to go party with my friends and uh he said no uh I don't think you're ready and put me
(13:19) in a coding boot camp and then through that Bitcoin became immediately fascinating to me and I really latched on to him and my stepma and we became a little team that's so dope 11 years ago yeah that's awesome I've actually met them both as well yeah yeah I met them both in 2022 I think 2022 out at the Bitcoin conference in Miami sure um they they recognized me and they were yeah I remember I I think I took a selfie with them sure and they were fans I didn't sure I I I didn't know I was I was just
(13:55) kind of it was my first time ever in Miami in fact and I was like oh like that's that's kind of interesting and they were like oh you know uh we're Jack Jack Jack M's friends and I was like oh awesome like your son's doing cool things so that's funny so I met I met them before I met you yeah makes sense it's very them awesome so that was 11 years ago and what's that Journey been then so you're in school doing coding yep um I can relate to this a little bit because I'm actually a computer science
(14:21) graduate well there you go and I don't like coding but um so maybe I would have gotten into Bitcoin earlier had I not had like the sort of a negative experience with coding during my University degree but um what was the journey from there how long were you how long were you there so I went to a three-month boot camp initially because I mean picture being my dad sends me away to University for like 25 Grand and I don't last a month I don't go to a class I'm playing chess in the park with a bunch of homeless people
(14:50) and he's like all right how do I hedge myself with this clown I'm going to send him to a 3month coding boot camp right and so that's what I went to initially and I fell in love with it which meant I knocked it out of the park I mean the classic thing with me is if I care you'll never meet anyone that cares more deeply um if I don't though I'm going to be the worst teammate in the world and so I cared and I really enjoyed it and I loved it a lot of similarities to chess and uh that allowed me to enroll in a
(15:20) 9-month program so in total I spent a year okay the best part about my engineering career is all of the boot camps and all of the program I went to don't even exist anymore it's the funniest part everyone's like wow where didd you learn to be an engineer like you can't even Google it man I could tell you but it won't matter so that school is gone um I did a few follow-up programs that was gone but being an engineer um the hardest part is knowing what you don't know uh once you're able
(15:50) to understand what you don't know understand clearly not literally because you don't know it um but directionally because then you can figure it out and if challenges you to be resourceful and so from there I was resourceful enough to be the classic kid and his bedroom that was hacking away at things he cared a lot about so I built online chess software that helped me coach other players on the internet which at the time was very difficult um I built software for a local gym that needed help with their personal trainers
(16:26) managing all of the data with their clients uh and then eventually I got good enough to start contributing to bitcoin I applied I kid you not I applied to every company that could spell Bitcoin and they all rejected me which in hindsight I'm thankful for but coinbase cracking I mean everyone I was begging to be a part of this thing and I couldn't find a way in which inevitably led me to pursue open source they couldn't fire me from open source software you could download it from the internet and run it yourself so uh that
(17:02) one I contributed to and then through that ended up becoming an entrepreneur and founding strike so that was a high level Journey for you and what year what year was that when you were doing these applications I'm guessing like 2014 2015 yeah so the homework assignment from the initial boot camp is like build something real yeah I actually owe a ton to that school and the founder Neil So shout out Neil um it was a different approach to school it was hey welcome to school but I don't even let calling us to school we're
(17:31) going to do real stuff for the real world I'm not going to grade you on how you can spell I'm not going to grade you on math uh I'm not going to grade you at all you are here to build software that can be used by other people and that's your assignment so find something you care about and it's going to be really hard but you're going to do it and so that's what I did and I built this chess software um initially and I built software as um this the very first application I present presented was
(18:00) actually crowdsourcing software on how well a referee is doing in an NBA game oh wow okay because uh growing up in Chicago I'm a huge Michael Jordan fan and I was convinced that refs would uh would rig games for LeBron James and so but that was the point it was it was be passionate care about something you know you exist and uh make a dent in the universe and uh you know we interface with these screens um and software and you have the power to influence that and so where do you want to see change and I was like I want to see LeBron
(18:35) James at the free throw line L like I swear he gets more calls than whatever the San Antonio Spurs so I built built that that was uh in 2013 um well the problem is it didn't really work okay uh all of my buddies in high school came over for the launch and it like barely worked but they were happy because I bought them all wings so um I'm still convinced that the NBA the the point of the software I'll I'll pitch it someone else should build it the point of the software was the crowd knows best right um if you can Outsource
(19:09) information to as many people as possible um the bigger the crowd the smarter the wisdom and so if I was able to log NBA games in real time and allow fans to say hey was that a good call or not um with enough of a populace we'd be able to actually crowdsource an official opinion of what the world thought about that officiating as opposed to and the specific call and I would pull a bunch of data where when LeBron James is refed by this guy then he goes to the free throw line twice as much as other referees and so I was convinced that I
(19:39) was correct um and so that's what it was intended to do it didn't work because I was uh engineer for 90 days at the time and I wasn't good but uh that was 2013 and so I I completed schooling through the beginning of 2014 and I built the trest software I got to meet a mentor still to this day Jason freed of base camp um and that was the beginning of my career where I for the first time felt confidence in myself you know I think in my career I will say there are certain parts where um people believe in you more than you
(20:20) believe in yourself 100% and uh you know those are a lot of the people I have to thank along my journey so my father you know when I thought I was a loser that was a College Dropout he believed that I wasn't um in this school you know Jason freed these guys believed that I was good enough to be an engineer I didn't need to go to school and I was creative and passionate enough and um just you know I think chess is the art of seeing yourself forward and and they saw that in me and that don't think about going
(20:52) back to college you got this that was a moment and I've had a lot of those throughout the career my career so um yeah that was around 2014 where I said yeah I got this yeah and it was different energy and different trajectory since since that point that's dope it's so it's so interesting to hear that because I think that's such an important and deep human point that is so often overlooked which is that people need encouragement people need encourage encouragement people need people to believe in them and see their potential
(21:22) even when they don't and the difference between being that guy who is in the basement and needs to be dragged out to go and do things and who isn't feeling confident I mean you're the same you're the same person and you can probably imagine this sort of like bifurcation in your life where had certain circumstances been different and certain people not been there to urge you on and encourage you and believe in you you could just kind of stay in that rut and I believe there are millions of people
(21:54) right now scattered around the world who are just in that rut they have so much potential they've got talent they've got so much ability to do great things but no one has told them that no one's ever encouraged them and it's sad when people miss that because it can just make such a small difference I mean I'm sure you see this because you you've got a big platform right and I'm sure you've had people who are massively encouraged and inspired by you and you know might even tell you a certain story or something
(22:21) you said on a podcast or something you posted and it fundamentally was just it was just that spark that they needed at the time to change into life I had so many people come up to me and tell me that like man I just I just read this thing that you wrote that one day or this thing you said and it's I was here and it just you know nudged me so I think that's extremely powerful I think that's a good lesson for anyone listening just to know for yourself and for how you engage with other people particularly people who are listening I
(22:49) know a lot of people who are listening to this podcast are parents when it comes to your own children just giving them that encouragement it's it's such a huge difference yeah I think um it speaks to the value of those that you surround yourself with um right uh I think back and if I didn't have the dad I do if I wasn't in that school um I found myself at certain points in my life in the wrong crowd um you know College Dropout in the Parks uh playing till the sun goes down with a bunch of people that didn't even have a home and
(23:22) it would have been very difficult to find the best version of myself through them I think um and it's no offense to any individual but more so speaking to the value of just surrounding yourself with the right people and um that also is I think what allowed me to travel so deeply into Bitcoin is because all of a sudden I had a little bit of confidence and faith in myself and I was surrounded by the brightest wies in the whole world I mean there's no more ambitious task than trying to fix money and so I was this
(23:53) young kid who had a little bit of energy and then all of a sudden everyone around me was smarter wiser nicer Kinder healthier I mean everything that you would want out of a human life and so yeah that was my takeaway was just how important The Company You Keep and I was lucky enough to have a really amazing father but there's no real excuse um we all have the ability to build a relationship and so uh ever since I've taken relationship and that lesson pretty seriously yeah that's awesome man so what is it that particularly sold you
(24:24) on bitcoin was there a moment where you just saw it and were like this is this is the thing what's the story there um I think it's the classic you know come for the number go up okay stay for the revolution um but in the beginning I was really cheering my dad on um and uh he was so convicted and had this position and my stepmother got into it and there's something about you know just having so much love for my family and my parents I wanted this thing to work and and through that you evaluate well is it
(25:01) going to work or not and you come to the conclusion that you know bitcoin's designed to go up forever well I believe that and you know what hard money means what a fixed Supply means where anything monetary derives value from how money Works what properties it needs to have and you come to this conclusion of oh man this is the best money that we have and so I initially was convicted and sold through that and then the revolution is what follows and you realize the knock on effects that having better money has for yourself for your
(25:32) family for your business for your country for our species yeah and that you know things like El Salvador are much more for the revolution um than the number go up but initially sold I was like you know is this thing going to work and you have to build your own conviction in that and um I I fell in love with the fact that I I felt like I knew something that the rest of the world didn't I remember walking around with my parents like that guy is no idea that this Bitcoin thing is going to be huge but we do and that's that's what it
(26:04) felt like and it was it was a really Charming feeling especially to do with your family that's amazing this is not explicitly a Bitcoin podcast so there are going to be a good chunk of people listening to this who have heard about Bitcoin maybe they've heard another bitcoiner on the podcast here or there they've seen me mention it maybe but they don't know what it really is they don't know the value proposition they don't know what you mean when you say it's programmed to go up forever um so I
(26:33) want to kind of go back to basics a little bit sure so for someone who's just listening to this podcast who's maybe heard about Bitcoin but they haven't really thought about it and been exposed to it properly can you give them the 101 on What the Bitcoin value proposition is in your eyes totally yeah um I actually think the best place to start is understanding money a bit better um I like to think of money as our time and our energy in an abstracted form uh what I mean by that is you do this podcast in
(27:06) exchange for that you get money I run strike in exchange for that you get money you mow a lawn you fix a windshield uh you drive a car for someone else you get money so money is the market good that captures our Collective contributions to society it's intended to capture our time and energy so that that time and energy can either be saved or be traded right you can't go to the restaurant after this podcast and say hey guys I just recorded a podcast I'll take two stakes I be like what I don't want that that's what we call
(27:34) barter right um to solve for barter and scale the economy and allow us to hyp hypers specialize on something like a podcast like a podcast isn't a tradable market good for dinner for gas for groceries um but it is for money and so money is that market good again for abstracted time and energy um now if I were to store my time and energy in wheat for example let's go through that mental exercise so I work all day on whatever I'm doing and in return I get wheat well how good is that money as wheat being the money at persisting and
(28:09) saving through time well it's very bad because it's going to go bad and moldy and stale and so that wheat is going to be worth zero in about a week right everyone has moldy bread uh and then how good is that money in exchange can I send that wheat to Europe on my phone right and so um thinking of money is how to capture your time and energy um is a very powerful idea as opposed to like a piece of paper or as opposed to something that your government whatever tells you to use then contrasted to the dollar if a
(28:42) government can print their own money and debase their money that means they're debasing by proxy your time and energy does that make sense absolutely so also a government's ability to borrow their own money is in my opinion as close to time travel as we've ever seen because you're borrowing the time and energy from the collective populace from the future MH that's crazy you're taking time and energy from the future and saying we'll pay it back at some point that's as close to time travel and as malicious of
(29:19) an act but every time the US government prints a dollar they're devaluing me in my life because I've spent time and energy here on this planet in return for that I've got US Dollars and now those are worth less so I'm worth less yes and so the idea that you have a money that's one fixed can't be debased so the holder the time and energy of those that hold it cannot be debased and then that lives outside the purview of a government or a central party or a corporation or any individual is the most powerful concept
(29:50) when it comes to storing our time and energy and you'd have to think through the history of money well historically you try and get as close as you can right Bitcoin right now I believe is as close as we can to the perfect store for our Collective time and energy but once upon a time it was gold yes why because those collection of chemicals get us kind of close it's harder to find more gold and to base our time and energy than it is silver than it is copper right and people think of real estate as a place to store wealth store time and
(30:18) energy why because you can't print any more land unfortunately that doesn't mean you can't print any more real estate right they're they're going to build a building that's thousand stories high in Manhattan one day so we've tried to find vehicles that are close enough at the time and energy piece and in Bitcoin my interpretation of Satoshi and Bitcoin is uh the tool that's best equipped to be money which is the tool that's best equipped to store your time and energy and allow you to save it and
(30:45) exchange it for something in the market so and and um that advancement is so powerful I here's the last sorry I know I'm ranting at this point I love this I think the last thing I'll say um and this may it a little weird or dark but uh I like to compare the guarantee and promise of Bitcoin as a fixed money to the guarantee and promise of death and that we can't live forever what I mean by that is that the fact that I'm going to die and I know I'm going to die is what allows me to value my life if I
(31:21) knew I could live forever I'd go to the gym in 10,000 years I'd think about reproducing in 100,000 years why would I the point is how would I ever be able to Value today M if there's infinite amounts of dollars infinite amounts of debt infinite amounts of printing currency it doesn't allow me to Value the paycheck I'm getting now and so the promise that I will die is what allows me to value my life time as an asset is infinite but my time isn't and it's the promise of Bitcoin the fact that I have
(31:54) a money that is fixed that actually allows me to value my time and energy right now and so when you hear bitcoiners say I got into Bitcoin I got healthier I got into Bitcoin I lowered my time preference I got into Bitcoin and I thought about the world differently um is it's it it is going from a life of infinity which is impossible to Value um to a life that is finite um that requires you to Value it does that make sense too yeah that makes complete sense to me it's just a life altering technology and an advancement
(32:24) in money which is how we capture exchange and Save time and energy between each other amen I think that's one of the best explanations of Bitcoin not from the tech perspective but from the value perspective that I've ever heard so I hope that resonates with the people listening man no for real that's that's powerful I think that two two points I think two things are really interesting with that which is one money is one of the only Technologies I can think of which is worse now excluding Bitcoin I'm talking
(33:01) Fiat money Y is worse now than it was thousands of years ago the money system if you were to go back 100 years 200 years 500 years a thousand years when things were running off gold and off a gold standard it was better that was a better technology in terms of all the things that you're talking about than what we have now and then I think the second point is just that almost everybody who is aive today vast majority of people have never known any different people are just used to the broken money system when you even
(33:35) say money people's brains go to a dollar bill or you know Euros or Pounds or numbers in the bank account or whatever people don't really think of money as that stored labor and energy which you can then use to trade for other people's labor and energy in the form of goods and services which is what it is if you work a job if you run a business if you have a career we are all con stantly exchanging our time and energy for goods and services right it's just constant exchange and we do that through the
(34:05) medium of money because we can't always barter as you were saying um but I just think that because it's you know wed the US go completely off the gold standard 1971 and I think I think in the 1930s the sort of the process began the world wars yeah yeah in many places and so this is just what people are used to right it's just like oh inflation is just inflation is just a given some people think infl inflation is good some people say and you're just like wait if you think about it the idea that you
(34:39) store $10,000 today and then the next year it's worth $9,500 and then later down the line you know you can get to a point where you know that 10,000 is now worth 500 or a th000 and people kind of just accept that and you're just like no that's not meant to happen and historically that wouldn't have happened to say if You' stored your money in Gold I talked to my father who came to the UK um from Nigeria in the 1970s the first time my dad's a medical doctor a physician and um this is this
(35:14) is the 70s we're now in 2024 uh head of the household of a family of now seven but at the time would have been five or six medical doctor in the UK what do you think his annual salary was in the 70s oh jeez in the 70s um what was a house a house was like 20 lb so uh 8,000 lb 4,000 4,000 okay 4,000 a year that was a good guess yeah that that was a good guess but 4,000 a year as a medical doctor in UK right and now you're just thinking like gosh I mean earning 4,000 a month as a doctor wouldn't be wouldn't be a good salary
(36:01) pay your loans yeah and I mean that's only 50 years ago it's not that long you he tells me the story of a mean he and my mom wanted to buy a certain house which cost like I think 15,000 not the deposit the whole house 155,000 at the time that would have been maybe $25,000 and you know they were like no that's that's out of our budget you know we can't we can't afford that and now in many places I mean you can't even get anything under half a million in some places you know approaching aill I so it
(36:29) just shows when you were talking about them you know the fed or the central banks or governments just stealing from people stealing labor stealing value from people born and unborn um it's very real and I think if people truly woke up to that then there would be some form of real Revolution yeah well I think they are um yeah that's exactly right you know so your dad or 4,000 lb a year and I believe a house would you say was 15,000 that they were looking yeah maybe you know 10,000 to 20,000 depending on
(37:07) what you wanted right so that sounds like 2 and a half to three years worth of work to acquire um what's crazy is if people look I encourage everyone listening to go look into metrics like the average year someone gets married uh the percentage of the populace that turns into a homeowner um it's all going very bad so for example everyone used to get married around 22 23 everyone's now getting married around 32 33 um life expectancy is going down home ownership's going down divorce rates going up and these are all metrics that
(37:45) tell me that in order to live a life what you're pleased with it's requiring more time and energy you know your dad could have worked 2 and 1/2 3 4 5 years years to own a home people are having to work 20 30 40 50 years to own a home they're still the same humans so by debasing the currency again if you think of it as time and energy in an abstracted form um you're increasing the time and energy required to live a sustainable life and it it deteriorates Society it's really an awful malicious
(38:16) thing to do to you know when you say steal from people they are stealing the time and energy from the collective populace you know when your groceries double when your McDonald's order doubles whatever that is for you your gas price doubles um it's just requiring more time and energy for you to have the life that you need to have you know what Jack I think you have just nailed a much better definition of what inflation truly is and why it's so bad the standard definition of inflation is either you know increase in the money
(38:48) supply devaluation of currency or just prices going up someone could say that they're often the same thing but I think when you think of it as debasing the value of the collective's time and effort then you see just how Insidious it is debasing you yeah it's like what are you made up of MH the energy you contribute and the time you have yeah that's it right like your life is capped with the time that you're given and your life is expressed through the energy that you contribute and they're debasing and
(39:23) devaluing that so every time they devalue your money they're devaluing you and what an awful crime and so I think we all can feel Society deteriorating in many ways feel people getting angrier we feel civil unrest we feel whatever metric you care about whether it's health cancer rates the real estate market all going bad and I think people are looking for a solution and I hold the personal opinion that the money's broken and when I say the money's broken it's like our ability to store save and
(39:55) exchange time and energy is fundamentally broken and so why do I care about Bitcoin is listen you know people can have their quals with Bitcoin and I appreciate that it's not perfect and it's why I spend my time on it but I think it's the closest thing we have to fixing that problem and there's a saying in Bitcoin fix the money fix the world and when you hear it when you see it and you're not familiar enough with the concepts it sounds maybe a little too insane to take seriously but that's what we mean when we say that
(40:27) is is that if we can fix the ability to store save and exchange our time and energy I think we can fix a lot of the problems with the world can can you connect those dots for people a little bit more because I think I I know what you're talking about but I think the jump from going to having a better form of money and then all those other problems that you talked about family formation um civil unrest division fam familial breakdown all those kind of things I think people struggle to connect those dots so can
(41:03) you kind of walk us through that yeah so um and let me know if I lose you cuz um these are weird Concepts at least when I try and describe them but um you know you time and energy uh when you say someone's robbed their time and energy someone's devalued them uh stolen their productivity or whatever however you'd like to describe inflation um it can't disappear it has to go somewhere else right and so maybe the best way to understand that is like the wealth Gap that we see for example is that you less
(41:35) than 10% of the United States owns over 90% of the wealth and uh that's because when you debase the currency everyone that holds it is getting crushed and is needing to require more time and energy to have a sustainable life and everyone that owns assets that is being inflated so when they print money your house gets inflated your Bitcoin gets inflated all these things get inflated um they acrew wealth naturally without expending time time and energy and so then you get a really disgruntled populace where 90% of
(42:01) the United States of America is required to expend more time and energy every single year to be able to afford a family be able to afford children be able to have a happy marriage to be able to afford a house to be able to afford groceries to be Ford gas and then you have the top whatever it's not actually 10% anymore 98 76 5% of the populace that actually controls and owns all of the collective time and energy from the populace because they own a pocket of Manhattan real estate and so that I think is the best
(42:35) there is no middle class anymore you either own assets that inflate against the debasement or you own the currency that's being debased yeah there's no middle class and so I think that's probably the best descriptor to describe the civil unrest we feel at war with each other but I think the real issue is uh there's a large portion of the population that um I mean listen if a if housing is inflating 20% year-over-year you have to be getting a 21% raise every single year to be making progress towards owning a home um and so there's
(43:09) an overwhelming amount of the population that is requiring more time and energy to have a life that we recognize as worthwhile it's really awful um and so yeah that is where I think a lot of the unrest comes from and um yeah I mean the napkin math on something like you know your groceries let's say your groceries doubled from now to covid let's say it took one paycheck to cover 3 months worth of groceries okay now it takes one paycheck to cover a month and a half yeah right so if you want three months
(43:45) worth of groceries you have to work twice as hard and that's you expending twice the amount of either energy or time energy and time to acquire the same amount of groceries whilst someone who owns who got grandfathered in passed down some apartment complex in Manhattan now gets even more groceries and they didn't contribute any time and energy to the collective populace they just have it because they had the asset and do you know one of the craziest things about this is that the numbers and the examples you're using these are based on
(44:14) places countries like the USA mhm which are the most stable and some of the lowest inflation countries right UK USA and so on if you talk to people who are in Nigeria or in turkey or in um gosh lots of developing countries where the inflation rate is not 5 6 7 8 10% it's 30 40 50 60 sometimes 100% per year which is just I think a lot of people in developed countries can't even fathom that because you cannot plan anything you cannot save you cannot you can't do anything yeah yeah and I think um the
(44:53) reason so Bitcoin is in my opinion the expression of Fiat de basement Fiat de basement is the act of time and energy theft um right in monetary form so that's why when I look at a Bitcoin chart when someone asks wow this monetary debasement thing this theft of time and energy from the populace seems really bad how bad is it I say look at a Bitcoin chart you know that thing that just seems to have gone like a hockey stick um that is the debasement of currency captured in another instrument I mean point is the antithesis of
(45:28) everything we're talking about it's a monetary policy that can't be changed it's a currency that's fixed in Supply and it's a network that's distributed and resistant against any central control and so when something that is printed out the woo a policy that can be changed by politicians and something that's so centrally planned and controlled is expressed it's captured in this thing and so um that's the other real beautiful thing about Bitcoin as well but um anyway yeah I mean the
(45:56) problem with with money historically is uh if you can print it you will yes um because energy and time are the currencies of the universe right energy is the currency of the universe if you think about Humanity from the highest level p possible it's really our ability to commercialize energy from the Sun um that's what yeah the the more we're able to commercialize energy from the Sun um the more advanced and flourishing our speci species and it's just a progressive way of how to engineer a better world and that's through
(46:32) channeling and commercializing energy and so if you have access to print energy and allocate it to yourself you will yes and that you know you can make the argument that that's really malicious and terrible of someone to do you can also make the argument that that's human behavior is that that is the currency of the universe and the currency of our history and if someone has access to it they will claim it correct and so yeah I mean with that's that to me when people say you know bitcoin's decentralized quote unquote I
(47:06) actually hate the overuse of the word you know Bitcoin to me is distributed Bitcoin to me is the point is that nobody can access the energy that's the whole way Satoshi designed why why do you dislike the term decentralized I just think it's been commercialized for Mal intent okay um I don't dislike it on net um but I think it's been co-opted to the whole concept of Bitcoin was not to be like this super duper decentralized thing that can solve decentralized Dentistry um the point was if you can
(47:44) print time and energy and debase it from the populace of holders you will so how can we build something where no one can access the time and energy for themselves and it's like this proof of work idea is that in order to acquire the Bitcoin you have to earn it like Michael saor he paid billions of dollars of Cold Hard Cash real time and energy that he's acquired through his life to get his Bitcoin right and that's that concept of proof of work and so that to me is the system is designed to protect
(48:13) against the idea that human nature is to acquire and monopolize time and energy if they have access to it and that's the problem with the money we have today is that um it's very easy to monopolize and take advantage of the time and energy which is our currency yeah one question I do have about Bitcoin and I say this about someone who's super passionate about it and has been for years but one thing I do wonder when we discuss some of these issues is if Bitcoin goes on and does what we both think it's going
(48:42) to do in the future and let's say it let's say Bitcoin reaches a million dollars at that point have you not have we not do we not now end up with a society where we still have this gigantic perhaps even bigger wealth Gap but now the people who are uber wealthy are just different people do we not is is that not a situation that we we end up with no um well I don't believe so okay uh there certainly will be wealth created um now you can have an argument on whether that wealth creation was deserved and earned right is someone
(49:21) early to bitcoin deserving of the wealth that's being transferred and New Wealth that's being created and there's some people like no they're just sitting on their couch right it's Dave porno friend of mine is like you just sit on your couch for the last 10 years um and then I make the argument that's the opposite of that um that I think can be debated in good fun but uh the interesting thing about Bitcoin in the point is that you have to put in real work into society to persist the wealth so even if you have a
(49:48) lot of wealth your wealth is going to bleach so let me give you an example I live on bitcoin okay um I don't own any cash I own only Bitcoin as far as money goes I own Bitcoin my house my company those are the three things I own nothing else I also don't take a salary from my business so I live on my assets I have to sell Bitcoin every single month to pay off expenses the way I do it is I spend on credit cards and then every month whatever I need to pay down I sell the Bitcoin um and and the point of that is that the Bitcoin gets
(50:21) redistributed right the only way for me to continue to own the same amount of Bitcoin is if I could be earning more than I'm spending does that make sense and so even for someone that has acquired a lot of wealth in order for them to maintain and persist that wealth they have to be contributing more to society than they're taking from it that's being profitable whether you're a business or an individual you're giving more to the world than you're consuming from the world yes right and so that is the difference in
(50:48) the system where someone in the Fiat system that's not the case is that if I can print the capital I'm not actually giving time and energy to the world but I'm receiving it where with Bitcoin it's a fair exchange if someone's Rich someone's rich and if they're able to persist that wealth that means they're contributing time and energy that Society values more than they're consuming from the world right yes and that's the big switch so of course there'll be upper class but in order to
(51:14) remain upper class you have to be contributing to the world and that's not true today yeah you can't just leech off the system or have somebody that's right in the you have to do stuff you have to do things yeah yeah that that makes complete sense you know actually you're the first person who's given me a proper answer on that there we go I'm man what am I two for two three for three G me some I've been I think about I think about these things a lot cuz you been I've been in Bitcoin since
(51:39) 2017 and when I look at it and when I think about that future I just think okay people say they want to solve you know you're never going to solve the quote unquote wealth Gap problem or whatever right human beings are different and we're unequal in many ways although we're equal in you know human Val and in God's eyes I believe we're equal but you know people don't work equally hard people don't are not equally talented people are not equal in many regards so that kind of doesn't
(52:06) make sense I'm no communist um but yeah I I have always wondered okay let's look forward into the future and you know you've got guys who got into Bitcoin know 2009 2010 whatever you know they just kind of stacked it up then some and then you know can kind of just sit on it and then we get to a point where I mean it's interesting when you say Bitcoin being worth a million dollars the immediate question that even comes to my brain is like what's a million dollars worth yeah at that point right
(52:35) um but then I just think yeah we'll just won't we just end up with the same scenario but the guys at the top are just different guys um yeah so that that's a really that's a very solid answer very solid answer what you see in Bitcoin adoption is so in markets in life generally with more demand comes more Supply so the reason I can't store my time and energy which is my wealth in iPhones is because if all 8 billion people wanted 20 iPhones Apple will just make them yeah so there's more demand
(53:10) more Supply bitcoin's the only thing in the world where more demand can't find more Supply and that's why more demand has to find a higher price right the reason gold can't work as currency one of the many reasons is because with more demand we'll always find more gold know how much of it exists elon's talking about I'm going to go to Mars and get it or whatever and so if more demand has to find higher price because it can't find more Supply then what you see happen is a redistribution through the price cycle
(53:40) so price gets up to a high enough point where the people to your point that have been sitting on the couch they do get cars they do get homes they do get engagement rings they do get stuff and that Bitcoin gets redistributed so when people say miners are the people that distribute Bitcoin I'd say holders do as well well every single cycle you can look at it in a chart it's like there's enough demand mhm where then they let go yeah if I want to find more Bitcoin I can't find it in the ground I have to
(54:07) find it in the market and so I also think that isn't totally appreciated that the concentration of Bitcoin is naturally going to be distributed I think it's hard to do you know why I think it's hard to understand is I think it's something that I said earlier and I think it's even me myself falling into this trap which is that we are so used to the Fiat money system and so everything we've known throughout our lives and the way that money is and the way it's distributed it's all always
(54:38) been based on pounds dollars whatever currency so when you even think of it your brain doesn't go to like the point that you made you just think well at the moment there are people who are able to manipulate and move markets and print money and do this and do that and so you're you're just used to that world where people can look most people have to contribute to make money but we all know that there are a class of people in certain places where you can you know you're just next to you're the guy who's
(55:07) next to the money machine you know you're the politician who's making certain policies and got certain lobbyists and whatever it is so you don't need to be out there I mean you know we we we we've got politicians who are I don't know they're on an annual salary of 150k and their net worth their net worth is like 50 million or something you're like h H wait you're outperforming the market by how much like this isn't really making sense you've been a so-called public servant
(55:32) your entire life you've never started a business you've never really been employed by a company and you why why is this person so wealthy yeah you know people get mad at Jeff Bezos or Elon or Bill Gates I'm like well I know why those guys are rich it's very clear yeah yeah um going back to like the civil unrest on top of that point you just made is it is I it's a real shame you know the lower class hates the upper class the upper class dislikes the lower class because they don't feel their it's their fault
(56:04) so when you see you know you're scrolling Instagram and you're getting these dopamine hits of social media and you see Jeff Bezos made 10 billion do today and they do that if he right and if if he donated all of that to Africa he'd solve world hunger and they're doing all this stupid math listen it's not Jeff's fault he didn't think of it this way he didn't contribute $1 billion worth of time and energy to the world today what happened governments debased and stole $1 billion worth of the
(56:38) collective populace time and energy and because Jeff owns assets he benefits from that and so Jeff is upset because he's like it's not my fault I'm just owning the assets and storing my time and energy in things that appreciate against the debasement right and that's where you get the civil unrest from I think think to judge if a society is using a good money is to look at the middle class that's what a lot of people say because you know if I were to say you know you're on the first floor now
(57:07) get to the third floor so first floor is the lower class the third floor is the upper class but there's no second floor you're stuck yep the third floor can never get to the first floor the first floor can never get to the third floor the middle class the second floor is how you have the open capitalist Society the free market to contribute more energy and time to the world that's making you profits to actually transverse and go from floor one to floor three and so the fact that our middle class has been
(57:36) entirely destroyed I mean we're stuck you're either on the third floor or you're on the first floor right and over 90% of America's on the first floor and they're suffocating and they're pissed and they're looking up at the third floor and so um that's another way that I like to think about it and a lot of the civil unrest I think is born out of this idea that it's you know one it's Jeff bezos's fault it's not Jeff's fault he just owns assets he doesn't own
(58:01) dollars right people blame the wrong people right that's that what they say is you know you know billionaires don't own any dollars you know that right it's all invested it's like buy my investing class and but the but the the point is billionaires don't own any dollars because that would leave them susceptible to their time and energy being taken from them so they put it in assets where it's much more difficult to debase the time and energy that they put into acquire the the capital in the
(58:27) first place so it's not their fault but the wealth Gap gets bigger and bigger the more they debase they debase they debase and I think they will I think we'll have to go through the biggest debasement chapter of Our Lives over the next few years um and so it's really a terrifying time if we didn't have Bitcoin I would not have much hope um for society to be honest wow how do you see it playing out what do you think is going to happen let's say let me give you a time frame let's say we're in
(59:02) 2024 let's say next 15 16 years let's say like 20 2040 what do you see playing out between now and then oh man I mean I'm hopeful that the US as really the world leader and World Reserve currency can adopt Bitcoin and we can transition to somewhat of a Bitcoin standard or make Bitcoin more accessible available and appreciated in everyday life um but it is difficult to imagine that um because the us would have to give up the hemony that they've really been trying to protect since World War II right um but in the near term which
(59:42) may be more interesting because it's it's real it's practical I like to look at Global debt to GDP because what that tells me again if you can borrow your own currency then it's as close to time travel as I've ever seen because you're able to go into the future and take time and energy from it and use that time and energy now mhm um the thesis of why anyone borrows any anything and people make loans is because you can produce more growth so the idea is the government's borrowing from our future and they're able to
(1:00:14) produce the growth today so that when we arrive at the future they have even more that's the why you would borrow from it is if you're able to produce more now if you had that time and energy but with global debt to GDP at well over 300% so Global debt to GDP me measures the amount of debt versus the amount of growth so it's the amount they're borrowing versus the amount of growth that they're producing to pay it back and we're now at disastrous levels where you know any Empire that exceeded debt
(1:00:41) levels of you know 150 200 300% collapsed when you say those numbers what exactly does that mean does that mean the amount they borrowing is three times what is being produced so 100% is is Double Y 200% triple 300% 4X 350% is so uh it's the the met I like the metric directionally and you know I don't even you know once it hits 361 per.
(1:01:10) then the world's going to blow up I I'm more so what that tells me is that governments have borrowed so much from our future with no way to pay it back and so when you think of money as time and energy and not you know when people sometimes on television they'll ask me well why don't you know they can just print it or they can just roll the debt over but if you think of it not as a piece of paper and you think of it as our time and energy you know that loss has to be realized somewhere someone's time and
(1:01:39) energy has to be used to make that hole fill MH and that's a huge problem and that's a problem that is going to have to be resolved in my opinion over the next few years that's why I think when I say I think bitcoin's going to 250,000 to a million somewhere in that range soonish one two 3 years you're like how's that possible is well they need time and energy to fill this hole uh and how do they get it like they print it right and um and so anyway that's like as realistic as of a prediction I have I
(1:02:20) mean more practically um I think Bitcoin is the best way to resolve a this debt situation I think Bitcoin is far more American than the US dollar I was born and raised on freedom Liberty democracy um immigration the the American dream none of that I think is realized in the dollar and in society today and so I hope Bitcoin becomes part of America's story which then I think will um Ripple through the rest of the world funny enough you know coming to El Salvador and what happened here it looks like it's it's in the reverse um which
(1:02:58) you know in hindsight makes sense but I'm not sure and I'm not even sure if I answered your question but yeah I don't know man it's hard to know yeah I know I I I'm not expecting some uh you know prediction that I'm going to pull up in the year 2040 totally and uh you know see if it was right or wrong well the the problem or like the really scary thing about the question is logically I have an answer for you but unfortunately there's like a lot of violence and self-interested um malice probably
(1:03:27) that's going to go that's going to happen it the the fear or the reason that people are uncomfortable making predictions is because they can't imagine the US sacrificing this hemony and this overall position within the world that they have had for the last whatever hundreds 70 to 100 years and so that's what's scary about it is often times these things result in world wars and what terrifies me is that not the craziest idea anymore oh no so that's what is fearful for me I do think that there's a way where we peacefully
(1:04:06) resolve of it all and we have the digital version of gold and we go back on this type of standard and restoring time and energy to the collective populace and there'll be a middle class again and then there's a version where you know the world goes out kicking and screaming from this chapter and that's the scary part about that question is um spe it really it can really go in a lot of different directions I I I can I wouldn't be surprised if the USA and other Legacy brand countries you know like the UK Germany France maybe even
(1:04:43) Japan I wouldn't be surprised if they sort of end up being laggards with this so if you were to go back 5 years ago I mean would you have predicted that El Salvador would be the first country in the entire world to make Bitcoin legal tender no dude when I landed here I wouldn't have predicted it and I got a DM from the government saying we want to talk about Bitcoin I wouldn't have predicted it no of course not yeah what I see happening is other small forward thinking countries like I live in the UAE MH I could very easily
(1:05:14) see within the next decade countries like the UAE Qatar Bahrain maybe Kuwait Oman like these Gulf countries maybe even Saudi Arabia maybe some other smaller countries in Central and South America perhaps some countries in Africa I can see them being quicker to start adopting Bitcoin officially than the USA and China and Russia and you know these big countries where things just move slowly and where they have you know they've got all this military power and they're they're kind of stuck in their ways a little bit and they're not as
(1:05:55) willing to I think in El Salvador it's a bit like heck like why not like why don't you know like why don't why don't we do this like let's let's give this thing a try um and I think there're just being a smaller country you know 6 million people versus 350 million you can just move things quicker you can make things happen yeah it's a risk in some ways but the potential consequences are not as you know there's a lot more to gain I think there's a lot more to gain for the US than there is to lose
(1:06:25) but I think in the sort of for lack of a better term and sort of like Boomer Boomer mental yeah Boomer mentality Boomer Fiat mentality it's uh it's it's just hard for it to happen maybe it'll be more of a generational more of a generational shift in the big in U some of these Legacy countries totally um I can agree more I think the one of the bigger problems in my opinion is the politics y so the idea that we have a central bank that separate from the government is a fallacy right we live in this you know fiscal dominance
(1:07:01) where you know Jan Janet Yellen in the US Treasury is really the boss of Jerome Powell in the Central Bank um Jerome Powell's job is to create market dynamics that sustain Janet's ability to Resource and fund whatever the Democratic party wants to do and and it's the same for the Republican to be clear I'm not a politics guy I've actually I'm public on record I've never actually voted in my life so that's how much of like one side of the other guy I am I'm very much not super interested in politics but the
(1:07:32) problem is um giving people the truth at this point doesn't get you elected that's the problem what gets you elected is like hey I'm going to give you guys a bunch of free stuff of course nothing's free but um it's very difficult I think to Envision what we're seeing in Argentina is fascinating because there was enough civil unrest and they were far enough down this chapter where someone camp AED on hey I'm going to blow it all up and it's going to hurt really bad for a while but then we're
(1:08:01) going to be better off and that guy got elected can you imagine if I campaigned against Trump and Biden and said hey guys your gas prices are going to be screwed I'm going to blow everything up banks are going to fail the deposits you have in your savings account that's that was never there it's actually gone um but on the other side of it after like another Great Depression we're going to be the real America I would never get elected no um and so that I think is is the real issue is conflation between
(1:08:27) politics and money and unfortunately just like how the political system is set up is um you got to get elected and you get elected by persisting the system that is and like what if I campaigned and said you know all of your you know retirement um savings plans and your your IRAs like those are gone y um so I think that's the problem uh for El Salvador I thought it was interesting like at the time I had no idea um that it all was going to happen how it did but what I think is is interesting is uh you're right is that they have the so
(1:09:00) they went through a really devastating Civil War lost their own currency so they're on the dollar so they actually didn't have a currency that was you're able to print and debase time and energy from the populace um so for that reason I find it fascinating the next chapter of like no way it was a nation state adopting Bitcoin the next is a nation state that has their own currency adopting Bitcoin the nation state that prints their own currency to buy Bitcoin is going to be a huge deal so for El Salvador it was massive but it makes a
(1:09:30) lot of sense to your point in hindsight um is that it is small has the most to gain um but you know talking to the government and uh understanding their intent it really was out of respect for the people is like allowing them to persist and save and exchange time and energy on on the Market's terms that was like the coolest part about it but yeah for those reasons I think change in America is going to have to come through civil unrest like we saw in Argentina unfortunately which no one wants to live through but I think we're already
(1:10:01) starting to see it like inflation is a known term uh and I actually have a lot of Hope the fact that Trump is campaigning on bitcoin yeah that's interesting I saw that so I think that's I I actually am really hopeful on that um Trump I know to be just don't know him actually but through watching TV and stuff I know him to be transactional so not to say that I think Trump is a bitcoiner and Allin like someone like myself um but it is interesting that the people have garnered enough power through this distributed decentralized
(1:10:39) currency to impact an election and that there's enough civil unrest where the people now how many elections in a row have they been won or Lost based on campaigns directly down to like a singular topic or topics uh that are driven by the voice of the people so I do think we're getting to the point even in America where there's enough civil unrest where um we could see something like I wouldn't be surprised if Trump said I'm going to buy Bitcoin for America as well just to make those promises and whether they're kept or not
(1:11:10) I think that's directionally um a good start I don't know man this topic freaks me out a little bit the world war stuff really terrifies me um history history would point us in that direction but um I'm really hopeful the problem too is is everyone was in World War II um is dead not because they died in the war but it so long ago and so the problem when you have these these turnings of Cycles or these chapter fours or however people Define and call them is that um all the people that learn the hard lessons are
(1:11:41) gone right that's how generational wealth gets ruined is the great grandson that inherited the company that's worth1 billion doesn't have the knowledge and the pain and the grit and the sacrifice that the great grandfather does right and they blow it and so that's my fear is hopefully we've been good enough at you know history and information transformation so that we have learned um and don't because it's crazy to me when a president will send people to War as if that's something that you can
(1:12:11) casually do so I don't know it's a freaky it's a freaky topic I just try and have optimism and hope and uh Bitcoin uh thank thank whoever you believe in for Bitcoin no doubt man what's your plans for the future of strike um we we barely even talked about that crazily enough well honestly um sometimes when I do my business and Bitcoin and my business are my story I feel too salesman so I actually kind of appreciate that um strike I mean we our goal is to deliver better money to everyone in the world through Bitcoin so
(1:12:52) we strive to be the best Bitcoin company in the world um we're just different because we don't focus on any of the other cryptos um we just try and be better at just Bitcoin than everyone else and so the goal is to continue to do that um when you when's it coming to the UK we listen to customers it comes to the UK uh at the end of June oh awesome yeah cool the the really the vision is that I don't believe in any of the other cryptos under this notion that I don't think they're any good at you
(1:13:19) know storing and saving and exchanging time and energy yes all right I think whether it's smart contracts this or that and to me those are far less interesting and I think that the one of the reasons I found it strike is I think there needs to be a company and hopefully many that are solely focused on financial services for the future of money yes and so yeah we're we're really driven by listening to our customers uh I think that's the healthiest relationship a business can have is hey we believe this is the future of money
(1:13:46) so do you guys and you know how can I help you store save exchange your time and energy and so that's why we've been able to do what we've been able to do and so um that's what we'll continue to do I guess from the highest level I love it Jack man it's been a pleasure talking to you thank you for the gift of your time and your knowledge I do a lot of podcasts and this has been one where like I've really felt like I'm learning certain things on a topic that I feel like I already know quite a lot about um
(1:14:18) so thank you for that and I hope it has been of massive value to everybody listening last thing where can people find and follow you online Jack m is my real name uh which in Bitcoin sometimes like Satoshi Nakamoto what's his real name so Jack MERS is my real name you guys can find me that's my handle everywhere and you're a gem brother you really are so thanks for what you do and I appreciate you having me I appreciate it man thank you
