Key Takeaways

This episode of TFTC explores how Bitcoin intersects with economics and societal issues, highlighting its role in addressing systemic problems caused by inflation and fiat currency devaluation. The discussion centers on how inflation forces compromises in the quality of goods and services, particularly in food and health sectors, as businesses are incentivized to produce cheaper, less nutritious products. Parker Lewis from Zaprite argues that recognizing the flaws of the fiat system is essential to solving these challenges. The episode emphasizes that Bitcoin, as a deflationary asset, offers a sustainable solution by preserving value and protecting businesses from the long-term effects of inflation, particularly through its adoption as a payment method.

Best Quotes

1. “Money’s function to store value is necessarily tied to its ability to exchange. If you can’t exchange it, it doesn’t store value.”
2. “If the fiat currency is the problem, and Bitcoin is part of the solution, then being able to take Bitcoin directly from my customers is part of that solution.”
3. “The debasement of money creates the debasement of everything around you.”
4. “The more exchange that’s available, the more valuable Bitcoin becomes.”
5. “It’s not just that the food’s broken, it’s that the incentives are tied back to the broken money system.”

Sponsors

Conclusion

This episode highlights how systemic issues like inflation, economic instability, and declining food and health quality are rooted in the fiat monetary system. The host and guest argue that Bitcoin, as a deflationary currency, offers a solution by preserving value and protecting businesses from fiat devaluation. They urge individuals and businesses to adopt Bitcoin not just for investment but as a sustainable tool for transactions, emphasizing its growing role as both a store of value and a medium of exchange. The episode serves as a call to action to embrace Bitcoin for long-term economic stability and societal improvement.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
0:54 - Money touches everything
10:35 - Exchange theory of value
16:48 - Bitkey
17:44 - Exchange is not zero sum
24:44 - Debasement interferes with market communication
32:55 - Is now the time to switch?
39:59 - Educating Zaprite customers
51:00 - Don’t rug yourself with fiat
55:54 - Bitcoin per unit mindset
1:04:10 - Competitive advantage against the vicious dollar cycle
1:09:35 - Parker’s urgency
1:14:14 - Political influence
1:26:23 - Check out Parker's stuff

Transcript

(00:00) its ability to be exchanged is the only reason why it stores value Parker Lewis head of Business Development at zap right a prolific educator and writer in the Bitcoin space his series gradually then suddenly has helped orange pill many bitcoiners over the years and the more exchange that's available the more valuable Bitcoin becomes and that's the logical connection for people so they don't just sit there thinking I can sit in my burning home not go out and create value not demand Bitcoin as payment and
(00:26) think that this house isn't going to burn that dollar inflation is this vicious cycle and there's no easy solution to it there's no Silver Bullet of saying I'm just going to opt out when do you cut over you're assuming well there's going to be these rails when I need them it's like well how do they just magically exist at the time when everything's collapsing when you need them is your water okay believe so I think we're winning feels like the energy energy feels like winning the conversation I had yesterday
(01:07) with Corney that was one that makes me feel like these tangental parallel movements that we've been talking about for a while are finally going to converge there was some uh we talked about Fiat food and obviously we had Sam from shirtail uh Creek Farms in the other week similar conversation there is is different groups of people philosophically aligned um running towards what I would deal uh deem to be sort of virtuous end goals whether it's clean food education Around clean food getting preservatives
(01:47) out of our food um they're becoming more receptive to bitcoin and that's something you're very passionate about is making sure that these people are accepting Bitcoin as payment so that they can continue to do what they do whether that's running a farm or educating people about how big farma big agriculture big food is poisoning the the lifeblood of our energy which is the food that we eat yeah I mean I think that or we had Matthew leack in uh to I think it was the awesome Bitcoin Club at the beginning of the month and yeah he's
(02:25) almost someone that came from it not directly from the Bitcoin side but more from the the food side talked about how he read the Fiat standard right here um and then that chapter just stuck out to him and he almost didn't believe it was true that the chapter in Fiat sard on Fiat food so then he started doing research and now he's become this I don't say great Advocate but just this Champion who's connected it to the the money system who's figured that out it's like okay it's not just that the food's broken
(02:56) it's that the incentives are tied back actually to the money system and if you don't fix the money then you're not going to fix the derivative or higher level problem that you know exists not exclusively but in large part because of the economic incentives and that you know whether it was having Sam through the commons from shirttail a couple weeks ago or um the interview you did yesterday of like reinforcing these people not just that they should accept Bitcoin payments but the first key being that the problem that they're
(03:29) experiencing and whatever vertical they're working in or passionate about in this case cuz I kind of put them in two different buckets one's the Healthcare System one's the food and those two things are related but if they're trying to solve a problem whether it's related to you know Sam having a more direct consumer model on the food side or someone who's looking at the healthcare space and and looking at you know trying to make America healthy again if they're not identifying that the money is a big part of the
(04:01) problem then they're never actually going to be successful in solving it so the first step is connecting that Bitcoin isn't just a thing and and our thing isn't is is Bitcoin and their thing is Healthcare so therefore it's not Bitcoin it's the money touches everything and um money sits at the root of all these problems to a certain degree and figuring that out first is a necessary step to actually making progress yeah I mean I'm pretty confident that Courtney had an unlock yesterday during our conversation
(04:33) particularly pointing to Fiat food and describing similarly going into more depth than what you just did with Matthew and it's funny like somebody is like a nutritionist focused on food and health and the effects of big Pharma and big food on the overall well-being of American citizens particularly she had no idea the connection cuz it was funny she the reason I brought it up she brought up 1970s like something happened in the 1970s and you look at diabetes rates obesities rates um heart disease rates from 1970 and I was like have you
(05:06) read Fiat food yet and she said no and so I had the opportunity to be like diving into what Matthew what safe originally wrote about Matthew expanded on which is they had to present to the American public that food prices were low so they had to subsidize all this cheap crap and do the hedonic adjustments in the CPI to make it seem like your food costs were lower than they actually were if you wanted to buy nutritionally dense good food and she had no concept of that monetary effect on what she has dedicated her life to
(05:44) which is food and nutrition well yeah and after the podcast when we were all talking it's like once that idea connects it's like well imagine your food your money just starts getting worth less and less and less how do you not have to substitute for worse and worse things and that the impact of that is wide ranging and pernicious and then once it unlocks it becomes obvious but if that hasn't unlocked and you're looking at a problem like she's looking at and then trying to figure out Solutions but if you have not connected
(06:19) it to the money just imagine how ineffective you're going to be in actually solving it um if a large part of the problem is because of the debasement of money and value not holding into the future and and your whole life functionally being debased uh without you know not only a way out of it but not basically being able to see half the equation like you can only work at a higher order rather than a lower level to solve a problem and you're functionally just you just keep swimming Upstream um and never can actually make
(06:51) a dent yeah I've got some salt of the earth in my throat I'm trying to work through right now but great product by the way great product oh bring that up after we finish recording have something to bring up there um no but all it is crazy getting to the root of the problem which is the money because that's what a lot of what we spent um our conversation on yesterday was like all the solutions to the Health crisis the Obesity epidemic in the US is like throw a pill at it like um an ideally one that someone has to take for the rest of
(07:28) their life yes and um the solving that root cause is like getting good nutrition back into um American society and getting good food back in but again going back they're fighting this higher order where it's like we need to pressure Kelloggs to take the food dies out and make sure we're not poisoning our children and again this isn't a knock on anybody like you're in your lane you're focused on what your core competency is like the inability to recognize that that is is a symptom of the need to flood the market
(08:03) with cheaper Goods because you're debasing the money hasn't connected but once that does connect and that's something I'm hopeful for if Trump gets an office and RFK and the Maha movement get some um influence within the administration is that I like to think that we have enough people within the orbit around some of the decision makers that may come into power to really help them make this connection yeah agree and I think that it does feel like we're starting to stem the tide you know just culturally it
(08:36) feels like and a ton of people are or majority of people are still in the Matrix but it feels like enough people are out of it and are connecting these dots that it creates the opportunity for real meaningful acceleration of that Trend and more and more people connecting that they're all related and that the money is at the Crux of all of it because on one side if you're looking at it and saying a lot of this problem is due to constant debasement of money which leads to constant debasement of everything around you that if you also
(09:17) you know haven't connected that that's part of the problem then if you're not solving that part of the problem you you you then can kind of realize well I'm never getting out of this like if someone you know we were having the conversation with Courtney after the podcast yesterday it's like hey if if if you can't actually save good money then like how even if you wanted to like stop replacing you know good quality beef with cereal for breakfast lunch and dinner if you don't have the
(09:50) savings to do that you you can't do that so that you actually what and and it doesn't just make it magically easy to do but unless you take that step to start being able to actually be able to afford things and then like well how do you afford things if everything constantly gets more and more expensive because they keep printing money and debasing it then you're like okay well if we actually want to solve this it's not just kind of educating about you know oh this is the problem but actually
(10:15) giving somebody a viable way to to fix it and if they're not s saving in a form of money that preserves their value over time they're functionally not in a position to do that it's just you're you you're just still in a hopeless position knowing that there's a problem without a tangible solution to actually better people's lives yeah and that's I mean sort of flung this on you but I think it's important to rehash the multiple conversations we've had over the last couple weeks with people that we think
(10:44) should get Bitcoin because it it highlights the order of operations to ultimately what we're going to talk about which is your piece Bitcoins exchange theory of value value and the importance of accepting Bitcoin as payment the order of operations is people first have to recognize this problem and identify Bitcoin as a solution only at after that point can they begin to do the research and really uh Orient their business and their personal finances in a way that allows them to protect themselves against this debasement that we're
(11:15) describing here right or their cause of it's you know in the case of Courtney working on this like broader effort to um really change how people think about health and make a dent in that or you know Sam I'm you know building shirt tail the farm and then local pasture uh the distribution grocery store to get you know product directly from the farm to the consumer to say you know I you know first understand the problem second understand the solution and then being able to operationalize the solution to
(11:44) to advance either a business or a cause an initiative and um you know ultimately what got me not just to you know talk about you know why I wrote the piece but just focusing on bitcoin payments period is yeah and we had a conversation about this I think on the podcast probably a year and a half ago after this slew of bank failures so like thinking about you know pausing from the idea of just you know the the consequences of monetary debasement on all aspects of life but just when your bank is at risk of failure and that and
(12:22) then and what was happening you know with a series of those saying what would we build if you know reliable access to our banks didn't exist that's what really set me down the Journey of Bitcoin payments in the first place but then beyond that you know when we think about Bitcoin as part of a solution which you know to your question it's like yes we all recognize that Bitcoin stores value but until it's like we're never actually going to get to the other side of the problem if the system isn't working independent of all other
(12:59) systems right and a key part of that is being able to um interact directly from an economic perspective and exchanging value um and you know I think if there's an area of Bitcoin that's most underdeveloped it is the payment side but it is you know key to whether you know it's a farmer building a local grocery store and saying okay I'm recognizing that the fiat currency is a problem well if the fiat currency is the problem and Bitcoin is part of the solution then being able to take Bitcoin directly from my customers
(13:30) is very logically part of the solution and that same type of thought process extends out to virtually everyone that's looking or how they should be thinking about Bitcoin and looking at it as an aggregate solution to this problem is it fair to say to you that you think there's been an over index on viewing Bitcoin solely as a store value yeah I mean I think so but not because that's a problem in itself but just like helping people understand and Roy from Breeze wrote an a great article yesterday kind
(14:01) of taking a different approach to explaining similar Concepts but recognizing that bitcoin's only able to store value because it's easily exchangeable um and you know if I'm helping somebody understand Bitcoin from zero to one I'll often times focus on a very simil simple Concepts like it's got a fixed Supply money can't be printed and money that can't be printed is going to store value better than money that can be easily printed and that's a really easy concept for somebody to get especially if
(14:34) they're first starting down the path to understanding Bitcoin but if you go a layer deeper it's that money's function to store value is necessarily tied to between a series of exchanges it actually doesn't have a purpose if there's not an exchange on the front end where you begin to store value and and then an exchange on the back end where you realize that value it's really important that whatever you're storing your value in maintains its purchasing power between those series of exchanges but if
(15:11) it weren't exchangeable on the other side then it will not store value the so thinking about bitcoin's fixed Supply in a vacuum like I'm just going to sit here and save it forever and that's how I'm deriving value of it is just misunderstanding the function of money and part of what I explain in the piece is that at a fundamental level at a very logical level Bitcoin does not increase in value merely by you being willing to buy and save it because every time you buy someone is exchanging value to you
(15:44) you're transferring some value even if it's dollars as as an indirect intermediary and that the consequence of that is that anybody using Bitcoin they're ascribing value to it for what they're able to exchange in the future even if they're not intending to do it for the future or or long into the future and the more easily Bitcoin is exchangeable the more value it will um it will Garner but it actually Garners the value or it increases in value because this is what I explain in the piece that trade is not Zero Sum that
(16:20) the the act like this would be a Turtles all the way down problem if there wasn't Mutual benefit to two parties to a trade uh because that's actually how value is created through the division of labor and through specialization and so I just I wrote the piece and part of the reason why I'm focused on bitcoin payments is because it's a critical aspect of bitcoin's ability to store value and if you're just thinking it of it in a vacuum like it's just a store of value and not a medium exchange you're not
(16:48) actually so freaks this rip of tftc was brought to you by our good friends at bit key biit key makes Bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose it is a hardware wallet that natively embeds into a two three multisig you have one key on the hardware wallet one key on your mobile device and block stores a key in the cloud for you this is an incredible Hardware device for your friends and family or maybe yourself who have Bitcoin on exchanges and have for a long time but haven't taken a step to self- custody because they're worried about
(17:18) the complications of setting up a private public he pair securing that seed phrase setting up a pin setting up a pass phrase again bit key makes it easy to use hard to lose it's the easiest zero to one step your first step to self- custody if you have friends and family on the exchanges who haven't moved it off tell them to pick up a big key go to big keyworld use the key tftc 20 at checkout for 20% off your order that's bit keyworld code tfc2 yeah let's dive further into like these exchanges not being zero
(17:51) some um because you you describe it well in the piece and I think it's really important for people particularly like lay men who aren't um like fully vers in Austrian economics and just e economics more generally and who want to understand this from first principles like why is it not Zero Sum like what like particularly exchanging money to build Capital to provide value to the rest of the world that is net positive so think about there a couple ideas and I'll kind of jump not necessarily to the end of the piece but
(18:28) kind of um towards the end of an idea in one of the early sections where it's like think about Bitcoin and its fixed Supply perfectly fixed terminal State no more Bitcoin no less Bitcoin 100% of all Bitcoin is being saved by somebody at all times and then think about what's functionally happening in that economic system money is moving between individual to individual business to business individual to business and the actual exchange of money is being used to build more and more things more and more Goods exist more cars exist more
(19:08) homes exist more humans exist as humans procreate and build things and then think about this fixed money supply distributed across more goods and services rather than less that is actually the function by which the monetary unit increases in value constant nominal amount of currency and more and more goods and the purchasing power of each nominal currency unit buys more for that reason but it's actually the money that's coordinating the trade that's actually allowing for more Goods to exist that's the inherent function of
(19:45) money and so one of the examples that I use in uh in the piece is thinking about Steve Jobs Steve Jobs used money to pay a bunch of employees and to pay manufacturers suppliers to build an iPhone and the iPhone is capital that's the accumulation of capital now everybody walking in the planet or virtually everyone can have the benefit of an iPhone um so each individual trade if I if I was to think about jobs paying an individual money to do a to do a service in this you know very complex process to produce an iPhone the person
(20:25) who got the money benefited and Steve Jobs mutually benit benefited and then everybody else who bought the product benefited as well but the value creation happens through those series of individual trades that ultimately allow people to build goods and services that didn't previously exist um and through that process is how the underlying value of the unit increases if that makes sense yeah it makes total sense um to me at least but I hope anybody listening understanding the process by which value is created and
(21:02) brought to the world I think an iPhone is perfect example not only is Apple benefit a massively trillion dollar company um but individuals who own iPhones have added more value to the the world just by having the accessibility of an iPhone like we can build apps like if you if you wanted to you can um access the internet and be more productive on the go and so overall productivity is certainly increased due to this one simple product and that product was the product of economic exchange exchanging value via money to
(21:40) coordinate all that activity to produce that end product yeah and so like kind of like using a different example which would be um it's like if if you think about every exchange it's like there's there's two there's two Core Concepts is that one the utility of money is to coordinate trade economic activity and that is actually what allows for division of labor specialization and gains from both of those division of labor and specialization and that this fundamental idea that that trade is not
(22:12) Zero Sum and what that what that doesn't mean is that certain trades can't be like some trades can be Zero Sum and some trades can you know not intend to be Zero Sum but an entrepreneur can speculate in trying to build a new product or service and it not being valued by the market and in that case it's not Zero Sum but the the basis of trade and the reason why trade persists is because there's Mutual benefit and so whether it's an individual working at a company the company's getting a benefit
(22:43) because that individual's performing a role and then the individual gets paid in money and then they benefit from future optionality saying I can go to the market and take this money and facilitate more trades or a producer of goods is buying input to a capital good and their suppliers benefiting from the optionality of money and they're getting the good in return to then build a high you know a good that's further down the production to say build a car right they they bought a Chassy from a a company
(23:16) that you know supplies chassis to GM and GM ultimately builds the car and and everyone along those series of exchanges benefits and you know the similar thing would be in the context of an oil well you know some you know there's a guy working on oil rig right now and he's getting paid money and now he has the future optionality of that money and the company that he's working for has the future purch and power of oil that's coming out of the ground um but fundamental to all of those is that each
(23:43) party to the trade benefits mutually for different reasons and when you add it up that's actually what creates value in the economic system and the reason why I tied in this in the Bitcoin is to help people understand that if they're just sitting there on their L laurels staring at their Bitcoin like that's not actually how value gets created in the world and that's actually not how value gets created in Bitcoin that's not why the price of Bitcoin goes up on their screen the value of Bitcoin goes up on
(24:11) the screen obviously in part because people are learning about Bitcoin understanding why it stores purchasing power but at a more fundamental level is because people are going to be able to use that Medium to facilitate a series of exchanges ultimately to deliver value to other people and the more of that that's happening the more valuable Bitcoin will become because that is the purpose of money and it will also logically Trend towards direct Commerce because that's the most efficient form of trade well yes and I think it's
(24:45) important to highlight like the complex process what we just which we just walked through becomes harder and harder as your money gets to based this coordination um and this these transactions Mutual benefit um in a currency that is increasingly and um uh ever faster be coming to base at some point like it's not mutual um because the like if you use extreme example Zimbabwe Venezuela like people get paid and they'd have to go spend it right away and the person they were um exchanging those bolars or um Zimbabwe notes with were the people
(25:26) that ended up with them like actually got the [ __ ] end of the stick Because unless they could turn around and spend it immediately as well like that was um arguably like a bad trade-off for them right and so you know kind of addressing something on the Bitcoin side someone might say well if I give you my Bitcoin and then it goes up massively in value then didn't I get a worse deal from that trade and the the answer is it's like if you are spending any form of money like if you're spending dollars it's theore
(25:58) at the opportunity cost of not owning Bitcoin so it doesn't actually change the calculus and yes anybody who is endeavoring say to invest if you were spending for investment purposes you should ideally be thinking about it in Bitcoin terms and to say hey well if I'm going to exchange this Bitcoin to go try to build this product you should have the intention of only doing that if you expect you can get more Bitcoin over time what happens when money is storing its value in this end state is that money is actually storing his value
(26:30) rather than losing his value and you bring up a really important point which is and this is something that I do not think that people appreciate because they think well I'm just going to save in Bitcoin and spend my dollars but as the dollar gets increasingly volatile relative to goods and services and loses more of its value more quickly it actually makes the process of trade and exchange harder and a great example of that which is you know for you know people should go listen to uh the podcast that you and
(27:09) Sam off recorded from shirtail he talked about having to look at his business basically after the fact realize what his cost had actually gone up and then basically like a year or two later then increase prices he's constantly having to re-evaluate his business model because the money supply changing not just because his Market is changing independent of that fact and that itself creates friction to trade and that as this continues to go on that what's really happening is the like what inflation is it is money printing but what
(27:47) hyperinflation is as an extension of that is not just because they printed too much money and the money became worthless it's that the the degradation of the money the debasement of the money actually made trade harder to coordinate as that happen certain businesses fail and goods actually start to become scarce relative to the amount of money it's just it's not a constant amount of goods and services and more and more money existing it's that the the more and more money existing is actually what
(28:18) causes the goods to become scarce because a business model breaks a business keeps raising their prices until they price their customers out and then their customers start stop showing up and they can't continue to service the other ones because their businesses now become unprofitable and in that sense as fiat currency loses its value increasingly it becomes less and less Mutual if I'm saving in Bitcoin and I spend a small portion of it and the rest of my Bitcoin gets worth a lot more that was still a mutually beneficial trade
(28:51) especially if I was a consumer buying something like stake that I needed to survive till the next day um but this broader point point of you can't just sit and I I think about that you know the dog sitting in the the house on fire saying everything is fine that's what that's what I think is actually most relatable to this idea that I'm going to store value in Bitcoin and never spend it and think that that's just going to continue to go on because there's a real consequence to you taking a bad form of
(29:21) money directly and it losing purchasing power until you can ultimately get into the good form of money and the way to solve that for all parties is just to transact in the good form of money and to be exposed as less and less to to the bad form of money yeah it's either the this is fine meme or congratulations you played yourself because the mindset of I'm just going to sit on my Bitcoin and spend dollars not recognizing that spending those dollars with people that provide you goods and services that make
(29:56) your quality of life possible does not not put them in a good position to continue to provide that good or service into the future you're functionally just externally you're what you're doing is you're externalizing the cost of the Fiat system onto the business owner that you supposedly yeah right and so in one of the prior pieces I had written um I explained that if you don't actually value the service that and you don't want it to be around maybe it's not rational to spend Bitcoin but if we
(30:26) value Sam and sh and local pastures and we know that he's going to be better off if he has Bitcoin and collectively all of us have we can cut out the Fiat system and that that's going to be important to the the future viability of our ability to exchange value with our local grosser who's also our local Rancher then it becomes very rational and that if you're just sitting there because there's this there's this logical dilemma for the scenario where it's I'm just going to save in Bitcoin and and
(30:59) spend in dollars it's either you're holding a lot more dollars than maybe you should be or well when does that change when does inflation get so bad and not just bad in degree but the speed at which prices change because that's actually what happens in in hyperinflation when do you cut over like it's almost you're assuming well there's going to be these rails when I need need them it's like well how do they just magically exist at the time when everything's collapsing when you need
(31:34) them the reality is it happens because there's already an there's already an a mutual incentive to purs pursue it even with say the friction of the tax system um and for people that are high agency to realize well I can't just go from today to this future state where everything's working if something's not making it work along the way progressively um and that it's not actually consistent with reality say like I'm just going to sit in this Burning home where you know inflation's
(32:06) getting worse and worse price changes are getting more and more frequent more economic imbalance exists exists rather than less more censorship in the financial existem exists rather than less and the fed's lowering interest rates and they're about to have to print money this house on fire is only going to uh be further engulfed in flames so if somebody's not high agency then and and what will ultimately happen for maybe most people is certain people are high agency and those people will benefit because of the people that were
(32:42) um complacent you know yeah the people that are complacent will benefit because other people were hire agents they say like okay I'm not going to wait till I can't escape the burning house I'm going to go ahead and help create a solution to that problem yeah and that's so I think what we're mean this is something we talk a lot about just not in the context of payments but like timing and obviously Merchant adoption was a big meme back in like the 2013 2014 era like Roger ver binn Jesus that
(33:12) it's part of the reason why he um forked off because he didn't think um Bitcoin is a medium exchange at the protocal level was being prioritized enough um didn't think like Solutions like lightning but it arguably at the time 2013 2014 the market wasn't ready for merchant adoption bequeen was a fraction of the market cap that it is now um I guess that's what I'm trying to get at like how do we know when the timing is right like is inflation increasing at a pace where you think it is wholly
(33:44) necessary at this point in time to begin uh adopting the rails um just for redundancy sake whether that's because you want to have the rails available to accept the better money um to protect yourself from De basement or have the better rails to protect yourself from a banking crisis which gives you uh creates an inaccessibility to your money both no yeah and no one can know no one can time anything perfect or no one has perfect knowledge to say is is now the right time there's a few things that I look at to at least think conceptually
(34:24) about it which is multiple 200 billion dollar banks failed practically you one of them failed practically overnight the other one failed over a matter of a couple weeks and those were the third and fourth largest bank failures ever in the United States so the system is still just as fragile as it was in 2008 as it established that it was in 2020 and again demonstrated in 2023 another thing is that yeah Bitcoin is you know at equilibrium now storing over a trillion dollars of purchasing power and I believe you guys
(35:06) that tftc put out I you know I think people can think about these different ways but that Bitcoin is the somewhere between the fifth and 10th largest currency system in the world base money yeah base money um but base money is relevant if bitcoin's at the very Inception of another adoption wave if adoption increases by from here had an equilibrium of 1 to 1 and a half trillion if adoption increases by 5 to 10 times then that's 5 to 10 trillion that not only represents purchasing power that mer that Merchants become interested in to
(35:46) say okay I can sell to that that market or I want to sell to that value it's also that value is an output of enough people valuing Bitcoin that there's enough potential density to begin to drive a trading economy right and again that that is difficult to to forecast of like when is enough density enough but as there's greater density there's greater opportunities to trade and exchange just by definition as there's more people holding Bitcoin there's more buyers and sellers more there's more consumers and businesses
(36:27) connect with yes and so just thinking about the the say the size of where Bitcoin is today a trillion versus a billion in or between a billion and five billion and uh 2016 you know when that might have been um and saying that it's 100 to A Thousand Times larger right um but then also again if you recognize that if you've recognized that the fiat currency is a risk to you from a bance sheet perspective from this store of value um quote aspect then it should become logical maybe the the danger to you does
(37:10) not seem as clear and present but if that currency is a risk then the rails of the currency are logically also a risk and that it's one of those if not if not us then who if not me then who if if if now then when right um and because there's so much negative asymmetry at a system level and at a business level that it's logical and instinctual to to protect yourself against the risk of Ruin to say like I can't wait until I absolutely have to have this new rail to then begin thinking about building it and that the more High
(37:57) agents people there are that think that way the less pain there will actually be um and so you and then it and then it does you know it's always reanchored back to this fundamental to help people understand which is storing value to what end right it only exists if its ability in its ability to be exchanged at some future date even if you never intend to spend it the value of Bitcoin is dependent on your future optionality to spend and the more of that that exists the more valuable the currency unit is to you if
(38:38) you had Bitcoin and you could only sell it at one place if you could only exchange it with one party how valuable would Bitcoin be if you could only exchange it at five places if you could only exchange it for 10 places if you could only exchange it for fiat currency and you were dependent on those centralized sources what's the value cap of Bitcoin if you're able to spend it at every Merchant around your local economy just the sheer number of people that are willing to bid for your Bitcoin the more optionality you have it should be
(39:12) logical oh the underlying medium is actually more valuable to me the more places not less than I can spend it and that only happens and again I I think about this very logically it's like somebody's not going to accept Bitcoin as payment nor do I think they should be accepting Bitcoin as payment or or even using Bitcoin as medium exchange if they don't first understand why Bitcoin stores value at that same time its ability to be exchanged is the only reason why it stores value and the more exchange
(39:41) that's available the more valuable Bitcoin becomes and that's the logical connection for people so they don't just sit there thinking I can sit in my burning home not go out and create value not demand Bitcoin as payment and think that this house isn't going to burn yeah and through your I mean what are you guys seeing in zap right like what is the typical AR like is the typical archetype of your customer somebody who's recognized this there's newer older big obviously we use Z right to invoice
(40:14) everything we do here at tftc I mean I made The Logical decision to run my business on a Bitcoin standard seven years ago um but or in terms of like new zap rate customers what is what are some of the different archetypes so I mean we we focus the product and what we're actually building specifically and you know in part how we Market it but also how we build it specifically to people who already understand Bitcoin um so really there's two archetypes but they have one thing in common the two archetypes are Bitcoin
(40:50) is qu to their business they work in Bitcoin mining they run a Bitcoin podcast they host a Bitcoin event or conference or for something core Bitcoin is Central to it so that that's that's one archetype the other archetype is just a small to medium-sized business that's generally privately owned that has one or two key decision makers that understands Bitcoin and understands why Bitcoin is important and understands why they need to make an investment in infrastructure to be able to diversify and be able to make
(41:28) for their customers that want to pay them in Bitcoin make that available basically reducing a risk from their business the thing that is common across both of those archetypes is people that understand Bitcoin what we find I find is if I'm talking to somebody that's having to be explain the benefit of Bitcoin at the same time that they're trying to understand should I accept this as money as payment directly it's a it's ultimately a waste of time for both parties it's like hey go read a book go read the Bitcoin
(41:58) standard go read gradu then suddenly you know broken money um but more and more people that are just sole Proprietors or you know um you like Sam has taking Bitcoin on his um online store we're working on you know trying to convince them to do that in person obviously we need the tools to be able to do that um local dentists just set up a local orthodontist um bike shops so it very it very much is that small business where once it the idea of Bitcoin unlocks for somebody the business owner can take the forward action to implement that
(42:34) obviously it's a lot more difficult the larger a business is the more stakeholders there are to gain a consensus to then and then it's also often times more expensive to them to be able to implement something because there's a lot more red tape a lot more approval processes that things need to go through um but it is just normal people who understand how difficult running a business is and understanding how much more difficult running a business is when what you're being paid in constantly gets destroyed and so
(43:03) we're really focusing on the early use cases where it's either a core you know Common there's bitcoiners willing to pay and there's a lot of uh you know where Bitcoin is core to someone's business but then also for the people that that Bitcoin isn't core to their business they're basically saying okay I understand this medium Bitcoin I understand why if I don't take this step step I'm going to have to at some point in the future and I can use it as a strategy Advantage now and today by
(43:35) attracting bitcoiners to my business and even if they don't pay me in Bitcoin the fact that I accept it is a advantage over my competition it's a way for me to find customers and so um those are really the two archetypes that that were you know targeting the product toward and are the people that are coming in um most commonly yeah and for that small to medium business that isn't core to bitcoin um I know that you talk to a lot of your customers every day like does that ever done see get them peace of
(44:06) mind like even if people aren't spending Bitcoin with them I don't think it's so much peace of mind I think that um it is it is always twofold it's I'm doing this to eliminate a cost and and so on that side it it's part peace of mind but it's more again that high agency like I'm solving a problem you know like if a business owner identifies a problem in their business they don't necessarily just fix it for a peace of mind it's like okay I fixed that problem now I can move on to the next problem I can I can
(44:39) know that that that that piece is solved and and so I don't necessarily think of problem solving as as just peace of mind and then it's forward action of saying okay now that I have this I want to turn it into an asset I want to make this known to my customer customers make it known why I'm doing this why it's important to me and why they should come work with someone that's values aligned and you know and that's you know very logically other bitcoiners so um you know peace of mind I said is only
(45:13) one component but they want to actually then get value beyond that um and so it it's kind of leveraging it not just as a cost center but to you know take ground yeah I don't want to say partly answer but I was going to ask next like what what do you think needs more attention the actual tools to facilitate these payments of the education around why people should leverage these tools in the first place and you mentioned something that reminded me of um our do our former doctor um she retired but that's one
(45:48) thing I really app like she used app right I paid her Bitcoin but she did have this section on her website which is like we accept Bitcoin explained why she accepted Bitcoin like she was values aligned with sound open source money and that alone um by her accepting Bitcoin and having to explain why because people could see it a checkout like you just see it and there's no explanations like why am I doing this as a business owner some Veronica particularly felt compelled to to explain why and that's in of itself like a an education touch
(46:23) point for for people who are not aware of Bitcoin um but still the the broader question like what needs more attention right now education round why or why you should use the tools or attention on making the tools as seamless and easy to use as possible so it the answer it's um they each relate to the other which is the tools have to exists in order for and they have to be easy to use in order for someone to the opportunity to be educated on why they're important to then adopt them but then the more that
(47:02) people adopt them the better the tools become and the more resources you have to go out and educate more people on why they're important and so I think that on the front side it is delivering the actual tool that for sufficient number of merchants to be able to adopt um is is necessary but beyond there it does then the first step is educating the merchants the the Bitcoin holders saying you if you are a business owner you should invest in this for your business and you should open up this Avenue for your customers and that will
(47:46) benefit your business on a range of on a range of levels that next step which we do encourage business owners to do is to make it known that you're accepting Bitcoin and not just that but why because in Veronica's case it was she valued sovereignty she understood Bitcoin and she wanted to tap and attract local patients here in Austin that were values align uh yeah her service was open to a broad-based people but it became a not just like a marketing channel and like how do I go you know acquire customers on the internet but
(48:27) okay this is what my service is how do I find people that actually value what I'm delivering to the market these bitcoiners seem to Value the service I'm delivering if I do this that will be a signal in itself and if I tell them why then I'm more likely to attract more of them and you can say that you know I don't want to say she's unique but she's somebody that's very sovereignty minded and and Bitcoin resonated with her very well but anybody that's figured out why Bitcoin is a better form of money and
(48:54) recognized like as I'm talking about as a business owner that why the fiat currency is a problem and they open up their business we have you know like thinking about a dentist in Michigan saying hey all my customers you can you can pay me if you want and if you're in this local area come come to me if you're a bitcoiner it's a way to signal and communicate that your value is aligned and the more that people know that you're accepting Bitcoin because you understand Bitcoin and that you're
(49:24) saving in Bitcoin that is also a NE necessary I say necessary it is a piece that is important to getting people to actually pay you in Bitcoin because if you accept Bitcoin and you're immediately converting it to Dollars and everyone knows it and they know that you're not actually values the line why would they do that if they have dollars they'll just spend the dollars there that's not in every case but it's a two-sided equation it's like the tools exist the merchants have to be educated
(49:53) why this important so those people that are sitting in the burning house will say okay I'm a Bitcoin I understand Bitcoin I run a business me not doing this is actually low agency if I do do this and if I invest in this side of my business I can then go market and acquire bitcoiners around me they'll be a lot of benefits that come from that and then as that happens it's like if the rails exist and no one uses them the rails will not get better or the rails just won't exist and so there do have to be
(50:26) and we think this is very much a merchant L um you know two side of the equation which it's like it's not consumers saying I want to pay in Bitcoin it's people that run businesses that understand the benefits of Bitcoin understands the risk of Fiat rails and say you know I'm going to to build this into my business before I have to and then turn it to an advantage but in order to turn it to my advantage I need to educate my customers because that was core to maybe why I decided to do this in the first place because I was educ Ed
(50:57) at so it becomes logical to extend that education yeah it's the converse of what we talked about earlier which is again you don't want to be the congratulations you played yourself meme like holding your Bitcoin and not supporting the business owners that you depend on for the goods and services you use throughout your life conversely the the business owner wants to attract the bitcoiner because they want that customer that actually has good money has money to spend um and actually preserves value um to sell their goods
(51:32) and services so it is a symbiotic yeah yeah it's a very symbiotic relationship I gave a presentation a few weeks ago talking about the various different benefits and that I think is one of the again it is hard to appreciate if you are sitting there looking at the world saying I'm going to just store value in the Bitcoin and I'll deal with Fiats as a rail not realizing that the Fiat system and the rails of that are a risk that if you are not like this this seems like a taale event the reality is it's an
(52:07) inevitability so you might say well it's not going to happen for two decades I'd say it probably happens in this decade but even if I'm wrong is there is there some reason why you wouldn't benefit from the same logic and that that logic is well and I use this cartoon not to make light of what's happening in Venezuela but there's this cartoon where a guy shows up with a wheelbarrow of dollars and Maduros or boulevards I guess and Maduro sitting at a um in a shack with several rolls of toilet paper
(52:47) and the guy shows up with a wheelbarrow of full of cash and then walks away with one roll of toilet paper that if you're customers and if you're not catering your customers to people who hold Bitcoin so if your business is highly catered to people that only have fiat currency as you need to increase prices if I think about Sam and local pastures as he increases the price of eggs it at a certain point people that only have Fiat get Tapped Out by Fiat price increases and that's ultimately how your business gets impaired because
(53:24) your Revenue either goes down because you lose customers you you've increased price which means that fewer and fewer customers are sharing more and more of the burden or you're constantly having to invest marketing cost to acquire more customers so it's kind of like running on a treadmill but one thing happens for certain as you continue to increase prices somebody someone of your customers says I I can't keep paying this I'm I'm going to downgrade my life to some shittier Factory eggs yeah um
(53:56) and that by catering your business to people whose money is storing purchasing power and you contines this example is like hey when the egg price increases happen if I can actually purchase more eggs despite the dollar price increase because my Bitcoin has saved value and I'm saving the majority of my value I can continue to be a customer that S I don't actually have to degrade My Lifestyle I I can sustain the dollar price increases because my bitcoin's purchasing power continues to go up despite that fact well put your s on the
(54:27) other side of that equation which is the business owner if you don't have customers like that eventually your customers start showing up your customers can no longer be your customers and if somebody's looking at that equation saying like what's the likelihood of that happening it's that is happening every single day like right now and because as food at the grocery store costs 50% more than it did four years ago they still have to keep buying food so they might not only have to substitute you know one quality of food
(54:58) for a lower quality food but they're cutting something else out of their life so it's like even if you're not raising prices somebody else is and they might have to turn your service off because they can no longer sustain it and that is happening every single day right now today we see videos of it all the time um and the faster or the sooner that someone says I'm open for business with Bitcoin I get it I know why I need to Value you I know why I need to cater to you you can pay me in the money that you
(55:29) hold and I actually prefer that and if you pay me in that I actually have a better chance of continuing to be be able to deliver this service that you value there's the mutual benefit there's how Bitcoin is actually creating value the more exchange is helping to facilitate the more value you actually get from the remaining 99.
(55:51) 9% of your Bitcoin that you didn't spend on that individual transaction yeah and let's dive into one of the marketing tactics that we've been talking about last few weeks which is um publicly positioning your products in a um a Bitcoin per unit and tracking that and articulating that to the market yeah qu a marketing tactic strategy just something that's that is something that is logical for if you follow if you're a business owner as an example and you follow this logic that as you increase prices you're ultimately pricing
(56:32) somebody out you're you're impairing your business because you're now having to recreate A customer from that person that gets priced out and if you keep doing this you're only tailoring your business to customers that that have Fiat or you're not actively trying to get customers that have sound money whether they pay you in Bitcoin or not you you're going to face this dilemma and um that what really matters and this is where you know it's like clearly the dollar still the unit of account clearly the
(57:02) dollar is the primary Reserve asset however as more people hold Bitcoin reserve and Bitcoin will become the primary Reserve asset for the for the reason that it will become the primary medium Exchange in in the unit of account but if you saving in Bitcoin and because Bitcoin increases in purchasing power for the reason that it is a fixed Supply and more people are adopting it for all of those Collective benefits then your unit of account is really Bitcoin and so even if you're not tracking things in your daily life like
(57:44) think like what it means to be a unit of account humans do hundreds if not thousands of economic calculations in their head that they don't that they might even be conscious of on a daily basis that's all still done in dollars but there's a moment where you're thinking about something maybe like a house that you're going to buy and you say how much does that cost in Bitcoin and what percentage of my Bitcoin is that house you're starting to price things in Bitcoin well because they keep printing
(58:12) dollars and because people continue to increase prices in dollar because their input costs are going up that the way that I think it becomes logical to measure your own Effectiveness as a business is to start to think about your dollar price PR increases in Bitcoin terms and so again translating this to a finite surface area so someone can understand what I'm talking about it is I did this analysis which was looking at the eggs at the local farmers market going from 8 to 875 this is a great example of congratulations you played yourself on
(58:44) the feds part yes and um we'll explain that and then well yeah well in this I I'll explain that now six years ago the price of Bitcoin was dropping from its astronomical rise uh I would say it was correcting from 20,000 down to three or 4,000 and the FED wanted to dunk on bitcoin and said hey look the price of eggs are going up in Bitcoin terms and so they wrote A Blog and realistically it was about volatility but they were making this point that the cost of eggs was was going up in Bitcoin terms drastically
(59:18) and then if you extend that and and the blog is still up and they have a chart now that is like a Fred chart uh St leis fed produced that is the cost of eggs in dollars side by side with cost of eggs in Bitcoin and you can see that the cost of eggs national average in dollars has gone from a47 to $381 a dozen an increase in dollar terms of 160% but from that low of 2018 when the fed put out the the piece to highlight that the price was was increasing in Bitcoin terms over time for fundamental reasons the price FS drops in Bitcoin and that
(59:58) it actually costs less now in Bitcoin to buy the same dozen of eggs so extended so it was like yeah that was that was the OWN on the FED part but it did demonstrate these two Divergent Trends also establishing or helping to establish why as a business owner you should start to be think again I'm not saying price things in Bitcoin to your customers but thinking about as your contemplating changing dollar prices to use Bitcoin as that Lighthouse as that anchor to say am I increasing the cost of my good in nominal terms and real terms or
(1:00:36) am I just accounting for the fact that they've they've printed more money and the way to do that is to say you know and I'll I'll use a hard example which is our local Rancher $8 of eggs going to $8.75 and that $8 price was the case from 2021 to 2023 and then just a few months ago was increased to 8 75 which is a 99% do price increase but if you look at it over any of those three years in between the current price of eggs in Bitcoin terms is less so he yes he increased his price in nominal terms in
(1:01:11) dollar terms but he didn't increase his prices in real Bitcoin terms and if his business is Catered increasingly to people that have Bitcoin then that's what ultimately matters to them and any business owner that is trying to sustain themselves can accept that dollar price increases are inevitable because dollar they're making a lot more dollars but if you're not able to consistently maintain or reduce your price in Bitcoin terms then whatever dollar price you're reflecting is probably going to impair your business
(1:01:46) more than it otherwise should and again it's not to say start pricing your things in Bitcoin it's that start being aware of your dollar price increase and thinking of them relative to the the change in the price of your good in Bitcoin terms over time as this barometer this kind of check and balance to see whether or not um you're actually um becoming more effective in in in in the in the hard money term which over time becomes the the more important Arbiter and then my perspective is people should actually lean into it
(1:02:19) because in certain cases price increases in Dollar World are inevitable and just as you know I might get out on Twitter and talk about how yeah hey this good or service just increased this amount is to start leaning into it and saying yes we have to increase our prices because they're making a lot more dollars our inputs are going up in dollar terms because there's more dollar floating around competing for the same number of goods and services but we didn't increase our prices in Bitcoin terms we
(1:02:49) encourage you to pay us in Bitcoin and you know we'll continue to be transparent about why we're increasing prices um but the more more you can help us of paying us in the form of money that can't be debased will allow us to in real terms actually reduce prices over time because that's ultimately what we think matters most to our ability to continue to deliver this service again I'm not saying that someone's going to hear that and immediately be like yes I'm going to do that tomorrow but
(1:03:16) fundamentally that is the right logical way to think about it and it's the It ultimately becomes the recipe of survival and success for business owner and the way that they start to shift over to a Bitcoin standard not just accepting it not just saving it on their balance sheet but thinking about the the relationship between this kind of water bed that's existing of dollar price is constantly changing and and the impact that has on their business and making sure that they can always look to the anchor the thing that's not changing
(1:03:46) Bitcoin and say am I am I raising my price in Bitcoin terms because that would make that would not make sense because they haven't been printing Bitcoin and then looking at that over time um and that becomes one way that over time you slowly start to normalize into uh ultimately a Bitcoin standard in Bitcoin prices yeah and we've been uh we've been spitballing ideas around because there has to be some sort of like trailing index on this because due to just bitcoin's price volatility like if you let's just say you increase let's
(1:04:25) say we have a similar cycle the Cycle's pass we have a blowoff top next December and you increase prices that month and then you increase them six months later and bitcoin's gone down like 30% whatever it may be um technically that would be like an increase in Bitcoin prices um so that we've been trying to figure out like what is the index or the trailing time period which you track this right and I think that you know reality is you you do it like Bitcoin is still volatile um but the question is if you were if you were increasing
(1:05:00) and this is the other side of the equation of like if I was a business owner how I'd be thinking about this if I'm increasing my prices every six months like I've got a real problem um and that's just reality and and and and part of this discussion or this line is accepting this fact that dollar inflation is this vicious cycle and there's no easy solution to it there's no Silver Bullet of saying I'm just going to opt out and I'm on Bitcoin now and that's it it's like no that's not the way the real
(1:05:36) world works if I'm a local Ranch if I'm a local grocer if I'm a dentist whatever I'm doing I have you know maybe 1% of the world understands Bitcoin I've got costs that are dollar denominated I've got more dollars competing against an existing pool of resources that's just reality but I can either be lower agency and not take marginal steps to to move off of that problem or I can be hire agency and take those marginal steps and so thinking about it and saying hey like in the the local ranchers case where I was showing
(1:06:13) this example I looked at it as a two-year average and looked at it compared to 2021 2022 2023 saying like Okay like you know is this is this generally in line it's like it's it's a best effort it's not I mean maybe I have to but I'm at least paying attention to this and being aware of it while I'm doing it and if you're looking at something over an average then you're taking into account volatility but the other half of how you solve this is if you were saving in Bitcoin your balance
(1:06:45) sheet over time and again there's no quick solution to this but if you are progressively saving in Bitcoin that balance she is what is paying and helping bear the brunt of dollar price increases because if you were thinking about P passing price increases onto your customer but then thinking about them in relation to bitcoin if you've been saving in Bitcoin for a year maybe bitcoin's gone down over that year but if it's two years if it's three years you you increasingly become you know in
(1:07:20) the in the green or in the black to say like okay I've stored purchasing power my inputs are actually cheaper now because I've saved in Bitcoin and when my supplier increases my price I can look at it and say do I want to pass that increase on to the customer or you know what I've saved in Bitcoin for this reason I'm going to choose to defer the price increase to gain a competitive advantage against my customer because I can still buy the same amount against your competitor yeah of product yeah um
(1:07:54) now marginal profit is always important and you're going you're not going to want to be um running any activity at a loss but by having your balance sheet saved in Bitcoin and thinking about like you know one way that I relate it to business owners is thinking about each gross profit unit and saying you get the pro gross profit unit and then from that point forward it's degraded and degraded and degraded imagine if each of those gross profit units marginally not 100% all at once was converted into Bitcoin
(1:08:27) because also when people are accepting Bitcoin payments it doesn't magically just show up that 100% of their business is getting paid in Bitcoin it's 2% 3% for 5% for us it's like 20% yeah right and so that might become what you are just able to save and put away but then over time as you need to pay your employees more well you had the Bitcoin and it's offset the dollar inflation so you know you're good and part of the impact of that those dollar price increases is blunted by your balance sheet and so by looking
(1:08:58) at this collectively it's like okay we can't just magically solve this vicious cycle of dollar inflation the only way out is through the storm and I have to start thinking about both how I pass on dollar price increases to my customers as well as how I manage price increases from my suppliers or my inputs with this tool and um and looking at it collectively on both you know being conscious of Bitcoin denominator or I'd say real terms as well as nominal um and then also how you manage your balance sheet is is the only
(1:09:32) way to actually solve a problem yeah now I admire and really value your not only your I don't want to call it zealotry but your passion for this particular problem and solving because I you've really hooked onto this problem like two years ago when inflation like hit 9 10% and I remember having conversations with you you not panicked but like we need to go to a gas station figure out how to get them to accept bit we need to go beef initiative was blowing up it's like good we're getting the ranchers figured
(1:10:07) out but there is this urgency I would argue there certainly should be some urgency to get everything that we've been discussing into motion as quickly as possible because we have been in this period where the rate of inflation's come down that's B I mean a lot of people into a false sense of security what I would say is certain things have started to come down in price food has not and anything generally marginal servicewise has not like fuel has but again we've massively depleted our strategic reserves that's
(1:10:47) the functionally on a marginal basis like printing oil or gas um and so there's just this fundamental reality that as the Fiat system deteriorates it doesn't get less expensive in Fiat terms to deliver Goods like it becomes more and more efficient with sound money to deliver services cheaper and cheaper that problem does not magically get better and we are setting up for this next point of they're lowering interest rates and they are about to print a [ __ ] ton of money this problem is not you know it's like kind
(1:11:23) of if you're in the eye of the storm Maybe maybe that's the right analogy and it's not to to panic but it's it's the it's to operate with urgency and intentionality about there's a there's a problem it's clear it's present we can be higher agency and go you know figure out how to put one foot in front of the other and actually Advance towards solving a problem or we can sit back and you know hope and change the strategy um and that you know I do you know like we've literally lived
(1:11:58) in a world in 2020 where and again it was a government L shutdown but the beef at the grocery store stopped showing up the solution to that problem was like go shake a Rancher's hand and make sure that you have a relationship with that guy and so that that guy keeps putting food on your plate and you have a direct relationship you reduce a risk um but just thinking about that problem as a microcosm to everything it is that businesses fail because of inflation more businesses fail as inflation worsens because they're constantly
(1:12:38) having to spend more of their time looking at this understanding how they're backwards and they need to increase prices and then they impair their business by pricing certain customers out and so if you accept this premise which is that it makes businesses harder to run with inflation it's not just you know the academic Economist saying well you know or the person sitting there saying I'm just going to store my value in Bitcoin and not spend my dollars saying okay well as that c as that b if I look
(1:13:06) at that business and I show up tomorrow and it has it's now charging me 5% more and then I show up in six months and it's charging me another 7% more that that is the the business basically trying to get ahead of a problem and that it doesn't fix itself the only way that that problem is fixed is is by saying you start accepting Bitcoin you can stop you know in the future at some future State stop increasing your prices for the reason that you have money that's not getting debased over time you know like that's
(1:13:38) the only way out and so just the more people that that focus in on like that problem's not getting solved period unless you have higher agency and the people that are that are the almost by definition highest of agency are bitcoiners and people that run businesses and then the overlap of people that run businesses that are bitcoiners they're the ones that will say like I'm not going to just sit in this [ __ ] house as a Burns I'm going to go you know turn on my business say you can pay me in Bitcoin and as more
(1:14:08) bitcoiners exist more more people will see that very logical path yeah and I think it's important too obviously there's a lot of anticipation for this presidential election it does seem like it's trending in the direction that many of us wanted to go in which is away from the incoming Administration towards um a a more what I would deem to be more sane Administration um but I also think as people are becoming more confident that Trump is going to get back in office there is a level of complacency because he's out there
(1:14:46) talking big game we're going to drive down Energy prices I'm going to I'm going to solve inflation but the structural issues that exist in the US there's too much debt not enough dollars still persist and there's not many levers he can pull outside of a complete decimation of the administrative class and the federal government that would actually quell the problem or solve the problem in any material way and I I find it hard to believe that that is going to happen easily if at all um and so just trying
(1:15:23) to get to the point like despite the fact that it seems like a more sane Administration may be coming into Power um as we had in the 2025 this inflation problem is still external to that yeah it's still yeah I would say it's foundational and so that's one of the things that there can be certain policies that are marginally B better and beneficial to worse policies and those should be pursued right if it makes sense to incentivized building Manufacturing in the United States rather than allowing companies to literally hop across the
(1:16:01) border not be subject to the same costs and then pop them back over but maybe that's a good policy like I I probably agree with that until people talk about the fact that the printing of money is the source and I understand the two things relate to each other the government wants to spend a lot of money and the FED finances it out of thin air because the two people are ined together but if you didn't have the ability the forcing function is taking away the ability to print money fed's never going away on
(1:16:34) its own only way to solve it is Bitcoin and my view is that until people start to talk about the money printing as the problem then they might be very well-intentioned about solving other economic issues they're never going to solve the problem of inflation for the reason they're not talking about the right thing but then also and what you mentioned is something I talk about a lot gradually and gradually than suddenly which is there's just a structural imbalance between the amount of debt in the system and the amount of
(1:17:08) actual dollars and that is what dictates that almost regardless of what even the government does at this standpoint they're going to have to print more money otherwise that entire system collapses and it's the printing of money that actually defers the collapse and that in my view is the the the aaal relationship that dictates why more and more money will be printed mathematically um and that yeah um I saw a clip from uh what What's the um Thomas Massie and he had this a cup of iced tea he said let me
(1:17:45) show you what happens when you print a bunch more money and he took a bottle a jug of water and he poured it into the tea he's like this is dilution like this is what happens when you print money again Thomas Massie is talking about it you know I don't think that at least at a congressional level even though he's read the Bitcoin standard and talked about it on a podcast he's not talking about Bitcoin as part of the solution in front of Congress obviously cynth lumus say senator lumus but um but
(1:18:15) yeah so I think that you there's just this structural imbalance in in on one part I talk about it being debt to Dollars on the other part it's like when when you think about the economic imbalance it is that and this is what also drives hyperinflation you have certain people that have more dollars than they could ever need and you have this whole other swath probably the majority of people that don't have a role in the economy to be able to sustain themselves and they have no savings and economic imbalance
(1:18:47) just gets worse and worse in this world and then you have people that have way more dollars that are just ejecting out them because they don't need them ever to actually facilitate the things they need in their daily lives while at the same time you have people that have nothing and balance is ultimately what you're striving for and balance does not mean equality balance means a way for an economic system to constantly find balance by through trade by delivering Mutual value um and so ultimately it's better than worse if
(1:19:17) somebody who respects the Constitution and doesn't you know go after their political Rivals like the you Democrats have of trump and somebody that actually has a perspective on an economic policy that will be more sustaining rather than exporting all of our manufacturing to other countries and then having them ship back in and paying for it basically via the printing of money um to be there like that that is better than the alternative but it doesn't get solv like the the problem of inflation everything
(1:19:47) that we're talking about like there's no way out of this vicious cycle the dollar can't fix itself it's too far gone it's too far broken and it only becomes more you know fractured over time the imbalance only gets greater as a function of time that doesn't mean that something doesn't correct slowly over 3 months and then gets worse over the next year um but it's a it's a functionally a one-way directional Trend and that's why again I'm not I'm actually very optimistic it's just like hey the way
(1:20:15) that you become optimistic is by actually taking the forward steps to permanently solve the problem and that's where it comes back to if you're a business and you're not taking that forward action you know that inflation is causing your business Havoc you're con like if you didn't constantly and Bitcoin is not going to solve this in the short term but if you're not constantly having to think about raising prices just for the fact that you know that they're printing money and that you
(1:20:38) have your employees that are constantly asking you for raises because their cost is getting more like you know that inflation is causing you a problem and there's only one solution and that's Bitcoin and if you're not taking every possible advantage to solve that problem you're just you know dead in the water yeah you know yeah and I think and it's very apparent anybody's listen to this podcast I much prefer Trump and hope that he gets into office but I do think he has been making a strategic misstep
(1:21:10) in choreographing or attempting to choreograph that he's going to bring down prices I think structural issues that you just described it's impossible and that's my hope is that he does develop the intestinal fortitude and standing to actually call out the problem he's going the opposite direction saying the dollar is the best well and he's launching a shitcoin and he's launching a shitcoin but that I mean again strategic misstep in the sense that there's a very not only a possibility but a high likelihood that
(1:21:41) he does get into office we have an economic crisis we have to print a [ __ ] ton of money in inflation goes back to where it was a couple years ago we have a repeat in the 1970s EO inflation and I would hope that he has surrounded himself self with advisers and people within his administration that are um capable enough to recognize and have again the intestinal fortitude to basically say it publicly because that's the big problem it's like the elephant in the room that you're not allowed to point at and acknowledge is that the
(1:22:13) dollar is a problem the Fiat system is a problem and until that is recognized you can't at at least at the federal level what we're describing here is how to save your self at the individual small business level but this problem has layers going all the way up to the top layer of the federal government and until it is officially acknowledged and confronted headon which I think Senator lumus with the Bitcoin Act is is trying to do but I think we need more momentum in that realm look I think that uh clearly Trump
(1:22:49) doesn't get it he's at least figured out why politically he needs to align himself and so that's that's at least an improvement right like take what we can get take what we can get I also believe that there are people around him who are much closer to actually getting it um just from hearing people or choosing one person as example the ramaswami I think that he's starting to to clearly understand it same with RFK like rfk's speech at the Bitcoin conference was phenomenal and um there's still the
(1:23:34) possibility that he hadn't fully get it you know he went and talked to the [ __ ] Quin conference but the way that he spoke about it's like if you do you accept that knowledge distributes over time more people understand Bitcoin not less that the way that RFK Jr talked about Bitcoin from the 20203 conference to the 2024 conference conference markedly different you know and so there are increasingly people around that aren't just sympathetic to it but I think are increasingly grocking it and that will be beneficial because I agree that
(1:24:13) there's this economic tsunami coming and they're going to have to bring a [ __ ] to [ __ ] ton of more money that's going to make the problems worse and having people that are seeing this field and recognizing that this is the only way out and there's going to have to be some pain to be felt it's not dystopian it's not you know um not optimistic it's actually just pragmatic pragmatic and saying I the way that I can actually solve this problem and be optimistic and be okay with tolerating pain is by
(1:24:39) knowing that I have a a path out on the other side well if you're not actually keying in on the medium that's actually causing it then it's a lot harder to to be optimistic or to to be able to sustain and to you know weather that storm one of the things I increasingly appreciate about na belli you know when he when he spoke at CPAC not only did he explain you know why do they tax you the humiliation ritual humiliation ritual in a very succinct way of saying like they don't tax you to fund the government they tax
(1:25:15) you to give the illusion that you fund the government because that allows them to continue to print money and that when the currency fails when the charade fails like there's going to be lot of pain like he's at least honest about that he's taking a forward action to protect their local economy and Advance their local economy there's going to be a impact to their local economy and the way that he speaks about it is saying like there's unavoidable pain to come like that is UN that is unavoidable and
(1:25:45) while he might not say this next part is like he understands why and in certain cases he certainly connects it to the money but he doesn't talk about it in a in a negative sense he just talks about it in a in a realistic sense and saying if if we're not being honest and we don't have any realistic chance of way you know finding our way through this storm or actually coming out the other side stronger um and you know basically saying like there the more you accept on the front end the more easily you're
(1:26:17) going to be able to to move forward um in a effective way yeah now should we leave with the freaks what call to action should we set out there I was just say this was powerful this is the best rip we've done in a few years I think we say that every time I know and it only gets better freaks it only gets better the uh I thought the last one we did was pretty good though Bitcoin and the Not The American Dream but uh nothing more American than Bitcoin that was pretty good no in terms of like actable like I think this is I I mean
(1:26:51) you're preaching the choir with me but we've been talking about this a lot over the last two years and more specifically over the last 3 weeks because it I do feel that urgency again um to to Really secure it's the businesses that I'm dependent on to to receive goods and surfaces because you can feel it coming back like the 9% increase in Shir tail think that's where we get our eggs like holy [ __ ] it's happening again um despite the fact they're saying that inflation's dropping the rate of
(1:27:21) inflation is dropping um but I do hope and I I can't imagine that people listening to this do feel inspired to act and go go out there and and seriously think about solving this problem yeah so I'd say one if you haven't read the article go read the article um bitcoin's exchange theory of value that's on my blog gradually than suddenly doxyz um except hopefully logically once you've read that that Bitcoin actually increases in value as it's able to facilitate more exchange and that the
(1:27:57) medium Bitcoin and you know value period is created through trade and to not sit there and just stare at your Bitcoin on the screen and thinking like I'm going to be okay um because this inanimate object on my screen is going to create value on its own and if I just sit here for long enough that that it will it's that you know to be high agency particularly if you run a business to say I accept that I have this problem I've already found Bitcoin for the reason that I've accepted this problem
(1:28:29) and I shouldn't stop there I should actually work progressively if even incrementally or marginally to cut the problem out at it's sneeze one step at a time one day at a time and if you're in the position to do so and generally businesses that are privately owned one or two key decision makers somebody understanding Bitcoin they're the ones that are in the position to lead to to say yeah the rails exist they're workable you know are they going to get better over time are they going to get
(1:28:59) more or sorry are they going to get more and more seamless you know is friction increasingly going to be taken out of them of course but they're in a position right now to accept them and if I don't you know if not me then who and to to take that action and the customers will show up you know if if you leverage it so um and then for the rest of the Bitcoin is out there accepting that you know just that idea that that you know there's no moral imperative to go out there and your Bitcoin that's not the
(1:29:26) message that I'm carrying it's that well there's no you know you don't need to go spend your Bitcoin to for for it to create value if no one does if no one is high agency then yes we got a real we got we have a problem and that when you actually go if I think about going and spending you know a small percent of my Bitcoin with Cole's stake it's like I'm I'm spending like 0.
(1:29:50) 0000 1% of my Bitcoin and it's like I'm saving everything else and by by having the foresight to say I can't just sit in the house while it burns I actually got to solve my problems and I can do that by helping to not only educate people on why this is important but putting them in a position to accept the you know that they can adopt the tools if they want to in a very accessible way more people that do that than less better we're going to be so um you know each day is a day to take take ground and more ground is taken by more business owners saying that they want to
(1:30:24) um except bitcoin's payment so yeah since you're uh too much of a gentleman and too humble I will give the shill for zap right as the perfect um tool to begin accepting these payments particularly because you have both Fiat and Bitcoin payments in parallel and I like the way I forget who described it to John but we were talking about this at uh over beers a few weeks ago um is like you have this vend diagram of people that accept Fiat and people that accept that will accept Bitcoin in the future and there that the
(1:30:57) circles are beginning to to blend and the small intersection in the middle is getting bigger and bigger and zap right is the perfect tool to facilitate your business your accepting of money generally whether it's Bitcoin or Fiat as those circles converge yeah yeah and I didn't intentionally leave out zap right but I do think you know and again my message is broader than that like there's a lot of great companies building a lot of great tools um you know one thing I didn't mention you know it's like there's a lot of different
(1:31:32) there's business owners there's consumers there's people building in the in the Bitcoin community and and financing and accepting that like hey like this is this is an aspect of Bitcoin that's actually critical to its proliferation as money the more we can do to affect and perfect it as money the the more valuable everything in the Bitcoin ecosystem becomes but yeah at zap right um you know it's not just that we accept Bitcoin in dollars it's a huge benefit of it it's like we recognize
(1:32:01) that onchain payments are just as important of as lightning um we have an API where people can manage it's one of the popular use cases of zaap right and anybody who has development resources that is in Bitcoin being able to manage one API where they can facilitate all of their Bitcoin and Fiat payments is incredibly powerful so um anybody that could potentially be interested in our API reach out to me and yeah um you know we support people like local dentists to you know highly technical large businesses so yeah like T FTC um yeah
(1:32:37) exactly we're still as I say we're we're highly technical big business we have we have camera issues media Mogul media Empire media Empire well we're going to need to do those save the ranchers let the ranchers save the world you know focus on our you know things that we control can control in ourmedia environment and one by one we're going to win peace and love freaks