The debate around Bitcoin's role in the future of money has been further fueled by the actions of prominent figures like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has historically opposed big banks but now appears to align with them in criticizing Bitcoin.
The debate around Bitcoin's role in the future of money has been further fueled by the actions of prominent figures like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has historically opposed big banks but now appears to align with them in criticizing Bitcoin. In a recent discussion with Parker Lewis, the complexities of this debate were unpacked, shedding light on the underlying political and financial dynamics at play. The meat of the conversation focused on the fact that Bitcoin is a child of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008/2009.
The conversation touched upon the seemingly contradictory stance of Senator Warren, who, despite her anti-bank rhetoric, has been actively working against Bitcoin, a technology that aligns with the founding principles of America by offering financial sovereignty. The discussion also highlighted the involvement of special interests in shaping political narratives, the contrast between Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and the broader implications of monetary policy decisions made by figures like Neil Kashkari of the Federal Reserve.
0:00 - Intro
7:07 - Liz Warren and CBDCs
16:55 - 2008 crisis still echoes
22:17 - Marty’s experience of the crisis
29:00 - Metting people where they are
35:27 - Satoshi was keyed in
38:29 - It’s personal for everyone
53:01 - Bitcoin, not Blockchain
57:41 - Bitcoin is not for criminals
59:28 - Dollar is not patriotic
1:07:50 - Sound money is freedom
1:13:49 - Bitcoin in future crises
1:22:59 - How much will they print next time?
1:26:08 - Replacing an unfathomable behemoth
1:38:10 - Can’t stop the signal
1:44:11 - Wrapping up
Marty: [00:00:00] We we're not live. No. We are recording. We're not live. We're
Parker: not live streaming.
We will drop this tomorrow
Marty: morning. Cool. Senator Warren. I mean, it's actually a good jumping off topic for this discussion. Historically, famously against the big banks, but For some reason or another, she seems to be their best friends.
Their best friend these days are teaming up to attack
Parker: Bitcoin. Yeah. I don't, um That close for you. You know, I always wonder where these things come from. You know, I think, like, if you just step all the way back, somebody who is as, For lack of a better term, like, anti American, you know, just in terms of, you know, kind of what her Policy agenda generally is relative to the founding principles of the country, [00:01:00] um, that You can kind of explain at the, you know, thirty thousand foot view why she wouldn't like something like Bitcoin, but it's also, Yeah.
There's always special interest involved. Right? And so and there's always something that that somebody wants in the political sphere That they're getting in return. Right? I don't think that, um, you know, it's all about money.
So I don't think that despite, You know, someone like Elizabeth Warren's, um, socialist communist leanings, um, that it's just that. That there's going there's gotta be some special interest that, you know, is trading some horse to to have her be out in But this also isn't new what's happening right now. And also, I feel like, you know, she's been leading this charge for at least the last, You know, year and a half, um, kinda like what happened, you know, the the policy that they were working through summer of last year, similar to [00:02:00] what she was a champion of. So, Um, you know, it's it's not a surprise, but I do think it puts, you know, Bitcoin on display, you know, kind of light versus dark, good versus evil. Yeah.
Marty: Life versus dark, particularly, like, juxtaposing Bitcoin with the CBDC, which is what Elizabeth Warren would like to thrust on the American populace.
Parker: Yeah. And then, you know, it's like, again, what is the special interest that, you know, she's pushing Did you see the video that came
Marty: out today? No. One One of our cosponsors on the bill came out explicitly, said that the American Bankers Association helped them draft the
Parker: bill.
Yeah. I mean, if you go back to the formation of that, uh, not I mean, this guy who wrote the book, Creature of Jekyll Island. But when you, you know, realize that the people who wrote the Federal Reserve Act, you know, were secretly the, you know, people who controlled The bank existing banking system. Um, yeah. I guess that's no surprise, but it's it is [00:03:00] also you know, you know, do you remember when, Um, Neel Kashkari, basically, who's who's you know, in terms of his like, What he advocates for in terms of monetary policy, like disaster, you know, um, in terms of, you know, had the famous, you know, line in sixty Minutes where he says, Yeah.
Yeah. We have an endless amount of cash at the Federal Reserve. An unlimited amount of cash. Unlimited amount of cash. But, yeah, there's that you know, and I guess our circle is that famous, Um, video of him saying, like, I know why an authoritarian or communist would want a CBDC, but why would the American people like, Basically, it's saying, you know, I think and he actually articulates, like, if you want a mass surveillance state, like, I can understand why you'd want a CBC.
I do not understand why the American people would ever Want that or agree to that. So to have somebody like Neel Kashkari, who's otherwise, you know, fairly, like, head in the sand when it comes to, Yeah. Understanding the ramifications of [00:04:00] printing massive amounts of money, on this one, he happens to be, You know, a very clear signal, which is just interesting having, like, someone like Kashkari juxtaposed against someone like Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. That's the
Marty: CBDC is a step too far for these people who have created this insane monetary policy.
Parker: Yeah. It's like I guess You know, and I think that hope, maybe? You know, one, I think in in broader context, we already have a digital currency. It is the dollar. Um, this is just a different technology rail, you know, upon which to deploy it or through which to deploy it.
And, um, that current system is centralized enough that Fed or treasury can functionally, not literally, but functionally exert whatever pressure they want on whatever, You know, large interest to, um, get [00:05:00] to the same means as what a, quote, pure Central bank digital currency would do. Um, and if you did that, it would be like hitting people over the head, you know, and be more obvious In terms of exactly what your intentions are. And, you know, typically, you know, it would be more common for them to be underhanded, to be, You know, to to want to achieve the end through a less obvious means. So, um, I think that that's kind of the strange thing about, like, Elizabeth Warren's, like, kind of, you know, over the top support for CBDC and, uh, and her, you know, antagonistic nature toward Bitcoin. Um, but I do think that, you know, it all anchors back to there's a special interest on the plug or not pulling the plug, but pulling the strings and Funding her campaign or giving her some other policy, you know, kind of promise or something else.
Who knows? You know, it doesn't really matter what, [00:06:00] but, um, it's there. Yeah. I wonder what she's
Marty: aiming for because we've heard the rumors that she and others may have told Gensler that he'll be the Treasury secretary if he plays ball with their attempts to sort the industry here in the United States. I don't think Yeah.
But what was Liz Boren, did she run for president last election? Like, does she
Parker: wanna I think she got, like, one percent. Like, she like, if I remember correctly and I'm you know, it's long time ago now, but I feel like she never got more than, like, one or two percent, and then she dropped out of So I don't think she's a serious, um, like Contender. Contender in any future election. No.
And also, like, if there was something there were promises being made to quote quote Gensler about, you know, future position and future administration, it's like, I can understand, You know, similarly, someone like Jenny Ellen at the treasury department, you know, her antagonistic nature toward [00:07:00] Bitcoin. But, Yeah. That would that would make more sense of, like yeah. I don't know. It's like their whole circus is, You know, actively unraveling.
And, you know, with each next thing that somebody, you know, who Is functionally socialist or communist, you know, kind of the further and further out in the ledge, the more obvious it becomes, not to necessarily even the majority, but for the people that are paying attention.
Marty: Yeah. Yeah. That's been my inclination recently is this push for the CBDC, particularly Warren Posturing that way and others being somewhat open to it is that they understand that something's broken on the back end, and they need this thing to sort of reset the system.
Parker: Or they're told that that will be the like, you know, there's something broken and this is how we fix it.
Yeah. Um, but I think, you know, the motivation is, first and foremost, some special interest. [00:08:00] Second, like, More surveillance, you know, more control, um, more, you know, shifting away from the constitution, You know, in terms of, like, what the underlying principles are and what the underlying protections are and it being rooted in, you know, protecting the rights of the individual. So, Yeah. At the end of the day, I do think that in in certain ways, like, the central bank digital currency is a distraction because, To me, it's irrelevant.
It's like the current system's broken. This just makes it marginally more broken. You know? Like, if it's broken, it's broken. Um, and that it's not to say I don't ever see them, quote, changing, like, the back end, You know, of how their system runs.
But the way it functions, it is already a Not just trusted system. It's a hyper centralized system. And, um, [00:09:00] in that world, The difference between that and things that people are talking about are marginal. And then the consequences, rather than forcing People to be more forward in the support of Bitcoin is very, um, it requires very little political capital to say I'm Again, CBDCs. You know, it's like it's like it almost feels like this, like, um, psyop To, like, have these two people fight on this false front, you know, of CBDC, um, for or against.
Where it's like, okay, you guys fight over there while, You know, a bunch of individuals that produce things in the real economy go figure out a real solution.
Marty: I hope that's the case. I think and this is a good backdrop for the conversation we wanna have. I mean, this is where The state of the discourses today is this framing that you just described with the backdrop of the [00:10:00] systemically weaker Financial system compared to what we talked about in the forward that I wrote in the introduction to gradually then suddenly. And, like, to set the case for this, I think what we're trying to get out of this conversation today is to really drive home the people that Bitcoin It is a child of the great financial crisis of two thousand eight, two thousand nine, and everything we just discussed.
The first five, ten minutes of this episode Really is just a knock on ripple effect from the consequences of the reaction to that great financial crisis. And you you can argue even further back in nineteen seventy one all the way back to nineteen thirteen, if you will. But I think for us, for the context of the book, Which you can now go by at the safe house dot com. Good plug. Is the great financial crisis is really the nexus of Satoshi launching Bitcoin into the
Parker: world.
Yeah. I think that, um, I mean, I [00:11:00] think everything I mean, With each passing day, kind of every evolution of what the fed of what the fed is doing today, Fed or treasury or our, you know, central government realistically because while there's that, Supposed to be that, um, kind of formal Separation. Separation. Functionally, it doesn't exist. And that, You know, the way I like to think about it is for many decades, you know, it was decades of imbalances that built up in the financial crisis Of, you know, similarly a function of money printing just in in smaller, more regular doses.
And that then, You know, some you know, the imbalances that have grown over three or four decades broke fantastically. And ever since then, It's been, you know, um, [00:12:00] trying to get out of a straight jacket of, you know, being, you know, at The, you know, late stages of that system collapsing entirely. And the thing that, um, about your forward that was great, um, to me was, You know, kind of you relating kind of, you know, kind of your formative years, you know, junior in high school. Senior. Senior in high school when you when the financial crisis happened, um, I was a few years out of college, you know, at Deutsche Bank.
And, Um, a lot of the, you know, kind of principle way that I got to understanding Bitcoin was Because of the financial crisis, and I do think that there's a whole generation of us that were coming of age at that point. It's not to say that People that are older or younger can't similarly grok Bitcoin for, you know, similar underlying reason to the financial system being broken. But, You know, for me, I kind of looked at the world and said, okay. [00:13:00] Something was clearly broken. Unclear what at the time When I was, you know, two thousand eight working at Deutsche Bank.
Um, but it never I never got past that. It was always like something was broke and we didn't just go back to normal. I think a lot of the world was like, oh, that was scary, but That's gone now. And that, you know, for me, you know, I didn't you know, Bitcoin didn't immediately click. But then, You know, for separate reasons, when I was going back through the history of the financial crisis, you know, As part of my role working for a hedge fund, trying to understand what would happen when the Fed unwound its post financial crisis QE, As that started to make sense of why they had to print all the money, that's what then made Bitcoin make sense to me.
And that it's not just like a, you know, quick easy, like, oh, tell me that and then that and all makes sense. But That that period of my life was formative. [00:14:00] And if I was looking at Bitcoin in a vacuum and just trying to, You know, analyze it on its own, not in relation to the solution or the problem that it's intending to solve. I could never have arrived at Bitcoin as money. It was kind of that anchor point of seeing, like, okay, this system is broken.
It was never fixed. Can kick down road. And now it's becoming very clear to more people that that, you know, what was off then is still off now. And the, you know, kind of panopticon is is flailing and trying to figure out, like, you know, How do we quote fix this? Can we fix it?
Or what do we do next? So, um, you know, me and, you know, being right out of college during that financial crisis Was critical to my ability to relate to Bitcoin and to see it as a solution. I think that, you know, for different reasons, You know, after reading your forward, [00:15:00] you know, different era of your life, we were in different places, but, you know, kind of questioning the world in similar ways because of that, you know, cataclysmic shock that happened. Yeah.
Marty: And I didn't get to expand Upon it or expand on it too much in the forward, but I mentioned that during that time, Uh, my dad was going through a lot of stress.
So he my dad, for most of his career, worked as a marketer for funds, typically, like, small cap, Uh, in mid sized funds. They would they would essentially help go raise money for these funds that RIAs would be able to allocate to. And so I think seeing him go through that stress really multiple times throughout our life. Um, so I I think my story even begins before two thousand eight go back to two thousand one, uh, after nine eleven. Like, we had just moved from Philadelphia to South Carolina.
My dad was [00:16:00] working for an asset manager, and he took over the Southeast territory The United States, and we've literally moved from Philly to South Carolina, I think, mid two thousand. We weren't even there for a year when nine eleven happened. It's like late two thousand. The nine eleven happened, and he immediately got laid off after that Um, after that event and, you know, financial turmoil and a crash in the markets then. Obviously, the dot com bubble was blowing up.
It's off the heels of the dot com bubble. And so he wound up getting laid off, and we lived in South Carolina, and he Took a job as a bellhop and, like, took side jobs while he was trying to rebuild his own business on the side. And he built that up Over the course of the next six, seven years and got it to a place of great success, and then two thousand eight happened, the same thing that happened in two thousand one. So I had these two very close to home [00:17:00] events happened to my family Centered around this financial crisis. And then going to two thousand eight when I was a senior in high school, I just so happened to be taking this economics Elective class.
It's elective economics class. Went to an all all guys prep school, so we had really good teachers. And, Uh, my teacher, mister Robson, who I mentioned Do you
Parker: think mister Robson's a freak? I
Marty: don't know. I don't know.
I I went to the directory. My mom Obviously, read the forward and said you should reach out to mister Robson. I couldn't find his information. He's not teaching at the school anymore, um, at my high school. So I mister Robson, if you are a freak and you're listening, Reach out to me.
But,
Parker: yeah, explain explain kind of like what he had you guys doing as a, uh, a So it was funny. Principal senior. So the,
Marty: I mean, it was from what I remember, obviously, it was, gosh, how many years ago now at this point? Uh, fifteen years ago? Yeah.
At this point, I don't remember the exact curriculum, but I do remember him, [00:18:00] like, we started that fall semester right after Labor Day. Market's going to turmoil, like, a week into the class. Uh, and, like, the week before markets blew up, We we started, like, one of the things we did in the class was like a stock picking thing. Like, you get an allocation of ten grand, and we had the software where you could pick stocks and Create a portfolio. Everybody's portfolio immediately went to shit.
Um, but as the crisis was going on throughout The the three months of that semester, uh, obviously, you had TARP and the bailouts and Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner Going to Capitol Hill, getting on their knees and begging, and he was really on top of that. Like, gentlemen, look at what they're doing. And then TARP, I think, was and I mentioned it, And I mischaracterized it as the,
Parker: uh, toxic asset. He said it was an intentional Freudian slip that will forever be will never correct it in the future. They they were toxic assets.
Yes.
Marty: They were. I mean, literally, if you look at it's the troubled [00:19:00] asset relief program, but if you look at the definition of what that is, they're buying toxic assets from Thanks. Um, and we dug into the TARP bill, like, granularly. Like, it was an eight eight hundred page bill, and he had us, like, read All the different stipulations that different congressmen sent or snuck in the bill.
It was a spending bill, essentially, and they were just putting in a bunch of at the time, they're calling it pork. It was filled with pork. That was, like, one of the lines that the media was running with. And so he had us identifying all the pork, and it became Glaringly obvious to me in seventeen, again, very traumatic financial event is happening, uh, and something that I'm Aware for the second point in my life. Yes.
I was ten when the first one happened, but I do remember I don't remember, uh, the financial ramifications of The markets, but I do remember what happened to our family, and I immediately began to connect those two. And I was seventeen in this class. Um, and [00:20:00] the TARP bill really highlighted to me that things were terribly wrong. Like, how if the financial system, the economy, the global economy, Uh, was on such fragile footing. It was in such dire straits.
Could any of the politicians focus on anything but, Like the financial aspect of everything, and they just threw all this pork in the bill that really highlighted, like, Moral hazard and just, like, the corruption that exists in our system. And then mister Robson Just made it clear to us as all this was unfolding, like, this is not right. This is not how things are supposed to play out. I think I'm pretty sure it was at the Austrian persuasion And a sound money guy, uh, and it really instilled, uh, when the semester ended. I had a whole another semester of senior year before I went on to college, but I'll I'll never forget, like, him basically telling us, like, this is really messed up.
Like, you gentlemen should try to understand what's going on here. And so [00:21:00] As I mentioned in the forward, I went to college with a with a know your enemy mentality, studied economics to really try to figure out What was going on in the system and to learn about it so that I could answer the questions I had as a seventeen year old. And, of course, Studying economics in college. Started in two thousand nine. Uh, I think it was around two thousand twelve When articles about the Silk Road started popping up, uh, I found Bitcoin.
I don't remember exactly what it was that identified Bitcoin was, like, two thousand twelve, two thousand thirteen. Once I found it and then actually, like, read the white paper and, um, understood That it was a monetary system with no central authority. It was a distributed system. It clicked with me almost immediately, and I became Infinitely obsessed and knew immediately that it was the answer to the problem I went to college trying to solve.
Parker: Yeah.
And I think that I mean, the thing that I loved about your forward [00:22:00] was, one, it just fit so well with the introduction that I had written of, you know, kind of Really jumping in to tell my story about how I came to Bitcoin and and linking it to the financial crisis. Because I think that, you know, when it's on The TV screen on CNBC, and they're talking about it like a stock. Um, and, you know, um, yeah. The Snake oil that is crypto and that all that nonsense, um, or that it's like a technology, like, you know, It creates this amount of noise that allows people to, when they hear the word Bitcoin, not just associate with it, but but, Rationally turn it off because they associate it with snake oil. You know?
And so it's it's a very hard challenge for us that are trying to to Be out there educating and communicating because very reasonably, if you're sitting on the outside looking in, you're like, okay. No. That thing, Bitcoin, you're telling me it's not stable, but it It it looks [00:23:00] the same to me. And that, um, starting at the financial crisis and and, you know, kind of very intentionally, um, With a book to try to, you know, get people's attention, but also relate to them in a way and relate to them specifically Connecting Bitcoin to the financial crisis to say, this is something serious and and this thing, Bitcoin, is related to that thing, The financial crisis and that the problems that existed then exist today, you know, in a worse way. And This is the only thing that can viably fix it.
And, um, you know, I remember myself, like, you know, um, didn't have that similar, You know, experience in two thousand one because, you know, I was I was in high school then, but, you know, my dad was in real estate and, You know, kind of living in Austin, Texas, not, you know, super exposed to the stock market. But, um, but [00:24:00] then, you know, the financial crisis, I was working at sixty Wall Street. Second I would have been a a Second year analyst in the m and a group. And, um, you know, remember something critically happening in the fall of two thousand At seven, but not remembering exactly what that was. And then obviously, Bear Stearns failed, um, and ultimately, it was bailed out through acquisition, Um, for, you know, equivalent of pennies on the dollar, but but that was engineered by, you know, uh, the Fed and the Treasury.
And then, Um, what I really remember is, like, over the summer, you know, basically, every you know, whether it was summer or or right around the time of Lehman Brothers, People just being tapped left and right and, you know, being laid off. I remember having, like, the recollection be like, okay. I can't imagine being in that guy's shoes at that person's age, you know. And and I never wanna put myself in that position. Were they older?
Yeah. [00:25:00] Yeah. Then I remember one night and this was around when when Lehman Brothers was rumored to be failing, you know, working on the forty fifth floor, Leaving the office at, like, nine PM on a Friday. And, like, there must have been ten senior bankers sitting in the group head's office At nine PM, you're like, okay. Margin call like situation.
That is not a that is not a normal thing to be happening, You know? And then, you know, kind of because there were a lot of rumors about Lehman Brothers. And remember that weekend, you know, being in New York and Some, you know, social event talking to friends about it on a, you know, kind of rooftop porch, and then Monday morning, Lehman Brothers' gone. You know? Um, and I I really think that there's kind of there's two arc you know, kind of, um, I don't know what maybe archetypes or personalities, but there's people who look at At what happened in two thousand eight.
And they say, um, it was crazy. It's not gonna end [00:26:00] well, but they had to do it. And then there's another group of people that have common sense to look at, and they're like, that was crazy, and it's not gonna end well. And that recognize that there's no logic applied between It's crazy. It's not gonna end well in the part where they say, but they had to do it.
And so, you know, my broadest hope with the book is that People, um, you know, more people are able to come to understand Bitcoin in a in a way that's accelerated. Um, you know, kind of Myself, you know, I read the Bitcoin standard. It was formative to me. But then relating it specifically to all the research I was doing at the time related to the financial crisis And the dollar and its brokenness and why they were always gonna have to print money allowed me to pair that knowledge with the Bitcoin standard and then, You know, be able to apply, you know, the things that I had to work through in a very logical, you know, reasoned way to to Not only recognizing that something was broken, but why Bitcoin was the solution. And [00:27:00] that kind of tying those things to the financial crisis for a lot of people who Are you know, of their working age now and the primes of their career, you know, being able to like, they they know because they lived it, you know, to to then, You know, understand right at the front of gradually suddenly that, you know, in my view and I think what will prove to be true, you know, as a testament of time, That this thing, Bitcoin, not just, you know, the the I don't wanna say coincidence of its release because I have to, you know, believe that, You know, when Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the white paper, worked on the code, released the code, um, that those problems that all of us came to see In a brighter way, you know, at times of financial crisis, maybe he learned, you know, in the two thousand one crisis or was paying attention Do the manipulation of interest rates by printing of money that had preexisted, but, you know, that sudden shock that was the crisis is a period where People don't forget if they were, you know, alive and [00:28:00] conscious.
And even at the time, if they, you know, might be one of those people that looked at it and said, but they had to do it. If they start to relate it to Bitcoin, they can start to see that maybe there is another path. And if If I start to, you know, read and learn about and understand Bitcoin through that light, maybe I can see something that I couldn't see previously. So that's that's my broadest goal. Yeah.
Marty: And as it pertains to Satoshi, I mean, I think it's pretty clear he overtly reference the inability of the central governments and the central banks to Not debase the currency due to the levers of control that they had access to. So I I do think it's
Parker: Oh, no. One hundred percent. I'm just saying that, like, the fact that he had, You know, written all the code before the financial two thousand eight financial crisis says that he was key keying in on this being an issue Before, it was obvious to a lot of other people. We do have this sort of like the financial crisis happened in terms of, like, you know, the height of it, which was at September of two [00:29:00] thousand eight.
And then so so she, like, sits down and, like, starts thinking about this as an idea and write some code in forty five days and and releases? No. Because I'm pretty
Marty: sure we have historical evidence. I think Adam Back audited the code in, like, July of two thousand eight or something like that, Um, and a couple others in the Cypherpunk mailing list. So you definitely written a lot of the code
Parker: before Yeah.
This would have to be something that you were thinking about for A long time. Yeah. Right? Like, um, but, you know, basically, being that much more prescient that to be working on it, You know, for however long leading up to then have it ready to put out to the world in literally The height of the financial crisis. And that that is also what, you know, makes it so, um, you know, just the timely of, like, you know, The period of time that we're living in is like someone like Elizabeth Warren can be so, um, not just tone deaf, but, like, [00:30:00] Backwards, you know, kind of antithetical to, you know, American spirit, American Culture, whatever, you know, constitution.
But that, you know, the kind of way that I started the, you know, introduction is kinda basically going back through that timeline of, like, Yeah. Um, March twelfth two thousand eight, you know, basically, um, David Faber asked The CEO of Bear Stearns, why, you know, why or whether Goldman Sachs would not, um, accept the counterparty risk of Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns fails. You know, six months later, Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, September fifteenth two thousand eight. Um, within a few weeks, the two thousand eight Emergency Stabilization Act.
And then, you know, thirty days later, shadowy supercoder steps out from the middle of nowhere And let's forward the solution. You know, that, um, it it wasn't just the the timing of its release that is relevant to me. It's [00:31:00] that, Yeah. It was the solution to the root cause of what was broken, you know. And that that really is, like, the the most relevant of all of it.
That, like, You know, it wasn't just that, like, it happened to be put out at the same time as that that person was had identified a problem, You know, long before and then put out the thing that actually worked. At the perfect time. At the perfect
Marty: time. Yeah. I got meant to, like, Elizabeth Warren.
I mean, for me personally, thank you, number one, for letting me write the forward. Thank you for fighting.
Parker: It was a perfect forward. And because
Marty: it it it was a bit cathartic for me because I don't know. It's personal to me.
Like, when you see Elizabeth Warren out there Basically, being a spokesperson for the banks now after years of being the bank hawk on the hill, Uh, particularly after the financial crisis. Like, it's it is disgusting to me because I do [00:32:00] have a deep seated Hardcore belief that this is the root cause of the systemic issues that exist in our society, not only Financially, but socially. Like, going back to my dad's story, I mean, he he died earlier this year. He was fifty four, and I Would not I would go as far as to say that, like, the economic stress that he felt throughout his life, like, Contributed to his early death. And that's my dad's just one example of many that are out there that Particularly grew up in this hyper financialized industry.
He graduated college in nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety one, the year I was born. And then that was the industry that he saw the most opportunity in, and it was just built on this house of cards. And I watched him throughout my life just get beat up and beat up, and he was a great man, great father, Great [00:33:00] friend, uh, uncle, brother, uh, son, and he shouldn't have had to go through all that. And I don't think He did actually wind up connecting it. Like, as soon as I got into Bitcoin, we began explaining it to him.
Like, he he dropped it and understood. He was like, yeah. And he's walked away from the finance industry later on in his life to start a coffee shop because he don't wanna deal with the stress anymore. But, Uh, that's one thing I tried to lately get across in the forward is that, like, for me, this is actually personal because it affected my life, my family's life, pretty directly, um, the insanity of the financial system. And We're just one family of millions of families that are out there.
You know, you don't even have to be directly associated or working in the financial industry to be affected by this. Anybody Who saves or tries to save Yeah. Dollars is. And it's it's like a it's a very, very big
Parker: problem. I think it I mean, I think it's personal [00:34:00] for, Like, for for everybody, like, when you think about, like, what you have to put in to produce actual value to then only be rug pulled, And that when when a country's currency hyperinflates is the ultimate rug pull, but, like, you know, literally, like, crisis after crisis.
I remember, Like, right after Bitcoin started to click for me, I'd step back from working at the fund that I was at because I wanted to work on Bitcoin. And, um, Went out to Santa Fe, New Mexico, went, you know, got a guide and went fly fishing, and this older gentleman was our guide. I don't even know how it came up because I certainly wouldn't have been talking about Bitcoin. By the time, I was still, like, you know, trying to find my own way in it, you know, of, like, really deepening my knowledge. But, like, somehow it came up that This would have been twenty seventeen, um, that, uh, you know, he had just gotten back to even from the financial crisis.
You know, this is this is probably a sixty sixty year old, you know, fly fishing guide on the side. Um, and when you think about that, it's like like in my mind, that signal, like, lost decade. [00:35:00] You know? And that you know, when my you know, when I was sitting there in a bullpen, you know, at Deutsche Bank, seeing guys who had families Forty five, fifty years old, just like you're out, you know. And that, like, it's it's personal to, You know, people who are most acutely kinda impacted, you know, on the front end of those crisis.
But then it's like when you just think about down to the last individual Of, like, what is actually happening and the consequences of the instability created, you know, not just what we've seen to this point in our country, but what we all kind of sense is out there. Um, it's like people feeling like I mean, The impact of inflation, going to grocery store, figuring out how they're gonna feed their family, like, the the cost of travel, things like that. That, um, that's very personal. You know, like and, you know, I, you know, I I call I refer to it as formative because, you know, [00:36:00] being in that Chaos zone, um, you know, in and around the financial crisis. It it would it just like, you know, that feeling of something being broken but not knowing what it Was.
Now it's like that you see Bitcoin. It's like it gives you a reason to be optimistic. Mhmm. Right? Because, you know, the thing that I, You know, something is so personal about us.
Imagine, like, the majority of the world out there that Is feeling and suffering from the same underlying economic struggles, But can't identify what exactly. Searching for, like, things to blame or, you know, just Dealing with the stress of it, but not connecting it with a solution. Because, you know, kind of at the same time that I figured out, You know, this was two thousand sixteen, um, into into two thousand seventeen, just how broken things have become. If I hadn't quickly [00:37:00] Figured out Bitcoin. It would have been very easy to be very negative and pessimistic about the world if you, You know, not only like, it's one thing if you're just feeling the symptoms of a problem but not identifying the root cause of the problem.
But even if you can identify the root cause of the problem, if you can't identify a solution, it's incredibly difficult to be To not be stressed out constantly or to to be optimistic or to be hopeful. And so, um, you know, when I think about where it's like I go out and, know, try to explain Bitcoin to people and help them understand. And one of the things I mentioned in one of the chapters, Bitcoin is a great de financialization of, like, that there's something cathartic When you're finally saving in a form of money that works in your favor rather than against it. And, like, what that ultimately translates to is, like, getting off the hamster wheel And what you can do when the value that you produce in the world retains its value in the future, you can You're finally able to [00:38:00] just, one, have some stability, and two, work on the things that you actually want to do And actually value rather than just working to pay bills. And, like, you know, for you know, you you see the statistics about how Half of Americans, you know, don't have, like, five hundred dollars of emergency funds or live paycheck to paycheck, whatever that is.
Um, you know, whatever the statistic is, it is in around that, Um, order of magnitude, the dollar being printed and causing everything that someone's produced in the past To lose his value is very personal, and the times of financial crisis are when the, you know, kind of Supercharged of the event of money printing happens that, you know, then trickles through to just destroy people's, you know, kind of Especially past decade decades. And, um, you know, I think that for a lot of people who are either working on Bitcoin infrastructure, building Bitcoin companies to be able to make [00:39:00] Bitcoin work better, podcasts, ten thirty one, You know, the book, you know, kind of past work and unchained, now working on Zapprite, it's like it's a very kind of purpose filled, you know, kind of We're moving forward and driven, but, you know, it does seem consistent to me that, you know, a lot of people that work on it, you know, Do it for, you know, not just personal reason, but because kind of the the consequences of the broken system are very personal, um, and that There's a there's a a wrong to be righted.
And, um, and, you know, that is Bitcoin. Yeah.
Marty: Why do you think it's so hard To get this through to people. I mean, obviously, that's the intent of the book is to get this through to people. Why Up to this point, do you think?
Parker: Um, I you know, when I try to rationalize it, I think that I think that there's a lot of noise. So if I try to [00:40:00] go back to myself Before having Bitcoin clicked for me, um, it's it's very difficult to put yourself back in that state Because Bitcoin is is incredibly unintuitive. You know? So it's like giving those people a break, you know, On on the front end, it's like, it's not intuitive. Nobody has asked the question, what is money in their life.
They've you know, a lot of people have evaluated buying a stock or buying a piece of real estate or buying a bond, um, Making financial investments, making consumer decisions. They've never consciously thought about the what is money question. Because they, you You know, people in the developed world at least have never really had to. Money's been there. And even if it's, quote, broken and degrading over time, It's getting them food at the grocery store.
So so it's like, that's that's the inception of it. Second thing is there's a lot of noise. So when You're trying to [00:41:00] decipher, hey. This thing's Bitcoin different from all those things. If you start from that point of this thing is incredibly unintuitive and it's difficult to see, Layer it on with, um, all these things put together look the same.
How am I supposed to decipher? And then the third thing, Which is I, you know, kind of what I, you know, mentioned in the introduction and hope people read the introduction online or share it and then, You know, get their, you know, friends and family to read it that I think a lot of people, uh, become intimidated Or maybe said another way, are fearful that if they consciously Endeavor to try to understand it that they won't be able to because they assume that it requires A lot of, like, technical understanding. And, you know, it's one of the reasons why I like to describe it. It's like not an IQ test. It's a common sense test.
Um, and, you know, some [00:42:00] billionaire can get it, some other billionaire can't, some, you know, yoga teacher can get it, and some billionaire can't. You know? Um, but that when you, you know, add those three things up of, like, incredibly unintuitive, people haven't had to ask that question before, to Lot of noise and distortion. Um, you know, it's why, you know, everything that is blockchain, In a digital asset chamber or Blockchain Council like iview is like, you know, you know, in some cases, maybe unintentionally, but moving The the ball backwards because it it distorts and conflates and creates this cloud. Uh, but then, you know, If you were to think about human psychology, if someone's saying like, okay, I wanna understand this, but if I try and fail, maybe it's better to not try.
Because I I don't want to be reinforced that if I tried, I can't actually see it. You know? And so, You know, I I I think that, you know, it is the cumulative effect of those three [00:43:00] things, but that's also why kind of, you know, One of the ways I describe my writing is that, like, I don't know if this is actually true, but I like, I've always associated myself with, like, a very right side of the brain. Like, Lot I gotta have I have to have things logically ordered. Like, I was not a tech bro.
I was not a, you know, dive head first in, like, YOLO. Let's Buy Bitcoin. If it works, great. You know, super conservative, um, when it come when it came to, you know, saving and and investing my money. Um, and that that in order to you know, I like to think that, like, you know, having met Safe before he wrote the book, The Bitcoin standard and having him, you know, kind of share a lot of his knowledge on money and monetary economics.
But then the Bitcoin standard kind of, like, Helped things fit into place for me. But even then, I still needed to, like, logically order all the the But what about x, y, or z? Um, and so my [00:44:00] hope is that kind of couple things about my book that I hope will help reach another, You know, layer of people is, you know, kind of connecting it to the problem, you know, because I think that if if people look at Bitcoin as A, um, a solution in search of a problem, that that is also part and parcel to why they may not endeavor to try to understand. But if they connect that this thing, Bitcoin is about that thing, the crisis, and that that thing, the crisis is about they're always gonna have to print money with a, you know, approach that's like, I'm building a very logical Case. Because these are literally the things that I had to go through myself even after it started to click for me To come back to the same conclusion consistently time after time, Bitcoin does work.
It does work because of its fixed supply. Because its fixed supply is credible, it's the solution to this problem. Um, and so you know? But also, just a bunch of people's Brains work [00:45:00] differently. So, you know, being able to communicate my thought processes will inevitably reach people That have similar thought processes to myself just as, like, you know, somebody else might write with a different style and, you know, kind of Attack it from a different angle and be able to reach people that I couldn't.
So being able to have, um, you know and obviously not obviously, but, you know, the series that I wrote, this is kind of, Built off of that I published from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty, it's already, you know, kind of impacted a lot of people. So, um, but my hope is now that it's in a book form, Um, that, you know, that combination of attaching it to the problem and logically ordered, you know, will allow More of those people that struggle with that combination of it not being intuitive, there there being a lot of noise, and they're being fearful that if they try, they'll fail To understand it that if they give this a shot that, you know, this is hopefully meant for those type of people. Out
Marty: of All the chapters in the book [00:46:00] based off the essays that you wrote previously, what was the hardest question for you to answer that you were proudest of putting into Clear logic.
Parker: Um, the the one, Probably, uh, Bitcoin not Blockchain. Really?
Yeah. Um, and I think it's also probably The, um, one of the densest, and I was I I have it as the second in there. And I've kind of, like, in the introduction, I explained to people, like, Understanding Bitcoin is not a linear thing. You have to juggle a lot of different concepts at the same time. I've written each of the Chapters or essays in a way that they can be read as standalones.
They're packaged together to be a comprehensive framework, and they're ordered in a way that, say, like, you know, if I was to go through this, this is how I would order them in an outline. But if you, If you're kind of struggling with a a [00:47:00] fundamental, because the first two are probably the deepest in terms of the fundamentals, and Bitcoin not Blockchain is the second one, But you have a question about, you know, something like, well, um, you know, You're saying Bitcoin not blockchain, but, you know, you're talking about how it uses all this energy, and that doesn't seem sustainable to me. And then, you know but if you're hung up on that question of energy and sustainability, and I have an essay that's Bitcoin does not waste energy, it's actually easier to digest Why that's the case, just go read that one to jump around. But so I was a little bit, you know, uh, questioning myself for putting it second, but it but it is, in my opinion, kind of like The the hardest question for those people, and I think the people that I connect with, it's like, you have to have thought about Bitcoin some.
And you probably had to be confused about why Bitcoin is different for that one to really land, but I think it's probably one of the hardest Questions? And to be able to [00:48:00] approach it from a very logical way, because the way I think about it is, like, if there's a thousand Cryptocurrencies. And only one of them signal, but nine hundred ninety nine of them are snake oil, um, which is the truth. But Now it's probably like nine thousand nine hundred. Yeah.
Whatever it is. If I was to tell someone that, their their immediate and very rational Question would be like, okay. I know you're saying that, but, like, how? How can you make that statement? And that if you Approach that problem from, I've gotta go evaluate.
Number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, number six, and it's all the way to a thousand. There's far too much information for you to possibly arrive at a coherent Or any answer at all. But that if you start to build up on a few, you know, bottom up building blocks, And the the ones that I [00:49:00] articulate in that piece are that, you know, I could basically explain fundamentally, basically, what a blockchain is, Demystifying that. Articulating why it only works in the application of money, And then articulating why money converges to one or why economic systems converge a single medium. And that if the reader comes away and says, okay.
I can get why economic systems converge on a single form of money, But assume that is true. If if it is, then does this thing blockchain only work in the context of money? Because if it does, Then you put those two things together and someone could rationally say, well, now I know that there's only gonna be one, And I need to just be identifying one verse the next, not one, two, all the way to to ninety nine. So That one, I think, is the hardest thing for people to like, once they start to, like once Bitcoin starts to [00:50:00] become a possibility where, like, they've gotten to the point of, like, Not just being open to I wanting to I wanna learn, but start to be able to say, okay, I know that there's some signal here, but I still don't know if it's real or not. Um, that the thing that Austin trips them up is being able to distinguish Bitcoin from, um, from everything else.
And the reality is if economic systems converge on a single form of money and, uh, blockchain is only good for one thing and it's the obligation of money and Bitcoin has a fixed supply, Then it obsoleted everything else already. So and I go through kinda like the technical parts, but in a way that's meant to be accessible. Um, so that was one. The other one was probably, um, Bitcoin is not for criminals, um, because I talk about censorship resistance And that one and I kind of use it to explain on a fundamental level, you know, kinda what censorship resistance means, why it's relevant to Bitcoin, why it's related to Coin's fixed supply. Why, basically, Bitcoin has to work for everybody [00:51:00] in order to work for anybody.
So that one was probably One of the best and easiest that I did, but also, you know, helpful. Maybe, you know, Elizabeth Warren will pick it up. Matthew Stoller should read that. That would say. Read it sometime.
Do you see that today? No. Bitcoiners are treasonous. Bitcoiners are treasonous. Uh, for enabling criminals to use bit I feel like, You know, there's nothing more American than Bitcoin.
You know, like Agreed. Like, when you Think about just like this this quote, like, the structure of governance. Like, kind of on a couple of levels, but, like, when you think about The the checks and balances in Bitcoin and nobody, you know like, the mechanisms that ensure why no one is really in control, Why it's incredibly hard to change? Like, similar to the structure of the checks and balances and, you know, kind of one of the Great things about the structure of government in the United States was that was very difficult to [00:52:00] change. Like and then that It puts the individual and and shrines the rights of the individual over everybody else.
You own a Bitcoin, nobody can you know, equal rights. Yeah. No one can debase that. Doesn't matter if you're, you know, in one of the poorest countries in the world or you're Paul Tudor Jones. You have the same assurance, you know.
And so whenever I hear people saying that either the dollar's patriotic, like, That is one of the most comical comical statements. Spend on that. Like, one of, like, the one of the statements that, like, lacks supreme self awareness To claim that the dollar is patriotic. You know, it's like one, like you know, there were, like, You could go back to the seventeen hundreds. You know?
Go back to, like, when they were trying to, You know, do a, um, like, one of the quotes that I have is from Alexander Hamilton who's a lot of people, [00:53:00] you know, um, you know, Give credit to or, um, deride because of, you know, the First Bank of the United States, but he was, Vehemently against, uh, unbacked money, you know, or paper money. You know? So just like thinking about the, you know, like, Reading a read read the constitution and, you know, show me where, you know, the Fed's ability to print money Is somehow patriotic. But then when you when you think about it at its broadest level of, like, basically, this putting this collective, Which is the entity of the United States, the mechanism by which the central government puts itself into debt and then finances it, the fed, It is inherently a collectivist, um, governance structure, and The United States Constitution enshrines the rights of individuals, you know? Yeah.
[00:54:00] So, um, people and and, yeah, like that dollar being patriotic is like, go read some history. No.
Marty: I think it's par for the course in the era of the manipulation of the definition of words. Like, in their minds, the dollar is patriotic in the sense that You need to, uh, be pushing forth the efforts and the goals of the US federal government. That is the sense in which we're patriotic to
Parker: these people.
I think, like, the the error and and and I see a lot of even people that I will Agree with them. Most things, they will say things like, you know, the dollar is important for our national security. And, um, clearly, that is a I'd say, whenever they express those views, they're they're talking about it Maybe in relation to how our our military is funded and and associating, you know, we need to be able to fund our military in order to have a, you know, Viable [00:55:00] defense infrastructure. Um, where they're talking about the, you know, the US financial system itself and the rails and, you know, Doing our best to keep out all the drug lords that still seem to use our financial system and the banks just pay fines for after the fact. You know?
Yeah. Um, but that what I think, you know, particularly on, like, the front end of it, which is like, we need the dollar's important because it's how we can ensure that, you know, we have the best military and that translates to the greatest defense. I think it ignores the thing that actually creates security for America, the American people, which is Enshrining the rights of individuals. And I think that that's what you know, if I'm reading history of the founding fathers of The United States, it was knowing that the collective would be most secure if the rights of the individual We're secure and [00:56:00] that the rights of the individual do not come from a government. That the government is there to serve a purpose which is to protect And ensure the rights of the individual, not not that they come from the government.
And so that if people got back to that foundation, It would see that the current centralized ability to print money undermines the rights of the individual. And if they figure that out, then they'll understand why the you know, if you're only looking at the first derivative of eye print money and It goes to military military defense good, um, that you're compromising everything and undermining everything. And so Dollar is actually bad for national security because it undermines individual. You know, like
Marty: that? I'm laughing because it's actually this is playing out in real time too.
I'm I was gonna say, are you aware of this? Ask you, but I'm pretty positive you're not aware of it. But there's a big trend. I'm figuring out [00:57:00] on TikTok Over the last couple weeks, which is enlisted servicemen, typically millennials or Gen z's, like, openly going And taking selfie videos telling people not to join the military because they don't make enough money. They can't afford things.
Parker: Yeah. That that's a good one. That's a good one because Would I in, um, in Bitcoin's not backed by nothing. What I you know, when I think one of the count like, observations I make is that, you know, oftentimes when you ask people, Um, you know, why does the dollar have value? They'll say something along the lines of like first, they'll say, like, either it's a collective hallucination or belief system.
But after they get Through that, they'll say, um, uh, because of the military and, uh, because of taxes, things like that. And it's that, You know, militaries protect things of value. You know, the the thing that is not of value because there's a military and that every Uh, government currency that's hyperinflated has [00:58:00] had, you know, a military and the ability to tax. And that, um, you know, even, like, go back to, like, Roman Empire, presume, you can't pay Just have to bring it up. Can't you can't pay soldiers, You know They're not taking your bunk Yeah.
Clipped metal anymore. Then you don't have an army. You know, like The barbarians are gonna sack this You have to have something of value To be able to pay, you know. And if you destroy that thing of value, the money, you will no longer have The thing to pay. Right?
It's like it's like it's the reverse set of operations. It's like your ability to print money is destroying everything at a more fundamental level because of Visual. But even the thing that you're, um, you know, keying on as a reason, yeah, that's the thing you're putting at risk because not gonna have a military if you can't pay them with a form of money that affords livelihood to make them putting themselves at risk, You know? Worth it. Worth it.
Yeah. This is played
Marty: out, man. But it's hilarious. You brought that up, [00:59:00] and I called it yesterday. I watched, like, six or seven videos of Enlisted military servicemen and women just being like, don't join the military.
You don't make enough money. It's not worth it. Saying that explicitly, like,
Parker: it's not Yeah. And and also, like, again but, like, go to the, uh, like, more fundamental levels. Like, if you don't respect the rights of the individuals, You know, I saw a picture that my cohort posted about, you know, like, there's that kind of thread going Along of, like, post the most epic picture of yourself.
And he, uh, posted a picture of himself in uniform Waiting for his I think he said waiting Discharge papers. Discharge papers as he was, uh, refusing to take the shot. Yeah. You know? But, like, if you think about us, like, it's not just like soldiers of fortune, but it's like If you disrespect the rights of the individual and then you expect, like, good quality people To want [01:00:00] to fight for what?
You know? Because it isn't just about, like, money and riches. Right? It's about wanting To protect something. Something worth protecting.
Right. And and that thing is Uh, governance structure or country founded on the idea that the rights of the individual are more important Then the collective and that the way to get a strong collective is by protecting the rights of the individual. Yeah. Um, and so yeah. It's like, it really It, uh, astounds me any time that I hear people talk about the dollar as being patriotic or that Bitcoin is Treasonous, um, because those people are just short of history and, you know.
Marty: In a free market, sound money Is probably the foundation for respecting individual rights, just allowing people to access A monetary, um, vehicle [01:01:00] that allows them to accumulate capital over time, And disperse it as they see fit. That
Parker: is like Yeah. I mean, in in one of the and I have it on the back of the, um, the book, but Um, I have, um, well, difficult to see Bitcoin as money, or I'll read the whole thing. But discovering Bitcoin is a personal journey that requires navigating uncharted waters. But as the picture comes into focus, chaos turns to order gradually than suddenly.
While difficult to see, Bitcoin is money and is the greatest instrument of freedom ever invented by man. And I kind of, uh, stole or and I I have it referenced in the actual book, but, um, it's playing on a line from, uh, Hayek in The Road to Serfdom where He describes money as one of the greatest instruments of freedom ever invented by man because it affords people with a range of choice. Do you know what page it's on? I believe that might be my copy. So, um, I don't know We've got books in the studio.
[01:02:00] I don't know what page it is, but I've got this highlighted. That's my that's definitely my copy, I think. Uh, I'm pretty sure this is my copy. This is your copy. Yeah.
Just based on the chicken scratch. Oh, I found it. Page one twenty five. This is From text and documents, the definitive edition, FA Hayek, edited by Bruce Caldwell. Said, um, here, I'll read it A little bit ahead, but it says, because of modern society, it is through the limitation of our money incomes that we are made to feel the restrictions Which our relative poverty still imposes upon us.
Many have come to hate money as a symbol of these restrictions, basically keying in on, like, money being the root of all evil. He says, but this is to mistake for the cause, the medium through which a force makes itself felt. It would be much truer to say that money is one of the greatest instruments of freedom ever invented [01:03:00] by man. It is money which in Existing society opens an astounding range of choice to the poor man, a range greater than that which not many many generations ago was open to the wealthy. Um, and so kind of connecting this idea that, um, the economic good that is money Is what allows people to pursue the endeavors that they actually wanna spend their time on, produce value for others, And then be able to convert that value into the widest range of choice, the the output of all the other people that accept that form of money.
And That, um, you know, when you connect that idea of I get to work on what I wanna work on and somebody pays me in a medium, Then I can convert into a range of choice that, you know, a few generations ago, kings might not have, you know, Being able to [01:04:00] Access. Access. Um, that that's what money actually delivers and that It's not, you know, kind of the exorbitant wealth that's created by quantitative easing, um, and the, you know, wealth extremes that are created by quantitative easing where, you know, the economic system is broken for virtually everyone, but it's working for very few. It is that I go I get to go out in the world. I get to deliver value.
I get to deliver value how I see, You know, see and choose. Um, and then somebody can't come behind me and cut me out from underneath My knees. You know, like, that value that I deliver in the world, I get to go out and determine how to allocate, you know, What value I'm gonna get in return without it being debased. And the ability to do that is incredibly like, it is an instrument of freedom And you start to see it in that way. Because the other thing and I don't know if I talk about in the book.
I think I talk about when I'm when I was describing the cover. But this idea That, um, [01:05:00] a SAU money basically creates the incentive for you to produce more value from others Then you consume of them. And if we're we're living in a world where there's only twenty one million Bitcoin, if you have some Bitcoin, that means that you've delivered more value to Other people than you've extracted from them. Uh, and so any savings that you have in monetary form Basically, represent that excess of of what you've delivered for others but have not consumed from them. And there's there is something also noble in that, you know.
But if you don't have that mechanism that stores purchasing power, basically, The incentive reverses. You don't actually have an incentive to deliver value to people. You actually have an incentive to extract. Yeah. You know?
It doesn't mean that, you know, everyone then suddenly doesn't, you know, still find ways to deliver value. It means that the underlying Economic instrument has a perverse incentive, um, that that's basically working, [01:06:00] you know, Against the stream of those that are trying to create value. Yeah. It was pretty poetic
Marty: that you just switched up that quote, Applied it to Bitcoin considering that Hayek was the one that said, we will never fix the money until we find this sly roundabout way to take it out of the hands Remittance central banks, and it's exactly what
Parker: Bitcoin is. I'm surprised I was able to find it so quickly, but yeah.
When you when you gave me the book, I was like, I'm not gonna be able to find it. But yeah. So, you know, that's also just, you know, a little nugget from the from the cover that, It's there and it it it's fully referenced in the I think a few different, uh, chapters too. Yeah.
Marty: So, I mean, we're here to we came here to sort of place Bitcoin in the context of the great financial crisis.
Now that deeply affected how we became to understand Bitcoin [01:07:00] at the end of the day. We've had probably one major crisis since two thousand eight, lockdowns, money printing. We would both argue that wasn't really the crisis. It was lack of liquidity in the banking sector that was made clear in September Of twenty nineteen with the repo spasm, but they were successfully able to, um, paper over that narrative with the COVID narrative. Um, so I would say that even though there was a financial crisis that led to massive amounts of money printing, People probably, uh, would be comfortable to say that most people just associate it with COVID and the lockdowns And not some stress in the banking sector.
With that in mind, like, moving forward, how do you think people will view Bitcoin And future financial crises that are probably inevitable considering the fact that they always need to print more [01:08:00] money, And they've hiked up rates and pulled a lot of money out of the system. They're just waiting for the point at which it breaks. Um, how do you think Bitcoin Is viewed by people in these scenarios. See if they get it.
Parker: Yeah.
Like, I think one, I think that twenty twenty was full full blown Finish crisis. I think that, um, so it was in many ways worse Then then two thousand eight. I think most people even, you know, kind of Wise on it. Have that impression that it wasn't, you know. But because of their association with the government shutdown.
You know, like, They associate and what they remember is, you know, the ten million jobs lost or whatever it was. And then I go, that wasn't the financial system. That was the Lockdowns. The lockdown, and the [01:09:00] financial crisis was locked down too. You know?
And that they don't go back to The repo crisis where the Fed printed more money in a single day, seventy five billion, They ever had because prior, you know, in in post fifty billion. Post post finish price QE, the height of it was eighty five billion. Yeah. But that was in a month. Seventy five billion in a night On a dime.
You know? Um, so that, like, that does not happen if something isn't broken and when the repo markets you know, interest rates tripled. Like, something was deeply wrong then. Then, uh, February prior to that Was the setup for the essentially, the oil wars, which created the crash in oil that then, You know, ultimately, then when they did the government quote lockdown, result in oil for technical reasons becoming negative, but, like, going, you know, from Wherever it was, like, thirty dollars. The May futures contract.
Yeah. I know. Um, so [01:10:00] but in that moment of crisis, the Fed did remarkable things they hadn't done in prior crisis. Right? Like, they, um, they, like like, fundamentally broke their charter, you know, In their At a time In concert with in concert with the treasury to basically, like, fund you know, to basically be able to purchase corporate debt, To be able to purchase, uh, municipal debt.
Like, they were basically having to plug the ship In many ways, that were breaking and that they were seeing, and they were just stuffing money in the system. And that doesn't make the crisis, Um, any less bad, it makes it worse in my opinion that they were having you know, they they had their learnings from the last crisis, And they were like, okay. We're gonna need to print money quickly. But even then, they, like, did three, you know, instances of, like, rate cuts and, You know, uh, emergency funding for the repo mark is before they then came [01:11:00] out. We're like, we're doing unlimited quantitative easing for as long as we have to do, You know, very quickly.
Um, so I'd say twenty twenty was just as bad. And that that thing, that turned people on to Bitcoin. Right? Like, Paul Tudor Jones's letter is one of the things that I highlight a lot when I'm trying to relate to, um, you know, I'm I reference it in the Presentation I gave at Dallas sold Parkland. Um, you know, he has his two quotes keying in on Bitcoin's finite scarcity and the fixed twenty one million supply with, Uh, we're seeing a rate of monetary expansion like the like none of us have ever seen.
Like a market yeah. I think the term he uses like Like, uh, that shook even a market veteran like myself who's been there for fifty years, whatever. Um, so when they printed three trillion dollars in three months, Thirteen weeks. People that were paying attention connected it to Bitcoin. Um, one of the things I also talked about in that in that Bitcoin It's not a hedge presentation at Old Parkland.
In order for a [01:12:00] crisis like that to be relevant to you or for not to be relevant to you, but for you to be able to, uh, relate the relevance of Bitcoin to it Is that you have to know something about Bitcoin prior to it happening. You know, imagine you or somebody that you just said, Bitcoin's snake oil, and I have, you know, never endeavored to learn anything fundamentally about it. And there's a bunch of market turbulence, and then you might read in the paper about how the Fed's QE, but you don't understand the effects of it, you can't relate that event to Bitcoin. You know? Um, but If you've picked up a book and you started to read about how, you know, the two thousand eight financial crisis is related to Bitcoin and about how the financial system and Since stability is rooted in, um, the the printing of money and that it would be in all of our Individual interest, like, anybody who produces value as, you know, who's our interest, um, to be Be able to save and [01:13:00] inform money that can't be printed, and then this is a solution.
Then the next time that the crisis happens, you're then going to say, Uh, this thing I read about, they just did it again. You know? Maybe maybe this whole thing, Bitcoin, makes sense. I think what happens is as a function of time, it's like knowledge distributes as a function of time. So more people are likely to have read something about Bitcoin, And that its whole purpose is to eliminate people's ability to print your money out from underneath you such that Each next time it happens, not only does it make that system more and more fragile and the ramifications of it on the system become more apparent.
So even if people haven't connected the solution, they're out there with their, you know, radars on and trying to figure out, like, knowing something's broken but Not knowing how to fix it. And then someone slides the Bitcoin standard across their desk or gradually and suddenly, [01:14:00] And they start to relate it to it. So I think that the short answer is just like function of time. More people will have learned about Bitcoin such that when the The next thing happens because it's inevitable that they're gonna have to print more money, that they're then able to connect it to Bitcoin, and that only accelerates because knowledge distribution Accelerates. Yeah.
And it's just it is inevitable. Like, they Each time they do QE, it causes the credit system to metastasize, has since twenty twenty. You know? Credit systems expanded by, I think, twenty three or twenty four trillion in total just in the US. Um, they are, you know, quote, trying to, You know, drain reserves, quote, rain and inflation not not gonna work.
And then, you know, something, You know, something's broke, and then they come back in, and they're gonna have to print more money than they had before because the system and the amount of liabilities in it. And I'm not talking unfunded pension [01:15:00] liabilities. I'm talking about fixed debt maturities are so much larger, it necessitates they have to print A shit ton more money. And that absolute scale, you know, was enough to spook, Uh, Paul Tudor Jones into Bitcoin, but it's just perfectly rational. And the more it is, the each successive, Um, instance of it puts people on that path to being able to see that one.
Yeah.
Marty: And I apologize for the background noise. They're working on the restaurant Below the comments right now. Yeah.
Parker: We're getting a restaurant back.
I you know, whenever something happens like this, I say, if you're gonna be a Bitcoin, I deal with a little volatility. Yeah. You know? So Can't can't deal with the little, uh, you know, people sawing underneath your feet. What How are you gonna make a bear market?
Yeah. Come back
Marty: next cycle. Yeah. Um, no. That'd be like, If you had a guess, how much money will they need to print next time
Parker: [01:16:00] around?
I just anchor to more. So, You know, um You think we hit?
Marty: I think, like What is it? Nine to eleven figures? How big is that?
Parker: Ten trillion at least. Um, like like, some of the ways that I bookended
Marty: Yeah. Ten no. I gotta add three more,
Parker: fourteen figures. The numbers get so large, I start to, you know Yeah.
Like, so in Over five years, they Hello? Created three point six trillion. And then between twenty the twenty nineteen And the fall of twenty twenty one, basically two years, they created five trillion or had to inject five trillion in the system. So it's both the scale and the speed accelerated. Um, and so it's like Like, you know, not wanting you know, like, one way that that I would think [01:17:00] about it is in terms of, like, uh, system leverage, like debt to dollars.
So When there were seventy you know, in two thousand nineteen, there were, like, seventy three trillion of Um, of seventy three trillion of debt and, like, three and a half to four trillion in the banking system. Um, so I think whatever it was, it was, like, something like seventeen times. And then after the you know, in terms of debt to dollars, and then they print all that money and it was twelve to one. Now they're in the process of taking that Money out and the credit system's continuing to grow, which is one of the things that creates this strain of inevitability of of something breaking. It's like As credit system is trying to expand because it needs to span, otherwise it collapses, the Fed's Taking the building blocks of liquidity out.
So it's actually relevering the system, essentially, um, that, you know, the, They have to [01:18:00] deleverage the system. They have to reduce that ratio, you know, if it was, say, Eight to one. Mhmm. You know? Then, you know, that would you know, add a debt stack of, A hundred trillion, I'd put it like twelve and a half.
You know? So that would say that they, you know, you you need to introduce an incremental five trillion, you know, from where they're at today approximately. But I think that, you know, ultimately, what they did before and why that they'll have to print more money than they did the last time is, like, gonna overshoot because they're trying to plug all the holes in the, uh, in the leaky ship. So it's like, I don't like to pick you know, Put your number on it, but it's gonna be greater than five trillion dollars. You know, they have to deal deleverage the system, um, because the System is now twenty five trillion dollars larger than it was before.
Yeah. And they're having to sustain all the the past excesses as well. Yeah. Logan, [01:19:00] can you
Marty: go yell at these guys? I can't take the volatility of this noise.
I'm kidding. Um, but the last question, I think this is on people's minds too. And this is hard really hard for people to go off. Like, the system that you just described with the Immense amount of debts and the dollars the significantly less amount of dollars underlying that debt. It's a lot of money.
Unfathomable.
Parker: Asher Medical Nomads. Large for us to actually conceive Yes. Truthfully. Yes.
Like, quickly, like, one way that I would relate the three trillion that was printed between March of twenty twenty and May of twenty twenty was that Jerry World took one billion dollars to build, and it coordinated economic activity way that you should think about, you know, what one billion represents, first five to six years to build that stadium, which at the time, maybe to this day, was still one of the nicest. And there's only thirty [01:20:00] Two of them in the country. And three trillion, what they printed just for that, you know, three month period was the equivalent of three thousand Jerryworlds Just flooding the system. Like, literally, like, the word trillion is a number that you can't conceive of in your daily life. Like, I don't even think I mean, maybe, you know, Elon Musk can start to equate them to, like, the number of rockets, but, like, you know Number of stars in here?
The new the number, like, in your individual life, when you think about, like, you know, buying one of the biggest ranches in tech, it's like, You still like, trillion dollars is outside of the realm of, like, what you can actually grasp in your In your daily life, like, what that value translates to, which you'd have to need to produce. Yeah. And
Marty: that's you're you're helping me, like, Frame the question even better because with that fact in mind, this is all unfathomable. That's what I think. And it could be making an assumption here, [01:21:00] but that that's what I think.
When When we talk about transitioning to a Bitcoin standard, I think that's the one thing that holds people up is thinking of those unfathomable numbers mean like the incumbent system is this big. How can we possibly get in the lifeboat and get to, Uh, the the Statue of Freedom, uh, in the in the calmer waters with that in mind, this unfathomable Amount of dollars and debt that is built up. Like, how do you transition away from that, uh, like, with the least amount of volatility as possible. How do you get from the front cover to the back cover without tipping your boat, essentially?
Parker: Yeah.
I mean, I I think that The the error that most people make is trying to, To to forecast the end state and trying to Prognosticate or forecast [01:22:00] everything that has to happen between now and then. Um, and I talk about this in one of my more recent pieces not in the book. I'm I'm sure I, you know, touch on these similar themes, but in a different way of the way I like to describe these people is, like, If I know, a, is where I'm at today and b, is Bitcoin's a form of mine that everyone's gonna adopt, I don't have to know exactly what that looks like or when it's gonna happen or how we're gonna get there in order to start heading out in that direction, You know, um, because there's a ton of uncertainty in the world. We're mortal. You know?
We lost your father too too soon. The the future, we we don't we don't know exactly what's gonna happen. We don't know how long we're all gonna be here. And that, you know, when we think about the ideas, it's like what directs human action? You know, what is the thing that allows me to take one foot In front of the [01:23:00] other, that guides that decision rationally without having to know how the next ten years, twenty years, Thirty years, rest of my my life, you know, maybe less, maybe more plays out.
Um, and so that it's really to start with the inputs Of, like, the cause and effect and getting less hung up on, well, what are the consequences and more focusing on The cause part of the effect rather than the effect part of the cause. Um, because if you get to the idea of it's in everybody's interest to have a form of money That can't be printed and that that allows you to better retain value and you recognize that this other thing isn't sustainable, it doesn't Really matter, you know, how many other people's lifeboats, you know, Tip up, down, go under. It's just what's the most rational thing for you to do to look over your own Self interest and that if enough people do that, if [01:24:00] enough people are rational, it's, um, you know, people are, then, We get to a better destination than we otherwise would be. Like, one of the things I like to relate it to is like, hey, Venezuela hyperinflated and there were a lot of other Working currencies around there. Imagine if Venezuela happened and there wasn't a working form of money to coordinate aid Or to help reboot.
Right? That's what Bitcoin imagine there wasn't this that that other that other system, it's going down, you know? Now just imagine a world where there wasn't this thing Bitcoin that could be the solution because the ship's going down either way. It's not going down because Bitcoin. Bitcoin's here to fix a problem That was created by the chip that's gone awry.
Um, and so, um, I think that the idea of, like, the nominal amount of money trips people up, But the fundamental answer is the nominal amount of money is not what's relevant because there's enough money to go around to satisfy everything, [01:25:00] Everything and every everyone because Bitcoin can be divided into, you know, infinitely small numbers of units. Um, and what that ultimately represents is that everyone can have their own percentage of a fixed pie. And that in the world with a fixed buy, that means that their their value will be stored or will most reasonably be expected to store value better than If that weren't the case. And and if there if that weren't the case is what the current system is where they regularly print money. You know?
And so it's like, don't get hung up on, you know, the ninety three trillion and, you know, How that all gets dealt with. It's it's real and it's valid. But the the thing that's relevant is that it's not sustainable, and it's what causes them to print money. Once you realize that and that you realize that printing money is a problem, then your solution is finding a form of money that can't be printed. And if that thing is Bitcoin, It's like, okay.
You know, be rational [01:26:00] and and take that forward action to solve your problem, but you don't have to be as concerned with, like, well, What's the consequence of you know, there's a lot of people that are holding US treasuries that think that they're assets, and they're not gonna be worth anything. You know? And, like, I don't celebrate that fact, but it's just reality. I don't have to, like, get hung up on, like, well, who's the person that has the treasury, and how's this gonna impact their saving? You know?
It it becomes less relevant than, like, what's gonna guide, you know, the future and what what what is the reason and logic to to lead to those conclusions. Because if you if you focus on, like, all the different things that happen between here and there or what exactly it it has to look like And you're not focused on the inputs? You'll you'll never get there.
Marty: Yeah. Completely agree.
I do think that is, like, a mental hurdle for people. I think the The sheer size of the incumbent system is just like a mental anchor. It's like people almost feel like that's be pot committed
Parker: to that. Yeah. But it's like, well but if they can print money faster than [01:27:00] you can contemplate the size of the amount of money they're printing, like, literally, like, when someone in congress says our budget's two trillion dollars, like, have no concept of what two trillion means.
You just don't. Like, you can't. It's a number that's too large. And if you were to wait Jerry
Marty: Wolds.
Parker: Yeah.
Um, so, like, um, it's like the numbers become irrelevant when they become so large, and you should be asking yourself, well, if they become so large, then maybe the thing's becoming less relevant, You know? And and just, you know, hopefully, be glad that you don't own any of the credit that Is going to, you know, essentially not be money good because the money is not gonna be worth anything when they pay it back to you. You know? So, um, but I do agree that that's a hang up. But, like, I just encourage people to, like, focus on the inputs of what drive decisions Because that's what will lead to outcomes, and there's two sides of the equation.
It [01:28:00] is the printing of money causes the currency to fail For very fundamental economic reasons, not just because of the fact that they printed too much of it, that the underlying form of money cannot coordinate trade, which money's, Uh, value to the world. And that if that's the case, you still need money, and you still have to go solve that problem if you do have one, which everyone does.
Marty: Yeah. No. I think it's important to walk people through this because I do think Like I
Parker: That's the big problem.
I had that question. It was one of the questions the question they answered. The whole part of it was like, this logic makes sense in theory, but How do we get there? You know, it's like and that's part of, you know it was part of the inspiration for the, um, the article that I wrote a few weeks ago. I made the thumbnail for you.
Oh, yeah. That's right. That's right. Uh, oh, that's right. Great thumbnail.
Yeah. Great thumbnail. Perfect. On the first try. On the first try?
On the first try. I literally [01:29:00] texted Marty. I was like, hey. I need a picture of A dude who's, like, on a cliff, you know, where there's, like, a a A deep valley. Deep valley.
And, uh, he sent me one back. I was like, this is perfect. No duration needed. But, um, but the but the idea that, Like, someone's going next, you know, and you just have to figure out what the economic incentive is that dictates why that It's true because whether or not it's you is entirely in your control and no one else's. Yeah.
Um, and that, Yeah. It's just you know? But but but then the other connection is, like, that's everything in life. You know? Like, how do you build a building if you don't know that there's gonna be someone there to buy it?
You know, you're you're you're operating on reason and logic of what, You [01:30:00] know, guiding inputs that, you know, result in outputs and sometimes, You know, you get things wrong, but that's why in my case, and what, you know, I intend this book to be, it's like, I had to test these, The like, that reason and logic about Bitcoin over and over again, uh, on a different levels or for different questions In order to consistently arrive back on it being the solution. Like and I I also try to reinforce that to people. It's like, you don't get to having the level of, You know, confidence, conviction, exposure to Bitcoin as I do or anybody does after they've been working on it for so long without having to struggle with these same questions. Because they're very they're very, um, they're very logical. You know?
And so, um, but it is a classic, You know, pitfall to try to, like, try to focus on the endpoint rather than just what what guides the next Next decision for [01:31:00] the next person. Yeah. It's an incredible book.
Marty: Thank you for adding the fort. I mean, like I said, the last sentence was The other part of the four that I wrote about is my journey of learning about Bitcoin.
Um, that's speaking to the point that you said earlier is that Each cycle, whether it's a financial crisis cycle or a Bitcoin having cycle, whatever it may be, more people are More aware of Bitcoin and I think content, like, gradually and suddenly, the Bitcoin standard, the Fiat standard, Uh, Broken Money by Lynn, uh, bunch of other books on this bookshelf and in other places in the world, Uh, have set individuals living today in twenty twenty three and moving forward up in a much better position to get from zero to one much quicker. Because when I was learning about Bitcoin, two thousand thirteen, two thousand fourteen, luckily, we had Michael Goldstein and Pierre writing the Nakamoto Institute, which It's probably [01:32:00] saved me in the early days, and you had Zabo's, uh, blogs that weren't really directly connected to Bitcoin, but describe the Technical aspects and social incentives that that make it work. Um, but beyond that, I mean, you had Andreas on Tynopolis. His videos were good. There a few podcasts.
Shout out to Vortex and Crew who are running, uh, The Bitcoin Show Back in the day, but outside the noise from the altcoin
Parker: world. The vortex or one vortex? Is it just the vortex? I just go on board. People just go on board things.
Yeah. But he was he was in around, like, sending signal Yeah. You know, particularly on, like, the Bitcoin versus Yeah.
Marty: And the point being is, like, I think anybody who picks up this book, uh, as their first Starting put on their journey to try to understand Bitcoin is in a much better position than I was at the age of twenty two in two thousand thirteen. Like I said it in the forward, I think.
This collection of x [01:33:00] essays that you've expanded on in the book is the best zero to one primer for people to get to not understanding what Bitcoin is to Having a well rounded understanding of what it is and how it can impact
Parker: the world. No. One, I appreciate you having written that and saying it, um, because It does it means a lot to me. And, um, you know, as, you know, as one that was guided by you know, once, you know, Safe had sent me a early copy of When standard that he'd you know, um, we'd developed a friendship, working relationship in the year prior to that before we had a working draft. But Second, the Bitcoin standard came out.
Gideon Powell and I bought two hundred fifty copies and was like, you know, I just had this, you know, Very common sense was like, okay. How long does it take to read a book? I can send this to somebody. They can read it, and then I can help them understand it from there. But imagine me trying to explain this.
Like, the best leverage on my time is buying the book and giving it to somebody to learn about [01:34:00] Bitcoin. And then, you know, also though, like, there was a a way that, um, The Bitcoin Center connected for me. And then I had these you know, even though, like, my brain connect them, I still needed to, like, get that thought process on on certain key questions down on paper to test, You know, the reason, logic, assumptions, however you wanna describe it. And that now this being in a book format And all being packaged as one, it's like the benefit of it in the past is has, you know, been something similar to what I expected to carry forward, but I hope To be on an amplified basis is that if I had to go through all those questions and and and order them myself, Now somebody comes and reads the book, it will hopefully accelerate their path to understanding Bitcoin. Because Rather than having to necessarily sit there and ruminate on the same questions to order it themselves, and they they inevitably would have gotten there Over a [01:35:00] longer period of time, you know, possibly short.
But that this now serves both for people that have already read it, that are familiar with it. Hey. Read the book because maybe somebody wouldn't, you know, click on an online blog post. But also, they're refined, they're shaped, and Having it all packaged is one. They have everything right there easily attainable and that, you know, if it was going to take someone x amount of time to get to Bitcoin.
If they read this, the goal is that, um, for, Yeah. Certain group of people whose minds work a certain way that, you know, relate to to to the ways and ideas that I talk about, that it will accelerate their journey. So, Um, it's kind of, you know that is what the distribution of knowledge is about, that it does accelerate because there's resources that Didn't previously exist. And, you know, when I was learning about Bitcoin for the first time, you know, even though the Bitcoin standard was formed for me, it wasn't Get out. You know, I I was [01:36:00] lucky to have a a personal and working relationship with SAFE.
Um, but then also people have pointed me to the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. And, um, you know, it's just it's, you know, the more high signal content out there, the The faster the destination or the the more, you know, kind of accelerated the path is that an individual should be able to grok Bitcoin. And, Um, if I've done my job, that will that's what the book will do. What took
Marty: me probably about three years to go from zero to, like, a Comprehensive understanding, like, as close to I am now as I think I fully understood Beckwith, like, three or four years in. If you pick up this book, you can do it in a weekend, I think.
I don't
Parker: think so. There it's gotta be some time component to it. You know, let's call it six month. You know? You read it over A weekend or a month.
And then, like, over the next few months, I feel like the things will start to really sink in. Okay. From
Marty: three years to three months.
Parker: Yeah. We gotta be, like [01:37:00] You know?
Humble. Humble. Understanding Bitcoin is still hard. It's still difficult to see. I'm gonna
Marty: blow smoke up your ass, but I think you did a good job.
Thank you. Thank you. It's been great. Thanks for having me on. Anytime.
I mean, around Merry Christmas. You know you know the
Parker: studio is always open if you're Yeah. Sometimes you demand that I I did last week. You did. I answered the call.
Thank you. I do that. Um,
Marty: mention again, where can people find
Parker: the book? Um, so the book is exclusively for sale on the safe house dot com. Safe spelled s a I f.
And, uh, you can read the forward and the introduction on TFTC dot io, Um, and also review the table of contents, get a good sense of what's in there, uh, to figure out whether or not you wanna purchase it. If you're, you know, kind of struggling with some of these questions or some of the ideas in the podcast make sense, like, definitely go to the safe house Dot com right now, buy the [01:38:00] book. And then, you know, if you've read Graduates and Suddenly in the past online series, buy at least twenty copies for your friend. Any any fewer you're doing your friends, uh, a A disservice. Serious disservice.
Yeah. It's an injustice, I would say. Yeah. I'm
Marty: a buy twenty bucks and take them home. But is it, like, weird for me to go home to my friends and family and hand them the book that I wrote the foreword to?
Parker: No. I think it's like, hey. I'm I'm proud of this forward. I I care about you, and I want you to understand Bitcoin. That's it's all about the framing of how I
Marty: prepare something.
So
Parker: like that. I care about you. Yeah.
Marty: I care about you. Here's this book.
I just so happen to write the
Parker: forward. I read this forward with you in mind. Yeah.
Marty: Well, Parker, Uh, as I said in the forward as well, it's been a incredible seven years now on this developing a friendship. View you as a mentor to a certain degree as well.
Parker: Same. View as mentor and a friend. Yeah. Go both ways.
Marty: Yeah.
It's been it's been fun To see you [01:39:00] go from where we were when we first met both of us, where we both were where we fur when we first met to where we are now, it's pretty cool.
Parker: Yeah. It's been a fun ride and look forward to the journey ahead too. It's gonna be a long
Marty: one. Volatile, fun, stressful, exciting.
That's what it's all about, the journey. Would it be worth it if the journey wasn't, uh, the way it has been and will be? Wouldn't
Parker: want it any other way. No.
Marty: Peace and love,
