Mailbag, incl: What about the Megathreats? November 23, 2025

27:58Even the Gold Council could give you an estimate. And then there's other estimates that are out there are varied. And that doesn't count for the unexplored, undiscovered. So it's sort of like, I'm not dissing on gold. Gold is really awesome pre-Bitcoin. Like now we've got Bitcoin, it's a joke, honestly. The only thing that gold has that is far superior to Bitcoin is it has 5 ,000 years of track record. Correct. And we've got 16 years of track record. And that counts for a lot. That's part of the adoption maturity question that George asked. Coming back to that, that's why you've got so much volatility because we're still betting, so we, people are still betting on will it actually be a thing?

28:36because if it's not a thing, it may be worth less than the current price. And so this goes out. But if it becomes more of a thing, the price might go up. And no one knows for sure. Plenty of conviction out there, but no certainty, right? And so that's kind of, George, to your question. When people are feeling like they want to take some risks, they want to bet on a brighter future that might make them some more money, you're buying Nvidia and you buy Bitcoin because things might go up. And when you're worried about it, now the true believers will say the whole regardless, and Andrew already talked about some of the dips you've been through, mate, But that's the true believers.

29:06Those who are just sort of, again, thinking about tech stocks, right? Thinking about GameStop and all the meme stocks. And there are people, and it annoys the Bitcoiners because, you know, they're kind of like, well, this is a real thing. Don't bet on the Australian dollar go up and down and up and down and up and down all the time. It's money, right? And yet a lot of the sentiment, a lot of the daily movements, remember pricing is on the margin. So whatever Andrew thinks Bitcoin is worth, if he's not buying or selling today, his opinion doesn't count. Now, it kind of counts in the abstract because he could add to the buying or selling pressure should you choose.

29:34But the reality is most people don't buy or sell anything. Stocks, cash, Bitcoin in a given day. So it's just a case of, well, who is trading? What do they think? I own Bitcoin. Not me personally. Person A owns Bitcoin. They get scared. You do. You do own it. My point was I'm not making it about me personally. Sorry, you're right. I do. Person A says, I own some Bitcoin, but I'm freaked out because shares are falling and the Bitcoin price is falling and I just don't want it to go up. I'm just selling because I'm scared. I thought I was going to make some money. or I made some money, now it's dropping, I'm going to take my profits or whatever million different reasons people buy and sell speculative assets all the time.

30:09Like with shares, the fundamental value out over time in the short term, it's just purely how optimistic, how fearful, how greedy, how exuberant are people in that market feeling. That's where the price gets set on a daily basis. 100%. The other thing that's really hard with this is that the way that we measure it is in dollars. Yeah, exactly. Right? So you're kind of measuring one money in another money. Yeah. What's the worst today? Which is weird. And so you'll often see memes out there that will talk about how Bitcoin is priced in houses, as you've said. Yeah. This is how prices go down over time and on average.

30:45House prices go down, we're measuring Bitcoin. And then even within that context, you and I are talking about it in either US dollars or Aussie dollars. There are people in Argentina, like I said, Bitcoin's down 20%. Like Bitcoin has exploded to anyone who's measuring it in Argentinian pesos or Lebanese pound or is it the lira? I forget. There's 168 international fiat currencies out there. 99 % of them are rubbish. Even the IMF came out with a report the other day saying, yeah, these are awful, which is interesting, right? This is an IMF-owned report. And so it's kind of like, you know, well, what am I measuring it in?

31:24And does it even make sense to measure it? I mean, houses don't make sense, right? Because the house measures are still Bitcoin to Australian dollars to houses. And so it's still, because houses are measured in local currency, all they're doing is converting Bitcoin into local currency denominated houses, which is effectively just turning into local currency anyway. 100%. It's all that. And it's got to be, right? Until and unless it's the primary unit of, I got paid a Bitcoin and I spent 0.1 of a Bitcoin. I know there's not real numbers, it's going to be lots of money. But, you know, and I'll give you a 0.001.

31:56a certain number of stats for those who the cookies like me who know those things i'll give you a couple of stats for a coke can and you'll give me a couple of you know once that change and then i'll go and you know when you start to talk in that if you go to france you don't you don't say you know i mean firstly you do you're like how many euro am i getting for my work i'm getting that many euro okay spending that year for coke okay by the time you've been there for i lived in london right and at some point you go god that's a lot of australian dollars god that's a lot of australian dollars then you just want to go i got a 10 pound note in my pocket that's going to cost me a pound.

32:24And you stop converting. Not because it's scary, but when you actually live there rather than travel there, it's the lingual franca. It is just the... And it makes no sense to go to a bar. Can I buy a croissant for a dollar and they'll look at you as in like, I have no idea what that's worth. Why would they? I'm not going to think about it in that context. Does it make any sense? Right. Do you know that one Australian dollar is worth 951 South Korean won? 951! About 6 odd yen, is it? 600 yen. I can't remember the yen conversion. No, it's hundreds of yen. Yeah. It's 64 dollars, six something. I think it's 64 dollars.

32:57It's like when you say it to your eight-year-old. Hong Kong dollars. Anyway. So$1 is 102 Japanese yen. There you go. And I remember, I don't know, I think my boy when he was little heard me saying something, he goes, what, dad, 102 yen? By the end, dad, by the end. Well, it's actually, yes, but don't forget that a big man costs 500 yen. Like, what, 500 yen? That's so, yeah, but don't forget that the average Japanese, companies pay is like, it's all relative. In fact, that's the point of money. The point of money is a common language that we use to facilitate. Without money, we just don't do modern commerce or even medieval commerce for that matter, right?

33:38Like it's entirely abstract. And so when we talk about hard money and we measure it in a not hard money, and by the way, this is always a stat that blows people away but 25 % of the Australian dollars that exist today did not exist five years ago maybe that figure is even higher now you go what now all else being equal how does that not change the price of everything even in okay let's forget currency exchanges right even a Keynesian economist will talk about real GDP yes yeah or inflation adjusted wages yes in which case within the context of the currency without any conversions, they're still doing a conversion because they need to account for the extra, for the change in purchasing power.

34:26We say, we've joked on the podcast before, when we were kids, a millionaire was like, whoa, a millionaire. A millionaire had three yachts and a mansion on Sydney Harbour. Yes, yes. A millionaire today is someone with a two-bedroom unit in Bankstown. Like, it doesn't mean anything. Now, because it's all relative, right? I can also price that unit in bananas, in cars, in units. Everything is relative. And the value of money and the – this is why people go, well, but Bitcoin's got no utility. It's got – it's like, yes, it does. It's got the same utility as any money. It gives us a medium of exchange and a common language to discuss value.

35:07It is what economists call it the most saleable good. It doesn't – what does it do? it allows me to trade with you now you want some fish and i've got shoes but i don't want any fish but how do you get well so then but i actually turns out that i want some bricks to build a house so you've got now got to find someone to trade the bricks with with the fish so that you can then trade with me the economy breaks down so we just use this thing that facilitates trade and i read just recently actually back in the very early days of australia we didn't the one One of the first currencies to be used was one of the, it was a Spanish currency.

35:45It wasn't really. It wasn't, there wasn't enough pounds or whatever it was in circulation. And then the, and then convicts started using IOUs on bits of paper. IOS got some money, right? So here it is. And that's an asset to you. It's only as good as my, my trust and your trust and faith in me, but it's just sort of like, you can actually pay someone else with my IOU to you. What is it? It's a bit of paper. I mean, it gets really, it's really very ethereal. It's very, it's very hard. The only reason it's not hard is because since we were three, we understood that when grandma put the dollar coin or the note, if you're old enough, in your hand, that you knew that I could swap this for a bag of lollies.

36:30And then it's just, and we've grown up with it. And so it's like as natural as the English language or as natural as looking up and seeing the sky is blue. and when something completely new that the universe has never seen before arrives like what how else do we describe it except in them that economic language of our our chosen language which is the australian dollar which means nothing to 98 of the global population in fact 99 of the global population right like it's a completely ridiculous irrelevant measure go to any other economy in the world you can't buy a coffee with it no one will accept it no one even knows like oh i'll give you 20 Australian dollars.

37:05Is that a lot? You don't even know, right? So I'm very sorry, George, I'll shut up in a second. The thing you've got to remember is this, there is the promise of sound money, but getting there from here, the hell of a journey. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

37:30I don't know how we're going to do this, mate. I'm going to try to keep you on the process lane here, right? So, because it's hard and I have some thoughts. I have some, but here's a question. Dear Scott and Ram, says Paul, a big question for you both because your opinion demands respect. You're goddamn right it does, Paul. You're goddamn right it does. Then Paul says, you ready, Andrew? Yep. Fix the money, fix the world. Yeah, Bitcoin is hope, man. I so fundamentally believe that. Imagine - It seems like this craven get-rich-quick thing is like, no, society and civilization is better served. Like, I will die on that hill.

38:09Go on. But imagine year 2046, says Paul. A decentralized currency is the new norm, where fiat and fractional reserve is no more. Yay. What would the years looking up, so leading up to this, look like? Messy. To address the elephant in the room, says Paul. How do we transition the paper wealth we in Australia have locked up in our mortgages, transferred to wealth stored in Bitcoins? Or is it simply we'll have to reckon with the truth of our homes being worth their utility value, and that no one in the perfect money world would trade them with us for the price we once paid for the home, which was financially engineered through credit created under the old system?

38:50While I'm a big believer in the technology represented by Bitcoin, I don't quite understand how we would get from point A to point B. Thanks and fool on, Paul. So I'm going to keep you on these. I may interrupt, Graham. Just heads up. Please do. Not to be a player. No. It's so easy. This is the process. I'm going to make you treasurer. I'm going to make you treasurer for the next 19 years because that's the year that Paul said we're going to get there. Now, if your job is to say we are going to buy 2046 at some point, I'm not saying wait till then. I'm saying at some point between now, 2046, we've retired the Australian dollar.

39:29Bitcoin is the currency of Australia. We are in a sound money world where we can't create more money because we're using Bitcoin and the Bitcoin dollar is. The Australian dollar ceases to be. Maybe it's pegged to Bitcoin. Who knows? But in any case, Bitcoin is the only currency. And by 2046 at some point, by that date, somewhere between now and then, we transition fully. What is, how do you manage that, if you do it all, to make that acceptable, to make that worthwhile, to make that either not as painful as it might be or just be less streamlined than it could otherwise be? How do you make the best possible transition for Australia to Bitcoin as our national currency?

40:15Yeah. You know, part of the reason why these are so difficult questions to answer concisely is because you have to, so you go into the realms of economics and philosophy and game theory and sociology. It's like, so I don't, I don't mean to waffle and ramble, but it's sort of like you either make these very big claims and just go, trust me, or you try and backfill them and do it. And that's, that's the journey that you go on. It's like, it's ridiculous. Oh, it does that, does that. How does it do? Oh, because of this. Yeah. But how is that true? Well, that's true because of this. Well, doesn't that relate?

40:47No, and that's because, and then like 14 hours later, it's like, oh, we're still on the tip. So it's really hard. Like, excellent question. Excellent question. How do you do it? Well, Hayek said, Nobel laureate of economics and one of the best economists that ever lived, in my humble opinion, said we do it in a sly roundabout way. And I think one of the things that we find very normal today was not very normal for most of human history because we think that money is something that is decreed on high. And it never was. It was an organic bottom-up phenomena that people just organically, it was an emergent property of civilization.

41:30in the modern context we think that no government makes money government controls it government issues it government mandates how it is used and how it can be used and so therefore very naturally when that's been the case for 50 odd years and a little bit longer than that too if you want to sort of go to that pseudo right but our transition from perfectly sound to to unsound it's sort of like we had all these sort of iterations but but now it's sort of like well if that's the world that I live in, the government has to make it happen. It's like, that's not true at all. And if you have kids, you might understand this more intuitively because when they go online and start playing Fortnite, they're not talking in Australian dollars.

42:10They're talking in V-Bucks. Yes, they are. You're like, well, it's ridiculous. Well, not to them, it's not. You laugh all your life. I mean, I laugh at it too. Of course it's ridiculous, particularly because it's a centrally controlled, manipulable currency that's sort of like operated by one central party. Unless you let your children play Fortnite, given the currency they use. Kids, you're not playing unless you use Bitcoin. Teachable moment. Bitcoin only, kids. Do you know the latest rumour? GTA 6 is going to be using Bitcoin. Wow. Yeah. That's cool. Well, it's a rumour. We'll see. Yeah, it's cool though.

42:39Yeah, anyway. Okay, so I'm going to stop you for a second. Yeah. If your argument is we, in capital W, we don't do it, can I then take you to how would it, what would the impact be of ongoing adoption? So let's change Paul's question to, let's assume by 2046, Bitcoin is, by natural emergent properties, the only currency we care about. I've got a couple of Australian dollars and a frame on the wall to show the grandkids, and we're all using Bitcoin because we've just gone there. What has happened between now and then? What are the implications for those who have assets, jobs, money, foreign exchange?

43:18What do we go through? I don't know the answer. Yeah, we do go back to utility value. That's definitely true. I wrote a tweet recently. Someone's rather snarkily. Hi there, if you're listening.

43:31It's nice to have a bully pulpit, isn't it? Well, property prices have gone up, which is a whole other thing, right? Someone sort of said, hey, you must feel good about buying a property. And it's like, well, yeah, but not really. And the comment I'm really making, they're saying, what's your return on capital like? And it's like, well, my return on capital is far better understood in terms of the utility value home ownership affords, shelter security and a place to build a life with my family. Aggregate property market performance metrics mean absolutely nothing to me from that perspective. The fact that this is a non-consensus view, I think demonstrates how much we've lost our way as a society.

44:07And it feels a little bit snarky, but it's true. That's what housing always was. Why is it that everyone aspires to own an investment property? It's because they can't save in dollars. That's why, right? And it's kind of like people will laugh at Bitcoin. Oh, it's a Ponzi. It only works if someone pays you a higher price. And how's that different from an investment property? Right? Or a share. I mean, to a degree, that is always true. So it's not the dunk, I think, that people think it is. I just want to – sorry, man. I'll just backtrack one quick second here. A great – if you want a great analog here, look at the developing world or the global self or whatever.

44:47these are horrible terms, but whatever term you want, whatever term you want is sort of applied to. Global South's is quietly is about the wankiest term I think I've ever heard of. Like I don't know if I remember from developing oil, but like at some point just call a spade a bloody child. Well, people, yes, yes. I mean, they're just bailing economies and a big part of it is because they don't have institutional rigour, corrupt governments, and they are incapable of managing their money effectively, frankly. But in all of those places, when you are on the ground, like everyone's using US dollars.

45:16Now, who dictated that? No one dictated. It was organic. Human beings very naturally look around and go, gosh, money is a really handy tool. My money that has been dictated from up above is terrible. I either keep getting locked out, debanked, completely deplatformed, censored, or outright debased. In fact, it's happened four times in my lifetime before I was 40 years of age. It sounds like, wow, you can't just cherry pick from history. And again, I refer people to the recent IMF report. This is not the exception. This is the rule. The US dollar, the Aussie dollar, the Canadian dollar, the yen, these are exceptions to the rule.

45:54And they're still pretty crappy, right? But my point is that happened organically. So just to finish that last point, how does it happen? Well, more and more. So Square recently has 4 million merchants in the US, I think, on their thing. And they can now accept Bitcoin. You can actually pay in Bitcoin without having Bitcoin because they'll do the back-end conversion for you, right? And so apparently it's been a really, really successful initial launch. So why, again, no one's going to dictate it, but more and more people like me and potentially like you on this way will start going, you know what?

46:24I actually wouldn't mind receiving some of my money in Bitcoin. And as I've got Bitcoin, I'm actually maybe I prefer to pay in, there's a thing called Gresham's Law. Actually, let's not go there. My point is that it's not something to be dictated. It will just happen and they'll reach a point. This is what happens in adoption curves. So we're at about 4 % global adoption at the moment. Let's say for the sake of example, we hit 60%. And that'll happen very rapidly. Generally, the time it takes to go from zero to 10 % adoption is the time it takes to go from 10 % to 90%. So in this very rapidly accelerating phase, it's just like no one has to do anything other than just say they want it.

47:00And guess what? We live in a democracy. And when most of the people like it and want it and have dedicated their savings to it and are happy to receive it, the government can do what it likes. It's like the cat's out of the, genie's out of the bottle, cat's out of the bag. Like use whatever, you know, the horse is bolted. Use whatever metaphor that you wanted. It's just like nothing stops this train. It just, it happens because it organically happened. So I'll go back to your point. Okay. So what happened? Now remember, this isn't, it isn't I go to sleep on Tuesday night, I wake up on Wednesday morning and it's happened.

47:33So what will happen is - Between now and 2046 in some slow evolving process. Yep. My thesis would be that over time, gradually, then suddenly, more and more people start accepting. Because if you imagine if you're the 89th percentile to adopt it, it's like it's not even a choice at that point. Right. Like, this is like, oh, you're choosing not to adopt the Internet. You're choosing not to adopt gunpowder. Like, there's no choice. You do it or you're living under a bridge or you're completely taking. So I think that happens. But it is a process. and don't forget, money is very easy to exchange very, very quickly.

48:11So it's the person who suffers the most, who just puts their head in the sand, goes, la, la, la, la, it's not happening, it's not happening, it's not happening. I'm going to continue to save all my money in this rapidly debasing currency, or let's just call it a slowly debasing currency if it's the Aussie dollar. And they bleed purchasing power over time. And that rate of bleeding accelerates into the point in which it's like, I'm getting the hell out of this, right? So that's cash. That's cash. Yep. What happens to, well, property, let's focus on property. That's the big one. Property falls to its utility value.

48:49Because of no credit. Think about you and I, let's forget about Bitcoin ever existed. You and I would argue strenuously that whether it's an equity or whether it's a property, the fundamental quote unquote intrinsic value is absolutely predicated on the cash flows that it generates. Now, if you look at the, let's just pick on Sydney, I'm sorry to be so local, but it's just the market I know best market, even the term market triggers me. It's the market that I know best. If you buy an investment property somewhere in the inner West, net of fees, assuming you've got the usual degree of leverage in there.

49:27So let's say you've got a 20 % deposit it there, you are probably, if not negatively geared, barely cashflow positive. Now, that only makes sense under a greater fool theory. Or inflation theory, which is back to your point. Or inflation theory, exactly. But let's just play that first dynamic forward. So you buy an investment property, you find a tenant, you start renting it out. And then just for the sake of illustrating the point, the government creates a rule saying you're not allowed to sell your property. It's closed. Property market's closed. It's like, what is the value of that property?

50:05Well, you just spent$2 million on something that puts$2 ,000 into your pocket each year. And now let's say the market reopens. And you say, because for every seller, there's a buyer, right? Hey, potential buyer of my asset, would you like to buy my property? It's like, well the yield is 0.0001 percent so not at the price that you're expecting so the price falls now i don't think it's like an immediate crash i think it's probably a gradual thing but people will realize that when the money is fixed that i don't need to store my wealth can you imagine our grandkids will laugh right could you imagine working your whole life spending less than what you earn saving up all your money leveraging it up five to one putting it into a depreciating asset And yes, property is a depreciation.

50:52The land is not, but the building itself, as any homeowner knows, and as Bunnings, you go to Bunnings every weekend, we'll tell you, it depreciates, right? Like the tiles crack, you know, the - I don't even know where to start. As a property owner, I can tell you, there are always things going wrong because it's a depreciating asset. But we store our money in it because I can't store it in the bank because inflation is just going to absolutely fleece me. and I can do it because my assumption is is that someone else will buy it off me at a higher price. It is definitionally the greater fool theory.

51:28But where there is a risk-free alternative with no counterparty risk, no maintenance costs that I can store in my head, that I can jump on a plane and decide to live in the UK or Tokyo or Manhattan and instantly have my money with me. Like it just, it's chalk and cheese, right? So does that mean that property becomes worthless? There is no world where property is worthless because property is the thing that we desire more than anything. Without property, you have nothing. I must live somewhere and I want to live somewhere nice. Would I prefer a tent or a 12-bedroom mansion with a swimming pool and a tennis court?

52:09Humans will always aspire for comfort and they will always require shelter. It's just that we demonetize the asset and that's the key thing. I'll even argue with shares that I think a good deal of the share market premium is because we are now, people use the passive ETF as a savings vehicle. No one gives us stuff about the companies in there or their earnings potential or their forecast quarterly earnings. It's like, all I know is I can't save their properties out of reach. I'm buying an ETF. Why? Because I'm saving money. That's why you're saving. And so I think what happens is we get to this really, and it'll be messy.

52:47I'm not saying it's not, but that's why the only losing move is not to play, frankly. And also, it's not a binary thing. It's just like, leg into it. I don't know. This thing will collapse tomorrow. Something happens, it's completely out of left field. Oh, it was a pipe dream. It never happened. The sound money dream is over. I guess we're going back to using units to save our money in. But Bitcoin was an absolute moonshot in 2012. 2025, less so. If it's still ticking over and doing exactly the same thing that we expected to do in 2035 and it's got much more adoption, far less. So as that occurs, I would just think it's just purely sensible and rational economic decision-making to allocate an increasing portion.

53:32As you've always – you do it far better than me, mate, and distilling it down. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, Andrew. It's just about adoption. You said it last week, right? It's just adoption, right? So as adoption continues, look, if adoption continues, you should allocate accordingly. If adoption stops, you should act accordingly. If it declines, you should act accordingly. But as long as that continues to go up, act accordingly, right? I'm sorry, I'm going to let you in there. That's too long a waffle. Did it make any sense? It's great information. It's great information. Paul, I will take the version that Andrew chose to avoid, rightly, because of the Hayek thing about we have to do it around about it, so I'll sly away.

54:17So I will only answer the hypothetical, which is probably unlikely for all the reasons Ram's already said, which is if I was a government that saw the writing on the wall and I wanted to act appropriately to allow, to get from point A to point B to your question, Paul. So Andrew's point basically is, who knows, it'll be messy, but we'll go there because that's what's going to happen and hang on for the ride hopefully it's not too bad right yeah um if if a responsible government who saw it coming would act accordingly to uh to once i soften the blow but i'll say manage the transition and how would you do it and ironically rams already said the biggest threat to bitcoin is that governments actually start acting responsibly which is absolutely right uh but that's what you would do that how If you had the choice, how would you try to do it?

55:06What program would you put in place? You would absolutely move towards a sound money standard in your own currency because doing that slowly over time. Now, Bitcoin may do it in itself. My biggest concern with Bitcoin's transition is that there will be losers and victims who don't deserve to be losers and victims other than being, if it is to happen. If I thought it was absolutely guaranteed, I'd have more than I have in Bitcoin. I have a very small Bitcoin allocation right now, right? Less than RAM would like me to have. um you'll get there yeah less than less than less than ram would like me to have um but but that i and i'm not worried about me right i don't give a i'm fine i i would if i was a government i would worry about the people who get smashed by this because they just simply weren't you know we say regularly fire is a nurse shouldn't have to know how to invest right to get ahead right yeah but equally they shouldn't have to know whether or not to adopt bitcoin and at what time to get what purchasing power.

55:59Again, forget the exchange rate, as Ram said, but cans of Coke, houses, whatever, you shouldn't have to know this stuff as a financial wizard to make a transition. If you're just an office job, you're a cab driver, whatever you're doing, right? You shouldn't have to be able to work out the right time to switch some or all of your assets to Bitcoin. It shouldn't be necessary. Well, just very quickly interject. It's those without assets that actually benefit most from the transition. Yeah, totally. Because there's no demonetization of their property. So I'm the nurse, right? Working in the ER, fingers to the, I just like, these people are just angels, right?

56:34Like, I just have so much respect for them because they do it all, the most hard, difficult job in the world. And they do it for a pittance. And because they've got a pittance, they can't afford a house or, you know, it's very hard to own assets. And it's just like, let's say we go to a Bitcoin standard and along the way it goes up to the moon. It's like, well, I don't own any assets that demonetize and I can always opt in, right? And there's no, in a hard money world, there's never a bad time to opt in. Like there's a better time to opt in, but it's not like you're ever, if you're the last person to adopt the internet.

57:07No, no, no. Even if you're not, let's say that you, I'm dirt poor. I'm the last person in Australia to decide that I want to do it. Well, I still get all of those benefits of a completely established network, which is going to appreciate. It's going to give me all the productivity. I'm going to get all the benefits of it. I don't get the adoption curve benefits, but I'm not disadvantaged. and that's a really key point. You're a disadvantage. Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry. I thought you were talking about that. There are people who will... The richest people who ignore it are the most disadvantaged and I'm okay with that.

57:37There's no bad time to do it. I think there is a bad time to do it because you may well end up with less... To your point about house prices, if you wait until the nth year minus one where your house is depreciated 90 % in value, you're like, what, 90 %? 40 % pick a number. It's like there is a bad time, I think. Oh, yeah. But these are also the people most able to endure. So my point is the richest, most, sorry to cut you off, mate, but the most privileged people. It's the first time in history that this is like, it flips everything, right? It's like the most privileged pig-headed are those that hurt.

58:10And I'm not saying that I'm going to be dancing on anyone's grave here. You kind of mocked it a little bit. But in every other world, whenever there's transitions, it's the poor that eat it. And here's something that it's just sort of like, no. And it's not even the real. No, no, no. you know, ask yourself what Jamie Dimon and even Trump, right? What's he buying? What's Larry think by like Elon Musk has got a bunch of Bitcoin, right? They're going to be just fine as long as they understand the writing on the wall, which, which I think the smartest people are starting to do. And you know what, you know what you do if you're that, you don't say much.

58:46You wait till your bags are filled before you say anything. And one of these days, one of these days, you're going to get someone like a Buffett, probably not a Buffett who come out and go, yeah, I've done it. And just like, it just game theory, man, it's going to kick off. And everyone wins. Everyone wins, except for the pig-headed, ultra rich, over-leveraged person in assets that are going to most demonetize. So I hear that. I worry about the middle class because you and I have agreed before about the poor. The poor got nothing to lose because they got nothing to value, right? By the way, inflation is the same.

59:18They've only got stuff to gain, the poor. I think the middle class, and the nurse is a great example, except the nurse who's married to the fiery who takes out a mortgage on investment property because they're told that's the only way to get ahead, may get screwed by this. So just to flesh it out, the answer, I'll make it quick, Paul. I would take the opportunity over the next 19 years to move towards I would say the thing is I would do it anyway right so you don't even necessarily need to adopt Bitcoin or want to adopt Bitcoin for this to make sense this is one of those things we're doing the right thing zero or 100 % are the only choices of allocations I mean doing the right thing budget wise would prepare us for Bitcoin well but also just be the right thing to do anyway which is stop overspending stop printing money because those things are not helping anybody so over the well helping some people not helping the country as a whole so overall helping the cantillionaires yeah So if I was treasurer for the next 19 years, I would slowly – now to your point about harm, I wouldn't stop tomorrow as much as it would be probably the absolutist.

1:00:10And Andrew Mayer might be one of those, I'm not sure. I might say just blow it up tomorrow because it deserves it, right? Run it to the ground. Right? I would slowly light a grass fire that would just slowly get rid of the undergrowth over the next 15 years. So you start by saying, well, what's inflation now? Okay, it's 3%. Well, that sucks. How much money are we printing now? We're doing this much. Okay, fine. How much money are we letting banks create this much? okay right let's let's aim you know any responsible government says well i can rip the bandaid off and that would make me feel intellectually better i might even feel um more righteous but i would screw a whole lot of people so i'm gonna say let's get there by 2042 because that gives us some some wiggle room and we will just very slowly over that period of time move these things back just just slowly take the edges off take the edge off take the edge off take the edge off not not in anything of an underhanded way to say to people guess what guys here's the thing bitcoin's coming We're going to be on Bitcoin in the next year's time.

1:01:01If we don't move now, here's the people who are going to be screwed. And maybe some of you deserve it, maybe some of you don't. Either way, that's not my job. My job as the government is to not do that. So I'm just going to simply slowly move us to a point where at the point of, and it's not a single point of transition, but as the adoption gets larger, the cost to the Australian economy gets smaller because we've made those decisions. We've made those moves towards a sound money country where we don't print money. Inflation is close to zero. and we're not using fractional reserve banking. So that's it.

1:01:33And it would be, I'll say it'd be easy. It would be really easy to do. Now, it won't be politically easy necessarily, but this is not a difficult conversation, right? If you own a money printer, you do not want to let go of the money. I mean, from their perspective, like what? No, this is a good deal for me. I don't want sound money. I want the ability to create money. So if you're a bit of a legit dictator, if I was doing it tomorrow, now, I'm not convinced Bitcoin would be the national currency, Paul, to be fair. Now, Ram is, or maybe, I don't know. I assume you are. We'll see. We're on that path.

1:02:00Right, right. If it continues, it will, but we'll see. And that's why you would move down that path. I mean, and this is the most frustrating point. You don't have to, as a government, make a bet on it, right? Not because you can do it over time to ram it, which is also true, by the way. What if we just ran the budget and the money printer sensibly? Which you should be doing anyway. Right, right. So that's my point, which is just actually implement reasonable, sensible policy. And then if we do get a Bitcoin, we're ready. If we don't get a Bitcoin, we've got sensible smart policy that actually is the best interest of the country.

1:02:30So heads I win, tails I win. And it's not even the... I mean, genuinely who cares if we go to Bitcoin at that point? Because we've got the benefits of sound money. And if we do go to Bitcoin, great. If we don't get Bitcoin, great. We're in a good place. So that would be what I would do and why I would do it, Paul. And I think in that case, you don't have to make a bet on Bitcoin. You just make a bet on a better Australia and say, will this improve the country if we go to Bitcoin? Yes. Will it improve the country if we don't go to Bitcoin? Yes. Yes. Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. I would actually, I would say that the government doesn't actually need to do anything.

1:03:10Just get out of the bloody way is what I would say. Well, I have to stop printing and they have to stop running budget deficits. If you want to do that, you can do it. But this is the thing that I bristle about is that they get so worked. how could you be against a voluntary open permission permissionless incorruptible money how can you be against that now it might not be for you okay yeah is it okay if i buy it yeah how do i hurt you if i own some bitcoin like where who's the victim here like there is no victim here yeah and and that's that's so so i don't need you to do anything government all i need you to do is stop treating me like a criminal, which whenever it is reported, it's getting less, thankfully, because facts eventually do come out.

1:03:56But it's just like, but, you know, it's sort of like, you've got to stop treating anyone who chooses to adopt something. Again, no one owns this, right? Like there's no VC, there's no government, there's no Elon Musk tech billionaire behind it. It's owned by the community, by the network. It's so democratic. It's so egalitarian. and it's so bottom like what why do you have a problem with me doing this just shut up and get out of the way now if you want to as a government be one of the early adopters you're going to benefit a great deal out of this if you don't okay fine like that's that's your choice as well i mean it's your point it's just like just either way just be sensible with your fiscal and monetary policy i mean i know and paul but i'm just saying that they don't i don't need you to i don't need you to make it's always accused of oh you want the government to pump your bags you're only doing this because you want to be rich and you want the government to help you be rich and it's like no i don't i actually i want the world to be on a sound money standard for all of the prosperity and all the great benefits that will infer from that and i just want you to stop being a blocker to that that's what i want you to do and if you do do that in fact here's the here's the irony right right through till now it's been an incredibly hostile environment and it's still winning it's still winning right like people forget about what the current value of the network is just add it up by terms of how much money has been put into it value each coin or each satoshi at the point it was last transacted at globally across the world something like 1.2 trillion dollars has been dedicated to this network no one held a gun to anyone's head no one did any and people voluntarily said, I want to do this.

1:05:42And then you've got Michelle Bullock and all these other people laughing on stage in the incredible position of privilege going, but what does it actually do? It's not backed by anything. Completely missing the irony that there's nothing backed by the very money that you control. You know, it's just like, just get out of the way, shut up, let people do what they want to do. And, and, and, and we'll all be better off, you know, and hey, the water's great come on in join us if you want or don't the the meme is have fun staying poor i said that last week and i realized people might not be aware of the meme and it's like let me let me at this point point out that when i said have fun being staying poor i do like i wasn't literally true there is a meme behind that there is some context sorry because i would have sounded very callous i love that but that's very very very funny does it make sense though do you know what i mean like it's It's kind of like just – It's different to how we get there, though.

1:06:38I think that's slightly off the topic of the question, which is the process. I think where you and I differ, I think – and it's understandable, and I was in the same space too, is that you assume that it needs to be anointed and directed for it to happen. Where I come at the bottom up, I said, no, it just needs to – we need to allow the bottom-up emergent phenomena – not even allow. We just need to recognise that that is happening. Jim Chalmers can go fly a kite. I don't really give a star. He can hate it all he likes. And so can the next treasurer. It's going to make it more difficult. It's going to make it more rocky.

1:07:12It's going to get to a point too. Whereas as other countries start doing it, it's like you're now at a real disadvantage by not doing it. Okay. So it's sort of like, well, you guys can do that if you want, but all you're doing is disadvantaging yourselves, frankly. Can I say that just quickly? That wasn't exactly my point, so I must have made it badly. Sorry, sorry. My point wasn't the government should make it happen. My point is if it's going to happen anyway, there are steps the government can take to minimise the size and timing of the pain that might be felt in the transition at some point.

1:07:49So if we keep running the current system we've got and eventually there was just this overwhelming... I agree with you on the emergency stuff, but if we ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore, the nurse who works hard and has an investment property because she figures that's the way to get her head or he figures that's the way to get her head and then all of a sudden like, oh, crap. It's now worth half of what I paid for it because government went print, print, print, borrow, borrow, borrow. And then that blows up because people go, I don't want that. I don't want your Aussie. Take your plastic money and go away.

1:08:19Then it's like, oh, bugger. Now I'm at, in 2045, the year before Paul's end date. Also it's like, well, now I've just been smashed, right? As opposed to a process which was not making it happen at all, but 19 years of preparing the national accounts such that as when, if it happens, the process becomes, well, moving from a sound Australian dollar to a sound Bitcoin doesn't require structural change. I'm not going to make it happen. If it happens emergently and takes over from this, we are ready to go. You know, we've, I can't give a good analogy, but it's like changing, changing cars, right? The car I'm on in now looks like the car I used to drive I know how to drive it.

1:08:59As opposed to the first car pulls up, you get the second car, there's no steering wheel, there's no pedals, how the hell do I drive this thing? Oh my God, everything I know is over. So you get people to a point of, let me help you, I'm going to slowly change the car over 19 years so that when we get there, you can go, oh, so I lost a little bit of money sequentially over those 19 years on my investment property for reasons X, Y, and Z, but I managed it, I absorbed it, and now I'm ready to keep going down a Bitcoin path without this structural seismic at an individual level. Yes. Oh crap. And again, you're right, People can make the decision now and get ahead of it, but the nurse doesn't want to, can't, doesn't know, what the hell is this Bitcoin thing?

1:09:34Then I'm forced to confront it in 2046. So I'm glad you made that point because I was trying to say you can prepare the country for a change, not make it happen. Just to be really clear. And don't forget that our hypothetical nurse still owns the property. Yes, correct. And it has value. It's not zero value, right? And they will probably sell it to someone who wants to live there for Bitcoin. If you're owns in Australian dollars, you're in trouble though, right? Wow, you actually, well, I'll tell you what. Go on. nothing better than borrowing money that's depreciating rapidly. Depreciation, debasement is horrible except for borrowers and it's wonderful, right?

1:10:07So it's like there's a little bit of a mind screw there that's also. Yeah, right. There's the value of the value of the property. Yeah, okay. It's hard, Paul. It's hard is the answer. It's very hard. Who knows? My point is just have an opinion on it. Absolutely. We have got to get – I said to you off air the other week, I don't care that people like or dislike it. what just triggers me is people who have spent zero time trying to understand it, speaking with great authority as to why it's awful. It's like, I would never rock up to a quantum computing symposium full of PhDs and tell them they're all wrong.

1:10:42Yeah. Like the arrogance of that, right? Now I might try and study up on it, wrap my brain around it so I can have an opinion so I now can intelligently talk about it. Yes. And by the way. Converse rather than judge, right? And look, there are bear cases for Bitcoin. I'm the first to acknowledge that things can absolutely go wrong. So if you want to attack it, at least be intelligent in your attack. Well, but also start with a balanced view rather than why could I hate Bitcoin. Start with what do I think about Bitcoin and ask it. Because people are starting with the whole it feels weird and speculative.

1:11:16So I've already emotionally made the decision I hate Bitcoin, right? Or I don't like Bitcoin. Then I'm like, what reasons can I find? And that's when you get that layer. It's like every argument where you say to someone, what don't you like about this? And they say this. oh okay well it turns out this yeah but what about that wasn't part of your first argument this is just i'm losing the fight so now i'm trying desperately throw a whole lot of crap at the wall having some of it stick so i can salvage some sort of ego rather than yeah i think i think this color is black because it's black oh actually it's white let me show you why oh yeah well it's probably blue then it's like no it's just just stop just just stop you know dawkins this is not a guy going to a very they say never talk about politics and religion but I'll say this anyway.

1:11:53Dawkins talks about the God of the gaps, which is, you know, sort of the atheist versus organized religious sort of argument. And it was like, ah, but science can't explain this. And then it explains it. Oh, well, well, you can't explain this. And we're at the point now, it's kind of like, well, we don't know what happened before the Big Bang. And I'm not, this isn't even anti-religious or anti-spiritual. I think it's absolutely coherent to be a religious person and be an advocate of science. I'm not, so I don't, please don't, if you are of a religious band, I'm not having, I'm not attacking you at all.

1:12:28If you do want to feel like attacked, you know that it's Andrew attacking you, not me. No, but what I am attacking are the ideologues who don't want to engage in good faith with the facts as we have them, right? So if your reason is it's impossible that, you know, atheists could be right because of x y and z and then x y and z gets disproved and go wow it's just it's just another argument it's intellectually weak right and it's just like by the way religion i don't care how far technology advances like you you're you're unimpeachable right because there will always be well then who started there will always be a prime mover argument i don't want to get too deep and philosophical but it's sort of like stop trying to argue on the specifics here and step back look at what's happening now whether it was electricity, whether it was the automobile, whether it was the internet, you go back.

1:13:19I wrote articles and other people have done much better jobs of it as well. Every single time these were poo-pooed. It can't work. A guy I used to work with used to explain why when he was at university, he's a gentleman who's probably in his 70s now, him and his other PhDs conclusively proved that mobile phone technology couldn't work because there wasn't enough spectrum in the electromagnetic there wasn't enough bandwidth in the electromagnetic space, so it's just impossible. Now it turns out, now I'm going to trip myself up with the technology here, but we can do all kinds of clever things such that 10 billion people can all communicate over the same relatively narrow spectrum that we communicate on.

1:14:00How has that happened? I don't know, some quantum mechanical mumbo-jumbo that is beyond me. But imagine me saying, imagine that, now that was a very rational, theoretical, scientific based argument yep yep but imagine arguing today that mobile phones couldn't work because you're just like yeah but it's like arguing that planes come even after the wright brothers flew it's like yeah but it can't work and now you're just like i just take i'll drive someone to melbourne airport go i i don't need to explain anything all i need to do is point yeah that's right well checkmate because look at that you know 100 ton piece of metal flying through the air.

1:14:40It's like, oh, but how? It doesn't matter how. It is. Yeah, that's right, yeah. Because you can't explain it doesn't mean it's not happening. Reality does not know your subjective argument, nor does it care. And this is the point where some of the naysayers, I'm talking about the really ridiculous naysayers, it's like, well, dude, it's been 16 years. It's operated flawlessly. You know, it's just sort of like, at what point do you concede that at least it has, it's the Lindy effect, right? It just is, right? There's a great book I love called Bitcoin is pretty dense, a little bit hard going, but they call it the semantic argument against Bitcoin where all the, you know, they say give all these reasons as to why it can't work, ignoring the fact that it works, right?

1:15:29And so we come back to your very, very good summation, which is so it really just matters about adoption at this point. It's like, yep. that's kind of don't worry about blockchain difficulty adjustment mining hash rate you know the thing that's being adopted is real because otherwise that just says the adoption is fake and so there is some fundamental element of and that's what I've said from I think from day dot almost the tech is stupidly impressive I don't understand it right but the concept of what was and you said it wasn't it was kind of pulled together and kind of aggregated by Satoshi the questions that were answered before they needed to be answered the structure it is I'm still mind blown it's amazing right He's the only person in history who is a very eligible candidate for a Nobel Prize in computer science and economics at the same time.

1:16:14Yeah, nice. By the way, can I share with you an aside? I believe this is true. And I'm, again, speaking of wondering, you talk about planes. Do you remember it was three or four years ago? And they disproved the theory as to why planes actually stay in the air. Yes. And we still don't know why. There is no theory. There's no great explanation for lift dynamics. You can't explain it. The science does not know why planes fly. It's your point. I mean, it's exactly your point, right? Now, obviously the science is – well, our interpretation is flawed or is missing something, which has always been missing.

1:16:51But it can't happen. Because, again, your point, we know it does. It's like we can't – it's also the bumblebee can't fly. Right. Well, according to quantum dynamics – I mean, quantum mechanics doesn't explain gravity, right? Just as classical Newtonian mechanics can't explain tunneling and entanglement. It's still incredibly useful. But imagine a hairless ape on a bit of rock spinning around the sun going, it's actually impossible for the universe to exist. But it's the anthropic principle. It does. It does. It exists. Anyway, it's why. I just love the fact we don't know why planes fly. It's brilliant.

1:17:29Right. We sit down to the moon. We don't have. That's why I get into all these arguments because I start them, obviously. It was like, well, Bitcoin can't work because of this and that. So now we get to these weird things with quantum computing and let's not even go there. But you get into all these like, oh, okay, so now we're retreating to this. Okay, well, let's have that discussion. And then when that gets knocked over, well, but no one will use it. Yeah, but every, I mean, we've got data on it. Like I know that here's the thing with a public open blockchain, right? Like I can see the transactions.

1:18:00I can see the number of wallets I can see the trades I can see it all and you're telling me that this network that is exponentially growing is not a thing like I don't it just doesn't make any sense to me now that doesn't mean people will adopt it but one thing that you and I I think learned and we learned it too late I shouldn't include you in this but I learned I assume that that statement applies again as what you're saying next You and I should be multi, multi, multi tens of millionaires. If we understood network effects. Yes. And we were born at a time when we were young adults, when the internet existed.

1:18:39I know, right. We would have a portfolio that consisted of Amazon, Netflix. And because we understand network effects. Seek Realist.com. We understand Metcalfe's law, right? And so, you know, all you need to understand is that with all of the properties that it has, it's still a bust if no one uses it. Correct. Now, if you and me use it, it's kind of handy, but not really. If 100 million people use it, pretty interesting. A billion people use it. This is really interesting. Here's another stat, and then we should probably move on, but it's hard not to. The 10th most valuable currency in the world is Bitcoin.

1:19:20There you go. So if you add up the total value of let's convert everything to US dollars, let's look at the euro, let's look at the yen, Let's look at the Aussie dollar. And as I said, there's nearly 170 international currencies. Bitcoin, without any CEO, anybody, in fact, not only without any marketing department, actively hostile environment has grown from zero to the 10th largest currency in the world. The US is strategically holding it. The Wall Street - As much as you can call Trump strategic, can I put an asterisk on strategic in that context? I mean, Trump - Sorry, keep going. Trump's an idiot.

1:19:58He's doing it for craven reasons, right? So I don't want to use him as my argument. But I mean, can you imagine if I said to you five years ago, a US president will hold Bitcoin and we'll be up on stage telling people never to sell their Bitcoin and we'll be talking about holding a strategic reserve for the US. What if I told you that Wall Street will release an ETF on this and it'll be the fastest, most successful ETF launch in history and within the space of less than 18 months is I think in the top five of all value ETFs, including the S &P 500, including gold ETF. And like, that doesn't mean it continues, but it's like, and this is what I've said to you before.

1:20:37You know, it might have flushed the pan, but it's less likely to over time. And it's like, I know, and people get tripped up on the unit buys. That's how you get all sucked into the altcoins. You know, it's like, wow, it's$100 ,000 US, so I've missed the boat. It's like the risk reward has never been better. Don't worry about the price. The price is arbitrary and relative, and it doesn't really make any sense to talk about it in dollars. All I know is that every single China tried to ban it, failed. The US was incredibly hostile, failed. We've now got numbers of nation states holding it. We've got the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund holding it indirectly through micro strategy.

1:21:17We've got Harvard Endowment, one of the biggest endowment funds in the world. Guess what their largest holding is? no yep really yep wow that's cool um uh sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry backtrack from there sorry the largest edition that they made in the year this is harvard these are these are institutional investors that invest with 100 year time frames they don't just ape into something because number go up because crypto bros fix the money but they'd like the right it was perfectly reasonable to ignore it at this stage and i've always said to people you don't have to do anything now but you do have to decide at what point when you can go into woolies and buy it is that enough no okay the reserve bank of australia has adopted it is that no okay draw the line right because then at least you can hold yourself to intellectual honesty and and and to account and as i say i will consider it a thing when i can pay my taxes or whatever thing that you want to do but i bet you if I had gone back even five years ago, it was 3 ,000 US.

1:22:20Like just let that hang there for a moment. But I went back and I said, oh, by the way, you will now be able to play in Bitcoin at 5 million different merchants worldwide. So yes, you can buy a coffee. Oh, by the way, the US will be holding it as a strategic asset. By the way, BlackRock and Larry Fink will be out there on CNBC telling everyone that it's a debasement trade. Jamie Dimon, who used to call it a pet rock, is now offering. Vanguard, when they launched the ETF, have said we are not allowing our customers to buy it we are fundamentally against it and guess what just the other week yeah okay you can buy it everyone bends the knee and and and i'm not i'm not dancing on their grave because i was the biggest critic of this thing five years ago right like i would have told michael saylor who wrote strategy or the ceo chairman of strategy the biggest book bitcoin bull in the world he's got this tweet from 2017 saying it's a ponty right so So forgive yourself because it was very understandable back then.

1:23:15Anyway, I'm sorry. I'm really passionate about it. It's not because I'm trying to pump my bags. It's because it really does usher in a better world. It does usher in a better world. Can I say the best thing about being pro-Bitcoin on a little Australian podcast is it's a bit like when I talk about index funds. I've got to disclose them and I can't trade them and stuff. It's like, trust me when I say whatever the hell I say about this massive big multi-trillion dollar investment, I'd love to believe it moves the price. I'd love to believe it makes a difference but you can try and pump your bag as much as you want and I've got to say as much as I love you mate as much as I hope there's more than 13 people listening to this podcast the reality is whatever we say is not going to make a single bit of difference to the price so feel free to do your thing actually one more one more thing one more thing Stanley Druckenmiller is the Druck is one of the world's greatest investments the Druck yeah he's a fan is he on the Druck or just you I've never heard him call me just me and him we're like this over cognac cigars I think he's one of the only big investors who's never had a down year in 20 years or something like that like he's just an insanely good investor yeah anyway there's this great clip you can probably find it on youtube where he says because a lot of people go oh it's so cultish and they're all so crazy and it's like and his argument is why am i betting against hyper-focused ideologues who will who will buy all the way to zero because people put it people try and throw shade at it it's like oh it's this cult and like you know it's funny even the bitcoin is joke about how it's a cult yeah but it's kind of like yeah that's kind of the point right like totally that's that was i said before i bought bitcoin i'll finally tweet at some point it doesn't really matter but i literally did a tweet thread i don't know it might have been a year ago ish maybe 18 months maybe less than i don't know what i literally said hey i don't need bitcoin i might if i do it'll be because of you know it's the tesla it's the apple it's the like man the coldest you mentioned don't marketing department cults don't need marketing departments dude that's almost the point right it's like you You know, yes, it stands on its own two feet as an item, and that's fine, but it's also, you know, the true believers, you've spent most of this podcast in one form or another.

1:25:18The end of every other one. Right, but that's the point, right? By the way, Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund, 7 ,161 Bitcoin indirectly, apparently. And multiply that by 100 ,000 US. Like, they're not mucking around. Through a strategy block, Coinbase, M-A-R-A, I've never heard of, and MetaPlanet. Yeah, but what - So someone's calculated their kind of indirect holdings as a result. But what else have you got from me? It's like, are you not entertained? Yeah, exactly. Another, you mentioned Telstra, so I have to go with this as well. Really good example of emergent bottom-up behavior. There was a lot of people for a long time advocating that we needed to move to an electric vehicle fleet because of the environment, right?

1:25:56And I was like, yeah, okay. But it was never going to happen by decree because nothing really happens by decree, right? Like that's, I think it's one of the thing that policymakers and central planners just get fundamentally wrong and why economies built on that are just impoverished and everyone is poor and starving and in bread lines. But you know what happened? I know that we, I know we've got subsidies there, but as you've made the point very well, the past, like all of those people are going to buy Teslas anyway. Why were they going to buy Teslas? Was it because of, for the, it's a cool car, man.

1:26:27It's fast. It's cool. It talks to you. It drives itself. It's like, that's why people bought electric vehicles. And now I just drive in the other day. It's like every other petrol station I see, they've got a charger there right at the front of a Woolies. And it's like none of this happened by decree. Right. And it just it gets to the point now to solar panels, you know, like, yes, there were incentives. I would argue that there would be a bunch of people doing it anyway for none other reason than it was just a really cheap, reliable form of power. It's everything, right? It's that it's also the social cues.

1:27:01It's the yes. It's humans being humans. We talked on Friday about applied psychology. It's for all the reasons. I mean, can I go out on a limb here? I'm sure Tesla's are wonderful. And I'm sure if you own a Tesla right now, you're yelling at me about how wonderful it is. And God help you if you mention on Twitter that Tesla's not wonderful. Can I tell you, there goes half your day. No, I'm not that silly. No, right. I am. And I would... Yeah, why not? Do it. Do it. Do it. Think of all the electric vehicles out there. The odds that Tesla is dollar for dollar the best investment you can make in an electric vehicle, I would suspect is very small.

1:27:36Now, can I tell you, speaking of cults, the true believers are throwing all sorts. I will get emails, I'll get tweets, like just... Luckily, it's now a 27 and no one's listening. So that's why I wait until now. But I don't mean that as a slight. It seems every car, right? Is a BMW that much better than an Audi? Is an Audi that much better than a Skoda? Is a Skoda that much... No, we all pick our points and go, that represents me for all of the things. Is it fast? Yes. Is it fun to drive? Yes. Do I need that? No, I like it. Okay. Do I like the badge on the front? Can I have a Casio or a Rolex? Right.

1:28:08Both all the time. Do I like the badge? Do I like the brand? Right. You buy a bloody Casio G-Shock. My son's got the one I had five, seven years ago that I don't wear. I've got a bloody smartwatch now. It's still going. Who's the idiot? Right. He's got a free watch. I bought a bloody smartwatch because I want to track my steps because I'm a moron. And the beauty is you're both right. Correct. Because value is subjective. Correct. And you both are. And in my point, no government bureaucrat said, oh, you should really buy that watch. Like, but I want to buy it anyway. And this is the point I think with Bitcoin and why it's winning and why we're getting away from all this crypto hype and NFT and all this stupid, stupid outright gambling degeneracy.

1:28:48Is that it's just sort of like after a while you go, no, I wanted to protect myself from debasement. When I see a future, I feel as though this is going to increase in purchasing power as adoption continues. And it's like, again, there's no one, there's no marketing department. There's no CEO. There's no government dictate. People are doing it because they want to do it. And my point is just like, I don't need anyone to help. Just get the hell out. Just stop getting in the way and let people do what they want to do. And if you're so smug and sure that this is a ridiculous thing, then just let it all collapse and then you can be super smug about it.

1:29:21right but either way you're not no one's forcing you to do anything that you don't want to do but if it's okay with you i mean i'm not going to make fun of people who who collect uh artwork or whatever for some unknown artist well no but even if i did it's kind of like i know no one no one who again my my boy and his friends genuinely see value in their fortnight skin it's ridiculous except no for them it's not and who am i to say what you like is ridiculous i'm no one i mean my opinion does not count towards your subjective reality except ironically this is me just going off one for fun of it that those who actually want to be part of the cool crowd which is also its own kind of thing right so you mentioned your son and his friends yeah i i would my young looks the same i'm absolutely sure if none of his mates collected skins and thought it was all stupid he would also think it's stupid yes and again is he wrong no because we're social animals and it's the stories we tell each other the stories we tell ourselves and what makes us part of the in group and we homo sapiens won because we're good we're good at stories and so that's is it good or bad well again you know there are objectively smarter things that sometimes you can reasonably say are better or worse to do i mean i i will i will i will arrogantly say using buy now pay later is one of the most stupid things you can do is it right for someone who wants to buy jeans with it?

1:30:46I mean, at one level, sure. Knock yourself out free world and do it. You know, do it. Sure. But also, I really wish you wouldn't because I'm telling this that that's not... But you can shout into the wind all you like. I'm not going to stop someone doing it. Can you give me a better example of that? Go on. Do you remember when Afterpay first came along? Yes. And back to our Friday's podcast with the banks, you know, it's outrageous. They shouldn't be able to do this. You know, read between the lines. They're eating our lunch in terms of credit card. We're making out like bandits on credit card fees and interest here.

1:31:13Can you please stop that, Mr. Governor? You know that the banks all have their own BNPL service now, right? Yeah, totally. You all bend the knee. And here's my prediction. I'll put that out here and we can end. Within five years, you'll be able to buy and hold Bitcoin on your CBA banking app. So can I say, we should have talked about this actually separately, and we won't do it in detail, but they have now just recently announced the ability to use CBA banking app to actually invest regularly, very small amounts in managed funds. Yep. And that's neither here nor there. Well, they're making money out of it.

1:31:45They're just shoveling people in their own funds, which I think is just awful. But your point of - They're a bank. They're craven. But your point is, you can log on to internet banking and they do a thing. Yes. Pressing the button to transfer that cash into some of those Bitcoins is not going to be a difficult conversation. Wall Street did not embrace Bitcoin because of freedom technology. They embraced it because they're greedy, degenerate finance bros. And that's just the nice ones. Yeah, right? I was like, uh-huh. And there's going to be, think of, again, game theory. Westpac comes out tomorrow and goes, actually, you can buy Bitcoin through here.

1:32:20And then the others are going, they're all in mature markets. They are desperate for growth. We'll do BNP, buy now, pay later. We'll let people buy managed funds. Like, hey boss, Westpac's over here and they've just been really friendly towards Bitcoin. They're allowing people to transfer. And like, instead of sending, someone's gone, why are we letting them send money to Hardblock and Bitteroo? Like, why don't we just do, actually, we could make broking. And Comsec's out, you know, the broker's out there going, oh, it's so risky. Oh, by the way, would you like to trade 100 to 1 leveraged CFD contracts?

1:32:56Hey, you can speculate on the yen through our hyper-leveraged product because that's responsible. But we can't let you trade Bitcoin because that would be, that's just for your protection. Come and trade some CFDs with us, though. They will bend the knee, not because of anything other than they like money. And then one of them will do it and the rest of them will have no choice but to follow. No, I think, and to your point about the cult, the first one that does it, we'll have an absolute avalanche of people who are like, well, self-custody, blah, blah, blah, right? Which is, I'm not sure. But the group will be like, I will bank with you because you offered this.

1:33:32That's not just a case of, I would. Partly it's like, I want to do it. The other part is just, if you said many, many times, I'm here for the mission right so it's like I will make a point of transferring my money from my bank to their bank because they're the Bitcoin bank and that's enough and that's to your point about you know the first move of opportunity that's it there because a whole lot of people who adjust the value for money usability interest rates who cares you're the Bitcoin bank I'm all in right because I think this is huge we're never going to finish this podcast but as I like to say dear listener it's on you at this point okay there is a I don't want to name names, but there is, would you believe there's more than four banks in Australia?

1:34:12You wouldn't know half of them because they're just so tiny, but there's, there's one that's listed on the ASX and I've been pinging them relentlessly on email. How is Matt Cohen? Here's my, what's that? How is Matt Cohen? No, yeah, Matt, Matt. He was smart, right? Here's my pitch to them. It's like, guys, you're irrelevant. I don't want to be mean, but you're irrelevant. No one, no. I don't mean, but you're irrelevant. How's that going for you as an opening line? Like facts are facts. I mean, I can see your financial statements. Your entire market cap is like$30 million. You are irrelevant. And the only business that you get are the mortgage brokers that push people there.

1:34:47And the only reason you can do that is because you just offer very, very marginally profitable products. Hey, I've got a plan for you. Why don't you become the Bitcoin friendly bank? And you allow people to do this. All of a sudden, you're going to get all these cult members like myself who will instantly tomorrow open up an account with you and transfer all of our banking products there because we're just here for the mission. Like, so instantly I'm going to like quadruple, quintuple your user base instantly. Now, secondly, I'm going to give you a second source of income in terms of allowing people to transfer their fiat into dollars.

1:35:19I'm not advocating trading, let me hasten to add, but just an exchange facility. You make a spread or a fee on the transverse. You'll make a spread, as you should, right? Of course. You're providing a service. You're providing a service. So absolutely, a new source of revenue, a massive inducement for new customers to come on board. You're dead anyway. well, let's just face reality. I'm not, when you're desperate, do desperate things, right? And then Commonwealth Bank will buy you out in five years time at 10 times the value that you're at at the moment, right? Like, what's there to lose? You get access to all that, yeah, exactly.

1:35:52Because you've got the banking license, right? And by the way, your banking app, you can start doing the square kind, what Block has done. It's just like, don't worry about any of that. I just want to be able to tap my phone and pay in Bitcoin, or I want people to pay me. I don't care about block times and lightning network. I don't give you stuff about it. I just want to tap it and I just want it to work. And if you've got a banking license and you've got the financial fiat infrastructure and you can integrate that with blockchain and lightning and that kind of stuff, you're just going to crush it.

1:36:22Like it's right there. It's right there. And they won't. They won't even answer my emails because I'm just some weirdo on the internet. But if you're listening - It's the Magic Beans guys. It's the Magic Beans guy again. I'm going to send this podcast to them in 10 years time I go They will not make it to an hour and 35 minutes Come on let's be honest I'll clip it It was on a silver platter guys Silver platter Don't look back in regret Don't look back in regret Well we don't ever catch on only criminals use it Yeah because criminals love to use a transparent open Ledger To hide their nefarious activities That makes a perfect amount of sense When is our straw man bank launching?

1:36:59If I could get a banking license I would do it in a heartbeat in a heartbeat. I'll never get one back. Storeman Bank coming to an up near you. Native support for Bitcoin. 100%. Only Bitcoin? That would be fascinating, actually. Imagine having only a Bitcoin bank. I mean, it's really just an exchange. So with Block, right, and Square, their whole thing is, here's the pitch to merchants. Would you like instant settlement, no chargeback and zero credit card processing fees? yeah but i don't want to receive bitcoin that's cool you can receive dollars like think of think about that for a second right it's just like it it was always it's one of these things the arguments that always oh but you can't buy a coffee with you know you can oh but people won't accept bitcoin when they don't have to or but they can't you know it's just it just no one cares about the technology some people do most of us i'm sorry fellow bitcoiners who are angry at me right now for going against it.

1:37:59No one cares. No one cares. But people do really care about convenience and that kind of stuff. And imagine if you could do that. It's just like, just replace the transactional rails that were built in 1973 and running on a computer code language that no one knows anymore. And you can just instantly seamlessly transact and you can be interoperable and global. It's just like, it's right there. It's right there. Feel better? You better wrap this up, dude, because I'm going to think of something else and I'm going to launch into it. I desperately want to hit the stop button just for the absolute comic value, but I won't because I listen and wonder what the hell happened to the rest of the podcast.

1:38:38In that case, thanks for listening. Until next Friday, have fun staying poor, as Andrew would say. And fool on. That was brilliant. Cheers. The Motley Fool and people appearing in this program may have positions in the companies mentioned. General advice only. Please speak to your financial professional to understand how it may pertain to your situation. Subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener. The Motley Fool operates under Financial Services Licence 400691.